This article examines who indigenous peoples are and how that question plays out in Nigeria, particularly within the Niger Delta region. The term indigenous has no single universal definition, yet certain features, namely continuity with pre-colonial society, attachment to ancestral land, and a culture set apart from the dominant society, recur across instruments such as ILO Convention No. 169 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In Nigeria, indigeneity carries an added political weight because it has long been tied to access to land, employment, and political office, producing the familiar indigene and settler divide that has fuelled conflict in places like Warri. The article also draws a line between indigenous communities generally and host communities as defined under the Petroleum Industry Act, the settlements that live directly alongside oil operations and bear the brunt of spills, gas flaring, and habitat loss in places such as Ogoniland and Bodo City. The article closes by considering how corruption, in the award of oil contracts and in the disbursement of community development funds, has worsened the position of these communities and frustrated the constitutional promise that natural resources should serve the people on whose land they are found.