To the OP: 2 very different cases for your consideration:
Gibraltar. Separate identity but have repeatedly voted overwhelmingly to remain under British sovereignty as a British Overseas Territory. Independence is not an option for Gibraltar - if it is alienated from Britain it reverts to Spain by Treaty.
Bedouin. Bedouin have maintained their distinct identity in countries all the way from Morocco across north Africa through the Levant and the Arabian peninsula. I have never heard of any Bedouin national independence movement.
I have read some people in Hawaii want independence, but think it is a minority.
Italy is a confederation of older states, and at times various parts think about some sort of separation from the whole, but I am unsure if this is with much seriousness.
“Forced”? So is there some trend developing like in Belgium in the 1960’s when a bunch of universities split along linguistic lines? I don’t know how strong the nationalistic urge is today to split up Belgium itself.
“Native Hawaiians” is the term most people use to refer to the indigenous population. “Local” typically refers to those born and raised in Hawai’i, regardless of ancestry.
But your larger point is correct. There isn’t a strong, unified movement for Hawaiian independence, although the subject is always around. (When I was doing my reading to decide who to vote for, I picked three issues I thought were especially important, and focused on each candidate’s views in those areas. But with one candidate, I didn’t even get that far, as one up-front tenet of his platform was that Hawaii should have its own currency. I stopped reading right there.)
You don’t think an officially designated “distinct society” gets special priviliges? The “Language Police” can go around with complete impunity trampling on the Constitutional rights of the anglophone minority and not a peep from the federal government or the courts. While Canada implements an official policy of national bilingualism, Quebec stormtroopers go around fining English businesses – contrary to freedoms guaranteed by the Charter of Rights – because they have English-sounding names (“Eaton’s”) or the English lettering on their signs isn’t small enough compared to the French, or because a restaurant had the audacity (this is true – I’m not making it up) to have items on the menu only in English simply because the item was known by that name for hundreds of years all over the world.
They spent millions of dollars replacing already existing bilingual traffic signs with French-only signs – despite the impact on traffic safety and tourism – even as Ontario spent millions adding French to their traffic signs in keeping with the national policy of bilingualism.
None of this is especially remarkable in Quebec, though, which has a much higher level of general discrimination than anywhere else in Canada. Remember the ban against public employees wearing “religious symbols” because it’s supposed to be a secular society? Yeah, no head scarves, no hijabs, but if you want to wear a garish silver cross five feet wide to celebrate your francophone Catholicism, mon Dieu, that’s perfectly fine!
Quebec is the only province in Canada that inconveniences its citizens by making them fill out provincial income tax forms as if it was a country. It’s the only province I know of where provincial government institutions refuse to fly the flag of Canada alongside the provincial flag. It was the province that insisted on a “notwithstanding” clause in the Constitution, meaning that if they want to violate the constitutional rights of their citizens, why, they could just go right ahead and do it. Including violating the terms of Confederation by trying to secede from Canada altogether.
I understand, but I am considered a native californian, even tho i am not a member of any of the Amerind tribes. The term "native’ is ambiguous in this case.
Well, we agree there.
My Canadian relatives are from Sask. And trust me they despise the Quebecois. You can say the same for Alberta and manitoba, and it is due to all the special privileges the Quebecois get. It is liek if Texas threatened to leave the Union, and thus the texan flag was flown in dominance over the US flag, the Yellow Rose of texas (or whatever) was required to be sung along the Star Spangled Banner, and Alamo day was a national Holiday. Oh, and that Texas had the right to squash the teaching or speaking of Spanish.
In my mind next time Quebec makes the threat- call their bluff. Oh, and repeal all the special laws just for one province. Mind you having french being taught in the schools is not a bad idea.
Without commenting on your relatives specifically, that’s an overstatement of the general sentiment on the prairies. Perhaps it was once true, but these days few people here get past moderate annoyance with Quebec, which is nowhere near to despising them.
Four: Syria (~10% of the population), Turkïye (~15-20% of the population), Iraq (~15-20% of the population), Iran (~10% of the population). By numbers it goes Turkïye > Iran > Iraq >>> Syria, tracking with the relative size of the countries, maybe 30-odd million total (probably a fair bit more than the entire population of Syria).
But although the Kurds occupy a very roughly contiguous territory, they’ve got some pretty major internal issues. Linguistic (profound linguistic issues), political, and a little religious. Never say never in that volatile part of the world, but I don’t see it happening. The countries they belong to will not willingly allow it and even in failed Syria the formal countries hold the whip hand (Syrian Kurds have a very large neighboring Turkïye problem).
Okay, but my uncles and their friends used to shoot holes in the french language signs. Despise might be too strong today, sure, but strong annoyance is a thing. Even you agree that they arent very popular.
Used to, sure. 35 years ago when official bilingualism was a new thing, when mandatory French classes in grade school were introduced, when Meech Lake and Charlottetown were making waves. In the 2020’s? Not so much.
Not that anti-Quebec sentiment couldn’t reappear quickly under certain circumstances. But it’s just not something that anyone has been thinking of for a couple decades.
Ambiguous to you, sure. I’m simply reporting how the term is used in Hawai’i, and as a general matter in situations where it tends to matter. “Native Hawaiian” (with capital N and capital H) is not an ambiguous term to people who live here, people we write grant applications to, and (among others) Wikipedia.
Not that Wikipedia is necessarily such a great source, but in this case, I concur with what it says, and as someone who regularly works with kānaka ʻōiwi / Kānaka Maoli, I can vouch for the fact that Native Hawaiians are comfortable with NH as an English language term for their heritage as well.
Native Hawaiians (also known as Indigenous Hawaiians , Kānaka Maoli , Aboriginal Hawaiians , or simply Hawaiians ; Hawaiian: kānaka , kānaka ʻōiwi, Kānaka Maoli, and Hawaiʻi maoli) are the IndigenousPolynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands.
In Saskatchewan? I’ve driven through and in Saskatchewan many times, and I don’t recall seeing any signs in French, except for signs advertising French restaurants, and in airports. And I doubt that your uncles and their friends would be shooting up restaurants and airports.
I’m not necessarily doubting you, but could you fill us in a little more on where and what these French signs were in Saskatchewan?
Yes, that’s the feeling I got from my readings on Indonesia, and especially Java. That’s probably for the better given that Indonesia seems to be fairly stable.
If I’m not mistaken you’ve lived there, so I really appreciate your insight. Can I ask you about the linguistic dynamics between Indonesian and Javanese? The latter is the most spoken native language in the country but there are overall many more Indonesian speakers, although the overwhelming majority of them learn it as a second language. And as I wrote above, it seems to have some real historical prestige.
Is there a push to have Javanese recognized as a national language? How do the Javanese feel about being the country’s largest ethnic group and yet having their language only recognized as a regional language?
As recently as 2008, it looked like it was about to split up, but the momentum for Flemish independence seems to have significantly abated from what I’ve read.
Heck, the guy who’s poised to become the next Belgian Prime Minister was one of the most rabid proponents of Flemish independence only 15 years ago. In the meantime, there’s been a financial crisis, Brexit and Covid, which might have led him to reconsider the practicality of being a very small country in a globalized world.
How about the Tyrol (Tirol) region of the Alps? Part in Austria and part in Italy. The Italian part, Sudtirol, the road signs are in both Italian and German, and most people can speak German. Tyroleans have a somewhat unique culture and work on cross-border projects and cooperation, and are allowed space by both Austria and Italy to have some level of independence, but I haven’t heard about any push to leave either country to start their own, independent nation.
Am I the only one that thinks the situation in the OP is mostly the rule rather than the exception? Nationalist drives for independence are mostly driven by politics (and geo-politics, at that); not identity.
