>> Okay one more, one more thing. What is the best way to refer to
Aboriginal peoples? This is kind of the, a question that comes
up. And, really the thing to do is to try and
get as specific as possible. I'm borrowing this kind of concentric
circle model from one of the teachers in the teacher education program at
[inaudible]. But it's, you know, other people have been
using similar things to talk about this with people who are saying, how do I, what
is, what is the safest thing to do? What's the politically correct thing to
do? And the thing is, you get as particular as
you can. Their nation in their own language is an
important policy to kind of go by. There's a lot of reclaiming of the
original language names for a people, for a people, for a culture, for a group.
And, and one of the reasons for this is because in the past a lot of the names
that, that became popularized or became the standard were names that one group
used to define another, and they weren't always positive descriptions.
For instance, one group might call another Real Snakes, and then you don't really
want to be called like the Huron because it's a, it's a putdown.
Another example like with, with Ojibway, it's, it's meant to suggest something
that's puckered up. And, for some, they say though, it was
describing the moccasins, that they're, the Ojibway made moccasins in a way that
the it was, they were puckered up. Others said it was a reference to the
horrible treatment that they exposed people to by roasting them on fires till
they puckered up. And so the, the, it's like a terrible kind
of connotation, but in our language when we say we, we are the people, the, the
real beings, or the human beings, the good beings the word is [foreign].
And most first nations have their own name for themselves, which really just
translates as the people or people in relation to a place, like people of the
hill, people of the, of the standing stone.
And so these names really are, if you look at them all, it's just people.
And it doesn't have those other horrible connotations that have been given to us by
warring neighbors or something like that. So it's not oh, it's, you don't always
know what that is. It's good to ask who you're, who you're
talking about, what they prefer. Moving outward, though, if you're talking
about like a number of nations or, you know, a number of Aboriginal people, then
you can kind of get, get specific. Are you taking about first nations, and
you're not talking about Metis and Inuit? You know, go with first nation.
Get as specific as you can. But then you move out to indigenous
peoples, native, first peoples, et cetera. Another thing to add to this kind of
discussion about eh, eh, you know what, what terms to use, the question often
comes up about the s. Like, is it indigenous people or
indigenous peoples? And I, you know, I've heard people saying
peoples, because they think it's the, the PC thing to say, but they're really
meaning people. I think the way to kind of understand it,
the way I've tried to explain it is with indigenous people, you're talking about
the collection of individuals who are indigenous.
So all the people who are indigenous are indigenous people.
If you're talking about the, the collectives, the groups, in plural, that's
when you put the s on there. So you're talking about the indigenous
peoples of North America, then you mean to say the Cree, the, the, the Inuit, the,
the [inaudible], and so on. And then, then you're describing
indigenous peoples, the collectives. So I, I think that covers a lot of the,
the main terms. But like I say, if you want to see some of
the other terms that are out there and how they're used, then look at saybar.ca slash
key terms, okay?
Jean-Paul RestouleAssociate Professor
