'first on the soil') are Indonesians whose ancestral roots lie mainly in the archipelago and consist of various ethnic groups, predominantly of Austronesian and Melanesian descent.

[7][8] The Dutch East India Company, which dominated parts of the archipelago from the 17th century, classified its subjects mainly by religion, rather than ethnicity.

Today, the Indonesian dictionary defines pribumi as penghuni asli which translates into "original, native, or indigenous inhabitant".

The United States Library of Congress Country Study of Indonesia defines Pribumi as: Literally, an indigene, or native.

In the colonial era, the great majority of the population of the archipelago came to regard themselves as indigenous, in contrast to the non-indigenous Dutch and Chinese (and, to a degree, Arab) communities.

The division and classification of ethnic groups in Indonesia are not rigid and in some cases are unclear as the result of migrations, along with cultural and linguistic influences; for example, some[who?]

The clearest example of hybrid ethnicity is the Betawi people, the result of a mixture of different native ethnicities that have merged with people of Arab, Chinese, and Indian origins since the era of colonial Batavia (Jakarta), as well as the population of Larantuka known as Topasses who were of mixed descent from the Malaccan Malays, the Lamaholot, and Portuguese.

Due to migration within Indonesia (as part of government transmigration programs or otherwise), there are significant populations of ethnic groups who reside outside of their traditional regions.