Friend of mine got a degree in Anthropology and spent a good amount of time writing academic paper about US tribes, which required visiting different groups and interviewing them.
He said that while there was a push from academia about 30-40 years ago to refer to indigenous peoples as Native American, he said that has been completely abandoned. The reason being is that the actual Native Americans don’t consider themselves American, nor does Indian describe them as these are Anglo Colonizer words.
When referring to themselves they will either go by the name of their tribe or they say they are Indian, because when they speak English they use English words to describe themselves.
Friend of mine got a degree in Anthropology and spent a good amount of time writing academic paper about US tribes, which required visiting different groups and interviewing them.
He said that while there was a push from academia about 30-40 years ago to refer to indigenous peoples as Native American, he said that has been completely abandoned. The reason being is that the actual Native Americans don’t consider themselves American, nor does Indian describe them as these are Anglo Colonizer words.
When referring to themselves they will either go by the name of their tribe or they say they are Indian, because when they speak English they use English words to describe themselves.