9/11 - Where Were You?

I'm part Indian-and I usually just use the word Indian when I tell someone, although I realize it is not accurate. Native American is better, I just rarely think to use it and no one has ever been offended. It doesn't come up very much, in any event.

I am one-fourth Cherokee, and when I was in college I had a friend who was Creek. He used to call me an apple, because I was red on the outside and white on the inside, and it's true, that my siblings and I were not raised as a part of the Cherokee culture at all. Most people who are Cherokee in Oklahoma live in Tahlequah.

I know that's off topic, and I apologize. The various stories of where people were and the peek at their lives is quite fascinating, along with the undercurrent of sorrow.

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Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf

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No way! Really?

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Yeah. And a morning radio jock too. In Columbia, SC.

I'm 1/8 native, Mikmaq from Nova Scotia to be specific, but I don't show it, it has been thoroughly diluted by Irish, Scott, and English.

I think the use of Indian is more controversial in Canada because of different dynamics of racial relationships. For many Natives in Canada it evokes the memory of when the Department of Indian Affairs' sole purpose was the forceful assimilation of Natives into mainstream Anglo-Canadian culture. It evokes the government proclamations of this kind:

"I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill."
- D.C. Scott head of Indian Affairs, 1920

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

Indian, in Canada at least, is considered almost as bad as the N word in some parts. Native issues are more prominent here, probably because aboriginal Canadians remain a significant minority population, and the majority in many parts of the country. It's often preferable to refer to people by their tribe/nation, such as Mohawk, Ojibway, or Cree. The PC term the government uses is First Nations, although that term usually does not cover the Inuit or the Metis, which is a cultural group in Western Canada that arose from French settlers intermarrying with natives after being cut off from the French Empire by the surrender of Quebec.

Edit: We also never quite had a history of glorifying the wars against the natives, largely because of how politically unpopular the expansion westward was perceived by Quebec, who were highly sympathetic towards Metis resistance, as they were fellow Catholics and Francophones.

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Interesting how much of a bad word is in Canada. I don't think most Native Americans really care if you call them Indian, though I suspect most would probably prefer Native American.

As for glorifying wars against Native Americans, I think we, as in America, have pretty much stopped that (I think it ended in the 70s), and now realize there's really nothing to glorify about it. If anything, portrayals of Native Americans being the good guys and settlers the bad guys is the predominant portrayal.

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Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf

Other than the social awkwardness that would ensue, there's one other reason to avoid using the word "Indian" - it's a four hundred year old error that makes our European ancestors and us look like morons for not correcting.

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Exactly.

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Originally Posted by B. Laumness

Neither one nor the other. When I heard that rumour, I had mixed feelings. I was incredulous, I said: "It's not possible, I can't believe it!" And meanwhile I could not ignore it, I could not help feeling an unknown horror. When I had correct informations, maybe an hour later, I thought it was an idiocy and a shame to have spread such a rumour. And meanwhile that horror became true, I could visualize or imagine the scene (since I had not the TV), I was really horrified. Several days later, when I finally watched the TV, it was worse than I could imagine.

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Interesting. I think most everyone had that "worse than I could imagine" reaction. I, and nearly everyone I talk to, upon hearing a plane ran into one of the twin towers just assumed it was a small two person plane, not a jet-liner.

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Originally Posted by MarkBastable

Yeah. And a morning radio jock too. In Columbia, SC.

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Are you talking about being the anchor of a local, Fox affiliated news program, or was she an anchor for the Fox News station (which is what I suspect some are assuming). It seems like the latter would make for an odd pairing between you and her, though I've heard opposites attract.

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Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi

Are you talking about being the anchor of a local, Fox affiliated news program, or was she an anchor for the Fox News station (which is what I suspect some are assuming). It seems like the latter would make for an odd pairing between you and her, though I've heard opposites attract.

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No, it was the proper Fox thing. Why would it be an odd pairing?

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Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi

Interesting how much of a bad word is in Canada. I don't think most Native Americans really care if you call them Indian, though I suspect most would probably prefer Native American.

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Yeah, the fact that you guys have been using the formal "Native Americans" in this thread is definately a testiment to your unfamiliarity with the term. We just say the shortened version, "natives," in Canada, because they're a minority that we encounter daily (much more often than black people in my area, and I've never even met an hispanic person) and because the "First Nations" issue is always a big one in Canadian politics.

Native culture is such a hot button issue here, not so much because they're our most predominant minority, but because of the harsh attempts at assimilation. Not long ago they used to literally try to beat the culture out of people. My mother and the other native kids used to get hit with meter sticks in school, and it was against the rules for the teachers to hit the white kids. This was in the eighties. The middle aged people that I know are so racist against natives it's unbelievable. They see them as "stealing their tax dollars to get drunk," and my dad once had to get into a wrestling match with one of his friends who was trying to bash a native's head in with a pool cue. Native women in Canada have among the highest rate of suicide in the world, and alchoholism is through the roof.

As a result, we now learn about native culture as early as possible (in the first few years of grade school, while learning about early Canadian history), we have numerous "culture" days in which native dancers preform for the students and cook us bannock and stuff, we learn Cree and how to make dream catchers and medicine wheels, ect. The people born since the 80's in our area aren't nearly as racist as the adults and the natives born since that time have an exponentially higher probability of going to college and staying away from alchoholism and suicide. All it takes to overcome racial violence and hatred is a little education.

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Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi

As for glorifying wars against Native Americans, I think we, as in America, have pretty much stopped that (I think it ended in the 70s), and now realize there's really nothing to glorify about it.

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I don't know, I've heard this sentence fairly often: "we saved your *** in WWII, Frenchie!" Plus I think you guys still do the pantomime civil war thing.

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Originally Posted by MarkBastable

No, it was the proper Fox thing. Why would it be an odd pairing?

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Well, this is just a guess, but I think that Mutatis finds it an odd pairing because you would appear to be an atheist liberal and most "proper" Fox anchors seem to be right wing evangelists.

I don't know, I've heard this sentence fairly often: "we saved your *** in WWII, Frenchie!" Plus I think you guys still do the pantomime civil war thing.

What do either of those have to do with glorifying the wars against the Native Americans?

...Oh, okay, when Mutatis said:

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As for glorifying wars against Native Americans, I think we, as in America, have pretty much stopped that (I think it ended in the 70s), and now realize there's really nothing to glorify about it.

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I assumed that "it" was war in general, but now that I read the next sentence in his paragraph more closely I can tell that he was just talking about European settlement (my bad).

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Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf

Well, this is just a guess, but I think that Mutatis finds it an odd pairing because you would appear to be an atheist liberal and most "proper" Fox anchors seem to be right wing evangelists.

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Oh, I see.

Apparently Fox don't ask you about your political and religious persuasions when you apply. Good utilitarian free market capitalists that they are, they just want to be certain that you can do the job and look good doing it (in that order, I'm assured).

Similarly, when my brother (who's about as gently and unconfrontationally liberal as you can get) was writing for The Times, I asked him whether he had a problem working for Murdoch, and he said, "They publish whatever I write. Where's the problem?"

And, anyway, liberalism is contextual. Given her sociopolitical outlook, Anne says that at work, and in the US generally, she was considered pretty much a liberal pinko commie pantywaist, and then she came to Northern Europe and realised that that same outlook flagged her as a reactionary jackbooted neo-fascist.

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Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf

I assumed that "it" was war in general, but now that I read the next sentence in his paragraph more closely I can tell that he was just talking about European settlement (my bad).

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Oh, no. We glorify war in general to no end--civil war, WWI and WWII, the Revolution, whatever. I think most realize the extreme error of our ways when it came to the treatment of Native Americans, though.

Do other countries do war reenactments?

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Originally Posted by papayahed

Do other countries do war reenactments?

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The descendants of UELs in Ontario like to re-enact the Battle of Lundy's Lane from the War of 1812, but that's about the only one in the country I can think of. United Empire Loyalist are a weird lot though, they did emigrate here from the US, hmm.

A historical society wanted to re-enact the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, which was when Quebec fell to the British, but this caused a major huff, and they cancelled it out of fear of protesters.

We have a least a couple of battle re-enactment societies. They tend to concentrate on the English Civil War. It's not that controversial because it's difficult to map the sides on to modern factions - so it wasn't, for instance, really a North vs South thing.

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Originally Posted by MarkBastable

We have a least a couple of battle re-enactment societies. They tend to concentrate on the English Civil War. It's not that controversial because it's difficult to map the sides on to modern factions - so it wasn't, for instance, really a North vs South thing.

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This might not be something you meant to refer to but, interestingly, the Civil War re-enactors in the U.S. don't really attract any controversy. The "angle" is mostly about historic authenticity, military history, and the drama: the soldiers, the dying, the tragedy, the heroics. I guess "cos-play" sort of (role-playing) too. Some guys would have uniforms from both sides, probably. It's more geeky than anything, and I've never ever heard of a protest.

Plenty of controversy about Confederate flag license plates, etc. though.

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Originally Posted by billl

This might not be something you meant to refer to but, interestingly, the Civil War re-enactors in the U.S. don't really attract any controversy.

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I didn't know that. I would have thought that the slave descendants would take issue.

Alberta is the most conservative Canadian province, but I've never even heard of a Canadian war re-enactment (I've never heard of the ones that Pip mentioned, for example). I guess it's because Alberta is only conservative in an economic and enviromnental sense, because of our oil reserves. The people here are largely be pro-military spending, but they treat the whole thing pretty respectfully. There's really nothing akin to pagentry about it (although in regards to the current war many of the Alberta cowboy types are pretty racist against Muslims).