People are leaving New Zealand in record numbers as unemployment rises, interest rates remain high and economic growth is anaemic, government statistics show.
Data released by Statistics New Zealand on Tuesday showed that 131,200 people departed New Zealand in the year ended June 2024, provisionally the highest on record for an annual period. Around a third of these were headed to Australia.
While net migration, the number of those arriving minus those leaving, remains at high levels, economists also expect this to wane as the number of foreign nationals wanting to move to New Zealand falls due to the softer economy.
The data showed of those departing 80,174 were citizens, which was almost double the numbers seen leaving prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Aztec Empire was founded in 1428 by people who migrated from the north to the Valley of Mexico.
By your reasoning, the Aztecs should not be counted as the indigenous people of the Valley of Mexico. They certainly are considered as such.
Similarly, the Inuit in Greenland only got there after the Vikings. The Vikings died out, the Inuit stayed. Again, they are considered indigenous.
In all three cases- the Aztecs, the Inuit and the Maori, they had developed unique cultures. In the case of the Aztecs and the Maori, Europeans then arrived and destroyed those cultures.
I mean if you really want to be technical, the only place humans are indigenous is the East African Rift Valley.
I would also suggest you look at the second definition here:
There are two ways of looking at your argument:
Consider the Aztecs narrowly as a fully separate and distinct people. In that case, no, they don’t count as “indigenous” because there were other peoples (e.g. Teotihuacan people and Toltecs) there before them.
Consider the Aztecs broadly, meaning you’re really talking about the Nahua people as a whole. Then yes, they do count as “indigenous,” but were also there way before 1428.
You don’t get to have it both ways, with Schrödinger’s “indigenous” being simultaneously the first and not arriving until 1428.
Your argument is like claiming that the Romans were the “indigenous” people of central Italy and have been there since 753 BCE and not a minute before, because (for some reason) the Latins and Sabines (and the Italic tribes they descended from) don’t count.
Here’s a question for you: who are the “indigenous” people of the Falkland Islands? Is it Europeans, or nobody?
Did you read the definition?
Yes. Answer the question.
If you read the definition, the question was answered before you asked it.
I want you to say it. There are two possibilities, and the conversation can’t move forward until I know which one you think it is. Quit dancing around the issue.
Why you think I have any reason to do what you demand is beyond me.
Believe it or not, I’m not actually trying to troll you here – despite, at this point, you pissing me off with your cutesy obstinance.
You know what? Fuck it. I’ll just get to the point despite your refusal to cooperate:
I can only assume you’re thinking, but refusing to answer, “no, the European-descended people on the Falkland Islands don’t count as indigenous (definition 2) because they were ‘colonists’ and didn’t arrive before themselves.”
In that case, here’s the real point I was trying to get at: what definition of “colonist” applies to those Europeans but not also the Polynesians, without relying on some kind of European exceptionalism? In what way was the Polynesian expansion across the Pacific not an act of colonization, just like what the Europeans were doing in the Falklands? If the implication is that the ability to “colonize” is exclusively an Age-of-Discovery-European thing, or that Polynesians somehow lacked the capacity to “colonize” places because of some “noble savage” bullshit, I’m not buying it!
In other words, I object to that line of thinking not because I’m trying to diminish the Maori’s claim to Aotearoa, but because making Europeans exceptional sells the Polynesians short.
Now, there is another connotation of “colonist:” the kind that is starkly contrasted with “indigenous” in the sense that they’re newcomers who arrive at a place that already has people living there and subjugate them while claiming the “new” territory for the country they came from. In that context, we can definitely talk about how the Europeans who showed up in Aotearoa were “colonists” and the existing Maori population were their “indigenous” victims. That’s definitely a definition that differentiates between the two groups!
…Except that going by that meaning, the Europeans who settled the Falklands couldn’t have been “colonists” because there wasn’t anybody there to subjugate before they showed up. So does that mean European-descended Falkland Islanders do count as “indigenous” (definition 2) after all, since they were the ones who inhabited the place from the earliest times?
The conclusion I have to draw is this: either both the Polynesian-descended Maori in Aotearoa and the European-descended Falkland Islanders are “indigenous,” or neither of them are.
If you disagree, I would – genuinely! – love to know why.
Well that’s a silly assumption since it literally goes against the definition.