Indigenous describes people, plants, or animals that originally come from a particular place and have lived there naturally for a very long time. It is often used to talk about the first peoples of a region.
It comes from Latin “indigena,” meaning “native” or “sprung from the land,” from “indu-” (in, within) and a root related to “gignere” (to beget, to produce). English borrowed it through Late Latin as a more formal, scientific-sounding word.
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