What should we call "American Indians"?

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Precisely. Just like I'm okay with calling anyone who lives on Great Britain "British", including the descendants of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who migrated from the continent.

Likewise, I'm okay with calling people living on the Italian peninsula "Italian", despite the fact that their ancestry goes back to the Caucasus. And furthermore, humanity didn't come from the Caucasus; people migrated to there!

They refer to themselves as American Indians. Plain and simple. From the mouth of Winona Fox, a member of the Spirit Lake Tribe of North Dakota. I just got off the phone with her. I asked her how the Spirit Lake people refer to themselves and how they like to be referred to by others. "American Indian" she said, in a tone that implied amusement. She laughed when I asked her if being called an Indian was insulting. She said, "It's not insulting unless they think it is. It depends what's in their minds when they say it. There's nothing wrong with the term 'Indian'." More laughter. I reminisced with Winona about my visit to Spirit Lake.

Ten years ago I visited the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation with an Indian named John. Actually, I found the phone number for the Spirit Lake Tribe through the yellow pages of the phone book in my hotel room and it was John that answered the phone when I called. I was in Devil's Lake with my teenage daughter and her friend and we were bored to death. I knew we were in Indian territory, but you would never know that in the town of Devil's Lake - which is what the white man named it. The Lakota call it Spirit Lake. John drove us all around the reservation, to the school, to the burial ground, to sacred ceremonial grounds and more. He referred to the children in the school as Indian children. He referred to himself as Indian. Indian Reservation is what they call their community on their home page.Spirit Lake Tribe

So, if it's good enough for the Spirit Lake people, it's good enough for me. The telephone is such a nice little convenience. Beats smoke signals. Google is okay, but the horse's mouth is more easily reached by phone sometimes.

Nations have names that are very old. The Choctaw call thenselves Choctaw. Their neighbors are also called, Creek, Natchez, not American Indians.

Some were named by other, Flathead, Gross Ventre, (Big Ass).

Some claim American Indian for all, as in AIM, American Indian Movement.

It shows how lost Columbus was, they could have as well been the American Chinese, or Japanese.

Most did come from Asia, but Asian Americans is taken.

Now I hear India Indians, who can be American India Indians.

American Indian does fit with 1972, when the hostiles that had been confined in camps for generations were granted American Citizenship. Before that they were Gitmoed without trial. They had no legal standing being held as prisoners of the government. They were what the USSR called Non-People.

Since 1972 they have done well in health, education, economic welfare, and their numbers are rising.

Cosmiccat has it right, ask how they would like to be called.

MY preference is for the terms 'Aboriginal', the name of the tribe or lineage or, if they, themselves prefer, 'American-Indian'. For those directly immigrating from India, I'll use the term 'Asian-Indian' to describe their ancestry.

I generally despise the term 'Native-American' in that:
1) I was born here into a multi-generational American family of distant mostly European ancestry (making me a 'native' American), and
2) the human species is NOT 'native' anywhere in the Americas - it is 'native' to sub-Saharan Africa. (Does that make us USAians ALL 'African-Americans'???) Also, the fact that those of full-blood American Aboriginal ancestry and those of full-blood European (as well as any other) ancestry can successfully mate very strongly suggests to me a common deep ancestry.

A couple of anecdotes - a couple of decades ago the USCensus Bureau reported a spike in the number of Americans claiming 'American-Indian' ancestry in a regular decennial Census - as it turned out, the line on the form said 'Native American' and the respondents thought that 'well, I was born here...'. Also, as time passes and people intermarry, etc, the 'melting pot' effect of the USA culture is more alive and well than it has ever been and officially parsing such differences is thus getting closer and closer to becoming an exercise in the absurd.

Mike

To sheri long

Rumanians are called 'Dacians"- because Rumania was the Roman province of Dacia- one of the last areas conquered by Rome before the empire started to decline.

Rumanians ( and Moldavians) speak a latin based language (infact a jr high buddy of mine who lived in Rumania could read the conversation excercises in my Spanish language textbook without missing a beat because word for word textbook Spanish is virtually identical to Rumanian!- Esta Susana en Casa? Si, in La Cocina!")

The French are- well linguistically they are NOT Germanic. French is decidedly Latin-based.
And a cousin with other Romance languages.
The fact that the country is named after the German tribe called the Franks doesnt change that. Its the same place as the Roman province of Gaul. In fact the whole reason that English is not a dialect of Dutch , is because of the thick veneer of Latin laid down on English by the Norman Conquest of England- Latin-by-way-of-French. English would be more purely Germanaic if the French hadnt ruled England for a couple centuries after Hastings.

Aboriginal Dwellers of North and South America

Or pre-Columbian people.


ruveyn

Thought this was interesting:


I AM AN AMERICAN INDIAN, NOT A NATIVE AMERICAN!
from Russell Means

I abhor the term Native American. It is a generic government term used to describe all the indigenous prisoners of the United States. These are the American Samoans, the Micronesians, the Aleutes, the original Hawaiians and the erroneously termed Eskimos, who are actually Upiks and Inupiats. And, of course, the American Indian.

I prefer the term American Indian because I know its origins. The word Indian is an English bastardization of two Spanish words, En Dio, which correctly translated means in with God. As an added distinction the American Indian is the only ethnic group in the United States with the American before our ethnicity.

At an international conference of Indians from the Americas held in Geneva, Switzerland at the United Nations in 1977 we unanimously decided we would go under the term American Indian. We were enslaved as American Indians, we were colonized as American Indians and we will gain our freedom as American Indians and then we will call ourselves any damn thing we choose.

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[quote="ShenLong"][quote="showman616"]To sheri long

I enthusiasticallly agree with your last point.
The term "Amerind' -a contraction of American and Indian- is a cool term.
It was ( or may still be) used in Anthropology textbooks, but sadly did not catch on in general parlence.

Its short and handy, trips off your tongue- and- it similar enuff the old term for folks to figure out what it means- but different enough from the old term that you no longer need to specify "red dot, or feather" when you mention "Indians".