"So What Should We Call You?"

Image Credit:  Mother Jones Magazine.

It's the first day of Native American Heritage Month. It's also the day before the largest-ever Native rally against racism, the upcoming warriors' cry against Dan Snyder's (and others') ongoing racist exploitation of the [ongoing] attempted genocide of our peoples.

So it seems like as good a time as any to talk about names. After all, this is a question (or set of questions) we encounter constantly, and so it seems worthwhile to answer them.   

Note:  Three points. 1) In this post, I am going to use certain slurs, wholly uncensored, solely for discursive purposes. Normally, I would use asterisks, but for purposes of this discussion, I want their full violent and painful impact to be felt. My use of them here is not a license for anyone else to use them in any way whatsoever. 2) I speak here only for myself and for Wings. With every definition and every opinion that follows, I can point to numerous Indians we know who feel similarly, but I'm not going to invoke anyone else's name here. I'm only giving you our very specific perspective, which arises in a very specific and highly personal set of contexts and experiences. 3) Because I am speaking for us, and only us, comments will be closed. Nothing in here is up for debate: not from Indians whose views differ (see that whole "speaking only for us" thing again), and certainly not from white folks, because they don't get to weigh in on the facts of our lived experience. This is not a discursive project, and devil's advocacy is most decidedly not needed; we've heard all the oppositional arguments before (yes, ALL of them), and not one of them holds a single drop of water. This is offered purely for informational purposes for people of good will and an anti-racist activist bent who genuinely want to learn how their own words are perceived. And again, as I say ad nauseum throughout, other Indians will have other opinions, and can and will speak for themselves when they feel so inclined.

Names.

Indigenous. 

First Nations. 

Native American. 

Native.

American Indian. 

AmerIndian. 

Indian. 

Injun. 

Brave. 

Redskin. 

Skin. 

Squaw.

This is the basic spectrum. It's not precisely linear. There isn't a definitive ranking to some of them — although clearly, some are more or less neutral, and some are so clearly racist that there is no place for them in civilized society. 

There are so many misconceptions and generalizations out there about what we "prefer to be called," as though there's one and only one opinion among all of us. And, of course, that "one opinion" is virtually always one that belongs to a non-Indian, and projected onto another population and culture and used to justify that person's preferred practice. In these days of organized, broad-based campaigns to overturn the use of slurs as mascots and the institutionalization of racism and appropriation, the question in the title is one we hear a lot.

Privately, among ourselves, we sometimes use certain terms that we would never countenance from outsiders. We also often use the names of our respective tribal nations (which themselves can vary depending on usage and context, and increasingly, we're seeing people revert to their names for themselves in their own languages, rather than accepting the labels put on them by others). But discomfiture often arises on both sides when outsiders presume to use one name or another for us. 

We have a unique window, having spent years operating a gallery visited by [mostly white] tourists. Tourists who say all kinds of things.

So what should people call us?

It's complicated. It's also simple.




Now, let's look at words. I'm going to show you what we hear when a white person uses these words, and how we react, whether we choose to show it or not. [And I'm going to use the term "white" throughout, since it is white culture that is the dominant one, and in which we all grow up immersed, whether by choice or not.] And by "we," I'm speaking  only for the two of us. That's what makes my final point essential.


INDIGENOUS

This is largely an academic term. It became popular in the '90s in university circles, first, I think, to avoid the obvious inaccuracy of "American Indian," and secondarily, to accord our peoples the recognition that we were on these lands millennia before anyone else. It also avoids the confusion between "Native" and "native," which I'll get to later.

Today, it's a term we see in increasing use among younger Natives, particularly those with university backgrounds. It's also seeing growing popularity in cultural terms, broadly defined: You'll see it used regularly by Native artists of all sorts. In this context, we both use it ourselves.

When a white person uses it, there's nothing wrong with it; it's not offensive. Generally speaking, it may garner a raised eyebrow, though: It's often used by non-Natives who want to show their so-called "Native cred," the extent to which they "get it." In our experience, the people most eager to do that are also the ones most eager to appropriate.   

FIRST NATIONS

In Canada, they've circumvented the "American Indian"/"Native American" problem by using this phrase. We like it; it makes the point clearly, without the need to explain anything about use of either the word "Indian" or the word "Native." We both use it on occasion, particularly in conversation with non-Natives when we want to avoid derailment of the discussion over either of the other terms.

Normally, we hear this only from Canadians. That makes perfect sense; it's the official word used by the Canadian government and the tribal nations there themselves, and it's thus the term that comes most naturally to them. 

But we do occasionally hear it from white Americans. And again, it rarely rings true. Instead, it usually smacks of wanting to show how much more enlightened they are than their compatriots. The impulse is understandable; after all, however bad Canada's own history with its tribal nations is, the U.S.'s is, and remains, far worse. In other words, there's nothing offensive in it to us — but as with the term "indigenous," our experience with the dynamics that are often involved make us . . . watchful.

NATIVE AMERICAN

Today, this is the commonly accepted term in the dominant culture. It avoids Columbus's error with the "Indian" label, yet it shows an understanding of our historical role as the first inhabitants of this land.

When a white person walks into the gallery, someone who is a stranger to us, and uses the word "Native American" to refer to us, our identities, our histories, our cultures, our art, we tend to breathe an inward sigh of relief. It means that we're dealing with someone who "gets it" at least a little: This person understands that "Indian" is technically inaccurate, and have not presumed to use it (yet), but s/he has not resorted to contrived locutions to avoid it. It also is more likely to be someone who is not going to have racist objections to referring to us as "Native Americans," or to recognizing that we are the people truly native to this land. That alone immediately makes the conversation go much more easily.

We use it ourselves, regularly and interchangeably with other terms. There's nothing inherently offensive about it. The only offense arises when white people presume to tell use that we are wrong to use terms other than this one (which we will get to in a bit). Here's the deal: In marginalized populations, "in-group" and "out-group" lexicons develop. There are some words in the former that are not permitted in the latter. There are some that we use in both. And some involve "reclaiming" language: a process by which a historically oppressed group takes a word used improperly, unkindly, or as an outright weapon, and converts it to in-group use as an expression of identity, of survival or defiance.

It also means that if outsiders unknown to us presume to use terms other than "Native American" (or the shorter "Native," discussed below) on first meeting us, we're going to watch events unfold with a jaundiced eye. To us, it's a sign of simple respect, of choosing to use the contemporary formal appellation because you have not earned the right to shorthand, of understanding that you should not presume to own in-group terminology.

A final point: When using the phrase "Native American" to refer to us as a people, the "N" in "Native" must be capitalized. The failure to do so (i.e., to render it as "native American") is a well-known and time-worn tactic of racists bent on equating (or even making superior) their status as white people born in the U.S. with that of people whose bloodlines on this land go back 10,000 years and more. If you write it with a lower-case "n," that tells us something about your underlying thinking. It's not anything to be proud of.  


NATIVE

This functions on two levels: 1) as obvious shorthand for "Native American," and 2) as a perhaps less-pompous analogue to "indigenous." It's a term we use regularly to describe ourselves, and it's one we welcome from outsiders. 

We're at least as likely to use the short form "Native" as we are "Native American." The latter is long and clunky for casual conversation; "Native" covers all the bases simply and easily. 

"Native" has one other big advantage. For some of us for whom the term "American" carries the weight of colonial and genocidal baggage, it identifies us without tying that identity to the invading power that tried to exterminate our peoples. For this reason, it often tends to be our go-to term, whether in in-group or out-group communications (or a combination thereof).

Finally, "Native" (like "Native American") is increasingly use among our younger people. They've grown up in an era where this phrase has been institutionalized as the norm for polite society. They've also learned well the lessons of history, and many of them reject Columbus's error entirely as applied to themselves. it's another reason why, in our opinion, non-Natives who wish to behave circumspectly and politely would do well to begin with these two phrases, rather than any other. 

For ourselves, our minimum expectation is that outsiders will have sufficient self-awareness to use either "Native American" or "Native" upon first meeting us. If you become a friend, that's when "Indian" becomes acceptable. But the latter is too much an in-group term for us to be comfortable hearing it applied to us by strangers or people who are not friends.


AMERICAN INDIAN

This is the old formal appellation. It's still in wide use among Indians and non-Indians alike, but in different ways.

You'll find us using it interchangeably with "Native American," especially in formal or official contexts. It does have the infirmity of the "American" label, and that's one of the many reasons why, in casual conversation, only the second word of the term is used.


AMERINDIAN

To us, this is a word of non-Natives, of the white archaeologists and anthropologists and academics who for generations have arrogated to themselves rights of naming and appropriation across the board — a group a much-loved friend and brother, now walked on, called "the gravediggers."

In real life, we know exactly one — one — self-identified Indian who uses it as a self-descriptor. Back in the '60s and even into the '70s, as all things Indian became beloved by both academic and popular culture, the term leached into discourse within the community, but now? The only people who ever use it in our presence are distinctly non-Indian, and they're also among the most likely to be busily appropriating what is not theirs to take.

Today, other than the one person mentioned above, neither of us has ever heard a single Indian use the term as an identifier.


INDIAN 

In many ways, this is still the most basic term. We use it as an in-group term, and more: Within tribal communities, rather than referring specifically to our nations or languages, you'll often hear us using it as the adjective for anything related to us. This includes linguistic references to saying something "in Indian."

Why? In part because it's a convenient catch-all. Within individual tribal communities, everyone knows the name of the people and the language. That becomes informational only when being communicated to an outsider. 

Part of it is habit; those of us who are older grew up with the word. And part of that is comfort: In the Black community, we all know elders who eschew both "Black" itself and especially "African American" in favor of "colored." It's not that they don't understand all the racist baggage the word "colored" carries when used by a white person; they understand it very well. But it's the word they've chosen to retain, and they will not let anyone tell them what they can and cannot call themselves. It's part of reclamation, and reclamation is part of it.

So, too, with the word "Indian" in our communities. The older generations, particularly, are comfortable with it. Younger folks often shorten it to NDN, to be sounded out. And in some parts of the country, people use a variant that gets spelled Indun, which is not actually pronounced "IN-dunn," but something closer to "IN-d(y)un." There's just the slightest hint of a "y" sound immediately after the "d," but no more than a hint, and the second syllable is truncated, with very little expression of the vowel. It's a geographic variant, one that stems from the differences in tribal languages and accents and sounds (and the speaking of which often require holding the mouth in a very different position from that of speakers of English). That's entirely an in-group word; if you're not actually Indian, don't go around trying to say "Indun."

Back to the word "Indian": We're both told regularly, by white folks, that we can't use that term: That it's wrong; that we're not Indians, because they're only in South Asia; that we're being false to ourselves by using the term.

That's crap.

My response, whenever someone's arrogant enough to pull that?  "It was your people who hung this on us in the first place. They were the ones who couldn't get it right, who didn't know what they were talking about, who couldn't be bothered to find out what we call ourselves. So if we've decided to take your misnomer of a label and reclaim it and make it our own, it's not your place to tell us what we can and cannot call ourselves."

That's when I'm being polite about it.

If you're not part of a marginalized in-group, put frankly and flatly, your opinion on such matters has no relevance. Keep it to yourself; it's the polite thing to do.


INJUN

Not yours.

Period. When you appropriate this word, old American English slang slung as a slur, you're not being clever. You're not being hip. You're being offensive, both appropriative and racist.

It's a reclaimed word we can use with each other. It's not one that can be used by outsiders in any way that's not offensive.


BRAVE

Again, not yours. Not the Atlanta MLB team's either, despite their ongoing racism in using it.

It's not even a term that ever applied to Indians across the board; it's mostly an invention of white authors and screenwriters. Some tribal nations historically referred to their warriors, in their own languages, by terms that roughly translated to brave — but keep in mind that Native languages, as a group, often tend to be characterized by an emphasis on actions, not on labels. Words and phrases often don't — indeed, can't— translate literally, and the same is true for conceptual frameworks.

Either way, it's a term that's inaccurate at bottom. It also reduces Indians (and exclusively male ones, at that) to an identity expressed solely via the "war" motif — which means, despite the fact that the English word "brave" is also a synonym for "courageous," that its very use raises the racist imagery of the "savage." [As a related aside, "savage" is likewise never appropriate. This includes any version of the "noble savage" mythos.]

Leave our peoples to choose which words to describe themselves metaphorically (or even literally). "Warrior" has always been popular, and it doesn't automatically carry some of the negative connotations in our cultures that it does in others. But it's a set of labels that are acceptable only for in-group use. 


REDSKIN

Never. NE.VER. Period.  I don't care how many fake Indians you find to support that racist mascot name, nor how many token sell-outs, nor even how many all-Native rez schools that use it.

It is a vile and violent racist slur, and it is not yours to use. Not even discursively. Hell, we don't even use it among ourselves ("Skins," discussed below, is another matter, but again, strictly an in-group term).

Now, in the fight against this vicious slur, some misinformation has grown up around the source of the word. It is true that it was used, in the pre-Manifest Destiny, pre-"Removal," pre-"Andrew Jackson, Indian  Killer" days as a descriptor for the color of our skin. An inaccurate one, to be sure, since most of our ancestors had skin in varying shades of light brown. But thee are very early colonial references to "redskin" that do not refer to scalps or genitalia or bounties thereon. 

In the end, it doesn't matter. Just like the ghastly expression "rule of thumb," use of which sexists will always try to justify by pointing to an earlier definition than the one for which it is now infamous, the word's use changed over time, acquiring a whole new context, and with it, new meaning.

It's not really the "red" part that's offensive. You'll see this among Indians of a certain age (and even much of our younger generations), who take the word "red" a mark of identity. "Red" in and of itself has been used as a label, but reclaimed by us as a source of pride. it's not offensive in and of itself, but it's not for use by outsiders, either. But it's why I don't asterisk any part of those three letters; to the two of us, it's simple identity.

The real problem is the "skins."

If you don't get it, then understand this: Our peoples were hunted. By white people. Like animals. With official governmental sanction, and governmental rewards. Bounties, values based on the age and gender of the bearer of the scalp, skin, or genitalia turned in for cash. Actual skins. Pieces of our ancestors' bodies, ripped off, turned in for coins or turned into shirts and chaps and blasphemous "medicine" bags. Bloody bits of skin and bone and hair, bleeding through the burlap, turning the straw color scarlet, weighed and cashed in for lucre like any soulless commodity.

It's a term of genocide.

And it's not one that's permitted in our home or gallery. Period. Anyone who uses it will be leaving forthwith, and will not return.


SKINS

Once again, not yours.  This is, much like a certain six-letter slur beginning with the letter "n" in Black communities, an example of pure reclamation. [And as an aside, that word is often applied to us, since in the racist society that is this one, Black is the tragic baseline for such bigotry. "Red nigger," "prairie nigger," "snow nigger" — none of these is new to us.]

It's one we use periodically, occasionally ironically, mostly sardonically. Divorced from the color prefix, it becomes something psychologically manageable and malleable. But it's strictly in-group reclamation, an expression of hard-edged humor among people who have been on the receiving end of the actual slur.


SQUAW

NOT YOURS.  Ever.

This is another one like "redskin" — and also like the example "rule of thumb," above, insofar as it's an example of how words acquire new meaning over time, particularly in the hands and mouths of oppressors.

It is not, as some people are wont to claim, merely a slang word for Indian women. If you really think that, here's my standard challenge: Go to a rez, any rez, and begin greeting every Indian woman you meet with the word "squaw." If you're lucky, you'll be expelled within ten minutes with all your limbs and features intact.

No, that's not what it means. It doesn't mean "broad," or "chick," or the obnoxious-on-its-own "gal."  Here's your tutorial.

The word was originally utterly benign, true — because it came from one of our own language families, specifically, the Algonquin languages. Originally rendered as iskwa (pronounced roughly ihss-QUAH), it simply meant "woman." It was often contracted with other words or as a proper name, shortening the suffix simply to -skwa. As the Algonquin peoples spread and our languages altered and evolved, it took related forms: iskwe (ihss-KWAY), contracted to -skwe, and ikwe (eeh-KWAY) contracted to -kwe. In all cases, the words simply meant "woman."

But of course, colonial mindsets appropriate for themselves the right to use whatever words they want, and to give them whatever meanings they want.

Some of the first languages white settlers encountered (outside of the Spanish, of course, who arrived in this part of the country nearly half a millennium ago) were of the Algonquin family. And since, of course, our peoples were all the same to white folks, the words must all mean the same thing, too. And so as settlers spread west, they took with them the stolen, mispronounced, misrepresented remnants of what little of our languages they'd absorbed. In this way, "squaw," a corruption of iskwa, became the invaders' catch-all word for an Indian woman.

But to them our women were not women. How could we be? We were not even fully human, in their oh-so-obviously superior judgment and wisdom. We were, however, suitable for capture, for trade, for buying and selling, for using, for possession as a thing, for rape. Which reduced us to our genitalia, and that reduction was emphatically not metaphorical.

The bastardized word "squaw," over time, became synonymous with female genitalia — but not just any female genitalia; red, racialized, subhuman, dirty genitalia. Someting synonymous with a four-letter misogynist slur beginning with the letter "c." 

And so it was used, and so it still is today. When a white man calls me that word, I know what he's really calling me.

As with "redskin," there's no excuse for a white person ever to use that word. Ever. So imagine my shock when a white male academic from a top-tier school wrote a slim philosophy tome a few years ago, one that purported to explain our cultures (but as usual, merely appropriated them, getting so much wrong), and marred his entire publication with the syllogistic repetition of this particular slur.

It was inaccurate, wholly out of context, and completely unnecessary. And for a man in his position, there was absolutely no excuse for it. It was completely off, it wasn't even wrong; it went way beyond that into something indescribable. But I'm sure his ivory-tower colleagues thought it a masterwork. The [white] literary critics certainly did.

For a book allegedly built around logical syllogisms, there was only one appropriate response: "Your argument is invalid."


"SO WHAT SHOULD WE CALL YOU?"

As I indicated at the outset, ask 500 different Natives, get 500 different answers. 

What, you wanted it to be easy? Why would you expect that? 

You want it to be "fair?" Who defines "fair?" When dealing with a marginalized population's own identity, the only interpretation of "fair" — or, for that matter, of "fact" — is that of the population's own members. No one else gets a vote. 

You want to talk "fair?" Take a look at the real history of colonialism and conquest on our lands, the legacy of genocide, still ongoing today. Compare that with the difficulty of basic civility, of fundamental politeness, of the onerous task of asking people of a different culture what it is that they prefer to be called, and then deferring to it, even if it changes from person to person. 

Yeah. Compare the relative lack of fairness of those two dynamics. Then get back to me.

Really, it's actually very simple. I said it at the top.

ASK.