Indigenous peoples

Indigenous peoples are people, communities, and nations who claim a historical continuity and cultural affinity with societies endemic to their original territories that developed prior to exposure to the larger connected civilization associated with Western culture. These societies therefore consider themselves distinct from societies of the majority culture/s that have contested their cultural sovereignty and self-determination.

They have historically formed and still currently form the minority/non-dominant sectors within majority-culture societies and are intentioned towards preserving, reviving, and enhancing the efficacy, cohesion, and uniqueness of their traditional social values and customary ties along with a conscientious effort to transmit this knowledge to future generations. This forms the basis of contemporary campaigns for reclamation of their own representational sovereignty and continued existence and recognition as peoples who desire to live according to their own cultural attributes, social systems and structures of law.^[1] Several widely accepted formulations, however, which seek to variously define the term indigenous peoples have been put forward by a couple of other prominent and internationally recognized organizations, such as the International Labour Organization and the World Bank.

Other related terms for indigenous peoples include aborigines ( æbəˈrɪdʒɪni (help·info)), aboriginal people, native people,first people, fourth world cultures and autochthonous. "Indigenous peoples" may often be used in preference to these or other terms as a neutral replacement, where such terms may have taken on negative or pejorative connotations by their prior association and use. It is the preferred term in use by the United Nations and its subsidiary organizations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples