At various times and places in American history it has been extremely useful for mixed race people to tell their children they descended from American Indians, in order to explain skin color from Africa or bone structures from Asia.
And as already explained, in Virginia claiming Indian descent of more than 1% was an invitation to forced sterilization, so state authorities were able to present to the Federal government that the tribes no longer functionally existed or never existed.
These two factors can show up in DNA tests; people in Virginia who have been told all their lives that they are of purely European descent may show significant American Indian ancestry, and black people who have been told all their lives that they had a Cherokee grandmother may find out they have no American Indian ancestry at all.
Add in the treaty-breaking Federal government’s hamfisted but well-intentioned accordance of special status to specific ethnic and racial groups, and you can see how the whole thing’s become a terrible mess. It would be a mess even without meaningful affirmative action.
It’s beyond degrading and insulting that the U.S. government has sway over who is Indian (or Native, if you like). Being defined by your oppressor, and having to prove your blood quantum to them to get their blessing is the worst kind of racism. Tribes really should take charge of this, demand their property back from the ‘trust’ of the U.S., and admit and deport people to their nations as they see fit.
The term I’ve seen used a lot is American Indian, Indian by itself is probably just a product of the fact that Indian is a legal term meaning Native American, as others have pointed out.
As I understand it not quite. The way its been explained to me is that there isn’t really an appropriate catch all. There is no autonym in this case as pre-columbian Americans didn’t have (or really need) a single term to refer to themselves collectively. Whether all the denizens of the Americas or just those in the US. Indian has its confusion and racist connotations. But so does Native American, specifically I’ve met people who complain about being labeled “native” because of the use of that term in colonial settings to degenerate peoples as lesser, sort of like “savage”. And either way you roll together a large number unrelated cultures spread across a huge area. Its not like we have a catchall for every culture in the Eastern Hemisphere, so there isn’t really a true precedent to build off of.
For my part I’ve met a bunch of people who prefer to be called “Native American”, but most of those have been Academics. Or otherwise well off educated people who weren’t raised on or who don’t live on or near a reservation. I’ve met more people who prefer to go with Indian or American Indian. Explaining that that’s the term that was first applied to them as a catch all, that their identity as an Indian coalesced around, and that’s ensconced in the treaties (so the legal terms are only part of it). Those people tended to be from or living on reservations, or in some cases working as activists for indigenous rights.
So its confused. And I can’t even be sure that my impression of a class divide in who uses what is accurate. Its likely enough to just be an artifact of my social circle.
But as an outsider who isn’t affected by this outside of some curiosity about how these terms arise and evolve. I think the Canadians have a good approach to it in First Nations. Its pretty respectful, pretty accurately describes what we’re talking about. And underlines a few things that have been ignored about the cultures in question.
But its still pretty linguistically awkward some of the time.
It’s based on blood, the tribes are not free to accept genetically non-Indians as members and have them recognized by the U.S., unlike every other nation on earth.
I pretty much agree as far as the term First Nations, the only real complaint I’ve heard about that term is that it’s confusing in that they’re not first nations in a literal sense, first in the world, which is a pretty mild complaint.
That’s a fairly bullshit complaint. The only real complaint I’ve ever heard is linguistic awkwardness. Being two words and always plural it doesn’t always sound right in every sentence or usage. And doesn’t lend it self to shortening or a one word descriptive. Can’t exactly run around calling people “firsties” and not sound like a jack ass.
Opening the acts would be a nightmare for sure. But the current situation that many indigenous Canadians live in is a real-life crisis (or moves from crisis to crisis), while opening the act would only be a bureaucratic crisis.
Lack of access to clean water, very high suicide rates and suicide clusters that devastate communities, lack of adequate housing (and we’re talking northern Canadian winters), thousands of missing women whose disappearances have never really been investigated. Indigenous people in Canada are incarcerated at a rate that is more disproportionate to their population size than the rate at which black people are incarcerated in the United States. And that’s only what’s doing on now. It was just a generation ago we ended our national program of abducting and abusing indigenous children; the trauma created by that system is still around.
And of course you can find swaths of Canadians who think of indigenous people as lazy, criminal, naturally inclined to addiction, etc. CBC has blanket disabled comments on any story having to do with indigenous people because they were so riddled with racism.
None of this is going to get better when we elect Trump North (Kellie Leitch) in a few years.
In the US, there certainly exist many who would gladly and eagerly make the real-life crisis worse for those on reservations. I can’t speak for Canada, just that persons’ concerns aren’t just bureaucratic and that of course help is essential
Yeah, I agree with your basic point, that there is a very good chance that anyone opening the act would actually be unconcerned with doing good. But I think that is why I’m so anxious to have it rewritten. People of good faith who want to make things better have to do the hard work of making things better or one day it will be rewritten anyway, and people of good faith who want to make things better will not be consulted.
There’s some reservations in Arizona and Nevada, and having lived near-ish the area you hear stories of discrimination, mistreatment, neglect, etc. It’s a hard situation to properly address because they are meant to be mostly autonomous.
I’m very ignorant on specifics… But it seems to me that by trying to keep the bloodline and culture as pure as possible they are isolating themselves further. Maybe this isn’t the case and i would enjoy having the conversation on it with someone with more insight.
The alternative would be assimilation though so i dunno, seems like you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Evidently it isn’t just around there. My wife had to deal with a tribe in Michigan for work. I guess in talking with them, they have had to put up with harassment. I would have thought the midwest to be more laid back about things, but I guess not. She ended up being quite friendly with them, telling them I was on the Potawatomie rolls, and they seemed to get along better with this common thread shared.
“Further” in that the Nevada and Arizona reservations they are already in relatively isolated areas as is, they are expected to take care of themselves so there’s also that, and then there may be self-imposed isolation as a by product of attempting to remain as a cohesive tribe.
I’ve plainly said i don’t know enough about the topic and i wouldn’t want to pose any “solutions” or make a statement that would be seen as being based on anything other than opinion. Not sure why nitpick me in particular even after i’ve gone out of my way to disclose my own ignorance. But whatever, maybe you’d be willing to enlighten me in some way? Hm?
I did answer. And again i’m not sure why exactly we’re having this particular line of conversation, i have nothing else to add and will leave it at that.
To give a vague answer to a vaguely stated problem, (“isolation” was still never properly defined) the persons who want to live on the reservation live on the reservation, those that do not live outside the reservation. The US government has a long history of forced integration, cultural indoctrination, kidnapping children to “civilize” them (the most recent news was the LDS plan that involved the children instead getting raped and abused up until the 1990s https://www.google.com/amp/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/504944/?client=safari
“As part of the Mormon Indian Student Placement Program, Native American children would live with Mormon families during the school year, an experience designed to “provide educational, spiritual, social, and cultural opportunities in non-Indian community life,” according to the Church.” )
There is a deep mistrust of meddling and persons taking advantage of tribes, because that is what many do under the guise of “help”.
It’s a series of tightly coupled problems, there isn’t one solitary answer why persons willingly isolate themselves in their own nation and people and culture, and just want the rest of us to stop fucking with them.
Hence my questions about why you would assign an ideal level of “not isolation”. These are not just questions you have but statements of belief that are yet unaddressed and would do you well to muse over.
