Talk:National Congress of American Indians

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America, which collaborates on Native American, First Nations, Inuit, Métis and related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
???	This article has not yet been rated on the assessment scale.
Suggested article edit guidelines: To help us prioritise our workload, and in readiness for Wikipedia:1.0, we need to assess our articles for Quality. If this article is Unassessed, please assess it. See the Article Classification for instructions. If you disagree with a rating, you can change it or discuss it at Article Classification. Before assessing this article, be sure to check the existing Archive of assessments made under the previous system (used until July 2006), and feel free to help in migrating the existing comments besides from adding your own evaluation. After assessing this article's quality, please make sure it to add it to the Lists at Article Classification, following the grading scheme detailed there.
Please rate this article and leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

The article currently says:

NCAI was organized in 1944 in response to federal termination policies and hostile legislation which proved to be devastating to the Native American nations.

It'd be useful to have some more details on what 1944 legislation is being talked about here, or a link to another article with details. --Delirium 14:22, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Improper terms

Note that the name of the organization being portrayed is "National Congress of American Indians (NCAI)" as opposed to "National Congress of Native Americans (NCAI)". That is because while American Indians prefer to be known by their tribe name they mostly prefer "American Indian" over "Native American" to describe them collectively as the latter term is more confusing. "American Indian" is also the correct legal term recognized by the US government. In the future use "American Indian" or "indigenous people" which is the term used by the UN. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.85.181.191 (talk) 12:24, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Please refer to the Native American name controversy article on the debate regarding the proper usage of terms "Native American" versus "American Indian" that large numbers of people still use in the U.S. without being racially offensive or how the term "Indians" was considered politically incorrect in the 1980's and 1990's the same way for anyone to still call African-Americans "Negroes" or "Coloreds", both are quite archaic. Maybe it's an attempt for "Indians" to reclaimed a term they are actually comfortable with, if not abused in a deragatory manner.

The origin of the term "Native" American to substitute the word "Indian" by left-wing activism in the 1960's then became widely adapted by American society by the 1970s. These activists insisted to say "Indian" to refer to North American Indian tribes was racially charged, held negative connotations and insensitive when used in the same way "Negro" and "Oriental" for East Asian-Americans (i.e. Chinese and Japanese) used to insult racial minority groups. It seemed the term "Native American" was in favor by most..."Native American" activists themselves.

Since the American Indians are "Native" peoples to North America, the term gained more popularity than "Aboriginal", "Indigenous" and "First" Americans that would catch on instead of "Native" American. But in the 2000's more and more "Native" Americans began to complain, question and reject the term as demeaning, and mentally replaced the image of American Indians as an oppressed by semantic usage: "Indians" = bad memories by westward expansion by white Americans, "Natives" = to cover up guilt or shame, and most American Indian persons no longer call themselves "Native American" unless to properly determine they are "Native" to this continent. Most of them identify themselves as members of their tribal nations and cultures first, then can say they are "Indian" as a self-title they are originally used to being called by the majority (i.e. European/Caucasian) of North Americans. + 71.102.53.48 (talk) 06:27, 9 May 2008 (UTC)