Conversation

Indigeneity isn't a nationalist category (as Marxists exclaim) but a condition imposed by settler colonialism, much like proletarianization. The French aren't “indigenous” to Paris or Marseille. Land isn't merely a “mode of production,” but is also imbued by social relations.

Land is never “just land.” A thing isn't never just a thing, it's always imbued with social relationships. That's the case with land. Would a plank of wood just be a fragment of a tree? Of course not; it's imbued with the crystallization of alienated labor and nature.

wrt colonization and settlement, people become Indigenous when they become alienated from their land, in very much the same way people become proles/workers through alienation from their labor.

For post-colonial creoles like myself, there is a double alienation, one from the land—of which creoles have no relation to unlike Indigenous peoples—and then another alienation from our indigeneity as we identify with colonial/post-colonial projects (e.g. the Philippines).