Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

It's worth noting that the definition of "Native American" varies over time. In addition to people self-identifying for various political, social, and economic reasons, the tribes can decide their own level of generic purity. One tribe can specify that you must be ¼ indian to qualify for their tribe, while others can make it far less or more.

All of this leads to the old joke, "What do you call 64 Cheyenne in a room?" "One indian."

The linked article unfortunately bases its conclusions on "self-identification," which is problematic. When the federal government sent the tribes billions of dollars in COVID relief money, suddenly there were newly-minted, self-described "indians" crawling out of the woodwork trying to get a check.

Also realated, there's currently a bunch of people on a reservation outside of Seattle who are being kicked out of their homes because they're not tribal enough. The tribe changed its definition, and because these people are from a related tribe up in Canada, they no longer qualify.

/Friends with a lot of indians. Subscribe to two indian newspapers. And yes "Indian" is correct. It's only white people and city indians who embrace the term "Native American." Rez indians call themselves "indians." Proudly.

As an archaeologist for whom the topic of names comes up a lot, why in the world would you give general advice on "Indian" naming? It's obviously specific to individual preferences and you should generally prefer identifying people with nations anyway.

“Indian” refers to Indians as a whole, especially with respect to their political relationship with the United States. Indians themselves use the term in that context, and it’s the preferred term in, for example, the field of Indian law.

It’s like the term “Asian.” Few people identify as generic “Asian” and it would be incorrect to equate it with a nationality or specific culture. But it does work at a high level to address a group of people who have something in common on a political dimension.

Where did you learn that?

It would be nice if the Canadian term First Nations was adopted for the political sense.

CGP Grey made a very convincing video on the argument that at least in the US, unexpectedly enough, "Indian" is probably the most appropriate term to use for Native Americans for a multitude of reasons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh88fVP2FWQ

Interesting but there is only a Part 0. Unless it is some sort of inside joke, I was hoping for more.

There is more coming, he's been working on the topic for years. I think the extra long delay between this and the next in the series is due to a combination of his rather slow rate of production, recent American politics, and Covid (both videos inspired by Covid, and Covid preventing visits to America).

He's also put out a number of tangentially related videos inspired by his research work on Indians:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABMV4wXx6Xo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCeMCwxayp0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsWr_JWTZss

> There is more coming

Well....maybe. 2 years is a long gap, even for Grey. I would assume he had hoped to put out much more by now. That he didn't is probably a reflection not just to COVID productivity but also lost motivation.

I hope that's not the case, but who knows...

why in the world would you give general advice on "Indian" naming?

I'm not. I'm reiterating what has been told to me by close to a dozen Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni indians.

Why would some random archaeologist decide for a large group of people what they should be called, when they call themselves something else?

I happen to have the January 6, 2020 edition of The Navajo Times on my desk. Just skimming the headlines (because I haven't read it yet), I see the following:

"Phoenix Indian Center," "Gallup Indian Medical Center," "Indian Health Service," "Santa Fe Indian."

The Four Corners region of the United States is called "Indian Country" by the indians who live there.

What give you the right to tell people what they can call themselves?

I'd encourage you to re-read what I wrote, because I've very intentionally avoided telling anyone what they can call themselves.

Part of this whole respecting preferences is that individual terms have to be treated separately. "Indian" is different than "American Indian" which is again different from "Indian country" or "Indian law". Someone may dislike some or most of these without necessarily disliking the others. The ones with specific technical meanings we're unfortunately stuck with in context.

Another popular example of this sort of issue is "Navajo" itself, as many would prefer to be called Diné or some derivative thereof.

> identifying people with nations anyway.

Always awkward after conquests.

I am not white or a city Native American and I use Indian for people from the country of India, because it results in less confusion.

If you want to prevent ambiguity you can use "American Indians" and "People from India". But usually it is clear from the context what you mean.

Whoa, sorry, I posted this under the wrong post. This was supposed to go under https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29989643

On a trip to the Monument Valley, our guide explicitly told us they hate being named as Indian. They seem to prefer their tribal name or if I remember correctly, First Nation).

First Nation is Canadian, and I would point out the number of reservations that have high school teams named "Indians". Those names are local.

My bad. Our guide told us the Navajo believe they were one of the first humans on the Earth, maybe I mis-remembered it as first nation.

It depends, these groups of people are not a monolith. US federal legislation and agencies often use “Native American” or “American Indian” on signage, etc. and some groups use similar, others don’t. I have found “indigenous” to be the most widely-accepted contemporary moniker.

Cubans, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans are all hispanic or latino but don't confuse them.

Although, if you are not an enrolled member of a tribe and you say you're an Indian on a reservation, expect some serious backlash. Harvard may accept you but the tribes will not.

That being said, some tribes use their enrollment offices as a power play on some members. I do wish the federal government would step in some way. Its a tricky subject.

>I do wish the federal government would step in some way

Yes, what Native Americans could use is more federal meddling in their lands, tribes, and affairs... /s

Its not like they don't interfere all the time anyway, might as well do something positive for once.

The boarding schools sere considered positive when implemented. Not so much.

In Canada tribal offices get money from the federal government and they get to decide how to spend it. Some tribes equally share, others hire family and the money never trickles down.

You can't take the easy way out and ignore the problem because you are part of the problem.

What about the Indians from India? What do they call them?

I dunno, but I've seen/used American Indians before to disambiguate (unless talking about specific nations/ethnicities), and Indian-Americans for Americans from India. for (non-American Indian) Indians in India, maybe Indian Indians? subcontinental Indians? that last sounds wrong to me but I dunno what else to use!

As someone of Indian origin - I just call myself South Asian. This seems to be accepted term by many of us who were either born or raised in the west. That could include people of Pakistani heritage, Sri Lankan, Nepal and Bangladesh.

I never disambiguate. my accent is thick enough to give away which type of Indian I am.

Slang wise, I've heard the phrase "beads not feathers". Generally, when talking on a reservation, its pretty obvious, but "Indians from India" was another. Depends on the crowd. You also have to remember that Native Americans talking about other Native Americans will use slang (not for outside use) or refer to the other's tribe.

1) I remember a band that I thought was called "Beads and Feathers" that had Native Americans and Indians.

In the movie, Good Will Hunting, clarification is made with “Dot, not feathers” which seems more accurate since both a dot mark and a feather are forehead ornamentations.

I've always seen "feather" contrasted with "dot", not "bead". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bindi_(decoration)

I've gotten the sense from Brown Pundits that among themselves they refer to themselves as Desi. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desi )

Dot works too. I heard beads at some meeting from an Indian from India speaker. I've heard Dot too.

I have heard "Sari not sorry". Dunno where that came from, but I think I like it.

I suspect it doesn’t come up that often.

East Indians. In rural parts of Canada and the US where indigenous North Americans are the largest minority, restaurants that serve South Asian food (if they even exist) tend be self-described as serving East Indian cuisine.

I'm not sure why this comment has been downvoted. It's a simple fact that anyone traveling in the prairies can confirm. Like it or not, in parts of Canada and the US, "East Indian" is a common term used to refer to people from the country of India. Here is just one example of a restaurant that describes itself that way: http://www.redchillis.ca

Even where I live, in a county which probably has 10 times more Indian-Americans than American Indians, the relevant section of the ethnic food aisle in supermarkets is described as "East Indian".

Indian is definitely not used in Canada nor is Native American as it turned into a very derogatory term. The preferred term is First Nations and Inuit.

In all seriousness, I wonder how long it will be until "First Nations" and "Inuit" become derogatory. I didn't even know "Native American" was bad, to be honest.

There are already people who consider terms like "Inuit" homogenizing and insulting. There are thousands of indigenous groups in the Americas and every person in them can have their own preferences and opinions. There isn't a singular term to refer to the totality of their identities any more than there is for "Eurasians".

>There are thousands of indigenous groups in the Americas and every person in them can have their own preferences and opinions.

Well, the same is the case with Europeans, Asians, and so on, so?

We have smaller identities, and larger group identities, it's not belonging or being categorized in one precludes the smaller more unique identity...

Logically, being characterized at one level doesn't prevent categorization into finer or coarser levels. In reality, there is a finite amount of information that can be conveyed, and the level of characterization is often whatever you lead with. There are important trade offs to be made with fitting in with a larger group vs being characterized as the mixture of traits of said larger group.

It's not a higher level label, they simply don't consider themselves Inuit in the same way Canadians generally don't consider themselves "American".

The problem there is that "American" has two meanings. Not that it's homogenizing.

Does "Inuit" have two meanings?

It's more like if you took American to just mean "people of the USA". So it's more like "Canadians don't consider themselves part of the people of the USA". Inuit refers to a specific subgroup of people which have it as a word in their language. Many of those not in it, if you apply the label to them, they view it as if you insisted Canadians were part of the US people because "they live in the roughly same area and live kind of similarly".

Part of it is the word Eskimo. Not popular and falling out of fashion, people look for a replacement, and grabbed what a large subgroup of the people called that calls itself. And thus mislabeling those that are not in that subgroup.

To stretch the analogy again, lets assume for some reason "North American" has become a word to avoid, so lets just call all North Americans what the people from the USA call themselves to be more considerate. And the Canadians aren't happy with that.

Lots of people living in Europe don't consider themselves europeans.

That's not much a problem, usually a characterization is for use by others, you don't necessarily have to agree. Germans don't consider themselves living in "Germany" either. Or, names like "Balkans" are not necessarily preferable by those there, but that's life.

It's more as if you decided to call Austrians "Germans" too because you can't be bothered to make the distinction.

Well, we could have just as well. That's just like my second example of "the Balkan nations".

I have never heard anyone taking offense to the word Inuit. It simply means "people" in Kalaallisut.

Greenland is quite far from places like Utqiagvik and Chukotka, where indigenous locals speak entirely different languages. Is it any surprise some people wouldn't want to be labeled that way?

I'll admit "inuit" is pretty widely accepted nowadays, but it's not universally so. The relevant ANLC page gives a good summary of the situation: https://www.uaf.edu/anlc/resources/inuit_or_eskimo.php

Eurasians sounds like a neat way to group people who are given a handicap when they apply to Harvard.

Native American is giving them the name of an Italian man who helped colonize them, it's not difficult to see why that's a poor name choice.

The same is not true in the US. Although in the late 80's, I almost got into a fight in Winnipeg because someone asked my Dakota classmate what "reserve he was from". Neither of us had ever heard the term, and it was not, initially, accepted as a friendly inquiry. "You think I'm an animal wasi'chu" did get the guy thinking there was a bit of terminology mismatch.

I once had a girl ask me if she looked Indian. I said no, she got pissed off, and it was quite a while before I realized she didn't mean "from India." Turned out she was from Whitehorse, "full blooded Indian" she said.

First Nations is what they say on the CBC, but "Indian" hasn't been stamped out completely.

Much of my mother's side of the family is Navajo and they do use the term Indian. Inuit is a completely different group much, much further north.

Meanwhile in Canada I have an Indian Status Card

I've heard plenty Indians call themselves Indian. Probably tied to locality

When my father was in school in Northern Ontario they were having students cross out "savages" in text books & write in "Indians". While I was growing up the term was moving to aboriginal

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