Native Americans around us

[kimberkit]

Savannah was talking about the indigenous populations of Hawaii and mildly irate that a friend of hers had questioned whether Hawaii had a native language, in her blog post the other day. I responded that both Hawaii and Alaska have fairly non-European sounding names, and that it didn't actually take much thought to realize that both Hawaii and Alaska were ergo probably Native American names. Of course they have indigenous populations and languages, even if they've been sort of thinned out/ not widely spoken. Duh.

... Then I thought about what I'd said, and realized that 17 (edited: Ry counts 25, and I am too lazy to count properly) of the 50 states have Native American, not European or Latin names. (Wikipedia page on State name etymology). That really should underline how much of our country was originally Native American, for a sense of history but then I thought: but how many Native Americans do you see wandering around now? Our indigenous population is almost extinct in almost all our states, not just in Hawaii or Alaska... which is sad.

Comments

[amocantare.livejournal.com]

Actually, you probably see more Native people wandering around than you think. Of course it's important to recognize the decimation of pre-contact populations, but I've been learning recently how stable and vibrant Native communities have been in the last couple of centuries. The myth of the disappearing Indian is a really powerful one that came along with ideas about Manifest Destiny and Frederick Turner's frontier thesis (Americans are American because they move west) in the late nineteenth century.

It's part of most current political struggles for Indian nations. If they've disappeared, they don't require rights. And it also points to our fundamental resistance to the idea that indigenous people could be both Indian and modern. I know that I would have said the same just months ago!

[kimberkit.livejournal.com]

Really? Well, perhaps it's that I don't get out enough, then :) I mean, I saw more Native Americans when I was in Arizona; and a few around the Mohegan Sun Casino; but not in the city here per se.

[swagmonkey.livejournal.com]

Well, there was plenty of population-decimation of Native Americans when Europeans first moved into this country, and I'm sure that there are WAY fewer now than there were then. That said, I do think Emily's right that they aren't disappearing further at this point.

[drlynch.livejournal.com]

Having grown up in states with indigenous names, I was surprised to learn that there are only 17. Actually, I see 25 not counting those states with disputed origins.

I have lived in 3 of them (as has my sister) while my sister-in-law is on her fifth. My mother has lived in 4 states, 3 of which have indigenous names although the origin of her birth state (Wyoming) is actually indigenous to the Delaware. My father is 4 for 4 although one of his three is also a distant group (New Mexico being pretty far from most nahua-speaking people).

[kimberkit.livejournal.com]

Hah, okay, I've corrected for my inability to count.

I would like to know more about the actual Native Americans in said states.

[drlynch.livejournal.com]

http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/c2kbr01-15.pdf

see page 5

You will notice that the populations are largest in states that are still sparsely populated because the land is less desirable (Arizona, New Mexico, Dakotas, Alaska). In those cases, people were certainly relocated (especially the Dakotas but even the Navajo had a trail of tears) but there are also people living in their historic homelands. In a lot of the west, native peoples were given reservations on pieces of their larger original territories. For instance, the Paiutes and Goshutes were hunters and gatherers who are now contained on small reservations that would not support their pre-contact lifestyles.

There is also the famous case of Oklahoma, which was remote at the time when people were relocated there.

The further east you get, the more mixed the American Indian populations are. Beyond that, a significant number of African Americans have American Indian ancestors (something that is more prevalent in certain regions) and a fair number of European-American families also claim AI ancestry although there are statistical problems in that most of these people claim American Indians on their mother's side to the extent that some peoples would have had exclusively female populations for several generations!

[drlynch.livejournal.com]

Also, not counting Latino populations, you do see American Indians in Utah for sure. In fact, a close family friend (who made the clothes for my sister's wedding) is Navajo and a high school friend married a Navajo. In Atlanta, I had a Cherokee neighbor. In Iowa, we used to drive through the Tama reservation (now known for a casino) to visit my grandparents.

Also in the west, most of our Latino populations are very obvious mixes of Europeans and American Indians and many identify this way. You probably see this less in NYC where the vast majority of your population is Caribbean. Of course, there was mixture there but most of their indigenous populations died of disease shortly after Columbus; those who didn't die generally mixed with the European populations.