I'm not gonna use the term "Native Americans" anymore
publius2k
wrote in soc.culture.native.american:
>CptainDan (cpta...@cs.com) writes:
>
>> I'm just gonna say "Indians."
>>
>> It's way easier and sounds better.
'injuns' is even easier, but maybe that could be confused with 'The
Little Injun That Could'
Or may be confused with the owners of the Indian restaurant that
specializes in curried chicken and such.
>
>I'm sure you think you're being insulting, but the majority of the people
>I've encountered who share my ethnic background prefer to be called
>"American Indians", or just plain "Indians".
both are problematic, as is 'native american'.
When communicating in the local vicinity of the USA, references to
'indians' are usually understood to apply to the peoples indigenous to
the land. But now with the opening of freer global communication via
the internet and other mass media, some confusion is caused with the
peoples of the state of India.
In earlier times of colonial USA, the term 'Americans' was reserved
for 'indians', the indigenous peoples of USA or north america. This
was typically egocentric as many of the peoples throughout central and
south americas also called themselves 'americans'.
Then, by the early 1800's the europeans in the USA had co-opted the
term 'americans' for themselves and even self-righteously called
themselves 'native americans' so as to distinguish themselves as being
'native-born', in contrast to the waves of new 'riff-raff european
immigrants' from Ireland and such.
Some 'indians' have opted to select alternative terms, such as
'american indian' or reclaim even the term 'native american'.
For those who would prefer those terms, I would ask, would you call
yourself 'columban indians' or 'native columbans', in obvious honor of
columbus?
How is adopting the name 'american', in honor of another colonizing
spaniard, amerigo vespucci any different?
Bartolome de Las Casas in his epic "History of the Indies" rants
against granting Amerigo Vespucci such an honor and accused him of
being a liar and a thief who stole the glory that he felt belonged to
Columbus. "The new continent," insisted Las Casas, "should have been
called Columba and not as it is unjustly called, America."
"One of the climaxes of vilification was attained by Emerson, who
comments in "English Traits" (1856): "Strange ... that broad America
must wear the name of a thief. Amerigo Vespucci, the pickle dealer at
Seville, who went out, in 1499, a subaltern with Hojeda, and whose
highest naval rank was boat-swain's mate in an expedition that never
sailed, managed in this lying world to supplant Columbus and baptize
half the earth with his own dishonest name.""
So what if, as Las Casas preferred, the continents now called North
America and South America had been named North Columba and South
Columba instead?
If 'indian', would you be comfortable with calling yourself or being
called 'Native Columbans'?
Does it make a difference which Spanish invader the label derives
from, whether Columbus or Amerigo?
Superfly Rev. Billy Graham
MIGRANT
well... they're here illegally.. = illegal
and they aren't from this country = alien
i don't see MIGRANT anywhere in either of those definitions.