Italian Aborigines

A surprising email from Massimo revealing the existence of Italian Indigenous peoples today. His original words in Italian, with my translation beneath.

In montagna vive ancora qualche persona che si può forse definire "aborigena", di solito persone anziane che hanno sempre vissuto nella loro frazione e che conservano un dialetto poco contaminato dalla lingua italiana.

In alcune aree di montagna in questi ultimi anni c'è stata una grande riscossa dei dialetti e delle tradizioni locali, ad esempio musica e danze. Per esempio, nelle vallate delle alpi Occidentali che rientrano nell'Occitania italiana, ora si organizzano molte feste tradizionali come quelle per il carnevale (ad esempio la Bahio di Sampeyre), oppure molte feste da ballo con musica tradizionale.

In the mountains people are still living who can be defined as aborigines, old peoples who have always lived on their lands and who conserve dialects hardly contaminated by the Italian language. In some mountain areas in recent years there has been a great revival of dialects and local traditions, for example music and dance. For example, in the eastern alpine valleys that reenter in the Italian Occitania, now there are many traditional feasts organised like those for Carnevale, for example la Bahio of Sampeyre, and many dance festivals with traditional music.

In later emails, Massimo also talked about the "cavernicoli" (cave people) who were labeled by Mussolini's fascists as "La Vergongna D'Italia" (the shame of Italy). During the second world war they disappeared...

Massimo also talked about the Indigneous people of Materna. It seems there is no country on the planet that does not still have its indigenous peoples.