Academic circles have preferred “American Indian” for a couple decades now. You still see “Native American” in lower-level materials (undergraduate and below), though.
It’s mixed at best, there’s no universal consensus for either one in academic circles, especially once you get to international audiences. Of course there’s no universal preference among indigenous people either, so the best bet is not to talk about indigenous peoples as if they’re a monolith and instead use narrower terms for just the groups you’re discussing.
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.
He said that while there was a push from academia about 30-40 years ago to refer to indigenous peoples
Academics don’t care what you call other people. They aren’t pushing anyone to do anything, except perhaps for people in their fields to recognize their novel, useful ideas.
All that matters to the academy is what peers are calling something. And that basically boils down to trends in language and the decisions the editors in chief of a few influential journals and a few influential authors in whatever field. You can say whatever you want. If you submit a paper for publication though they’re probably going to change yours to their own preferred usage.
Academic circles have preferred “American Indian” for a couple decades now. You still see “Native American” in lower-level materials (undergraduate and below), though.
It’s mixed at best, there’s no universal consensus for either one in academic circles, especially once you get to international audiences. Of course there’s no universal preference among indigenous people either, so the best bet is not to talk about indigenous peoples as if they’re a monolith and instead use narrower terms for just the groups you’re discussing.
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.
Academics don’t care what you call other people. They aren’t pushing anyone to do anything, except perhaps for people in their fields to recognize their novel, useful ideas.
All that matters to the academy is what peers are calling something. And that basically boils down to trends in language and the decisions the editors in chief of a few influential journals and a few influential authors in whatever field. You can say whatever you want. If you submit a paper for publication though they’re probably going to change yours to their own preferred usage.
Yep, cool, I just meant trend, maybe ‘push’ was a poor choice of words.