ELL: RE: Re: indigenous

[Julia Sallabank]

Sorry if I'm getting the wrong end of the stick, but does it matter whether
a language (or people) is indigenous or not?

Yours helpfully (I hope)

Julia

----- Original Message -----
From: "Victor Golla" <vkgolla at ucdavis.edu>
To: <endangered-languages-l at cleo.murdoch.edu.au>
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 10:14 PM
Subject: Re: ELL: RE: Re: indigenous


> 6/21/2001
>
> Curtis gives us another instance in which "pre-European expansion"
> is inadequate as a replacement for "indigenous":
>
> > Or Navajo and Apache, which apparently didn't arrive in the
> > southwest of the United States until after Spanish did.
>
> This is unlikely.  Most of the evidence (which is admittedly
> indirect) points to the Southern Athabaskans arriving in the
> Southwest no later than 1350-1400 AD, although they came to
> occupy their historic territories subsequent to that -- after
> 1865 in the case of most of the Navajo Nation.
>
> But whatever the dates, are the Southern Athabaskan languages
> to be considered less "indigenous" than Zuni and Hopi?  -- The
> distinction seems an invidious one, prompted by the ideological
> implications of the word.  Are not the modern social and
> political facts--sovereignty over reservation land, legal status
> as "recognized" Indian tribes, etc.--far more important than
> (putative) antiquity?
>
> --Victor Golla
>
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