Re: American Indian/Indian American/Native American
Mario Handler (mhandler@igc.org)
Thu, 19 Dec 1991 06:14:00 PST
As far as I know, natives prefer to be called by the name they use
among themselves. This is confusing, sometimes the generic name
they use means just "men" or "people". For example, there has been
a deffamation (spelling correct?) with the caribes, they had a
sentence "ana karina rote", which many translated as "only we are
men", but perhaps it just meant "only we are caribes" as "caribes
(karina)" meant the same as "men" (I assume).
For many years the yanomami were called "waikas", but this is just
a name other tribes called them, meaning waika=bad people.
"Indio" is a bad word in the really indian countries like Peru,
Ecuador and Bolivia. In Venezuela (less than 1% but more than 25
groups), indio is a normal word, as well as "negro".
Mario