• tyler@programming.dev
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    5 months ago

    Yes, American Indians prefer to be called Indians, not native Americans. You’re not being insensitive.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOPM
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      5 months ago

      In my experience, there seems to be a lot of disagreement on that point, but it is not my ethnicity, so I don’t feel like I’m right to speak on any of their behalves.

    • Sweetpeaches69@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I live in a population area with a lot of native Americans, and I’ve literally never heard that before. I only hear a preference toward, “native” or “indigenous”.

      • MeThisGuy@feddit.nl
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        5 months ago

        because Indian can be confused with a billion+ other ppl in the world.
        the 'ol “feather or dot” question

      • tyler@programming.dev
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        5 months ago

        have you ever asked them? My wife works on reservations. They unanimously want to be called Indian. CGP Grey has a video on it as well I’m pretty sure. And I think it’s pretty telling that the agency is called the Bureau of Indian Affairs and not the Bureau of Native American affairs. https://www.usa.gov/agencies/bureau-of-indian-affairs

        We’ve had plenty of reform of sports team names, you’d think they’d want to reform the actual federal agency name if it wasn’t what they wanted it to be called.

        • Sweetpeaches69@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Yeah, I have. I wonder if it’s a difference of reservation versus non-reservation? I don’t really interact with people from the reservations, just people that have moved into the city. Really interesting, I’ll look for that video.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOPM
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          5 months ago

          I generally try to avoid the whole thing and call any people who were there before the colonials came ‘indigenous,’ which applies to the peoples of Australia and Polynesia as it does the Americas.