malinche II

[Frances Karttunen]

About the use of the word "Indian"


This is a problem some of my colleagues and I have struggled with most
recently in the title and text of a volume of which I am co-editor.  The
volume title is "Issues of Minority Peoples," and one of the contributions
is an essay about names people have for other people.  Another contribution
to the volume uses "Indian" and yet another that was submitted used "native"
and "white man."  We editors an the contributors had debates and
disagreements.

In my own work, if I am talking about one particular people or several such
groups, I use their own current chosen ethnic names.  That means preferring
Tohono O'odom to Papago, Dakota/Lakota to Sioux, Wampanoag to Pokanet,
Mexicano to Nahua, Purepecha to Tarascan, etc. unless there is a good reason
to use the other name.  When the topic is very large, then one has to choose
among "first peoples," "first nations," "Native Americans," "Alaska
Natives," "indigenous peoples of the Americas," or (yes) "Indian people."
There really are a lot of people today who think of themselves as, refer to
themselves as, and want to be called "Indian people."  It depends on where
you are and who you are talking about.

When one is talking about the past, there are additional considerations.  If
one's sources constantly talk about "Indians," then one is not doing one's
readers a favor to pretend the sources don't say that, which goes for
"whites" and "blacks" as well. (My strategy is to refuse to capitalize such
labels.)  What's more, there is regional variation.  Mesoamericans, whether
Nahua, Maya, Mixtec,or Popoluca (all names that one can argue are artificial
or flawed), haven't ever, so far as my experience goes, referred to
themselves as "indios."  On the other hand, the ancestors of the Wampanoags
of the northeast Atlantic coast didn't call themselves Wampanoags in their
written documents of the 1600s and 1700s. ("Wampanoag" seems to be a word
borrowed by English and Dutch speakers from the Delaware language, and its
original meaning was "people who live to the east of us.")  Guess what the
ancestors of today's Wampanoags called themselves when writing about
themselves in their own language?  They referred to themselves as
"indiansog."  No kidding.  But if one goes back a few years to 1643, one
finds Roger Williams reporting that the Narragansetts asked him why the
English called them Indians.

As for the title of Indian Women of Early Mexico, a number of alternative
titles were considered, and the U. Of Oklahoma Press marketing department
convinced the editors that this was the title that would most effectively
inform potential readers of what the book is about.  The women in the book
are from several different Mesoamerican peoples.  Naturally there was also
much prepublication debate about what "Early Mexico" really means.

Fran Karttunen

----------
>From: Michael Mccafferty <mmccaffe at indiana.edu>
>To: Multiple recipients of list <nahuat-l at server.umt.edu>
>Subject: Re: malinche II
>Date: Sat, Feb 5, 2000, 7:05 AM
>

> You will have to convince most of the indigeneous people of North America.
> Good luck.
>
> On Sat, 5 Feb 2000 Yaoxochitl at aol.com wrote:
>
>> Please rid yourself of the term "indian" from your vocabulary when referring
>> to the indigenous people of these lands.  It is an inaccurate label.
>>
>
>
> Michael McCafferty
> C.E.L.T.
> 307 Memorial Hall
> Indiana University
> Bloomington, Indiana
> 47405
> mmccaffe at indiana.edu
>
>
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> "Glory" (what a word!) consists in going
> from the me that others don't know
> to the other me that I don't know.
>
> -Juan Ramon Jimenez
>
>
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>
>