An article on watching our language.....

Watch your language!

by Suzan Shown Harjo
Columnist

An "Indian" lexicon lies within the English language, coloring attitudes and actions toward Native Peoples. Most English-speakers do not even notice it exists, let alone that it degrades the Native subjects and the spoken and written word.

This sub rosa language uses the past tense almost exclusively, suggesting that Native Peoples do not live in the present or have a future. Commonly, American Indians once were and used to be, but rarely are or will be.

Curiously, with such an emphasis on the past, Native American history is scarcely recognized. In its place are legends, stories, myths or tales, and pre-history, meaning time before the 1492 Invasion. Which brings us to discover, as in, Europeans discovered India - that is, the Western Hemisphere - and (ahem) Indians.

In the language of discovery, they found and claimed our countries in the name of Manifest Destiny and the divine right of kings. Now, non-Natives are landowners, while American Indians are mere inhabitants who occupied this territory.

But, read on through the "Indian" dictionary and, if you need a guide, just ask the nearest scout.

American Indians eat maize, rather than corn, and game, not meat or fish. American Indians have ponies, rather than horses, and bison, instead of buffalo. And American Indian runners and ponies are swift - not fast, not speedy, only swift.

That's not Native American music or singing you hear - it's American Indian chanting and drumming. And Native American writing and art? Nope, only symbols or markings. American Indians have pow wows, not business meetings. Only American Indians seem to have plights.

Let others wear clothes, fashion and finery. American Indians are decked out in garb. Full Clevelands, Santa Fe style outfits, dashikis and saris all have their distinct identities on folks who are dressed, attired and adorned. Not us. We're garbed, in feathers, war paint, beads, braids, regalia, costumes and, well, you know - "Indian" garb.

It is important for Native Peoples to be familiar with this "Indian" lexicon, not only to try to change outside references and related behavior, but to avoid using the isolating and charged terminology ourselves and to communicate Native American messages in no uncertain terms.

American Indian children, when imprisoned in church and state schools, were force-fed an English that marginalized and belittled both relatives and cultures as savage and uncivilized. The kids were rewarded for using words that demeaned or distanced them from their past. They were punished for speaking their own languages or for expressing favorable thoughts about their homes and families.

After a century of generational indoctrination, many Native American adults today have internalized both the self-denigrating terminology and the attitudes, and often are the harshest critics of Native American languages and traditions.

Ordinarily, language is a tool of art and communication. In an abusive society, language is a control mechanism, too, and words are weapons used to signal status information, such as who are the inferior and superior folks.

Bullies communicate their status by size, stance, volume, numbers. Verbal bullies do so through put-downs, technical jargon, threats and lies.

The bully strips away self-identifiers - starting with group and individual names - and replaces them with terms of diminution or derision. Traditional names and pejoratives are then co-opted for the bully's playthings and places.

Over the past 150 years, for example, the historic white man all but eliminated Dakota, Lakota and Nakota as recognized titles of languages and nations, converting them to names of locations, vehicles, teams and products. These national names were reshaped into one distorted identity, Sioux, a word in the Anishnabe language for snake or enemy.

Name-calling and cultural thievery are most noticeable in sports these days. When objections are raised, the practices are recast as the innocent sounding nicknaming. A reasonable person can understand why another would object to leveling epithets or stealing identities, but it sounds petty to struggle against a little ol' nickname. In this way, the issue and the person raising it are held up to ridicule, mostly in news stories about objections to ridiculing.

While nouns pose the worst problem - redskins and squaws most prominently - the verbs are troubling, as well. Sports writers never write that cowboys or Vikings scalp anyone, despite ample historical evidence to the contrary. No, in sports headlines, scalping is done by chiefs, Indians and braves.

Don't look in literature or educational materials for American Indians who walk, jump or skip. "Indians" roam. Antelope and elk roam, but "Indians" are the only people who do. The United States even officially outlawed "Indian" roaming, for 56 years in the 1800s and 1900s, regulating that "all nomadic Indians ... will not be allowed to roam away from their reservations without any specific object in view." 

 

 

Ms Harjo makes some interesting points here.....

I recall several years ago when a certain Phillip M. Parker, developed a computer generated dictionary on Potawatomi, which he had copied from various sources. This is quite easy to do with today's technology being as is, and this man called this so called dictionary his publication.

It was full of errors and should have been banned by all the Bodewadmik who knew of it, but several top ranking tribal officials from one of the Potawatomi bands were seen brandishing it as though some trophy. One tribal chairperson even had his own secret copy tucked away in his briefcase, and rumor has it he still has it to this day, even though Phillip M. Parker, has been legally censured by the Maori Nation for trying to do the same to their language. In fact, Amazon took his remaining books off their sales and refused to sell them any longer.  

It is interesting that many Native American people have totally accepted the printed word, and often see it as the gospel truth. i.e., what gets published must be true, and they do nothing about questioning what is published, nor the authors of some of the stuff they buy and come to trust in, often quoting it liberally. In short, they don't take the time to authenticate the books they buy. This was true of Phillip Parker's books on the Anishinabe languages he did.

Thank goodness the rest of his books have been censured, but folks, Amazon still sells some of his computer generated stuff he did on the Abenaki language, the Hmong language, and a few others, because no one registered a complaint against them and Dr. Parker. I wonder just how long we Neshnabek will feel and suffer the effects of colonization, for that is what all this is. Even some of our people calling themselves Indians, instead of by their tribal name, accepting reservation land as their only land, when all of America was our country. This is a mark of colonization and what the long term effects can be.........

Learn your language. It will tell you who you really are, it will give you your inherent rights and much, much more as a Neshnabe, for that is what we call ourselves in our language. Other groups call themselves by a host of other names, but not Indian.

Iw enajmoyan ngom........nin se Neaseno.