<> and DeprecationWarning

[Floyd Davidson]

Your understanding of Inuit agrees with mine - they might well
prefer that term, but Yupik Eskimo people presumably wouldn't.

Even the Inupiat (who are technically Inuit) people in Alaska
don't care to be referred to as "Inuit". They like Inupiat,
and they certainly don't mind being called "Eskimos".

The only clear error is to confuse the Aleuts with Eskimos.

Donn Cave, (e-mail address removed)

I've seen Japanese people walk up to Yup'ik people in the
Anchorage airport and start speaking Japanese to them...

And a lot of the tourist who come to Fairbanks think that every
Alaska Native person the see is an Eskimo, while in fact they
are looking at local Athabascan people.

 

[Floyd Davidson]

(e-mail address removed) (Anton Vredegoor) wrote previously:
|> "Native American" is to "American Indian" as ______ is to "Eskimo".
|>Anyone in the .ca domain care to educate the .us folks?
|To my (eu-domain) eye the use of "American Indian" instead of "Indian
|American" is strange.

Incidentally, in Canada, "First Nations" is generally used rather than
"Native American." But in either case, Native Americans themselves are
quite split--as would be any group of people when it comes to
politics--over best names. In a lot of cases, when referring to a
particular person, naming her particular nation and tribe (Navaho, Oglala
Sioux, etc.) is better. But lots of NAs themselves prefer "Indian" as a
term.

The term "Native American" is a coined word that the US Federal
government came up with to reference *all* indigenous people in
the US and its territories. Hence it includes American Indians,
Eskimos, Aleuts, Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans, Guamanians, American
Somoans and probably somebody I've forgotten to name.

It obviously can't mean anyone who is Canadian, by definition.

Probably an influence on the names is that Canada has a much larger
percentage of Indian immigrants (i.e. from India) than does the US--or
their families of 2nd or 3rd generation. The name "Indian" quite apart
from coming from a 500 year old mistake, refers to a quite different
large group of Canadians. Not that Indian-Americans are a rarity in the
USA either, but we USAians are really quite thick in the head, as a
rule.

Yours, Lulu...

Another oddity with naming conventions came up about a dozen
years ago. If my memory serves, it was a meeting in regard to
education, and involved the Bureau of Indian Affairs or
whatever, but it was a national symposium of Native people...
and when they had to choose a set of terms, they ran into a
problem. Seems that there was obstinate opposition to the term
"native" by many Lower-48 Indian groups, yet Alaskans absolutely
insisted that the *only* way to reference all of the people
indigenous to Alaska was to use the term Native. Hence, they
adopted the phrase "American Indian and Alaska Native peoples".

You'll find that phrase has been widely adopted by the US
Federal government when it refers specifically to that group of
people, as opposed to the wider significance of the term Native
American.

(Boy, any of those Lower-48 folks who don't think there's any
difference between Canadians and USAians, really ought to try
talking about this subject... it'll cure 'em of such a notion!)

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters fed this fish to the penguins on Tuesday 21
October 2003 18:32 pm:

Incidentally, in Canada, "First Nations" is generally used rather than
"Native American." But in either case, Native Americans themselves
are quite split--as would be any group of people when it comes to

I'm afraid I still tend to use Amerind at times -- a term I think I've
only seen in some older Andre Norton novels (possibly "Beastmaster" --
which was science fiction and NOT the sword&sorcery the moview would
have one believe). Of course, if I'm going to use Amerind, for
consistency I should also use Asiaind <G>

--

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

Floyd Davidson fed this fish to the penguins on Tuesday 21 October 2003
20:47 pm:

meaning "snowshoe netter", and Jose Mailhot from Quebec believes
it came from words meaning "people who speak a different
language". Both are quite reasonable, and though I personally

Wasn't that the application of the ancient "barbarian" (one whose
speech sounded like "barbarbar..." <G>

--

 

[Andrew Dalke]

Floyd Davidson:

The term "Native American" is a coined word that the US Federal
government came up with to reference *all* indigenous people in
the US and its territories. Hence it includes American Indians,
Eskimos, Aleuts, Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans, Guamanians, American
Somoans and probably somebody I've forgotten to name.

When did the phrase come into use? I'm thinking about the
indigenous populations of ex- US territories, like the 40 or so
years we held the Phillipines, or the time (times?) we took over
Cuba .. or our current control of Iraq (does that make it
a territory? A protectorate? Do I need a passport to enter
country?... I guess so.)

Anyway, there's something strange about the thought of
native Phillipinos all being called Native American. I'm
also suprised about Puerto Rico in that list. I thought
most of the people there came from European/African
lineage, with little of the local pre-Columbus genetics
or culture remaining. But I can easily be wrong. I am
definite that all the native Puerto Ricanos I know don't
think of themselves as Native American.

indigenous to Alaska was to use the term Native. Hence, they
adopted the phrase "American Indian and Alaska Native peoples".

You'll find that phrase has been widely adopted by the US
Federal government when it refers specifically to that group of
people, as opposed to the wider significance of the term Native
American.

Interesting. One of the local radio shows is "Native American
Calling". It's a talk show, and people from Alaska call in.
They also include news from around the US and Canada.
I'll be on the lookout now to see if/when they say "Alaska
Native peoples"

There's also the low-grade complaints because some people
use the term "Indian Country" while others don't like that term.

Speaking of naming ethnicities, I've heard about Americans
applying the "African-American" to black people in the UK.

Andrew
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Anton Vredegoor]

Do you mean American Indian and Indian-American meaning different things
(they do; the former refers to Native Americans and the latter refers to
naturalized Indians of Asian origin), or that American Indian (i.e.,
Native Americans) should be better be referred to as Indian Americans
(which it shouldn't, X-American means a naturalized person from X, like
Japanese-American or Polish-American).

The problem with this naming scheme is that the natural way for an
Indian who was born in America to identify with the Indian cultural
heritage first and in second place with being an American, seems to be
taken by the denominination for *foreign* Indians.

Would you also rather say American Texan, because Texan American would
mean an American that is naturalized from the foreign country of
Texas?

Anton

 

[Duncan Booth]

(e-mail address removed) (David Mertz) wrote in

The problem, to my mind, with '!=' is the series:

x += y
x -= y
x %= y
x &= y
x != y

One of these things is not like the others. REALLY, really not like the
others (the first four are assignment statements, the last an
expression).

Why didn't you pick this list instead?

x <= y
x >= y
x != y
x == y
x /= y

One of these things is not like the others. REALLY, really not like the
others (the first four are expressions, the last an assignment statement).

 

[Erik Max Francis]

The problem with this naming scheme is that the natural way for an
Indian who was born in America to identify with the Indian cultural
heritage first and in second place with being an American, seems to be
taken by the denominination for *foreign* Indians.

I'm still not sure what you're objecting to in the bigger issue.
There's no question that there is an unfortunate ambiguity in the term
_American Indian_ to mean a Native American -- which comes from
misexpectations of the discoverers and explorers of the New World -- vs.
an American of (Asian) Indian origin. But that's inevitable in evolving
terminology (in any field, not just the one we're talking about here).
If I emigrated to India, became naturalized, and renounced my
citizenship in the United States, saying (in English) that I'm an
American-Indian would be ambiguous, but that's simply because of an
existing "corruption" in the terminology, because "American Indian" is a
preexisting term overloaded to mean something else. It doesn't have
anything to do with the adjective-noun form of the phrasing.

Would you also rather say American Texan, because Texan American would
mean an American that is naturalized from the foreign country of
Texas?

I've never heard anybody use either term, due to the obvious redundancy,
so I can't comment.

 

[Erik Max Francis]

Why didn't you pick this list instead?

x <= y
x >= y
x != y
x == y
x /= y

One of these things is not like the others. REALLY, really not like
the
others (the first four are expressions, the last an assignment
statement).

And, by the way, that /= token is used to mean other things in other
languages (for instance, it's "not equal to" in Lisp).

 

[Anton Vredegoor]

I'm still not sure what you're objecting to in the bigger issue.
There's no question that there is an unfortunate ambiguity in the term
_American Indian_ to mean a Native American -- which comes from
misexpectations of the discoverers and explorers of the New World -- vs.
an American of (Asian) Indian origin.

In my original post, which was an answer to :

"Native American" is to "American Indian" as ______ is to "Eskimo".

I tried to "brainstorm" some possible delicate connotations of the
terms (perhaps not so successfully), because I think that is the way
to solve analogy problems like these.

Since you cut away the problem my post was about in your first reply
to my post it's not a surprise you are now having difficulties seeing
the bigger issue, which IMO was about solving this analogy problem.

The answer is possibly "Indian" (with ambiguous connotations)

Anton

 

[Joost Kremers]

The singular is "inuk".

you may not believe me, but i actually knew that. just a typo... ;-)

It means a great deal more than just
"man" or "person". (It means something on the nature of
"genuine man", as being a human with a human spirit, as opposed
to a human which is actually an animal temporarily masquerading
as a human for a short time. The derivation has to do with an
"original owner" concept relating to ones spirit.)

interesting. i wasn't aware of the cultural implications of the word...

That has always been a nice sounding reason for the derogatory
use of the term Eskimo by Canadians (blame it on Indians!);
however, it isn't true.

like i said, it was "to the best of my knowledge"... i never heard of any
other etymology. thanks for setting this straight.

Whatever, in Canada all Eskimo people are in fact Inuit, and it
is considered impolite to call them anything else. By the same
token, the *only* word in the English language which properly
describes all Eskimo people is the term "Eskimo". "Inuit" does
not, because in Alaska there are many Eskimos who are not Inuit,
and in Siberia all Eskimos are Yupik.

i have never before heard the word 'eskimo' be used to refer to people in
siberia.

It should also be noted that Alaska's Eskimo people are
virtually all rather fond of the term "Eskimo".

so noted... i'll keep it in mind.

 

[Michele Simionato]

|I'm confident there's no way <> can be officially deprecated

Heck, we true believers should be more ambitious: Deprecate the
heretical '!=' pseudo-assignment!

Hurrah!!!


BTW, I am back


Michele

 

[Floyd Davidson]

Floyd Davidson:

When did the phrase come into use? I'm thinking about the

In relatively recent times. For some reason the date 1948
sticks in my mind, but that may be off by a few years either
direction.

Interesting. One of the local radio shows is "Native American
Calling". It's a talk show, and people from Alaska call in.
They also include news from around the US and Canada.
I'll be on the lookout now to see if/when they say "Alaska
Native peoples"

You'll hear lots of Alaskans! And they will almost all use
the term "Native" with regularity. When they want to
distinguish Alaskans from everyone else, it will be "Alaska
Natives" or "Alaska Native people".

There's also the low-grade complaints because some people
use the term "Indian Country" while others don't like that term.

That one is a real problem, because there is the common
vernacular and there is the legal term too. And if you want
bitter fights, get involved in the legalities of just what is or
is not legally "Indian Country". The courts, and in particular
the US Supreme Court, want to reduce the application of that
term because with it comes sovereignty that they would like to
diminish.

Indian Law is a maze of tricks and word games, all designed to
remove ownership of whatever it is that Native people have that
non-Native people want. And "Indian Country" is right in the
middle of that.

What you'll notice is that most people who like the term "Indian
Country" also use it as a stick to poke non-Native legal
philosophy in the side. However, here in Alaska the courts have
found ways to deny either that fact of Indian Country or the
effect. First they say that only Native Allotments are Indian
Country, and then they say yes they are, but tribes have no
governing authority over them individually, and therefore cannot
exercise sovereignty on them. Translate that to: The State of
Alaska government is good enough for me and it will damned well
be good enough for you, even if it does *nothing* for you.

Speaking of naming ethnicities, I've heard about Americans
applying the "African-American" to black people in the UK.

Heh heh, there are more upsetting things than that.

My children are Yup'ik Eskimo (Central Alaskan Yupik), and grew
up in a Yup'ik village. They think of "white" people in terms
of culture more than skin color, and use the traditional Yupik
word to name it: Kass'ak (gu-suk). (It was originally derived
from the Russian word, Kaz'ak, which became Cossack in English.
Technically it means "stranger", but commonly is used to mean
"white man".)

So in the late 1970's we moved to live near Eielson AFB in the
Fairbanks area. My children were pre-teens / early teens, and
went to schools on base, and I worked on base. So they dropped
by my work location after school if they needed a ride home
later than the bus run. That lead to an interesting experience
for some of the young black GI's.

When the subject of race relations came up (keep in mind that I
was just old enough to be the father of these young men, so we
our relationship is pretty much father/son rather than
co-workers and/or friends) I couldn't resist telling a couple of
them that, welllll... my kids just figured they were "Kass'aks
with black colored skin".

Can imagine their shock when they said, "What's that mean?", and
I said with a grin, "White man! Because to them you are just
another White Man!". A totally new concept to a young black
fellow... but a very good experience to have because it is *all*
relative.

 

[Floyd Davidson]

Would you also rather say American Texan, because Texan American would
mean an American that is naturalized from the foreign country of
Texas?

Don't ask Alaskans that question... you might not agree with their
answers... ;-)

Of course, we aren't necessarily too keen on calling ourselves just
American, either.

 

[Floyd Davidson]

you may not believe me, but i actually knew that. just a typo... ;-)

I figured it was a typo. It would be hard to spot though, for
anyone that doesn't have a particular interest in that
terminology. (Everyone has trouble with Inupiaq and Inupiat
too.)

interesting. i wasn't aware of the cultural implications of the word...

Yupik and Inuit are the "same" word in the two branches of the
Eskimo language. They derive from the Proto-Eskimo word "Inuy"
(Which actually is two different words, one with a funny looking
'n' and a funny looking 'y', the other with a normal 'n' and
only the 'y' looks odd. But I can't reproduce that, and don't
know how to say it phonetically. In the following quote there
are also different variations of 'a', 'r', 'e', and 'y'. I've
highlighted words with variations on the character set that
cannot be displayed.)

PE Proto-Eskimo (2000 years ago)
AAY Alutiiq Alaskan Yupik (south central Alaska)
CAY Central Alaskan Yupik (Yup'ik, western Alaska)
NSY Naukan Siberian Yupik (East Cape on Chukchi Pen.)
CSY Central Siberian Yupik (St. Lawrence Is. and Chukotka)
Sir Sirnikski (Chukotka) (Siriniki Chukotka, extinct)
SPI Seward Peninusla Inuit (Seward Peninsula and Bering St.)
NAI Northern Alaska Inuit (Kotzebue to Canada)
WCI Western Canadian Inuit (Alaska to Hudson Bay)
ECI Eastern Canadian Inuit (Canada east of Hudson Bay)
GRI Greenlandic Inuit (Greenland, all dialects)

"PE /inuy/ or *inuy* 'human being' [for Inu forms inuk, etc.,
compare /innar-/ and /inaluk/, and for Yup yuk, etc., compare
/ina(va)-/ and /inay-/; in possessed form (yua, /inyua/, etc.)
this base, the orginal Eskimo ethononym, is everywhere
attested also in the senses 'resident spirit', 'core of
boil' and 'chick in egg'; cf. also perhaps Aleut /inisxi-X/
'owner', ... ]
...
AAY suk 'person, owner'
CAY yuk ... 'person, owner'
NSY yuk 'person, male person'
CSY yu(u)k ... 'person, male person'
Sir yux 'person'
SPI inuk 'person, master, owner' ...
NAI /inyuk/ 'person, owner' [and /inyunyuk- 'form a being (egg)' ...
WCI inuk 'person, owner'
ECI inuk 'person, owner' [as verb = 'form (chick in egg)' and
innu(k)- 'get inhabitants, appropriate']
GRI inuk ... 'perons, owner' ... 'get a boil, form (chick in egg)']"

from "Comparative Eskimo Dictionary With Aleut Cognates", 1994,
by Fortescue, Jacobson, and Kaplan.

Note the similarity in all Inuit forms except NAI (and there was
much clipped out that relates to other uses of the term in NAI).
That is really interesting given that we are talking a 1000-2000
year old language that stretches from the Bering Straits all the
way to Greenland!

Yupik dialects are each distinct though, from Alutiiq in south
central Alaska to Siberia, each shows at least some small
variation, which is probably simply because those people have
been in place for probably 6-8,000 years.

like i said, it was "to the best of my knowledge"... i never heard of any
other etymology. thanks for setting this straight.

The old claims that it means "eaters of raw meat" or something
like that are slowly being replaced in literature by studied
etymologies. But the original was popular just because it is
catchy and easy to remember! Of course, it also says a lot more
about our culture than it does about Eskimos, because quite
frankly no Eskimo would be insulted by the idea that they eat
raw meat (Two days ago I was given a package of raw bowhead whale
blubber, fresh from a whale... which is ready to eat form!) Of
course, Englishmen probably think/thought Norwegians and Swedes
were horrible for eating raw meat too...

i have never before heard the word 'eskimo' be used to refer to people in
siberia.

There aren't very many of them, and they are all relatively
close to the the Eastern tip of Siberia. They are all Yupik,
though the dialects they speak can't be understood by Alaskan
Yupik speakers on the mainland. Saint Lawerence Island is only
36 miles from the coast of Siberia, and they move back and forth
between the Island and the mainland traditionally. (The
Soviet's stopped that, but it is now at least possible again.)

so noted... i'll keep it in mind.

Wanna see an Alaska Native get steamed? Tell an Aleut he's
actually an Eskimo; tell an Indian he's an Eskimo; tell an
Eskimo he's an Inuit. "Native", however, is a safe term that
any of them will be happy to hear.

 

[Skip Montanaro]

Floyd> The problem with the above is that there is no way to fill in the
Floyd> blank and be correct! The terms are reversed...

I don't think so. My intent was to answer the question, "What's the current
politically correct term to use in place of 'Eskimo'?" I believe the above
SAT-style question captures the correct relationship. "Native American" is
p.c., "American Indian" (or simply "Indian") is not. "Eskimo" is apparently
also not p.c.

Floyd> Whatever, in Canada all Eskimo people are in fact Inuit, and it
Floyd> is considered impolite to call them anything else. By the same
Floyd> token, the *only* word in the English language which properly
Floyd> describes all Eskimo people is the term "Eskimo". "Inuit" does
Floyd> not, because in Alaska there are many Eskimos who are not Inuit,
Floyd> and in Siberia all Eskimos are Yupik. Moreover, in Alaska the
Floyd> Inupiat people, who are the same as the Canadian Inuit people,
Floyd> simply do *not* like to be called Inuit! (They use the word
Floyd> Inupiat.)

Thanks for the clarification. Sounds like there's no one best term.

Skip

 

[David Mertz]

|Floyd Davidson:
|> The term "Native American" is a coined word that the US Federal
|> government came up with to reference *all* indigenous people in
|> the US and its territories. Hence it includes American Indians,
|> Eskimos, Aleuts, Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans, Guamanians

|When did the phrase come into use?
|also suprised about Puerto Rico in that list.

I've never heard/read Native American used as widely as Floyd suggests.
Only applying to the native peoples of the Americas.

In the case of Puerto Rico, Columbus was thoroughly exterminationist;
and likewise the rest of the Spanish conquistidor's in the Carribean
after him. So the ENTIRE native population (Boricuas Indians) of Puerto
Rico were slaughtered outright, or died of disease. And similarly in
most of the Western Carribean.

Yours, Lulu...

 

[Geoff Gerrietts]

Quoting Anton Vredegoor ([email protected]):

I'm still not sure what you're objecting to in the bigger issue.

[...]

Since you cut away the problem my post was about in your first reply
to my post it's not a surprise you are now having difficulties seeing
the bigger issue, which IMO was about solving this analogy problem.

I think there's a misunderstanding growing here. If I can summarize
what I've discovered by reading this interesting but grossly off-topic
thread, I will. Maybe someone else who's been reading the whole thing
can summarize.

This analogy puzzle tries to use "Native American" as an example of a
more politically sensitive term replacing an older, less politically
sensitive term (in this case, "American Indian"). There are several
problems with this formulation, though. There's also a problem with
the term we're being asked to fill in a value against: "Eskimo" can be
meant in a couple different ways, one correct and one incorrect.

The relationship between "Native American" and "American Indian" is
not clear-cut. A great deal of political sentiment is tied up in both
terms. While most Americans, particularly those who are accustomed to
making an effort at political sensitivity, tend to regard "Native
American" as a politically sensitive replacement for "American
Indian", this is not entirely true.

For many people who would be labelled "Native American", this is not
an acceptable formulation. Probably for the same reasons, they would
object to my use of the word "indigenous" in preceding paragraphs.
Also, according to the precise definition of the term "Native
American", this term may well represent a superset of what was
previously intended by "American Indian" -- in particular, there's
some concern that native Phillipinos might be included in "Native
Americans", but are definitely not included in "American Indians".

Further, it appears that "Eskimo" is not as clearly understood as we
thought it was. Some portion of our audience believes Eskimo to be a
pejorative term. Some portion of our audience regards Eskimo as a
tribal name.

Where the original question tried to sort out "What term has replaced
Eskimo in the same way Native American has replaced American Indian?"
But it appears that Native American hasn't really replaced American
Indian in the simple way we thought it had. Meanwhile, for some prior
usages of "Eskimo", that term is still correct: it identifies a
specific cultural/ethnic/tribal group. In other ways, there doesn't
appear to be a real equivalent. While "all descendents of indigineous
peoples" seem to have some kind of collective identity, it does not
appear that "all descendents of indigineous peoples that lived north
of the Arctic" do.

--G.

 

[Geoff Gerrietts]

Quoting Geoff Gerrietts ([email protected]):

Further, it appears that "Eskimo" is not as clearly understood as we
thought it was. Some portion of our audience believes Eskimo to be a
pejorative term. Some portion of our audience regards Eskimo as a
tribal name.

Where the original question tried to sort out "What term has replaced
Eskimo in the same way Native American has replaced American Indian?"
But it appears that Native American hasn't really replaced American
Indian in the simple way we thought it had. Meanwhile, for some prior
usages of "Eskimo", that term is still correct: it identifies a
specific cultural/ethnic/tribal group. In other ways, there doesn't
appear to be a real equivalent. While "all descendents of indigineous
peoples" seem to have some kind of collective identity, it does not
appear that "all descendents of indigineous peoples that lived north
of the Arctic" do.

Up to this point I think I was doing okay. I should have kept going
down the thread, missed a few key posts.

But it looks like Eskimo is still more complicated than my initial
readings suggested. I don't think I can adequately express how it is
"correctly used", but I think it's pretty safe to say that a
substantial percentage of prior usage intended it to apply more
broadly than it actually does.

--G.

 

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

|Floyd Davidson:
|> The term "Native American" is a coined word that the US Federal
|> government came up with to reference *all* indigenous people in
|> the US and its territories. Hence it includes American Indians,
|> Eskimos, Aleuts, Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans, Guamanians

|When did the phrase come into use?
|also suprised about Puerto Rico in that list.

I've never heard/read Native American used as widely as Floyd suggests.
Only applying to the native peoples of the Americas.

In the case of Puerto Rico, Columbus was thoroughly exterminationist;
and likewise the rest of the Spanish conquistidor's in the Carribean
after him. So the ENTIRE native population (Boricuas Indians) of Puerto
Rico were slaughtered outright, or died of disease. And similarly in
most of the Western Carribean.

Yours, Lulu...