When someone says "native American" do they mean Mexican? or Hawaiian?

I suppose I should also add in that I don't think of Mexico as different than Albuquerque or LA - except of course by all this weapons phantasmagorica going on about some drugs, weapons I assume we provide readily.

We don't provide weapons readily... we trade them for drugs.

some people need to read Ishi.
Ishi was the pseudonym of the last member of the Yahi, in turn the last surviving group of the Yana people of California. Ishi is believed to be the last Native American in Northern California to have lived most of his life completely outside the European American culture. He emerged from the wild near Oroville, California, leaving his ancestral homeland in the foothills near Lassen Peak.

never just money?

I'm not privy to all that, but I see money as the plume.

You may disagree with reason, I'm just not that interested, but I'll await your straightening me out.

Yeh, and I may be one of the few that ever went to Ishi on Temple in downtown LA. Extremely cool food, even then.

I should say to start that I'm a learner here, but I'm not alone in that.

I was skipping a step... but sure.

The narcos give us drugs in exchange for money.
They give us money in exchange for weapons.

The result is drugs for weapons (from a slightly sarcastic perspective).

Setanta,

I understand your distaste for what distortions of history. The scorn in your tone when you say "political rectitude" or "propaganda" is quite clear. And sure, I am not averse to being corrected on historical accuracy. I have no problem with the historical points you are making here or elsewhere.

My perspective is one of social change. I am interested in how we can make society "better" (sure subjective, but that is the point of social change). I am quite interested in the history of how social movements in the past have succeeded or failed.

A successful movement sets a clear narrative-- a story about why one's point of view is correct. Language, without question, is part of this. There is historical fact, but it is quite a bit of room to set a narrative based on your point of view without bending facts (although perhaps even successful movements bend fact).

There is no question that political movements by Amerindians have been ineffective at best. This does not mean that they have any less of a case-- they have certainly been wronged historically. However, for whatever reason, they have failed to unify behind any compelling narrative. There is an issue of social/political strategy and lack of leadership that is separate from any issues of right or wrong.

Contrast that with the African-American Civil Rights movement of Martin Luther King. King was brilliant at communicating a narrative. He used the Moses story (already familiar to Americans) to make his movement a divine struggle. He invoked the founding documents and portrayed the struggle as a natural outcome of America. He united the movement and spoke to the nation.

Language is a part of narrative-- several terms can be accurate... but the one that is chosen for common use is important politically and socially. These battles over words are contested as part of the battle over competing narratives.

There are any number of examples: That the term "partial birth abortion" is the common term was a coup for conservatives. People on my side of the immigration debate lost the battle over "illegal immigrant" versus "undocumented immigrant" (although the other side is now trying to get rid of the word immigrant), and most of us have accepted this. "Marriage Equality", "family values" the battle over terms is constant, and important.

It is social struggle that shapes our society. Some movements are effective and some are ineffective. But these discussions over language are a part of this important dynamic over how our society will change.

Flog that dead horse, E_Brown, flog it it disintegrates! I have already acknowledged that i am swimming against the tide, and that this is something which peeves me. My advice to Boom was that she should tell her boy that "Native American" is the contemporary acceptable term for the aboriginal inhabitants of this continent.

I don't object to the term on an historical basis. I object to all the touchy-feely-huggy-lovey bullshit about Indians living in brotherhood with one another and harmony with the environment. That's the historical distortion to which i object. The only historical context of the term Native American to which i object is that it suggests that the rest of us don't belong here, and it enshrines a pipe dream of the Amerindians.



"Perspective" . . . that's an interesting term to use--i'd have said irrational obsession. Once again, a myth of the noble savage, combined with a term such as Native American which implies that those of European descent don't belong here, and which encourages the perpetuation of idiotic fantasies of recapturing lost glories is not conducive to a realistic attitude toward the world. It doesn't seek social change, it seeks to suggest (idiotically) that everything in the past was just hunky-dory and that it is realistic to dwell on the past.

You know Setanta what I love is people like Green Witch who cheerfully enjoy all the hard earn benefit of a high technology culture, at the same time complaining and whining about the history behind that culture.

Nonsense like she is a hunter/gather with a internet connection of all things!

Love to be able to cut such fools off from the benefits of this culture and let them enjoy living in the ideal dream culture they claim is so must more moral then ours.

'peeve', now there's an even more irrational obsession.

I would say it was someone whose decendants arrived before the Europeans.
What used to be known as "Red Indians" before political correctness came in.

Having first hand knowledge of many American tribal members, I can submit that they prefer to be called "First Americans".

First Americans or second or four or...I forget now how many major waves of immigration DNA studies had come up with spanning ten of thousands of years before the last wave of Europeans arrived on this shore.

Only a fairly small gene pool out of total “Indian” population would or could be call the first Americans.

http://www.americanscientist.org/my_amsci/restricted.aspx?act=pdf&id=2885494546964

Anthropologists have long speculated on the origins of the native populations in the Americas. One of the more recent theories holds that three distinct waves of immigrants--corresponding to three proposed linguistic groups among Native Americans (Amerind, Na-Dene and Eskaleut)--crossed the Bering strait from Asia no earlier than 13,000 years ago. Molecular anthropologist Theodore Schurr’s research on genetic variation in the mitochondrial DNA of native populations in Asia and the Americas casts some doubt on this view. His research suggests that the first Americans may have come to the New World more than 30,000 years ago. Although there is concordance between the linguistic and genetic affinities of Na-Dene Indians and Eskimo-Aleuts, this type of linkage is less robust for the so-called Amerinds. According to Schurr the genetic evidence is, instead, more consistent with a complex migration pattern involving at least two ancient expansions of ancestral populations who may have come from widely separated parts of the Asian continent, as well as the re-expansion of Beringian populations into the New World following the last period of glaciation.

Since we are all being so "correct", in my opinion, each tribe is a sovereign nation, and should therefore be refered to by their tribal name, (i.e., Choctaw, Lakota, or Cherokee). All tribes should take the example of the Choctaw and put the past behind them and build their future economically. Former Chief Phillip Martin laid out a plan that has led the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians into the 21st Century with much economic success even without the casinos.

My opinion: You can dwell on the past, or you can make today and the future something to be proud of. White, red, black , or whatever have to concentrate on the future. We are in an economic mess and the solution is not in the past.

As Pres. Obama said "No matter what ship we came over on, we are all in the same boat." So my advise is "Quit gripeing and start rowing.

BTW I am not black. I am an elderly white woman from Mississippi. So there!

It's all relative.

I didn't mean to quell the discussion. I am enjoying all your posts emensely.. It is refreshing to talk to others with real ideas.

I recall Chief Martin telling of meeting with a high ranking Chinese diplomat and discussing light heartedly possibilities of being related.

We have had a few words before about white Americans calling black Americans... African Americans, even though they came to America many generations ago. On your caulculation, if a white person born in African came to the USA and became a citizen it would be quite logical to call him African American and on your logic if he was caught robbing someone, the police should report him as a African American... but of course you wouldn't. this is why I said originally... you might as well say black Americans, but then that wouldn't be acceptable would it??

I don't know what the hell you're talking about with "a few words about white Americans calling black Americans... African Americans [sic]." Perhaps you would be so good as to enlighten me with a reference to a thread in which you claim we had those few words. You make an extravagent claim about what derives from "[my] calculation." That's utter bullshit. So far as i know, if the police catch someone in a criminal act, there is no reason for them to describe the individual at all. If someone commits a crime, and escapes capture, then they might have reason to issue a description, which would refer to their complexion, and which would have no basis upon which to speculate on the origin of the ancestors of the alleged criminal. You have no logic in this whine at all. My remarks about the use of the term Native American have absolutely no reference to the origin of a person, other than whether or not the person concerned was born on the North American continent. And before you get you panties twisted further, i'd be more than happy to stipulate the South American continent, too.