Anthropologists condemn the use of terms like 'stone age' and
'primitive' to describe tribal and indigenous peoples alive
today.All anthropologists would agree that the negative use of the
terms 'primitive' and 'Stone Age' to describe [tribal peoples] has
serious implications for their welfare.
Terms like 'primitive' have been used to describe tribal people
since the colonial era, reinforcing the idea that they have not
changed over time and that they are backward. This idea is both
incorrect and very dangerous. It is incorrect because all societies
adapt and change, and it is dangerous because it is often used to
justify the persecution or forced 'development' of tribal peoples.
The results are almost always catastrophic: poverty, alcoholism,
prostitution, disease and death.
Describing tribes as ‘primitive’ suggests they are ‘backward’
and this has real and dangerous implications for their welfare.
Governments regularly exploit the false notion that tribal peoples
are ‘primitive’ in order to remove them from their land and open it
up to outsiders, thereby freeing up access to its natural
resources.
Even the idea of tribe promotes misleading stereotypes and that
anyone concerned with truth and accuracy should avoid the term
"tribe" in characterizing African ethnic groups or cultures.Tribe
promotes a myth of primitive African timelessness, obscuring
history and change.In the modern West, tribe often implies
primitive savagery.Images of timelessness and savagery hide the
modern character of African ethnicity, including ethnic
conflict.Tribe reflects once widespread but outdated 19th century
social theory.
Indigenous peoples are the descendants of those who were there
before others who now constitute the mainstream and dominant
society. They are defined partly by descent, partly by the
particular features that indicate their distinctiveness from those
who arrived later, such as their language and ways of life, and
partly by their own view of themselves.
It means the same as ‘native’, but in many places that word is
not used now because it carries too many negative colonial
associations.
Using terms like tribal and indigenous create perceptions of
racism and promote outdated ideas of social evolution even
today.