Indian Country

[dstarfire]

For me, Indian means “Thank you for calling technical support, how can I help you …” and the accompanying frustration.

I can’t imagine why anybody would want to go to an Indian casino. “Thank you for coming to … Casino. How much would you like to bet?”

note: No offense to the Indians (folks from the subcontinent), it’s just those constant pitch shifts are incredibly distracting and make it harder to follow the word sounds that actually carry the meaning. I strongly suspect it’s a result of insufficient training.

[CateAyo]

Indian Country is the recognized term to describe reservations, Indian trust lands, and Indian held fee simple lands. It therefore refers to all Native American held lands, that are established by trust relationship with feds and other associated parcels. It is the term used in Indian Law, from tribal courts, all the way through the federal system to SCOTUS.
Ironically, I respond from the Federal Indian Law Conference in Santa Fe, which is in Indian Country.

[Keeve]

@GreasyJack

Sarcasm is a major feature in the Native sense of humor, as is the subversion of their portrayal in earlier white culture.

I once heard that their preference for the term “Indian” is because it implicitly pokes fun at the European who got lost on his way to Asia. Has anyone else ever heard this?

[Colibri]

@Keeve

I once heard that their preference for the term “Indian” is because it implicitly pokes fun at the European who got lost on his way to Asia. Has anyone else ever heard this?

Liberal, who used to post here, used to say that. I’m not sure where else I’ve heard it.

American Indian Activist Russell Means, I Am an American Indian, Not a Native American

I abhor the term Native American. It is a generic government term used to describe all the indigenous prisoners of the United States. These are the American Samoans, the Micronesians, the Aleutes, the original Hawaiians and the erroneously termed Eskimos, who are actually Upiks and Inupiats. And, of course, the American Indian.

I prefer the term American Indian because I know its origins. The word Indian is an English bastardization of two Spanish words, En Dio, which correctly translated means in with God.* As an added distinction the American Indian is the only ethnic group in the United States with the American before our ethnicity.

At an international conference of Indians from the Americas held in Geneva, Switzerland at the United Nations in 1977 we unanimously decided we would go under the term American Indian. We were enslaved as American Indians, we were colonized as American Indians and we will gain our freedom as American Indians and then we will call ourselves any damn thing we choose.

Finally, I will not allow a government, any government, to define who I am. Besides anyone born in the Western hemisphere is a Native American.

*However, Means’ assertion that “Indian” is derived from “En Dio” is bullshit, as I demonstrated in my Staff Report Does “Indian” derive from Columbus’s description of Native Americans as “una gente in Dios”?. (It was nice to see the report cited on the Wiki page on Native American name controversy, reference 4.)

[CateAyo]

I know people who prefer one and some who prefer the other. There is no hard and fast rule, really. Most of us will not bristle at either. We just appreciate being referred to as anything other than “prairie nigger”, “redskin” or thieves or drunks.