Sir, - There has recently been a discussion in these pages on the use of "Native American" as a general term for so-called "American Indians". As a historian specialising in American Indian history I recently came upon this problem myself. I wanted to use the term "Indian" in the title of a forthcoming book, but my editor wondered whether "Native American" might be more appropriate in these sensitive times.
I pointed out that "Native American" was actually ambiguous; in a 19th-century context it could also mean white, English-speaking, Protestant Americans, as distinct from immigrants from Ireland and other such unsavoury places. I also checked out the issue with colleagues in the United States who spend more time than I can in "Indian Country". They assured me that Indian people themselves generally use the "Indian"; they also, of course, refer to themselves by tribal name, or even by sub-groupings such as clan membership. My editor accepted the reasoning, and the book was called American Indian Children at School, 1850-1930 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993). The real clincher for me was a recent major article by R. David Edmunds, himself of Indian extraction, in which he writes: "Although `Native American' is the term of choice among academics, `Indian' is more commonly used among most of the Indian population in Oklahoma and on the reservations in the West." ("Native Americans, New Voices: American Indian History, 18951995", American Historical Review, Vol. 100, no. 3, June 1995, page 718, note 1).
I believe that, where possible, we should call people what they want to be called, and what's good enough for most Indian people is good enough for this academic. - Yours, etc.,
Michael Coleman,
Department of English,
University of Jyvaskyla, Finland.