Indigenous means originally from a place, native to a region long before others arrived.

When we talk about indigenous people, we mean groups who lived in an area first, long before other populations moved there. Australia's Aboriginal peoples are indigenous to that continent, having lived there for over 65,000 years. The Māori are indigenous to New Zealand. In the Americas, hundreds of indigenous nations and tribes lived across North and South America for thousands of years before European explorers arrived in the 1500s.

The word applies to plants and animals too, not only people. Kangaroos are indigenous to Australia, meaning they naturally evolved and lived there, while rabbits were brought from elsewhere. Redwood trees are indigenous to California's coast. When something is indigenous to a place, it belongs there naturally, not because someone imported it or introduced it from somewhere else.

You'll also hear the word native used similarly, as in “native plants” or “native peoples.” The phrase indigenous people or indigenous peoples specifically honors the first human inhabitants of a region and their descendants, who maintain cultural connections to their ancestral lands.