Native American name controversy
There is an ongoing discussion about the terminology used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas to describe themselves, as well as how they prefer to be referred to by others. Preferred terms vary primarily by region and age. As Indigenous peoples and communities are diverse, there is no consensus on naming.
After Europeans reached the Americas, they called most of the Indigenous people collectively "Indians". The distinct people in the Arctic were called "Eskimos". Eskimo has declined in usage.
When discussing broad groups of peoples, naming may be based on shared language, region, or historical relationship, such as Anishinaabeg, Tupi–Guarani-speaking peoples, Pueblo-dwelling peoples, Amazonian tribes, or LDN peoples.
Although "Indian" is the most common collective name, many English exonyms have been used to refer to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, who were resident within their own territories when European colonists arrived in the 15th and 16th centuries. Some of these names were based on French, Spanish, or other European language terminology used by earlier explorers and colonists, many of which were derived from the names that tribes called each other. Some resulted from the colonists' attempt to translate endonyms from the native language into their own, or to transliterate by sound. In addition, some names or terms were pejorative, arising from prejudice and fear, during periods of conflict between the cultures involved.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, there has been greater awareness among non-Indigenous peoples that Indigenous peoples in the Americas have been active in discussions of how they wish to be known. Indigenous people have pressed for the elimination of terms they consider to be obsolete, inaccurate, or racist. During the latter half of the 20th century and the rise of the Red Power movement, the United States government responded by proposing the use of the term "Native American" to recognize the primacy of Indigenous peoples' tenure in the country. The term has become widespread nationally but only partially accepted by various Indigenous groups. Other naming conventions have been proposed and used, but none is accepted by all Indigenous groups. Typically, each name has a particular audience and political or cultural connotation, and regional usage varies.
In Canada, the term "First Nations" is generally used for peoples covered by the Indian Act, and "Indigenous peoples" used for Native peoples more generally, including Inuit and Métis, who do not fall under the "First Nations" category. Status Indian remains a legal designation because of the Indian Act.
United States
"Indian" and "American Indian" (since 1492)
Europeans at the time of Christopher Columbus's voyage often referred to all of South and East Asia as "India" or "the Indias/Indies", sometimes dividing the area into "Greater India", "Middle India", and "Lesser India". The oldest surviving terrestrial globe, by Martin Behaim in 1492, labels the entire Asian subcontinent region as "India", named ultimately after the Indus River.Columbus carried a passport in Latin from the Spanish monarchs that dispatched him ad partes Indie on their behalf. When he landed in the Antilles, Columbus referred to the resident peoples he encountered there as "Indians", reflecting his purported belief that he had reached the Indian Ocean. The name was adopted by other Spanish and ultimately other Europeans; for centuries the Indigenous peoples of the Americas were collectively called "Indians" in various European languages. This misnomer was perpetuated in place naming; the islands of the Caribbean were named, and are still known as, the West Indies.
As European colonists began to settle in the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries, and had more sustained contact with the resident peoples, they understood that the residents were not a homogeneous group sharing a unified culture and government, but discrete societies with their own distinct languages and social systems. Early historical accounts show that some colonists, including Jesuit missionaries in New France, attempted to learn and record the autonyms of these individual groups, but the use of the general term "Indian" persisted.
In 1968, the American Indian Movement was founded in the United States. In 1977, a delegation from the International Indian Treaty Council, an arm of AIM, elected to collectively identify as "American Indian", at the United Nations Conference on Indians in the Americas in Geneva, Switzerland. Some Indigenous activists and public figures, such as Russell Means, have preferred "American Indian" to the more recently adopted "Native American". According to the National Museum of the American Indian, "In the United States, Native American has been widely used but is falling out of favor with some groups, and the terms American Indian or Indigenous American are preferred by many Native people."
The term American Indian is the accepted term used by the United States Government, by the National Museum of the American Indian, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and other institutions. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "in the United States, many individuals of indigenous heritage continue to refer to aboriginal Americans, in aggregate, as Indians."
Alternative etymology
In the late 20th century, some etymologists suggested that the origin of the term was not from a confusion with India, but from the Spanish expression En Dios, meaning "in God", or a similar one in Italian. David Wilton notes in Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends that this phrase does not appear in any of Columbus' writing. Wilton says that many European languages since Greek and Roman times used variations of the term "Indian" to describe the peoples of the Indian subcontinent, more than a millennium before the voyages of Columbus.In the 17th century, Quechua nobleman Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala claimed that the word Indian derived from "en dia," meaning "in day," referring to the Inca Empire's altitude and proximity to the sun.
Objections (since the 1970s)
Objections to the usage of "Indian" and "American Indian" include the fact that "Indian" arose from a historical error, and does not accurately reflect the origin of the people to whom it refers. In addition, some feel that the term has so absorbed negative and demeaning connotations through its historical usage as to render it objectionable in context. Additionally, "American Indian" is often understood to mean only the peoples of the mainland body of the United States, which excludes other peoples considered Indigenous peoples of the Americas; including Inuit, Yupik peoples, and Aleut. Related groups among these tribal peoples are referred to collectively as either Alaskan Natives, First Nations, or Siberians.Supporters of the terms "Indian" and "American Indian" argue that they have been in use for such a long time that many people have become accustomed to them and no longer consider them exonyms. Both terms are still widely used today. "American Indian" appears often in treaties between the United States and the Indigenous peoples with whom they have been negotiating since the colonial period, and many federal, state, and local laws also use it. "American Indian" and Alaska Native are the terms used in the United States Census.
"Native American" (since the 1960s)
The Oxford English Dictionary cites usage of the uncapitalized term native American in several publications dating to 1737, but it is unclear whether these texts refer to Indigenous peoples, or to persons born on American soil. One early use is the 1817 novel Keep Cool by John Neal, which declares "the Indian is the only native American; he holds his charter from God himself". During the 1850s, a group of Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans used the capitalized term Native Americans to differentiate themselves from recent Irish and German immigrants, both of which groups were predominantly Catholic. The group later formed the "Know-Nothings", a 19th-century political party that opposed immigration to the United States, a policy known as nativism. The Know-Nothings also called themselves the "Native American Party" and were referred to in the press with the capitalized term.In 1918, leaders of the Indigenous Peyote Religion incorporated as the Native American Church of Oklahoma. In 1956, British writer Aldous Huxley wrote to thank a correspondent for "your most interesting letter about the Native American churchmen".
The use of Native American or native American to refer to Indigenous peoples who live in the Americas came into widespread, common use during the civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s. This term was considered to represent historical fact more accurately. In addition, activists also believed it was free of negative historical connotations that had come to be associated with previous terms.
Between 1982 and 1993, most American manuals of style came to agree that "color terms" referring to ethnic groups, such as Black, should be capitalized as proper names, as well as Native American. By 2020, "Indigenous" was also included in these capitalization guidelines.
Other objections to Native American—whether capitalized or not—include a concern that it is often understood to exclude American groups outside the contiguous United States, and Indigenous groups in South America, Mexico, and Canada. The word American is sometimes questioned because the people referred to resided in the Americas before they were so named.
As of 1995, according to the US Census Bureau, 50% of people who identified as Indigenous preferred the term American Indian, 37% preferred Native American, and the remainder preferred other terms or had no preference.