Wildcroft/Religion & the Sense of Self, 7.“We are the Old People.” Modern British Druidry and the sense of​ being indigenous

The volume brings together the issues of power, marginalisation and appropriation in religious​ selfhood in Chapter 7,“We are the Old People.” Modern British Druidry and the sense of​ being indigenous. Jennifer Uzzell addresses the thorny and politicised distinctions between​ indigeneity and Indigeneity in this case study of the self-identification practices of British​ Druids. The chapter asks: why do so many British Druids find an affinity with the concept ofi​ ndigeneity, and is there a way of understanding druidic indigeneity that is​ non-appropriative​ of the struggles of colonially-oppressed peoples? The answer involves debates about​ belonging, land rights and nationalism; about oral transmission, ancestry and kinship. The​ chapter moves on to revisit diverse definitions of tribes, pseudo-tribes and neo-tribes,​ concluding that the “claim of some Druids to be part of an indigenous religion can b​e understood as a self-conscious act of resistance to a mainstream society that seeks to​ commodify and ‘other’ anything that is not a part of the​ human world.