Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
"native american" really is a stupid term for people of the new world who trace their ancestry back to pre-colonial times.
native means "associated with the place or circumstances of a person's birth", so that's pretty much anyone who was born here, ie. not an overseas immigrant.
"aboriginal american" would've been a million times better from a strictly definitional perspective.
|
Canada's gone through lots of names as well. Aboriginal was one of them until fairly recently in fact.
It was shelved and the current term is Indigenous.
Native was also used to some degree in Canada but obviously never as "Native American". At least not by anyone even semi-official.
I've always shared the same view of you when it comes to the word "Native". It doesn't really make sense.
Interestingly, Portuguese and Spanish have the term "Amerindio" which combines the notion of the Americas with the historical error that led people to think these people were "Indians" because they thought they'd arrived in India. French also has the similar term "Amérindien" though it's definitely fallen out of favour here. "Amerindian" AFAIK has never really caught on with English speakers.