First Americans.

Education > History > U.S. History > First Americans

The first peeps.

Hint : their first name didn’t start with Leif, Eric, or Chris.

Once upon a time, Christopher Columbus showed up in North America with three ships and a bunch of other white fellows. He had bumbled his way onto the continent, needed some help upon arriving, and decided to call those who already lived there and welcomed them - in other words, the native peoples - “Indians.”

But they were not in India!

Right. They were not in India. But like many poor habits that get repeated too many times, it stuck. His generic title for the hundreds of tribes living across North America became the de facto term for the indigenous peoples of the continent. Which brings us to our word of the day.

Word of the day : Indigenous

Indigenous basically refers to someone or something that is native or naturally-occurring to a region.

First Peoples are indigenous to North America.

My first name is “Joseph,” but sometimes people who don’t know me well like to casually shorten my name to “Joe,” and they think that’s alright.

It’s not. I don’t want them to call me Joe.

So…

We can do our best to call people and groups of people what they would most like to be called. Whatever I write here might be dated in 20 years. Or ten, or one, or next week. That’s okay. Language has a long history of evolving and changing; of being fluid. That’s the way things work.

Principles, not rules

That’s why Principles are often more helpful than Rules.

I could write a Rule here about what to call indigenous peoples in every country on every continent in the world. And there’s a good chance that in the future, some, or many of those rules would change.

Or, I can write a single Principle to cover things. Something like:

Treat others like you would like to be treated, therefore,

take it upon yourself to call others, both individually and collectively, by the names that they ask to be called by.

Show respect for their wishes and by how others wish to be identified.

And let’s all try and be patient with one another as we navigate, together, the evolving complexities and nuances of of language.

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