🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug9.150547.23732@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>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.

And it is up to the community of English speakers to make the teensy
effort to actually bother to TALK to them, instead of sounding off about
Native American Oppression and never talking to any of them.  That just
seems awfully hypocritical to me.

Regards,
Janis C.