ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides most space for considerations of indigenous diasporas that result from genocidal assaults on people who have been decimated in the process. Indigenous Diasporas and Dislocations connect two concepts that are often used and antithetical to one another: indigenous and diaspora. Although 'diaspora' is regularly used in speaking of the negative experience of separation from a loved and lost homeland, it is available for use in quite different contexts. In the majority experience of Jews through the last two thousand years, diaspora has been experienced and understood in a diversity of ways. Jewish discourse about belonging, place, identity and peoplehood is rife with contrasting possibilities of diaspora. Indigenous particularity is supposed to generate its own likeness in 'traditional' repetitiveness. Too many studies of the Pacific and other 'native' contexts fail to articulate that indigenous perspectives blend with others.
