TIG Doug 🌲

The Maoris are widely accepted as the indigenous people of New Zealand even though they only arrived in the late 13th and early 14th-centuries, roughly 700 years ago, and displaced and even genocides earlier Polynesian populations on some of the surrounding islands. By contrast, the Anglo-Saxons -- the literal founders of England -- arrived in Britain 1577 years ago, in AD 449. Yet figures like Lord Foulkes (seen in the video) continue to insist that only the Celts can claim indigenous status in Britain, while treating the English as later arrivals with no equivalent claim. This position is inconsistent on its own terms, because if 700 years of continuous presence is enough for the Maori to be recognised as indigenous to New Zealand, then 1577 years of presence by the Anglo-Saxons proves a much stronger claim. It is worth mentioning that Celtic-speaking groups themselves only reached Britain roughly 1,200 years before the Anglo-Saxons did; they were not the original inhabitants either. Modern genetic evidence further complicates any neat separation between the two groups owing to the ethnogeneis that took place over centuries; this is evident in the people all across England who carry substantial ancestry from the pre-Roman Celtic Britons as well as from later Germanic migrants, with the proportions varying by region. The English ethnogenesis that followed the Anglo-Saxon settlement has been stable for longer than the period usually required for indigeneity to be granted elsewhere, which explains why treating the English as non-indigenous while accepting the Maori as indigenous is therefore less a historical judgement than it is the making of a selective political argument.