[ExI] War ----- It's a meme!

[Darren Greer]

>>So, to be strictly correct, you have to find out which culture the
person you are speaking to is a member of and use that name.<<

Yup, that seems like it might be true. At least it was when I worked at the
Pauktuutit Inuit Women's centre. We used Inuit except in cases where those
being referred to believed it didn't apply, such as the Innui in Quebec and
the Dene in Saskatchewan.

>From Wikipedia:
In Alaska, the term Eskimo is commonly used, because it applies to
both Yupik and Inupiat peoples. Inuit is not accepted as a collective
term or even specifically used for Inupiat (which technically is
Inuit). No universal replacement term for Eskimo, inclusive of all
Inuit and Yupik people, is accepted across the geographical area
inhabited by the Inuit and Yupik peoples.<<

It's not so much the generalized term that people are using, but what that
generalized term means and where it comes from.  Inuit means "our people"
from a Northern Indigenous tribal dialect. Eskimo means "eater of raw flesh"
from the Cree, who are incontestibly not Eskimo or Inuit. Nit-picking aside,
I can see that the objections to the first might be greater than the second.


 >>* Athabascan
   * Yup'ik & Cup'ik
   * Inupiaq & St. Lawrence Island Yupik
   * Unangax & Alutiiq (Sugpiaq)
   * Eyak, Tlingit, Haida & Tsimshian<<

So you wanted nit-picking? :)

There are specific tribal names and even tribes-within-tribes
and generalized rubric headings. The above is a confusing mixture.
 Athabaskan and Haida generally consider themselves first nations, and more
importantly 'treatied' first nations if they live in Canada. The other
tribes may or may not call themselves first nations for a number of
political reasons, not the least being that when the colonizers dealt with
the northern tribes, there were in fact so few of them in numbers that they
found there was more bargaining power in being considered  as a single
nation rather than a group of very small tribes seperated by vast
geographical distances.  (Some) of the northern tribes you name find the
term Inuit inappropriate for political reasons, not cultural ones. The term
Inuit was adopted for political reasons, and gained wide-spread use when
some Northern tribes negotiated Nunavut as a seperate Canadian Territory.

One of the mistakes people make when dealing with Indiginous people in
North America (and Russia) is to forget about the political distinctions as
well as the language and culture. There was a complex political structure in
place when the colonizers first arrived here. So Inuit may be (and is) often
objected to on political grounds (such as the Innui and the Dene who have
been very successful in negotiating political advantages as isolated tribes
by looking at their small numbers and unique culture-within-a-culture as a
bargaining chip rather than a libaility.)

But the term Eskimo is (or almost is) universally culturally offensive, as
far as I know. And this biggest nit-pick of all? I stated the term Eskimo
was cultural offensive, and bet even the Yupik and (I know the Innui) find
it so. It is best when dealing with tribes who don't identify with the "Our
People's" designation to ask them what they prefer to be called, instead of
assuming "eater of raw flesh" is OK.



Darren
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