Native American name controversy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Native American name controversy is an ongoing dispute over the acceptable ways to refer to the indigenous peoples of the Americas and to broad subsets thereof, such as those living in a specific country or sharing certain cultural attributes. (The naming of individual ethnic groups, such as the Navajo, the Haida, or the Yanomami, is discussed in their respective articles.)

Many English terms have been used or considered for such purposes, such as Indians, American Indians, Native Americans, Canadian Indians, First Nations, First Americans, First Peoples, Indigenous Peoples of America, Aboriginal Peoples, Aboriginal Americans, Amerindians, Amerinds, Alaska Natives, and more. However, few if any have found universal acceptance. Typical reasons for contesting a name are:

• ambiguity of the words used, like American or indigenous;
• prior use for a different set of people, as in the case of Indian;
• existence of unrelated common meanings, like native;
• conflict with prior legal definitions, like Aboriginal;
• sentimental attachment to a previous name;
• perception that the term is quaint or pejorative, as for Eskimo;
• resentment about having a name imposed by outsiders;
• presumed political implications of the name, as with Native;
• reluctance of individual groups to be referred to by a collective name;

and several others. Further complications arise when translating names between different languages, since even words that are closely related linguistically may have very different cultural loads in the respective speaker communities.

In many countries some broad names have been defined by law, such as Native American and Alaskan Native in the United States, and First Nations and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. Even in those cases, there may be lingering debates on whether certain groups fit the legal definition or not, or whether the the name or its definition are adequate.