why are the original inhabitants of America called as native Indians even today
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Native American Indian Studies is a mouthful of a phrase. I chose it because I want people to think about names. I want to provoke a critical awareness of history and culture. In the study of Indigenous Peoples, I don't want the question of names to slide by, to be taken-for-granted. 1
Most of us know the story about how the Peoples of the "new world" came to be called "American Indians." Columbus (his name gives away his secret: Cristobal Colon; the Christian colonizer) thought he was going to India and, being a vain and self-important man, insisted he had found it. So he named the people he met "Indians." The "American" part would come later, after everyone but Columbus had admitted his error, and the land had been named for another Italian navigator, Amerigo Vespucci.
"American Indians" derives from the colonizers' world-view and is therefore not the real name of anyone. It is a name given to people by outsiders, not by themselves. Why should we use any name given to a people by someone other than themselves? 2
On the other hand, why shouldn't we use it? Almost everybody in the world knows the name and to whom it refers. It is commonly used by many Indigenous Peoples in the United States, even today. It is the legal definition of these Peoples in United States law.
Some people get upset about "American Indian" because of its association with Columbus. There is an equally serious dilemma with the use of "Native American," which came into vogue as part of a concern for "political correctness." The latter was an effort to acknowledge ethnic diversity in the United States while insisting on an over-arching American unity. Groups became identified as hyphen-American. Thus, African-American, Irish-American, Italian-American, and so on. For the original inhabitants of the land, the "correct" term became Native-American.
The word "native" has a generic meaning, referring to anyone or anything that is at home in its place of origin. "Native" also has a pejorative meaning in English colonization, as in "The natives are restless tonight." From an English perspective (and, after all, we are talking about English words), "native" carries the connotation of "primitive," which itself has both a generic definition, meaning "first" or "primary," and a pejorative use, meaning "backward" or "ignorant." And, as we have seen, "American" derives from that other Italian. So "Native American" does not avoid the problem of naming from an outsider's perspective.
Footnotes:
1. For a detailed critical analysis of government naming practices—including an extended discussion of "the renaming of Native Americans" as a "cultural project: to fashion and normalize a standard patriarchal family-system deemed suitable to [U.S. and Canadian] citizenship, property rights, and civilized, moral conduct"—see James C. Scott, John Tehranian, and Jeremy Mathias, "Government Surnames and Legal Identities," in Carl Watner, ed., National Identification Systems (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2004). The essay originally appeared as "The Production of Legal Identities Proper to States: The Case of the Permanent Family Surname," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 44:01, pp. 4-44 (January 2002).
2. The following excerpts from an 1897 essay by the Superintendent of the U. S. Boarding School for Crow Indians, Montana, illustrate the government policy of "naming the Indians": "The Indian Department has continually urged this matter upon its agents, superintendents, and other workers 'in the field.' The command to give names to the Indians and to establish the same as far as possible by continuous use has been a part of the 'Rules and Regulations' for years past. ... In this thing, as in nearly all others, the Indians do not know what is best for them. They can't see that our system has any advantages over their own, and they have fought stubbornly against the innovation." Frank Terry,"Naming the Indians,"
Most of us know the story about how the Peoples of the "new world" came to be called "American Indians." Columbus (his name gives away his secret: Cristobal Colon; the Christian colonizer) thought he was going to India and, being a vain and self-important man, insisted he had found it. So he named the people he met "Indians." The "American" part would come later, after everyone but Columbus had admitted his error, and the land had been named for another Italian navigator, Amerigo Vespucci.
"American Indians" derives from the colonizers' world-view and is therefore not the real name of anyone. It is a name given to people by outsiders, not by themselves. Why should we use any name given to a people by someone other than themselves? 2
On the other hand, why shouldn't we use it? Almost everybody in the world knows the name and to whom it refers. It is commonly used by many Indigenous Peoples in the United States, even today. It is the legal definition of these Peoples in United States law.
Some people get upset about "American Indian" because of its association with Columbus. There is an equally serious dilemma with the use of "Native American," which came into vogue as part of a concern for "political correctness." The latter was an effort to acknowledge ethnic diversity in the United States while insisting on an over-arching American unity. Groups became identified as hyphen-American. Thus, African-American, Irish-American, Italian-American, and so on. For the original inhabitants of the land, the "correct" term became Native-American.
The word "native" has a generic meaning, referring to anyone or anything that is at home in its place of origin. "Native" also has a pejorative meaning in English colonization, as in "The natives are restless tonight." From an English perspective (and, after all, we are talking about English words), "native" carries the connotation of "primitive," which itself has both a generic definition, meaning "first" or "primary," and a pejorative use, meaning "backward" or "ignorant." And, as we have seen, "American" derives from that other Italian. So "Native American" does not avoid the problem of naming from an outsider's perspective.
Footnotes:
1. For a detailed critical analysis of government naming practices—including an extended discussion of "the renaming of Native Americans" as a "cultural project: to fashion and normalize a standard patriarchal family-system deemed suitable to [U.S. and Canadian] citizenship, property rights, and civilized, moral conduct"—see James C. Scott, John Tehranian, and Jeremy Mathias, "Government Surnames and Legal Identities," in Carl Watner, ed., National Identification Systems (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2004). The essay originally appeared as "The Production of Legal Identities Proper to States: The Case of the Permanent Family Surname," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 44:01, pp. 4-44 (January 2002).
2. The following excerpts from an 1897 essay by the Superintendent of the U. S. Boarding School for Crow Indians, Montana, illustrate the government policy of "naming the Indians": "The Indian Department has continually urged this matter upon its agents, superintendents, and other workers 'in the field.' The command to give names to the Indians and to establish the same as far as possible by continuous use has been a part of the 'Rules and Regulations' for years past. ... In this thing, as in nearly all others, the Indians do not know what is best for them. They can't see that our system has any advantages over their own, and they have fought stubbornly against the innovation." Frank Terry,"Naming the Indians,"
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