🚀 go-pugleaf

Janis Maria Cortese (cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu) writes:
>Why not just use their nation names?

Good point. Why say "Indian" or whatever when you the guy is a Cherokee?
But I suppose you have need of a general name as well. Just like it is
sometimes uninteresting whether people come from Sweden, Spain or Slovenia,
just another European.

>I think we had better start asking Native Americans or American Indians
>or First Nationals or American aborigines THEMSELVES and stop talking
>among ourselves and coming up with our own names for `em.

Yes and no. After all, do you bother what they call you in their
language? The problem is of course that with your total conquest
of the continent, your language has become an important medium of
communication too, so they will be bothered about the names used
about them. But in practice, it is the community of English speakers
who decide what things are called in English.

Here home in Sweden where we don't have any redskins except maybe a
few immigrants, we simply say "indian" without any qualification
with "American". The guys from Asia? Oh, they are "indier".

...but Sweden has its analogue problem. The old Swedish word for the
a person of the people who live in the north mountains is "lapp", but 
these days the "politically correct" word is "same" which is their
own name, since "lapp" acquired a pejorative connotation among the
Swedes up there. However, being born and raised in the south of
Sweden and never have had any direct contacts with them, I feel no 
shame of using "lapp" interchangeably with "same". For me they are
as remote as the Indians in America.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
Life is wonderful when the wonderlife is full