Redefining Indigeneity and Blackness: The Forging of Eritrean National Consciousness Through Migration and Exile

This issue’s editorial line rejects the opposition often suggested between Indigeneity and migration. Indigeneity implies a specific relationship with the land, but it is not something that ceases to exist the moment people are no longer in contact with this land. We asked Semhar Haile to reflect on this claimed opposition through the particular historical example of the Eritrean national consciousness in relation to the Ethiopian Empire and the diaspora that emerged from it.

From Europe to North America, indigeneity is frequently portrayed as the antithesis of migration and movement. Meanwhile the African continent and (the experiences of) post-colonial African migrants, whether in Europe or beyond, have largely been excluded from discussions of indigeneity. As for Blackness, it often solely engages with theorizations rooted in the experiences of the historic Black diaspora, particularly in North America. With this in mind, in reflecting on the intersections between migration and indigeneity, I approach the concept as a broader sense of relationality or a mode of belonging, as also suggested in Boatema Boateng’s article, “Black Indigeneities, Contested Sovereignties” (2023). I find this conceptualization of indigeneity expansive, especially in capturing the experiences of post-colonial African diaspora, a mode of belonging that is relational, fluid, transnational, and in constant process of being made and remade through shifting social, historical and political circumstances. In the same way, I view indigeneity as a construct that has been shaped and reshaped through processes of colonization and post-colonial state building, as well as through other hegemonic processes of globalization and (racial) capitalism and entrenchment of border regimes.