The name, “American Indians,” derives from the colonizers’ world-view; it is a name given to the Indigenous Peoples of the continent by outsiders and strangers. Most of us know the story: Columbus (his Spanish name gives away his secret: Cristobal Colon; the Christian colonizer) thought he was going to India, and, being a vain and self-important man, insisted he had found it; he named the people he met “Indians.” The “American” part came later, after everyone but Columbus admitted his error, and the continent had been named for another Italian navigator, Amerigo Vespucci.
In addition to naming entire Peoples, colonizers developed naming practices applied to individuals among these Peoples. One analysis describes “the renaming of Native Americans” as a “cultural project: to fashion and normalize a standard patriarchal family-system deemed suitable to [U.S. and Canadian] citizenship, property rights, and civilized, moral conduct.” [James C. Scott, John Tehranian, and Jeremy Mathias, “Government Surnames and Legal Identities,” in Carl Watner, ed., National Identification Systems (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2004). The analysis originally appeared as “The Production of Legal Identities Proper to States: The Case of the Permanent Family Surname,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 44:01, pp. 4-44 (January 2002); available at Cambridge Journals Online.]
An 1897 essay by the Superintendent of the U. S. Boarding School for Crow Indians, Montana, illustrates the cultural policy of “naming the Indians”: “The Indian Department has continually urged this matter upon its agents, superintendents, and other workers ‘in the field.’ The command to give names to the Indians and to establish the same as far as possible by continuous use has been a part of the ‘Rules and Regulations’ for years past. … In this thing, as in nearly all others, the Indians do not know what is best for them. They can’t see that our system has any advantages over their own, and they have fought stubbornly against the innovation.” [Frank Terry,” Naming the Indians,” American Monthly Review of Reviews (New York: March, 1897). This essay is available as an e-text from the University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center.]
It is common to hear criticism of the name “American Indian,” coupled with an insistence on the use of “Native American,” which came into vogue as part of a late-20th century concern for “multiculturalism.” This was an effort to acknowledge ethnic diversity in the United States while insisting on an over-arching American unity. Under multicultural naming practice, people are identified as hyphen-American: African-American, Irish-American, Italian-American, and so on. For the indigenous inhabitants of the land, the correct term became Native-American.
“Native American,” however, faces dilemmas as serious as the name it was to displace. First, the word “native” has a generic meaning, referring to anyone or anything that is at home in its place of origin: anyone born in America is a native American. Even if we insist on the significance of an upper-case letter, we have to admit that Native American has an ordinary language problem. Second, as applied to Indigenous Peoples who have been subjected to colonialism, the word “native” has a culturally pejorative meaning, as in “The natives are restless tonight.” The word carries a connotation of “primitive,” which has both a generic definition, meaning “first” or “primary,” and a pejorative use, meaning “backward” or “ignorant.” Third, as we have seen, “American” is not an indigenous name, but derives from that other Italian.
“Native American” does not avoid the problem of naming from an outsider’s perspective. Moreover, multiculturally “correct” names focus on surface appearances, and may even obscure the demographic, political and economic situations of the named Peoples. As John Trudell observed when “Native American” first became fashionable, “They change our name and treat us the same.”
If we want to be true to the principle that a People’s name ought to come from them, we have to discard both “American Indian” and “Native American.” The consequence of this is that the original inhabitants ought to be called by whatever names they give themselves. There are no American Indians or Native Americans. There are many different Peoples, hundreds in fact, bearing such names as Wampanoag, Cherokee, Seminole, Navajo, Hopi, and so on.
But the conundrum doesn’t end here. Some apparently “real” names are not actually derived from the People themselves, but from their neighbors or even enemies. “Mohawk” is a Narraganset name meaning, “flesh eaters.” “Sioux” is a French corruption of an Anishinabe word for “enemy.” Similarly, “Apache” is a Spanish corruption of a Zuni word for “enemy,” while Navajo is from the Spanish version of a Tewa word. If we want to be fully authentic, we have to inquire into the language of each People to find the name they call themselves.
The important thing in naming is to acknowledge the fundamental difference between how a People view themselves and how others view them. In this context, it is not surprising to find that a People’s name for themselves is often a word for “People,” or for their homeland, or for some differentiating characteristic as seen through their own eyes.
It’s been asked, “What’s in a name?” Sometimes the answer is everything, as when the name is Rumplestiltskin; sometimes nothing, as with the rose, fragrant by any other name. N. Scott Momaday, in The Names: A Memoir, writes about the meaning of who we are that is contained and not contained in our names. Names are mysterious, sometimes revealing, sometimes concealing our identity or the identity of a People or place.
Names can have great power, and the power of naming is a great power. History and law, as well as literature and politics, are activities of naming. The Judeo-Christian Bible tells a story of God giving Adam the power to name the animals and other parts of Creation, a naming that signals a power over Creation. This story established a relation that became crucial in the encounters of Christianist colonizers with the inhabitants of the “New World.”
In studying Indigenous Peoples, we do not need to completely avoid incorrect or colonial terminology whose significance is widely understood. Indeed, the shortest way to penetrate the histories of Indigenous Peoples may be to analyze the names imposed on them by others. These names are part of world history, politics, and culture. As a component of “Indigenous Peoples Studies,” an inquiry into names can develop toward an understanding of nationhood, homelands, and self-determination.