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Paper short abstract:

This paper is an attempt to re-read and contrast the use of “indigenous people” in Wilhelm Heinrich Riehls ethnographic folklore classic “Naturgeschichte des Volkes” with contemporary transindigenous and posthuman perspectives.

Paper long abstract:

This paper engages with the idea of indigenous fluidity by contrasting the historical usage of the term in Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl's ethnography "Naturgeschichte des Volkes" (published 1851-1869) with current transindigenous approaches to the terminology from an anti-totalitarian and posthumanist perspective in contemporary Germany.

Riehl’s work has been considered as one of the first ethnographic attempts of “German” people. Instead of synthesizing sources while sitting in an armchair, Riehl analyzed them based on field notes gathered while hiking the lands and talking with people. While in non-European contexts, the terminology of indigeneity justified colonial atrocities at that time, Riehl uses the term “indigenous” as a resource of empowerment and rejuvenation for his social-political vision of the German Empire. “Diversity,” "rawness," and “naturalness” of German “cultures” and “languages” emanate from “livings with/in a land.” Essentialness emerges from being with earth, trees, rivers, seeds and mountains. Similar ideas appear under other signs in contemporary anthropologies of and in the South and their subsequent notions of “Terran” indigeneity and more-than-human relatedness.

Riehl's characterization of indigeneity fostered the master narrative of ethnoracist German fascism. Until today, the term is politically contaminated. Is this “blocked-ness” another “German Sonderweg”? Could the acceptance of being excluded from being “indigenous” open up a pathway to a new, more fluid concept? If so, the fact that “German lands” were always a space of human (and more-than-human) migration must be integrated. As starting point I propose to entangle transindigenous and posthuman visions with existing folklore records of place-wisdom.