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Sámi are the only officially recognised indigenous people in the EU and some of their languages are on the brink of extinction
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- Title
- Saving an indigenous language from extinction
I think the erasure of indigenous culture and intellectual heritage is something a lot of people simply don't think about. Even though I'm a white American, I still think keeping these distinct practices alive is a crucial part of alleviating the harm done by settler policies based on maxims like "kill the indian and save the man." People are quick to think of native people as "mysterious ancestors" to tell stories about, rather than people who still live and maintain their practices today.
It's really too bad. A number of Sami dialects and languages have already gone extinct.
This phrasing feels so odd to me. Are white people not indigenous to Europe? I understand what they mean, but it feels a little patronizing to call them the only "officially recognized indigenous people in the EU". I suppose Germans and Norwegians and the rest aren't officially recognized as "indigenous", so it's not inaccurate per se.
According to Wikipedia, "Indigenous peoples, also known in some regions as First peoples, First Nations, Aboriginal peoples or Native peoples, or autochthonous peoples, are ethnic groups who are the original or earliest known inhabitants of an area." White people, who are descended from Indo-Europeans, do not match this description, as they were not the first to settle in Europe. See: Old Europe
This is (at least not always) the relevant part of the definition. For example, UN defines indigenous people like this:
I'd say that "non-dominant" is the imprtant part. Practically this often means that they don't have a state.
This is important for example in Finland, where neither Sami or Finnic tribes were the earliest humans there ever, and have inhabited area of Finland for approximately the same time. However, later on Finns colonized them and became the dominant culture, while the Sami were left without state, as guests/subjects in the different Scandinavian states.
Depending on what you mean by indigenous a large part of europe can probably be disqualified.
More seriously though, the idea of being 'indigenous' is rather vague.