Can you be a native of America/United States of America if you are not Native American?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Given the utter destruction (and insurance payouts) in Florida, wouldn’t the present be a golden opportunity to return all that land to its rightful owners?

We’re t most of the Seminole and other tribes displaced and murdered with only a small percentage of reservation land remaining in Florida.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Given the utter destruction (and insurance payouts) in Florida, wouldn’t the present be a golden opportunity to return all that land to its rightful owners?

Which of these groups are the rightful owners: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_Florida

[Anonymous]

What about Columbus day?

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/0/1085355.page#23514694

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What about Columbus day?

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/0/1085355.page#23514694

Completely racist.

[Anonymous]

Simply put, native means "pertaining to birth" and anyone born in a country (whether they are occupying it or not) are natives of that country. Our country is not technically called America, but is rather the United States of America. So one would be a United States of American Native. But since we shorten that to America often, and call ourselves Americans, we could say native American (note that native is not capitalized in this instance).

A better term for the Native Americans would be Aboriginal Americans, just as Aboriginal Australians are called such. If we used that term here, there'd be no confusion. The other confusion with Native Americans is calling them Indians, a term I do use normally for the population. It's as if Americans deep down psychologically want to apply a name to the aboriginal tribes which is confused with others, as if they don't want them to be distinct.

But back to us being American natives, we should be able to use that term just as well as French native is used, even though the Franks only invaded France about 1600 years ago. And likewise English native (invaded about same time as the Franks), Scottish native (invaded about 1300 years ago, German native (invaded about 1800 years ago), Turkish native (invaded about 600 years ago), etc.

Now, another point is the illogical thought processes which comes to peoples' minds when they decide to play with words. If I were Native American, and did not like the term Indian, I certainly wouldn't say I was a Native of a place of which the name was European, as America is a European name. In lieu of using a term which was the name of the land for only one tribe, and since the overwhelmingly common spoken language is European, I would say something like Native Westerners or Native Occidentals.

That's right, I don't believe a word like Oriental is racist, when the word literally means "pertaining to the East or Rising". Asian is a much worse term because it comes from the name of the area at the very western part of Asia (modern Turkey), and why would those of the east prefer to define themselves as being from the westernmost part of the continent, the small area which borders Europe?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

That's right, I don't believe a word like Oriental is racist, when the word literally means "pertaining to the East or Rising". Asian is a much worse term because it comes from the name of the area at the very western part of Asia (modern Turkey), and why would those of the east prefer to define themselves as being from the westernmost part of the continent, the small area which borders Europe?

East of what

[Anonymous]

I can see the confusion OP.

I personally don’t think the word native should be confused with indigenous, which usually refers to thousands of years. You can be a native of a place in one life time while being indigenous requires many generations of your ancestors having lived in a place.

However the Smithsonian museum for indigenous Americans refers to Native American Indians so it is confusing. That museum includes indigenous Americans of central and south americas as well.

[Anonymous]

What about the status of natives of Puerto Rico?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can see the confusion OP.

I personally don’t think the word native should be confused with indigenous, which usually refers to thousands of years. You can be a native of a place in one life time while being indigenous requires many generations of your ancestors having lived in a place.

However the Smithsonian museum for indigenous Americans refers to Native American Indians so it is confusing. That museum includes indigenous Americans of central and south americas as well.

The Smithsonian is the Museum of the American Indian. Not the museum of indigenous Americans or Native Americans or Native American Indians. It's not that confusing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can see the confusion OP.

I personally don’t think the word native should be confused with indigenous, which usually refers to thousands of years. You can be a native of a place in one life time while being indigenous requires many generations of your ancestors having lived in a place.

However the Smithsonian museum for indigenous Americans refers to Native American Indians so it is confusing. That museum includes indigenous Americans of central and south americas as well.

The Smithsonian is the Museum of the American Indian. Not the museum of indigenous Americans or Native Americans or Native American Indians. It's not that confusing

This is actually my favorite SM… I remember when this museum opened and there was a lot of debate around whether to include the word native. Many indigenous groups were split on it and there was a lot of confusion since both American Indian and American native Indian are criticized as inaccurate … I still
find it confusing and prefer the term indigenous … however, it is a gorgeous symbolic building both inside and outside ..,

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/09/american-indian-vs-native-american.html

American Indian vs. Native American
Which is the proper term?
BY BRENDAN KOERNER
SEPT 24, 20047:31 AM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the-head-of-national-museum-of-the-american-indian-on-what-we-should-all-know/2016/11/21/746c9c22-a109-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html

The head of National Museum of the American Indian on what we should all know

By Joe Heim
November 23, 2016 at 7:00 a.m. ET
Kevin Gover, 61, is the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. A member of the Pawnee tribe, he was born in Oklahoma. He and his wife, Anne Marie, live in Northern Virginia.
Do you prefer being called Native American or American Indian?
I’m indifferent. [Laughs.] As a friend of mine says, they’re equally inaccurate, so you can use them interchangeably.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren’t people native to the place where they were born?

Not necessarily.

Most in the U.S. are occupiers.

I hate to break it to you but everyone in the world is an occupier. Your comment is laughable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

That's right, I don't believe a word like Oriental is racist, when the word literally means "pertaining to the East or Rising". Asian is a much worse term because it comes from the name of the area at the very western part of Asia (modern Turkey), and why would those of the east prefer to define themselves as being from the westernmost part of the continent, the small area which borders Europe?

East of what

The west. Duh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

That's right, I don't believe a word like Oriental is racist, when the word literally means "pertaining to the East or Rising". Asian is a much worse term because it comes from the name of the area at the very western part of Asia (modern Turkey), and why would those of the east prefer to define themselves as being from the westernmost part of the continent, the small area which borders Europe?

East of what

The west. Duh.

I meant: east of what? /s

Saying “Oriental” isn’t racist because it just means “eastern” is a bad take because obviously you are then referring to the people of an entire continent not by the name of that continent (as we do for all the others) but in reference to the position of Europe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren’t people native to the place where they were born?

Not necessarily.

Most in the U.S. are occupiers.

ALL are occupiers.

Those "Native Americans" came from Asia.

Not only that, but they didn't even come all at once. There were waves of them migrating across the land bridges over the centuries and even over millennia in some cases. So even among the indigenous people in the Americas, you still had established people and newcomers. And yes, they fought each other and took their lands many times over. These are humans after all, and not some "noble savages."

I am getting really tired of this misinformation being spread, both repeatedly on this thread and every time people talk about indigenous Americans. No, they were not all fighting and taking over each other's territories all the time. There were maybe 50 million people across both continents, which cover 17 million square miles. Tribes were not huge and lived in villages that were loosely congregated by language and culture across larger areas, similar to how Alaska natives live today. When Europeans arrived, they were able to establish boundaries between tribes pretty easily and drew maps using rivers, mountains, etc. There may be have been occasional clashes over hunting territories, problems following ecological stressors, and a small number of tribes with an aggressive culture, but overall there is not much evidence that there was overlap or conflict among different groups, who were more focused on day-to-day issues than "territory."

The fighting and political conflicts among tribes that most people know about happened after contact when fur trapping became extremely lucrative and territorial rights and boundaries became important to tribes. Also, as Europeans pushed westward and consumed natural resources, tribes that previously had not had to deal with scarcity suddenly had to develop mechanisms to protect themselves and were encouraged by the US Government to fight with each other. These were not traditional patterns.

It is ignorant to post these kinds of responses "they fought each other and took their lands many times over" without knowing the history, and I suspect it is done with racist intent.

I appreciate your attempt to educate us, but you should probably read a bit more extensively before lecturing. It's misleading (and uncomfortably similar to the white supremacist narratives you claim to deplore) to conjure the entirety of North America as having ALWAYS been a sparsely populated continent, settled only by scattered villages.

Setting aside the Aztec capital, which had (by some estimates) up to 300,000 inhabitants at its peak, there were also civilizational centers across what is now the US. The most famous of these is Cahokia (in what is now Missouri and Illinois), which scholars have estimated was a city of 40,000 people at its peak, but which had outposts all the way up into Wisconsin.

It was first contact with the Spanish that really depopulated the continent -- some really gnarly epidemics, featuring diseases that native populations had not encountered in millennia or ever, took horrific tolls.

To this end, the earliest Spanish accounts of contact make for tragic, if fascinating, reading. The first round talked about thriving cities. Then the Spanish left for a bit. Wen they came back, roughly half a century later, they found almost nobody left.

[Anonymous]

Native American = a race.

Not same as a "native Washingtonian."