INDIANS and some more thoughts...

[micc at home.com]

Chema,

You have succinctly captured the essence of this complex, human, and
passionate subject....

To me, it is not a matter of what labels we choose for ourselves.... it
is how we respect the labels others have chosen and how we carry
ourselves in our path of life.

Living a life or anger, hatred and, dogmatic purity is not a sign of
being a warrior.  It is a sign of not having a high intelligence ( Do
THE NAMES Hitler, Stalin, Balboa, Alvarado, Atilla, Tlacaelel, Idi Amin,
Ghengis Khan ring a bell?  They did not kill millions of innocent people
by themselves, they had "noble and loyal warriors who did the
butchering)

too many people (especially young people....AND YES I TOO WAS ONE OF
THEM... MANY CENTURIES AGO!!) spend so much of their sacred and finite
energy, re-batlling the battles that were won or lost long ago.

i did not use ...>  You my son, most precious feather, must not fall
into this darkness...."facetiously.... yaoquichtli IS OUR SON (OR
DAUGHTER.....although correctly a female would be yaocihuatl) and he/she
IS A PRECIOUS FEATHER to our people....We chicanos have more angry and
lost,young men rotting in prison than we do attending college...THAT IS
A TRAGIC WASTE OF LIFE..... and no amount of revgisionism, hatred or
political correctness can change that!

i am 45 years old.  I have been involved in the
Chicano/indigenous/olitical/spiritual/educational/economic struggle for
27 years.  I have seen  many sincere activists end up wasting their
lives with anger, self-defeating behavior (drugs, alcohol, etc) i have
seen self-appointed prophets, leaders, elders, and so-called Nahuatl
experts come into our communities and take advantage of the naive and
innocent who are looking for something or someone to help them find
meaning in their life.


it is only after we have climbed the pyramid that we can see how far we
can fall....


mario e. aguilar
www.aguila-blanca.com


 I never state that we should "we should accept it (even though
"indian/indio" is incorrect),
> and move on.

i simply stated that for those people who LIVE AN INDIGENOUS LIFE
EVERYDAY (as opposed to those who study it, dream of it, or wish it upon
themselves) indian/indio is not a big issue. The bigg issue for them is
economic, political, linguistic, spiritual and gentetic survival.

that is why I write my ..." soliloquy. It
> was so full of un-topical, irrelevant, random comments tied together with
> personal attacks that I had to read it several times to see a point."

The point is that there are too many people fidgeting over how many
indians/indigenists are dancing on the head of a pin.










Jose Maria Hernandez Gil wrote:
>
> This is a mail directed to Mario E. Aguilar and Yaoxochitl, but I think
> it contains enough relevant information(*) to merit posting it to the
> list.
>
> I'll commence with an analysis of Yaoxochitl's mail. He/she makes a very
> simple comment. Essentially that "indian/indio" should not be used when
> referring to the people encountered by the Europeans in 1492 in that land
> mass.
>
> I agree.
>
> To say otherwise would be to contradict obvious fact. It would be to say
> that the sky is not blue (as in the specific wavelength of light that
> most english-speaking humans have agreed upon to refer to as "blue".) A
> mistake was made. To accept this fact leads to the next logical question:
> Should be strive to correct this error in the language?
>
> You cannot force people to change their opinions, much less force them to
> accept the truth. One can try, but will most likely fail. You
> (Yaoxochitl) say that we should. Yet you do the same thing that you're
> criticising. You call "Columbus" "Columbus", yet his name was and always
> will be "Cristoforo Colombo". Should you correct it? I think so.
> Will/Could you change it? Probably not.
>
> Then you say an indian is someone that is from India. India is a large
> country. I'm positive there is someone somewhere there that is "indian"
> yet does use "indian" to call themselves that. Can you force a Bengali or
> Kashmiri to be "indian" just because they where born in India?
>
> I could continue with Africa, which is an interesting example, but I
> think you get the point. To bring to someone's attention an inaccurate
> label is good, but people will not give it much value unless you are
> willing to do the same for others, period.
>
> On to Mario E. Aguilar. Frankly, I got lost reading your soliloquy. It
> was so full of un-topical, irrelevant, random comments tied together with
> personal attacks that I had to read it several times to see a point.
>
> You say that even though "indian/indio" is incorrect, we should accept it
> and move on. I do not agree with this anymore than I agree with calling
> Taco Bell food mexican, but I see merit in this. Words are rather trivial
> in the long run. There are other, much bigger things to worry about
> (hunger, corruption, survival in general). But to say that ALL should
> resign themselves to the label without at least giving a rational
> explanation is quite immature.
>
> I think that's it. If you two have a reply, please e-mail it to me
> directly, no point in annoying others.
>
> (*) On relevance: To many of you this discussion might seen rather
> stupid. Perhaps, but this list is about nahuatl. Nahuatl is not a dead
> language. Like most things in Mexico, many people have many opinions
> regarding it that can be quite different and even contradictory. I also
> believe that Mexicans today are not all that different from Mexicans that
> lived 500 years ago or even 1,000 years ago. Language is important, but
> so is the way the people who speak it/spoke it think. Debates such as
> these are useful is learning a little more about the problems of Nahuatl
> speakers (or at least their descendants.)
>
> Chema