Native Americans

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental USA, parts of Alaska, and the state of Hawaii. History of moving of Europeans to America from the end of 15th century.

Рубрика История и исторические личности
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World War II

For more details on this topic, see Native Americans and World War II.

General Douglas MacArthur meeting Navajo, Pima, Pawnee and other Native American troops.

Some 44,000 Native Americans served in the United States military during World War II: at the time, one-third of all able-bodied Indian men from 18 to 50 years of age.[95] Described as the first large-scale exodus of indigenous peoples from the reservations since the removals of the 19th century, the men's service with the US military in the international conflict was a turning point in Native American history. The overwhelming majority of Native Americans welcomed the opportunity to serve; they had a voluntary enlistment rate that was 40% higher than those drafted. War Department officials said that if the entire population had enlisted in the same proportion as the Native Americans, the response would have rendered the draft unnecessary.[96] Their fellow soldiers often held them in high esteem, in part since the legend of the tough Native American warrior had become a part of the fabric of American historical legend. White servicemen sometimes showed a lighthearted respect toward Native American comrades by calling them "chief."

The resulting increase in contact with the world outside of the reservation system brought profound changes to Native American culture. "The war," said the U.S. Indian Commissioner in 1945, "caused the greatest disruption of Native life since the beginning of the reservation era", affecting the habits, views, and economic well-being of tribal members.[97] The most significant of these changes was the opportunity--as a result of wartime labor shortages--to find well-paying work in cities, and many people relocated to urban areas, particularly on the West Coast with the buildup of the defense industry.

There were also losses as a result of the war. For instance, a total of 1,200 Pueblo men served in World War II; only about half came home alive. In addition many more Navajo served as code talkers for the military in the Pacific. The code they made, although cryptologically very simple, was never cracked by the Japanese.

Self-determination

Main article: Native American civil rights

Conflicts between the federal government and Native Americans occasionally erupted into violence. Perhaps the more notable late 20th century event was the Wounded Knee incident in small town South Dakota. Upset with tribal government and the failures of the federal government to enforce their treaty rights, about 300 Oglala Lakota and American Indian Movement (AIM) activists took control of Wounded Knee on February 27, 1973. Federal law enforcement officials and the national guard cordoned off the town, and the two sides essentially had a standoff for 71 days. During much gunfire, one United States Marshal was wounded and paralyzed. In late April a Cherokee and local Lakota man were killed by gunfire, causing the elders to bring an end to the occupation.[98] In June 1975, two FBI agents seeking to effect an armed robbery arrest at Pine Ridge Reservation were wounded in a firefight, then killed by shots fired at point-blank range. AIM activist Leonard Peltier was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life in prison in the FBI deaths.[99] Nixon's statement against termination

In 1975 the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act was passed, marking the culmination of 15 years of policy changes. It was the result of American Indian activism, particularly of the previous decade, the Civil Rights Movement, and community development aspects of President Lyndon Johnson's social programs of the 1960s. The Act recognized the right and need of Native Americans for self-determination. It marked the U.S. government's turn away from the policy of termination of the special relationship between tribes and the government. The U.S. government encouraged Native Americans' efforts at self government and determining their futures.

In 2004, Senator Sam Brownback (Republican of Kansas) introduced a joint resolution (Senate Joint Resolution 37) to “offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States” for past “ill-conceived policies” by the United States Government regarding Indian Tribes.[100] As section Section 8113 of the 2010 defense appropriations bill, President Barack Obama signed the legislation into law in 2009.[101] Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Native American Apology Resolution

In 2007, AIM activist John Graham was extradited from Canada to the U.S. to stand trial for killing Anna Mae Aquash in December 1975 at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. She was a Mi'qmaq and the highest-ranking woman activist in the American Indian Movement (AIM) at the time. She was killed several months after two FBI agents had been shot at the reservation, for which Leonard Peltier was convicted in 1976 and sentenced to life. Many Lakota believe that she was killed on suspicion of being an FBI informant, but she was not.[102][103]

On September 13, 2007 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, after nearly 25 years of discussion. Indigenous representatives from the United States, particularly from AIM, played a key role in the development of this Declaration, as did indigenous peoples from the Americas and other nations. It was passed with an overwhelming majority of 143 votes in favor; only Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States voted against it. Each of these four nations has indigenous populations that became outnumbered, disfranchised and historically oppressed by new immigrant groups.[104] They expressed serious reservations about the final text of the Declaration as placed before the General Assembly. Australia and New Zealand have since then changed their vote in favor of the Declaration.

Speaking for the United States mission to the UN, spokesman Benjamin Chang, who was staff under Richard Grenell, said, "What was done today is not clear. The way it stands now is subject to multiple interpretations and doesn't establish a clear universal principle."[105] The U.S. mission also issued a floor document, "Observations of the United States with respect to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples", setting out its objections to the Declaration. The United States drew attention to the Declaration's failure to provide a clear definition of exactly whom the term "indigenous peoples" is intended to cover.[106] In December 2010, President Obama declared that the United States would sign the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.[107]

Native American slavery

For more details on this topic, see Slavery among Native Americans in the United States.

Traditions of Native American slavery

The majority of Native American tribes did practice some form of slavery before the European introduction of African slavery into North America, but none exploited slave labor on a large scale. In addition, Native Americans did not buy and sell captives in the pre-colonial era, although they sometimes exchanged enslaved individuals with other tribes in peace gestures or in exchange for their own members. "Slave" may not be an accurate term for their system of using captives.[108]

The conditions of enslaved Native Americans varied among the tribes. In many cases, young enslaved captives were adopted into the tribes to replace warriors killed during warfare or by disease. Other tribes practiced debt slavery or imposed slavery on tribal members who had committed crimes; but, this status was only temporary as the enslaved worked off their obligations to the tribal society.[108]

Among some Pacific Northwest tribes, about a quarter of the population were slaves.[109] Other slave-owning tribes of North America were, for example, Comanche of Texas, Creek of Georgia, the Pawnee, and Klamath.[110]

European enslavement

When Europeans arrived as colonists in North America, Native Americans changed their practice of slavery dramatically. They found that British settlers, especially those in the southern colonies, purchased or captured Native Americans to use as forced labor in cultivating tobacco, rice, and indigo. Native Americans began selling war captives to whites rather than integrating them into their own societies. As the demand for labor in the West Indies grew with the cultivation of sugar cane, Europeans enslaved Native Americans for the Thirteen Colonies and some were exported to the "sugar islands." Accurate records of the numbers enslaved do not exist. Scholars estimate tens of thousands of Native Americans may have been enslaved by the Europeans.[108]

As slavery became a racial caste, the Virginia General Assembly defined some terms in 1705:

All servants imported and brought into the Country... who were not Christians in their native Country... shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion ... shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resists his master ... correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction ... the master shall be free of all punishment ... as if such accident never happened.

--Virginia General Assembly declaration, 1705[111]

The slave trade of Native Americans lasted only until around 1730, and it gave rise to a series of devastating wars among the tribes, including the Yamasee War. The Indian wars of the early 18th century, combined with the increasing importation of African slaves, effectively ended the Native American slave trade by 1750. Colonists found it too easy for Native American slaves to escape, and the wars took the lives of numerous colonial slave traders. The remaining Native American groups banded together to face the Europeans from a position of strength. Many surviving Native American peoples of the southeast joined confederacies such as the Choctaw, the Creek, and the Catawba for protection.[108]

Native American women were at risk for rape whether they were enslaved or not; many southern communities had a disproportionate number of men in the early colonial years and they turned to Native women for sexual relationships.[112] Both Native American and African enslaved women suffered rape and sexual harassment by male slaveholders and other white men.[112]

Native American adoption of African slavery

Native Americans resisted Anglo-American encroachment on their lands and maintained traditional cultural ways. Native Americans interacted with enslaved Africans and African Americans on many levels. Over time all the cultures interracted. Native Americans began slowly to adopt white culture.[113] Native Americans shared some experiences with Africans, especially during the period, primarily in the 17th century, when both were enslaved. The colonists along the Atlantic Coast had begun enslaving American Indians to ensure a source of labor. At one time the slave trade was so extensive that it caused increasing tensions with various Algonquian tribes, as well as the Iroquois, who threatened to attack colonists on behalf of the Tuscarora before they migrated out of the South.[114]

In the 1790s, Benjamin Hawkins was assigned as the US agent to the southeastern tribes; he advised the tribes to take up slaveholding to aid them in European-style farming and plantations. He thought their traditional form of slavery, which had looser conditions, was less efficient than chattel slavery.[115] The Five Civilized Tribes had a tradition of slaves captured in warfare, and in the nineteenth century, they acquired African-American slaves for workers as well. They adopted some European-American ways to benefit their people. Among the slave-owning families of the Cherokee, 78% were said to have some white ancestry.[108]

Writers such as William Loren Katz contend that Native Americans treated their slaves better than did the typical European American in the Deep South.[116] Though less than 3% of Native Americans owned slaves, bondage created destructive cleavages among those who were slaveholders. Among the Five Civilized Tribes, mixed-race slaveholders were part of a class hierarchy that seemed related to European ancestry, but their advantage was more typically based on the transfer of economic and social capital from their European-American fathers.[116] Proposals for Indian Removal heightened the tensions of cultural changes, due to the increase in the number of mixed-race Native Americans in the South. Full bloods sometimes tried harder to maintain traditional ways, including control of communal lands. The more traditional members who did not hold slaves often resented the sale of tribal lands to Anglo-Americans.[108]

Current legal status

Main articles: Tribal sovereignty in the United States and Native American tribe

There are 562 federally recognized tribal governments in the United States. These tribes possess the right to form their own governments, to enforce laws (both civil and criminal) within their lands, to tax, to establish requirements for membership, to license and regulate activities, to zone and to exclude persons from tribal territories. Limitations on tribal powers of self-government include the same limitations applicable to states; for example, neither tribes nor states have the power to make war, engage in foreign relations, or coin money (this includes paper currency).[117]

Many Native Americans and advocates of Native American rights point out that the U.S. Federal government's claim to recognize the "sovereignty" of Native American peoples falls short, given that the U.S. wishes to govern Native American peoples and treat them as subject to U.S. law. Such advocates contend that full respect for Native American sovereignty would require the US government to deal with Native American peoples in the same manner as any other sovereign nation, handling matters related to relations with Native Americans through the Secretary of State, rather than the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Bureau of Indian Affairs reports on its website that its "responsibility is the administration and management of 55,700,000 acres (225,000 km2) of land held in trust by the United States for American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives."[118] Many Native Americans and advocates of Native American rights believe that it is condescending for such lands to be considered "held in trust" and regulated in any fashion by other than their own tribes, whether the U.S. or Canadian governments, or any other non-Native American authority.

As of 2000, the largest tribes in the U.S. by population were Navajo, Cherokee, Choctaw, Sioux, Chippewa, Apache, Blackfeet, Iroquois, and Pueblo. In 2000, eight of ten Americans with Native American ancestry were of mixed ancestry. It is estimated that by 2100 that figure will rise to nine out of ten.[119] In addition, there are a number of tribes that are recognized by individual states, but not by the federal government. The rights and benefits associated with state recognition vary from state to state.

Some tribal nations have been unable to document the cultural continuity required for federal recognition. The Muwekma Ohlone of the San Francisco bay area are pursuing litigation in the federal court system to establish recognition.[120] Many of the smaller eastern tribes, long considered remnants of extinct peoples, have been trying to gain official recognition of their tribal status. Several in Virginia and North Carolina have gained state recognition. Federal recognition confers some benefits, including the right to label arts and crafts as Native American and permission to apply for grants that are specifically reserved for Native Americans. But gaining federal recognition as a tribe is extremely difficult; to be established as a tribal group, members have to submit extensive genealogical proof of tribal descent and continuity of the tribe as a culture.

Native peoples are concerned about the effects of abandoned uranium mines on or near their lands.

In July 2000 the Washington Republican Party adopted a resolution recommending that the federal and legislative branches of the U.S. government terminate tribal governments.[121] In 2007 a group of Democratic Party congressmen and congresswomen introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to "terminate" the Cherokee Nation.[122] This was related to their voting to exclude Cherokee Freedmen as members of the tribe unless they had a Cherokee ancestor on the Dawes Rolls, although all Cherokee Freedmen and their descendants had been members since 1866.

As of 2004, various Native Americans are wary of attempts by others to gain control of their reservation lands for natural resources, such as coal and uranium in the West.[123][124][125]

In the state of Virginia, Native Americans face a unique problem. Virginia has no federally recognized tribes but the state has recognized eight. This is related historically to the greater impact of disease and warfare on the Virginia Indian populations, as well as their intermarriage with Europeans and Africans. Some people confused the ancestry with culture, but groups of Virginia Indians maintained their cultural continuity. Most of their early reservations were ended under the pressure of early European settlement.

Some historians also note the problems of Virginia Indians in establishing documented continuity of identity, due to the work of Walter Ashby Plecker (1912-1946). As registrar of the state's Bureau of Vital Statistics, he applied his own interpretation of the one-drop rule, enacted in law in 1924 as the state's Racial Integrity Act. It recognized only two races: "white" and "colored".

Plecker, a segregationist, believed that the state's Native Americans had been "mongrelized" by intermarriage with African Americans; to him, ancestry determined identity, rather than culture. He thought that some people of partial black ancestry were trying to "pass" as Native Americans. Plecker thought that anyone with any African heritage had to be classified as colored, regardless of appearance, amount of European or Native American ancestry, and cultural/community identification. Plecker pressured local governments into reclassifying all Native Americans in the state as "colored", and gave them lists of family surnames to examine for reclassification based on his interpretation of data and the law. This led to the state's destruction of accurate records related to families and communities who identified as Native American (as in church records and daily life). By his actions, sometimes different members of the same family were split by being classified as "white" or "colored". He did not allow people to enter their primary identification as Native American in state records.[126] In 2009, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee endorsed a bill that would grant federal recognition to tribes in Virginia.[127]

To achieve federal recognition and its benefits, tribes must prove continuous existence since 1900. The federal government has maintained this requirement, in part because through participation on councils and committees, federally recognized tribes have been adamant about groups' satisfying the same requirements as they did.[126]

Contemporary issues

Portrait of Native Americans from various bands, tribes, and nations from across "Indian country."

Poldine Carlo, Koyukon author from Alaska

According to 2003 United States Census Bureau estimates, a little over one third of the 2,786,652 Native Americans in the United States live in three states: California at 413,382, Arizona at 294,137 and Oklahoma at 279,559.[128]

Native American struggles amid poverty to maintain life on the reservation or in larger society have resulted in a variety of health issues, some related to nutrition and health practices. The community suffers a disproportionately high rate of alcoholism.[129] Agencies working with Native American communities are trying better to respect their traditions and integrate benefits of Western medicine within their own cultural practices.

"It has long been recognized that Native Americans are dying of diabetes, alcoholism, tuberculosis, suicide, and other health conditions at shocking rates. Beyond disturbingly high mortality rates, Native Americans also suffer a significantly lower health status and disproportionate rates of disease compared with all other Americans."

-- The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, September 2004 [130]

This Census Bureau map depicts the locations of Native Americans in the United States as of 2000.

In the early 21st century, Native American communities remain an enduring fixture on the United States landscape, in the American economy, and in the lives of Native Americans. Communities have consistently formed governments that administer services like firefighting, natural resource management, and law enforcement. Most Native American communities have established court systems to adjudicate matters related to local ordinances, and most also look to various forms of moral and social authority vested in traditional affiliations within the community. To address the housing needs of Native Americans, Congress passed the Native American Housing and Self Determination Act (NAHASDA) in 1996. This legislation replaced public housing, and other 1937 Housing Act programs directed towards Indian Housing Authorities, with a block grant program directed towards Tribes.

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A discriminatory sign posted above a bar. Birney, Montana, 1941

Perhaps because the most well-known Native Americans live on reservations relatively isolated from major population centers, universities have conducted relatively little public opinion research on attitudes toward them among the general public. In 2007 the non-partisan Public Agenda organization conducted a focus group study. Most non-Native Americans admitted they rarely encountered Native Americans in their daily lives. While sympathetic toward Native Americans and expressing regret over the past, most people had only a vague understanding of the problems facing Native Americans today. For their part, Native Americans told researchers that they believed they continued to face prejudice and mistreatment in the broader society.[131]“ He is ignoble--base and treacherous, and hateful in every way. Not even imminent death can startle him into a spasm of virtue. The ruling trait of all savages is a greedy and consuming selfishness, and in our Noble Red Man it is found in its amplest development. His heart is a cesspool of falsehood, of treachery, and of low and devilish instincts ... The scum of the earth!”

--Mark Twain, 1870, The Noble Red Man (a satire on James Fenimore Cooper's portrayals) [132]

“ LeCompte also endured taunting on the battlefield. "They ridiculed him and called him a 'drunken Indian.' They said, 'Hey, dude, you look just like a haji--you'd better run.' They call the Arabs 'haji.' I mean, it's one thing to worry for your life, but then to have to worry about friendly fire because you don't know who in the hell will shoot you? ”

--Tammie LeCompte, May 25, 2007, "Soldier highlights problems in U.S. Army"[133]

Native American mascots in sports

Main article: Native American mascot controversy

A student acting as Chief Osceola, the Florida State University mascot

The use of Native American mascots in sports has become a contentious issue in the United States and Canada. Americans have had a history of "playing Indian" that dates back to at least the 18th century.[134] Many individuals[who?] admire the heroism and romanticism evoked by the classic Native American warrior image, but numerous[quantify] Native Americans[which?] think use of items associated with them as mascots is both offensive and demeaning. While many universities and professional sports teams (for example, Chief Wahoo of Cleveland Indians) no longer use such images without consultation with Native American nations, some lower level schools, such as Vallejo High School in Vallejo, CA and John Swett High School in Crockett, CA and other lower level sports teams[which?] continue to do so. In the Bay Area of California a number of High Schools such as Tomales Bay High and Sequoia High have retired their Mascots.“ (Trudie Lamb Richmond doesn't) know what to say when kids argue, 'I don't care what you say, we are honoring you. We are keeping our Indian.' ... What if it were 'our black' or 'our Hispanic'? ”

---Amy D'orio quoting Trudie Lamb Richmond, March 1996, "Indian Chief Is Mascot No More"[135]

In August 2005, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) banned the use of "hostile and abusive" Native American mascots in postseason tournaments.[136] An exception was made to allow the use of tribal names as long as approved by that tribe (such as the Seminole Tribe of Florida's approving use of their name for the team of Florida State University.)[137][138] The use of Native American-themed team names in U.S. professional sports is widespread. Examples are mascot Chief Wahoo and teams such as the Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins, considered controversial by some.“ Could you imagine people mocking African Americans in black face at a game?" he said. "Yet go to a game where there is a team with an Indian name and you will see fans with war paint on their faces. Is this not the equivalent to black face? ”

--"Native American Mascots Big Issue in College Sports",Teaching Tolerance, May 9, 2001[139]

Depictions by Europeans and Americans

Sketch by John White of Roanoke Indians

American Indian on five-dollar Silver Certificate, 1899

1892 sculpture by Alexander Milne Calder, installed on the Philadelphia City Hall.

Native Americans have been depicted by American artists in various ways at different historical periods. During the 16th century, the artist John White made watercolors and engravings of the people native to the southeastern states. John White's images were, for the most part, faithful likenesses of the people he observed.

Later the artist Theodore de Bry used White's original watercolors to make a book of engravings entitled, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia. In his book, de Bry often altered the poses and features of White's figures to make them appear more European. During the period when White and de Bry were working, when Europeans were first coming into contact with native Americans, Europeans were greatly interested in native American cultures. Their curiosity created demand for a book like de Bry's.

A number of 19th and 20th century American and Canadian painters, often motivated by a desire to document and preserve Native culture, specialized in Native American subjects. Among the most prominent of these were Elbridge Ayer Burbank, George Catlin, Seth and Mary Eastman, Paul Kane, W. Langdon Kihn, Charles Bird King, Joseph Henry Sharp, and John Mix Stanley.

During the construction of the Capitol building in the early 19th century, the U.S. government commissioned a series of four relief panels to crown the doorway of the Rotunda. The reliefs encapsulate a vision of European--Native American relations that had assumed mythic historical proportions by the 19th century. The four panels depict: The Preservation of Captain Smith by Pocahontas (1825) by Antonio Capellano, The Landing of the Pilgrims (1825) and The Conflict of Daniel Boone and the Indians (1826-27) by Enrico Causici, and William Penn's Treaty with the Indians (1827) by Nicholas Gevelot. The reliefs present idealized versions of the Europeans and the native Americans, in which the Europeans appear refined and the natives appear ferocious. The Whig representative of Virginia, Henry A. Wise, voiced a particularly astute summary of how Native Americans would read the messages contained in all four reliefs: “We give you corn, you cheat us of our lands: we save your life, you take ours.” While many 19th-century images of native Americans conveyed similarly negative messages, artists such as Charles Bird King sought to express a more balanced image of Native Americans.

During this time there were writers of fiction who were informed about Native American culture and wrote about it with sympathy. One such writer was Marah Ellis Ryan.

In the 20th century, early portrayals of Native Americans in movies and television roles were first depicted by European-Americans dressed in mock traditional attire. Examples included The Last of the Mohicans (1920), Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans (1957), and F Troop (1965-67). In later decades, Native American actors such as Jay Silverheels in The Lone Ranger television series (1949-57) came to prominence. Roles of Native Americans were limited and not reflective of Native American culture. In the 1970s some Native Americans roles were improved in movies: Little Big Man (1970), Billy Jack (1971), and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) depicted Native Americans in minor supporting roles.

In addition to overtly negative depictions, Native people on U.S. television have also been relegated to secondary, subordinate roles. During the years of the series Bonanza (1959-1973), no major or secondary Native characters appeared on a consistent basis. The series The Lone Ranger (1949-1957), Cheyenne (1957-1963), and Law of the Plainsman (1959-1963) had Native characters who were essentially aides to the central White characters. This characterization was also a feature of later television pilots and shows such as How the West Was Won. These programs resembled the “sympathetic” yet contradictory film Dances With Wolves of 1990, in which, according to Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, the narrative choice was to relate the Lakotas story as told through a Euro-American voice, for wide impact among a general audience.[140] Like the 1992 remake of The Last of the Mohicans and Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), Dances with Wolves employed a number of Native American actors, and made some effort to portray Indigenous languages.

In 2004, Co-Producer Guy Perrotta presented the film Mystic Voices: The Story of the Pequot War (2004), a television documentary on the first major war between colonists and Native peoples in the Americas. Perrotta and Charles Clemmons intended to increase public understanding of the significance of this early event. They believed it had significance not only for northeastern Native Peoples and descendants of English and Dutch colonists, but for all Americans today. The producers wanted to make the documentary as historically accurate and as unbiased as possible. They invited a broadly based Advisory Board, and used scholars, Native Americans, and descendants of the colonists to help tell the story. They elicited personal and often passionate viewpoints from contemporary Americans. The production portrayed the conflict as a struggle between different value systems that included not only the Pequots, but a number of Native American tribes, most of which allied with the English. It not only presents facts, but also seeks to help the viewer better understand the people who fought the War.

In 2009, We Shall Remain (2009), a television documentary by Ric Burns and part of the American Experience series, presented a five-episode series "from a Native American perspective": it represented "an unprecedented collaboration between Native and non-Native filmmakers and involves Native advisors and scholars at all levels of the project."[141] The five episodes explore the impact of King Philip's War on the northeastern tribes, the "Native American confederacy" involved in Tecumseh's War, the forced relocation known as Trail of Tears, the pursuit and capture of Geronimo and the Apache Wars, and concludes with the American Indian Movement's involvement at the Wounded Knee incident and the resurgence in modern Native cultures afterward.

Terminology differences

Further information: Native American name controversy

Common usage in the United States

Native Americans are more commonly known as Indians or American Indians, and have been known as Aboriginal Americans, Amerindians, Amerinds, Colored,[80][142] First Americans, Native Indians, Indigenous, Original Americans, Red Indians, Redskins or Red Men. The term Native American was originally introduced in the United States by academics in preference to the older term Indian to distinguish the indigenous peoples of the Americas from the people of India, and to avoid negative stereotypes supposedly associated with the term Indian. Because of the acceptance of this newer term in academic circles, some academics believe that Indians should be considered as outdated or offensive. Many actual indigenous Americans, however, prefer American Indian. Also, some people point out that anyone born in the United States is, technically, native to America, and that the academic who first promoted Native American confused the term native with indigenous. People from India (and their descendants) who are citizens of the United States are called Indian Americans or Asian Indians.

Martha Gradolf, Hochunk weaver from Indiana

Criticism of the neologism Native American, however, comes from diverse sources. Many American Indians have misgivings about the term Native American. Russell Means, an American Indian activist, opposes the term Native American because he believes it was imposed by the government without the consent of American Indians. He has also argued that this use of the word Indian derives not from a confusion with India but from a Spanish expression En Dio, meaning "in God".[143] Furthermore, some American Indians[who?] question the term Native American because, they argue, it serves to ease the conscience of "white America" with regard to past injustices done to American Indians by effectively eliminating "Indians" from the present.[144] Still others (both Indians and non-Indians)[who?] argue that Native American is problematic because "native of" literally means "born in," so any person born in the Americas could be considered "native". However, very often the compound "Native American" will be capitalized in order to differentiate this intended meaning from others. Likewise, "native" (small 'n') can be further qualified by formulations such as "native-born" when the intended meaning is only to indicate place of birth or origin.

A 1995 U.S. Census Bureau survey found that more Native Americans in the United States preferred American Indian to Native American.[145] Nonetheless, most American Indians are comfortable with Indian, American Indian, and Native American, and the terms are often used interchangeably.[146] The traditional term is reflected in the name chosen for the National Museum of the American Indian, which opened in 2004 on the Mall in Washington, D.C..

Recently, the U.S. Census Bureau has introduced the "Asian-Indian" category to avoid ambiguity

Gambling industry

Sandia Casino, owned by the Sandia Pueblo of New Mexico

Main article: Native American gaming

Gambling has become a leading industry. Casinos operated by many Native American governments in the United States are creating a stream of gambling revenue that some communities are beginning to use as leverage to build diversified economies. Native American communities have waged and prevailed in legal battles to assure recognition of rights to self-determination and to use of natural resources. Some of those rights, known as treaty rights, are enumerated in early treaties signed with the young United States government. Tribal sovereignty has become a cornerstone of American jurisprudence, and at least on the surface, in national legislative policies. Although many Native American tribes have casinos, the impact of Native American gaming is widely debated. Some tribes, such as the Winnemem Wintu of Redding, California, feel that casinos and their proceeds destroy culture from the inside out. These tribes refuse to participate in the gambling industry.

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