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I am an American Indian, not a Native American!


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American Indian leader Lakotah Russell Means from Pine Ridge, South Dakota explains why he and many of us abhor the term "Native American."


Check out Russell Means' informative website at www.russellmeans.com

From Charleen Touchette, Oppressionist Artist recruited by Russell Means in 2006, for TouchArt.net and OneEarthBlog.blogspot.com

HAVE LAND? THANK AN INDIAN

You can get a tee-shirt with the wise words above at www.nativeharvest.com
TouchArt

24 responses // I am an American Indian, not a Native American!

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AagFcJ3mOj0
    hope ;)
    KINGSTON916
  • I've always admired Russell Means.

    After a lecture he gave, several years ago, I asked him about his disdain for Western culture. He said the great cathedrals were "just a rearrangement of rocks" and that the great artists like Mozart and Michelangelo failed to move him. When I asked him why, he said they were "linear."

    It's always puzzled me.
    jsburman
  • Novel idea: how about if EVERYONE asking to be (WTFEVER) hyphenated American just STFU's and we all go by American? Guess that would be too easy of a way to start wiping out some of the self manufactured racial tension in America...
    Liberal_Extinction
  • Good to hear it from the horse's mouth; it's something I've wondered...
    Humdrum
  • As a Lakota from Standing Rock and a libertarian I'd like to add some quotes from Means from lpnews for all of my statist friends who constantly praise the "Native American" or "American Indian" way of life:

    "Freedom is for everyone, whatever lifestyle they choose, as long as it's peaceful and honest -- from high-tech entrepreneur to hippie in a commune and everyone in between..."

    "American Indians are caught in the same dilemma as libertarians. We're neither left nor right. We're just for freedom."

    "I'm for a free market. I only oppose the misuse of technology. A libertarian society would not allow anyone to injure others by pollution because it insists on individual responsibility. That's part of the beauty of libertarianism."

    All quotes from http://www.theadvocates.org/celebrities/russell-means.h...
    Hawkmang
  • This is one of those things I've always wondered about (the other one is whether it's more incorrect to label someone an 'African American' rather than 'black'; I mean, we don't call white people 'European Americans').

    A very enlightening link, though, thanks TouchArt. It's interesting that I've never heard of the conference held in Geneva despite all the American History I was forced to take in public school.
    NcSchu
  • this reminds me of those other identity crises that gave way to the 90's PC movement: "Latino" vs. "Hispanic", "Black" vs "African American" - what was unfashionable is now fashionable and vice versa. It's annoying and a turn-off.

    Personally, when referring to those peoples that existed on American soil before the European settlers came, I choose to identify them simply by cupping my hand over my mouth and shrieking wildly.
    stephenthomson
  • stephen :-/

    and i've also caught myself saying "indigenous" and wondering if that is a word that would correctly be used. I still don't know though..wouldn't American Indian be just factually incorrect? Touch Art maybe you could help me..
    keeshii768
  • alternative possibilities by which to identify yourself:

    "American Native Indian Americans" (to be safe)

    "The Same Decaying Organic Matter as Everything Else" (-Tyler Durton, Fight Club)
    stephenthomson
  • the most pathetic example of how American Indians are treated by the "US gov't" is nowhere better demonstrated than in how the National Park Service runs the "historical" sites ( which require fees , btw) - many are the times i've been at a "site" where a "park ranger" made actual , living , "natives" walk around a "site" in the opposite direction which the "site" was built for ( and built by the ancestors of the same people whom were being forced to basically commit sacrilege to visit the site ) - it's something so f-ed up i can't begin to address it - the one thing that really gets on my nerves is when "natives" aren't allowed to bring their dogs along - ugggg
    malathion
  • No government should be allowed to define what you are. Thanks for this viewpoint.
    JanforGore
  • sorry to be the one to point this out, but if i was native american.. or west indian.. or indigenous.. (however you would like to term it) i would have much bigger things to worry about and insist upon than what people were referring to me as..

    in all of history, you would be hard-pressed to find another society/culture/group of humans who were screwed over as badly as the people who were here before colonialists arrived..

    then again.. it is their rite.. one of the few they have been left with..
    chapter12
  • they're deft not considered west indian, it's funny though...i identify as west indian...and even that term alone is kinda incorrect
    keeshii768
  • personally, I am Native American. I am NOT from India so I am NOT American Indian. I think of this the complete opposite way. To me, I don't understand why they prefer to associate with a part of the world that they have nothing to do with [India is in ASIA and I am not ASIAN either]. I abhor the term American Indian. They only called them Indians because they were confused about where they were in the world.
    nkeg87
  • lol good point nkeg.
    stephenthomson
  • very good point indeed nkeg - just goes to show what BS "natives" of this continent have to go through to be called anything at all , and thus have some kind of voice as being somebodies as far as the gov't is concerned .
    malathion
  • It would be easier to call the american comunity American colonists..for it was never the americans land in the first place..yet again in history it was taken over from the various Indian tribal communitıes who populated the country at that time..before it was again discovered by columbus who had been blown there by the trade winds. and as for jsburmans comment on linear thought..the tribes at that time were working with the planet in harmony and balance like the Aborigines..and so the reason that these american colonists thought linear was possibly because they only walked across the earth and were not connected to it as they are..
    mcwally
  • In my neck of the woods, we say Amerindians.
    Vierotchka
  • I am Caucasian-German-Scottish-Cherokee-American! I am not white! (a.k.a. Caucagermascotterokeemerican)

    just had to clear that up. If you call me anything other than the aforementioned i'll be very offended.
    recommended by  stephenthomson
    stephenthomson
  • I understand what he's trying to say, but simply put:

    "Columbus... in an effort to discover a shorter more direct route to India by heading west, across the Atlantic, on what he presumed to be an open sea route to the East Indies...miscalculated the distance...thought the Earth was a smaller sphere than it is" and ran "into a landmass before he reached the East Indies. Nevertheless, he called the aboriginal peoples he encountered in the new world "Indians." - from the book, The World is Flat, by Thomas L Friedman, foreign affairs correspondent for the New York Times.

    so is the term "American Indians" an appropriate choice after all?
    akira069
  • as vierotchka said amerindians is good if they are not offended like Caucagermascotterokeemerican would be but then you would probably just say Hello friend ..to him?
    mcwally
  • there is now a research that suggests the chnese discovered america before Columbus..Oh dear! http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/17/international/asia/17...
    mcwally
  • Sorting through labels (and finding ones that aren't white controlled) may be irritating, but definition is crucial. Linear thinking should be challenged. And almost any challenge to the status quo, no matter how appropriate or just, is going to annoy a lot of people. This isn't a bad thing.
    24French
  • The video is breathtaking. Thanks for sharing.
    TouchArt
  • I don't like American Indian either, I preferred Native American, but I'm not all Native either. I'm Choctaw, Mexican, and somewhere in there is some white. My sister and I have learned somewhere that Choctaw and Mexican mixes were called Mystizio's. But that doesn't cover all of the blood in me. So what do I call me, Choc-Mex-Cau-merican?? Silly huh, I am what I am.
    grelaria

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