When people refers to a distinctive group of a nation, community, or ethnicity, the word, otherwise a mass noun, may take the plural peoples to indicate a collection of multiple such groups. To write, for example, In 1991, Australia began its reconciliation with its indigenous peoples implies multiple separate groups of native Australians with whom the government is reconciling. Although frequently prefixed, as in the above example, with indigenous or autochthonous, peoples may refer to any groupings of distinctive people—Germanic peoples, Slavic peoples, etc.