But what do you call the women?
I’m suddenly seized with the urge to watch that Monty Python ep with Mr. Neutron, just for the scene of Graham Chapman saying “we are not Eskeemohs!”
(bolding mine)
Um, no, no it isn’t, not in Canada anyways. “Eskimo” or Inuit refer to the northern peoples, the ones who speak Inuktitut, traditionally lived on caribou, hunted seals, biuld snow houses as temporary shelter while hunting, etc.
The more southern peoples are Haida, Tlingit, Ojibway, Cree, Huron, etc. These are the peoples called “Indians”, traditionally the woodland dwellers, the hunters and fishers and corn-growers. They are NOT Eskimos or Inuit.
In Canada, all are officially called First Nations, or “native”.
That was what I thought too, Sunspace, but we’re wrong. Apparently First Nations refers only to “Indians”. Inuit do not consider themselves First Nations. Together, they make up the First Peoples.
This was in the first link I posted which, apparently, doesn’t work. The site is here.
Look, we in America (you’know, God’s Country 
) don’t have anything like First Nation or First People or First Whatevers. You’re Native American if you r ancestors happened to be here a really long time ago, and your Eskimo if yer a NA who lives in Canada or Alaska. Inuit and Haida and whatnot is specific tribes.
So there. 
This is not America. This is the Internet. 
Well, we do distinguish between Eskimo and Indian (Native American) in Alaska, and we also have Hawaiians, who are not referred to as Native American. Weez gots our own problems, too!
There is not only Inuktitut, there is also Inuvialuit, which is in the Western Arctic; I don’t know the native languages spoken outside of Canada in the North.
[/tuqituq qaalunaaq* who lived there way too long]
*crazy white person. Although the word qaalunaaq actually translates to ‘eyebrow belly’, it means white person.
The real important question here is why did we abandon the old spelling of Esquimaux? It lets you exercise more of those unused letters on the keyboard!
I’ll count this as a semi-pitting, giving me a lifetime total of 3½.
Like I said, America.
Thue. I forgot about them. I am not an expert.
Too French. We call them Freedom Eskimos now.
I still maintain that “this is hellishly complicated, everybody disagrees with/contradicts each other, it’s obscure and you’ll hardly ever use it, but it’s bloody imperative that you get it absolutely right” is not any kind of reasonable.
Calling all Native Americans north of the US/Canada border Eskimoes is like calling anyone south of the US/Mexico border in the Americas “Mexican”.
Now don’t be silly. Everyone in America knows that people south of Mexico are Brazilian. 
That is an excellent analogy.
Actually, it’s more like calling them Brazilian. It ignores the fact that there’s a different group closer.
Wait. Wait!
I am horribly, intensely, and, I’m afraid, inextricably confused.
In Canada, those who in the States we referred to as “Native Americans”, “Indians”, or “Washington Redskins”, I am to call “Costa Ricans”? And those we called “Eskimos” are to be named “Falkland Islanders”?
Is that it?
Are there really that many of them?
Now that Frank’s safely in Canada, would some local Doper please sit him down and fill him in on what we secretly call Tennesseans who insist they know better than Canadians about what to call the indiginous peoples of the Canadian north?