Regarding the Term "American Indian"

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On wikipedia is says "Canadian Metis" is a person part European/part native, so I wonder do you despise the naming of "Indian" because you think they are lower class people ?

I have heard this is true in Mexico, where the part European/part native people look down on the darker skin Indians, so to call them Indian would be to assign them to a lower class.

These days, as far as I can see, the only Siamese are kitty cats.

I think Thais call themselves Thai. I believe there are subdivisions of Thai--like Red Thai, etc.

As far as I know, Siam became Thailand around the time Persia became Iran (circa 1935).

LOL...I really didn't mean to give the impression that I'm interpreting this literally; I see the good humor in it.

I think Jacoby makes a good point here. Identify people by their ethnic group.

Metis are specifically of French European and aboriginal descent.

In Canada it only a tiny minority are "Metis". They dont make up the bulk of any class in core Canadian society. Whites are the majority, and are the bulk of every class.
In Mexico the majority of the population is Mestizo (mixed White and Indian). The people who are White enough to look White (the minority) tend to be the aristocracy. Most of the large minority who are full blooded Indians are rural peasants. If you're in between racially, you also tend to also be in between in class. So thats why race equates to class in Mexico. I seriously doubt that it would work that way in Canada (Indianness being equated to class). Canada and Mexico just are not comparable that way.

I avoid any terminology that implies an "original" or "initial" status of any humans in North America. Before our current American Indians, there was the Kennewick Man about 9,000 years ago. Before the Kennewick Man, were the Paleo-Indian Clovis humans about 13,000 years ago. Before the Clovis, there were the Paisley Cave humans about 14,000 years ago. So, who gets the "first human" status in North America? Can anyone really link the Paleo-Indian migration out of Beringia with the American Indians of recent centuries?

The same is true with any other continent. "Indians" can refer to individuals from India (who lived there for 45,000 years before migrating to central Asia and, 10,000 years later, to Alaska before migrating to the Americas 3,000 years after that), of course, as well as those from the East Indies or the Americas. That is large constituency to square with the histories of migration. So, why not use the generic term "American Indian" to refer to those individuals of North, Central and South America, and leaving the "first" status to sometime in the future when it can be claimed with evidence?

I live pretty much in Indian Country and they use both terms freely and call each other Indian. Everyone says Indian here.

"Indian" sounds cooler to me. It can conjures up images of savagery, ruthlessness, brutality. However, "Native American" sounds like neutered term, that removes that connotation.

An analogous example would be to change the term "Vicking" to "Native Scandanavians". The term "Vicking" connotes a group of conquerers, whereas "Native Scandanavians" is a neutered term.

I am still not sure why Canadians feel it's an offensive term?

I'm part Indian. Not a whole lot, but some. My paternal grandmother was part Cherokee.

I guess I had better stay out of Canada -- they might find me offensive.

Why would you think that? Canada has a terrible history with aboriginal people (google residential school,) but we are doing better now.

LOL...I think Eric was being ironic.

Really:

If a person wants to be referred to as an Indian, an Indian he is, history aside.

It's all very complex to me.

But it's nice to ask the person what he/she prefers.

I'd rather be called Don than Donnie (my name isn't Donald). I'm more of a Don than a Donnie. It's based on the fact that I hated being a kid, and I hated being called by my diminuitive.

Everybody has a complex history of one's own.

Me too

Utter nonsense.

None of this has anything to do with changing the status of modern Amerinds as the "first Americans". It may effect how diverse the roots of the modern Amerinds are (whether their ancestry came from only one, or from several, stone age migrations from the Old World). But none of it would cause Amerinds to not be the first humans in America.

By the way: they recently did DNA tests on Kennewick Man, and he is now known to be genetically indistinquishable from living Amerinds.

But even if he were shown to be of some distinct non Amerind race that had somehow managed to die out before the Amerinds arrived-that wouldnt change the fact that the Amerinds were here for ten thousand years before Columbus arrived, and so (for practical purposes) were the "first Americans".

The "English" ( Anglo Saxons) are native to Germany, and didnt migrate to "England" until 1500 years ago (and we KNOW that they were NOT the first people in what is now England- the Celts and the Romans and others preceded them). The Amerinds were in America at least eight times as long as "the Angles" have been living in "La Angleterre". So if we call England "England" we can call the Amerinds "the First Americans" even if you could show that an extinct population of prehistoric Jewish Bantu people preceded them here by getting to America more than ten thousand years ago.

Down here in Alabama we say Indian. Many times we simply say the tribe, like Cherokee or Choctaw or Creek. Almost everybody who is born in Alabama and has family here for several generations is part Indian. It's a huge part of the culture here and we have tribes, exhibitions, arts and crafts, and even an Indian burial ground that schools go on field trips to. Everybody here seems to know which tribe they are and how much Indian blood they have. When we say Indian down here most people know what we mean, and when we mean someone from India we simply say "A guy from India" or "a foreign lady Indian". American Indian is the default Indian in our vernacular. We still have many school mascots that are Indians and I've yet to see anyone be offended or crying their little eyes out over that. I've actually seen kids say that they should get to wear the mascot costume at the ball games because they have more Indian blood than the particular cheerleader who has been wearing it. It's about talent, not amount of Indian blood though, so that never works.

At my kids school, which has the mascot of an Indian and the name of a particular tribe, they have an 8 foot tall Indian statue dressed like a Plains Indian in the entranceway of the school. There are tomahawks painted on the parking lot and on school themed items. Many people in this county are that type of Indian, but the biggest group in Alabama is Cherokee. I'm actually in a Cherokee tribe and I have a roll number from the government. So does my oldest son. I need to get my other kids signed up for it as well. A lady I used to know worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and said it was important to sign up for that so when your kids were older they could get scholarships. Thats honestly why most people signed up. They do go to the "pow wow's" and learn the crafts and such, but mainly the gatherings have nothing to do with Indian stuff. It's usually just the same people who show up at the tribal land and spend the weekend in the cabins hanging out, listening to football or Nascar on the radio and portable TV's and cooking BBQ or fishing and just kicking back.

Even though to the govt I'm Indian, I identify as Italian. I'm half Italian but only 1/8 Cherokee. You can be in a tribe and have a roll number up to 1/32. Also, because of how things used to be in the South, where lots of times Indians didn't have birth certificates and many people were ashamed of Indian heritage until around the 60's it's common for it not to be documented. We don't have to have documentation down here, at least my generation doesn't. There isn't anything anywhere on anything that states my grandfather's mother was full blood Cherokee, but everybody in the family knew it, there are old pictures that are obvious, stories about her and her family etc. My grandfathers sisters denied it to the day they died, but that's because it was considered mixed race to be part Indian and they were born and raised during a time where if you were anything other than full blood white, you were "less than". That started changing in the 60's.

I have a roll number from the gov't and the term Indian doesn't bother me, so I'm certainly not going to listen to somebody else define what I should be offended by. Also, the term dago, guido, guidette, guinea, nor wop offend me.My younger son even tells people that he's a guido, because he really is. You rarely see a blonde one, but he's got the olive skin and dark brown eyes, and he's tall unlike a lot of Italians, but he's very much a stereotypical guido about his clothes and belongings and such. He's not a douchebag guido though, there is a difference. His gf is mostly German and really wishes she was one of those guidettes but he has told her that if he wanted a trashy gf he wouldn't be with her, and guidettes from Jersey Shore, which is where she gets her ideas, are the definition of trashy sluts, so he's glad she isn't one.

Maybe I have a thicker skin than some or maybe I realize that slang isn't insulting and it's not the same as a slur. I've met so many people who use slang about ethnicities that it's not funny. One of my good friends is Romany. That's Gypsy. Many of the PC whiners nowdays will tell you not to dare say Gypsy because that's an insult. He says it's not. His family is very, very ethnic. They are the kind of Rom who follow the purity laws very strictly. They even have sheets on the furniture that gadje might sit on and don't let outsiders use their china and silver, and they use the word Gypsy, not Romany to identify what ethnicity they are.

I just don't see what the big hoopla is about finding everything except textbook labels to be demeaning and insulting. I think it's a form of oversensitivity.

LOL...it's funny to hear an Alabaman use "guido."

I've only heard it used in Brooklyn!

And I've never heard it until I was in my 20s--and I've known quite a few Italians.

I once had a girlfriend who had considerable Indian blood--and she looked the part. She insisted on being called "Indian."