Why is Indigeneity Important?

What exactly does it mean to describe a people as the "indigenous" inhabitants of a land and why is indigeneity important? There are two possible ways of defining "indigeneity": (a) indigenous peoples are the descendants of the first human inhabitants of a land; and (b) indigenous peoples are the descendants of those who inhabited the land at the time of European colonization. Corresponding to these definitions, we find arguments for indigenous rights based on (a) a Principle of First Occupancy (PFO), which gives moral recognition to the fact that a people have taken possession of land without disturbing any other occupants; and (b) a Principle of Established Order (PEO), i.e. a conservative principle that commands us (and should have commanded the colonizers) not to disturb established arrangements. Often there is confusion as to which of these is meant when theorists of indigeneity talk about "an indigenous people's original occupancy of a territory." And once we distinguish the two principles, we begin to see that they have been adopted opportunistically and carelessly by the First Peoples' movements. PEO might be used to condemn colonial invasion as disruptive of an existing indigenous order; but - as a conservative principle - it cannot be used now to justify any sort of reversion to the status quo ante. The conservative protection that PEO offered to the status quo in (say) 1840, it now offers to the status quo in 2002. It condemns historic injustice, but it blocks radically disruptive remedies. PFO seems more promising as a basis for radical remedies, but it is a difficult principle to apply, inasmuch as it makes tremendous demands on our historical knowledge, and it assumes lack of conflict and conquest among so-called indigenous peoples. In any case, PFO is problematic in ways that theorists of property have understood for a long time. It legitimizes occupancy which is not disruptive of anyone else's occupancy; but it puts too much weight on history and it is insufficiently sensitive to subsequent changes in circumstances and to the conditions that face us today. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]