Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
HEY!!!! I'm sitting right here.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
HEY!!!! I'm sitting right here.
I take issue with Native Americans being called Indians, though, because they aren't in any way Indians. Just because the Europeans who first came here screwed up and thought it was India, now Native Americans are destined to be mislabeled. We continuously (or, at least I do) run into the problem of not knowing what one means when they refer to one as "Indian." Which Indian? It's not even a matter of political correctness. It's not offensive to me when Native Americans are called Indians because I think it's racist or something, but because it is, simply, incorrect. And I do realize even Native Americans migrated from somewhere else, but if we want to take that approach, we might as well label every human an African, since that's where it all started. Native Americans were here first, and that's all there is to it.
I agree that using the term "Indian" to denote "Native Americans" is problematic. It even leads to confusion when doing searches on Google for "Indian Art" as in the art of India as opposed to the art of Native Americans. Of course I don't know if the term is much more offensive toward the Native Americans than the native term many tribes used to define themselves: "human being"... inferring that all others... even other Native American tribes were not human beings. Rather like the Hebrew notion of being God's "chosen people". But if we ever do get around to changing things, what are we to do here in Cleveland with our ever beloved and beleaguered Cleveland Indians? I suppose we could just change Chief Wahoo into some blue Hindu god...:shocked::sosp::arf:
In my school we call them Native Americans or American Indians, interchangeably, although the first is more popular (one less syllable ...)Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
I don't know how teams get away with team names and mascots like that, especially the Redskins. I don't find it offensive, just pretty damn insensitive.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
:lol: Students do take any shortcut they can.Quote:
Originally Posted by cl154576
So, this thread went off on another topic sort of and I don't really have anything to contribute to it. I'm still stuck on 09/11 and it's Thursday now, so the 10 year mark has come and gone. But I'm always late.
I was living with my mom and dad at the time, and I was sleeping when all of it started. My first class didn't start until noon so I wasn't getting up if I didn't have to.
My mother called and it was the phone that woke me up. She works for a government agency and they had been ordered to evacuate when the pentagon was hit so she called and said "What's going on?" and I had no clue what she was talking about. Then I turned on the news and watched it until my class started. The campus was pretty much empty that day but I went to class and all 5 of us sat around and talked, had a bit of lecture and went hom. That night I attended a prayer service.
This past Sunday, I watched the old news coverage with Katie Couric. I do remember some news coverage shown the day it happend of a reporter in New York and pieces paper from the offices in the towers were blowing all around her - 8 X 10 white and yellow paper you'd see in any office and she grabbed a piece of paper and put it in front of the camera - I guess maybe as a memento. It was some kind of flyer it seemed like with big type and then my dad said that they needed to cut to another reporter. And they did. I couldn't even tell what it said.
So I was on youtube trying to find old news coverage of the event. I was wondering if I could find a clip of that reporter in New York with the papers blowing around her but I got sidetracked with Kevin Cosgrove. He called 911 from the South tower. I hadn't heard that phone call until Sunday. It was very sad.
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.
It's often preferable to refer to people by their tribe/nation, such as Mohawk, Ojibway, or Cree.
That is probably the best when one considers that the various tribes were no less individual nations with their own language and traditions than the whole of Europe. Of course the challenge is to recognize the Sioux from the Blackfoot from the Cuyahoga from the Comanche, etc...
I was at home in London, working. Our wedding had been two weeks earlier, and my American wife's relatives had gone back to the East Coast only a few days before.
My wife took a call from her sister (also living in London), telling her to turn on the TV. I went to watch too and - like the rest of the world - saw the second plane crash into the towers. We spent the rest of the day watching the coverage.
Anne had left the US in January that year - and until then she'd been a Fox News anchor. Watching the coverage, she felt that she ought to be there, working, doing something. I think she felt disloyal or cowardly because she was safe and happy in London. (Though a few months later we were to discover that London wasn't safe either.)
Some images from that day are still hugely evocative. They stimulate an inescapable involuntary response.
I work in the Docklands district of London, in the shadow of these buildings.
http://www.photoconnect.net/imgUploa...-03-02-097.jpg
London City Airport lies three or four miles to the east, and the planes' flight path goes right over the top of these skyscrapers - dozens every day. Even now, ten years later, my stomach lurches when I glance up and see this...
http://www.photoconnect.net/imgUploa...-03-02-051.jpg
Quote:
Originally Posted by OrphanPip
My area is about 30% native, and if you call any native an "Indian," you're in big trouble. You're supposed to call them either "natives" or "Cree" here, because that's the tribe that the vast majority our natives have descended from.Quote:
Originally Posted by OrphanPip
In fact, I happen to be native on my mother's side, and I get called "Cree" even though my people are from the Inuit tribes in the east. :rolleyes5: Then again, my family is the only non-Cree native descendants in the area so I can't fault them for the assumption.
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.
No way! Really?Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkBastable
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
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
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by OrphanPip
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.
Exactly.Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by B. Laumness
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkBastable
No, it was the proper Fox thing. Why would it be an odd pairing?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkBastable
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:
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).Quote:
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.
Oh, I see.Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
Do other countries do war reenactments?
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by papayahed
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkBastable
Plenty of controversy about Confederate flag license plates, etc. though.
I didn't know that. I would have thought that the slave descendants would take issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by billl
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).
I can't say I know for sure, but there isn't much opposition (if any) to my knowledge. There are some African-American re-enactors who obviously are fine with it--there might be some others who are uncomfortable with it, but I can't ever recall hearing anyone getting upset about it. Odds are there would be someone, I guess, but...
In the media, the re-enactors are pretty much always presented as a brotherhood, a bunch of guys getting away to go camping for the weekend, possibly have some bourbon around the campfire, I imagine, and maybe getting a little weepy together at some point (again, my imagination). Actors on each side will talk about how they respect each other and the soldiers that fought, and how there's no partisanship, etc. to the point where it probably doesn't need to get mentioned anymore if the TV coverage is just a brief little snippet.
I could be wrong, but if anyone is upset about it, they are for some reason not protesting or getting news coverage. Using my imagination again, I sort of wonder if an African-American watching re-enactors on TV, or stumbling on them on a weekend country drive, might see a bunch of guys in Gray running around, a bunch of others in Blue running too or whatever, then some shooting, some guys from each side fall down, and, what the hell, I guess that's what happened.
True, I guess the majority people doing the actual fighting were just young boys. Most of them probably didn't even know the details of why they were fighting, so why get angry at the reenactment? My boyfriend is a big civil war buff, he tells me that it was a horrible, gangrenous, bloody thing.
Yeah. I had a friend in high school whose father was a Civil War buff. He wasn't a re-enactor, but that was the first time I encountered Civil War "geekdom". In 1990, when Ken Burns put out his hugely popular Civil War documentary (10 hours long, on PBS), the infatuation became well-known nation-wide, and probably got a lot of new converts. I think that's the spirit people do the thing in, on the whole. Who knows, there might be some people with ugly fantasies going on while they run around, but it looks like they would be keeping them well-hidden from the larger community of re-enactors.
As my initial response to Mark's post probably hints at, I am actually a little surprised that, in other countries, this sort of "innocent" or "non-partisan" aspect of the phenomenon isn't so well known. Makes sense, though, of course, because there certainly is controversy in closely-related areas.
I have a couple of friends who are into the re-enactment thing. One focuses upon the Revolutionary War and the other on the US Civil War. As has been already noted, I have never heard of the least bit of protest. The whole thing is not far removed from the popular Renaissance Fairs where reenactors get together acting out roles of peasants, dukes, lords, knights, traveling minstrels, etc... Many of the actors have both civilian and military costumes. The women play along as camp followers, bar wenches, nurses, wives, etc... The Revolutionary War reenactment would include a dress ball in which high-ranking officers and aristocrats would be dressed in their 18th century powdered wigs at a formal dance and there would be pubs with traditional (nasty) drinks). The whole thing is just an excuse for a sort of elaborate role-play... like Halloween spread out over a week with a historical aspect. I don't see it as far removed from those who are into the costume parties at Halloween... or even those into certain fashion subgroups such as Goths or Steampunk.
Not really, because it's not really "about" slavery or the causes of the war. My Dad went through a reinacting phase and it's more about telling the story of the Civil War (and the soldiers in it) as authentically as possible. Usually when there's a reinacting event, there's a section set up where women and other men are also in costume and sort of tell the "homefront" side of the war or talk about medicine, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
Also, a lot of Union Reinacting units have a separate set of uniforms to "play" confederate and vice versa. Some of the guys who do this stuff are a little crazy, but most of them are just very interested in history and educating people.
The most re-enactors are ever accused of being is dorky, honestly.
I have a friend who does a yearly WW2 re-enactment with paintball. It basically sounds like a huge paintball match with little organization and a ton of drinking. I'm surprised no one's died, honestly.
One of my teachers was in the Tied Knot. He was a big noise as apparently, being a short-house, he got to play Charles 1. It suited him, pompous as he was.Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkBastable
Sounds great. I'd love to go paintballing. I've done the laserquest thing in the past with the laser sensors and light pulse rifle type things. etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi