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Requested move 18 September 2017

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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. Good discussion, reasonable arguments from both supports and opposes. Ultimately the votes were roughly split and so too was the strength of argument. While there was a general acknowledgement that the term most prominently referred to those in the US, there was clearly not a consensus on whether it referred to them more than anywhere else combined. Perhaps we could restructure the dab page somewhat to give Native Americans in the United States more prominence? Jenks24 (talk) 04:46, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]



Native AmericansNative Americans (disambiguation) – Redirect Native Americans to Native Americans in the United States, per WP:PRIMARY. Some of the entries on the disambiguation page appear to be original research; e.g. First Nations of Canada are not referred to as Native Americans (except inasmuch as they're within the category of indigenous peoples of the Americas, which "Native American" is (rarely) used to mean, as a confusingly ambiguous blanket term). The DAB page's current breakdown of just about every article we have on subtopics of indigenous peoples of the Americas isn't how we do DAB pages. No one ever writes "Native Americans" and specifically and only means "indigenous peoples in Ecuador", so entries like that should not be on this page.  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  20:47, 18 September 2017 (UTC)--Relisting. Cúchullain t/c 20:09, 26 September 2017 (UTC) --Relisting. DrStrauss talk 21:13, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to see some evidence of that, as it doesn't appear to be either uncommon or decreasing on JSTOR or Google Books.--Cúchullain t/c 17:48, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The BBC would most certainly disagree that it's commonly used for people outside the US! Yes, it's a neologism. Yes, it's a PC term. Yes, it's meaningless (anyone who was born in America is a "native American"!). But is it most commonly used to refer to indigenous people from the United States? Yes. And is it commonly understood to mean that by almost all English-speaking people? Yes. Let's face it, people from other countries in the Americas are not generally known as Americans (although they might be known as South Americans, Central Americans or North Americans), so I fail to see why the indigenous peoples of those areas would be known as Native Americans. And they're not. Look at Americans and see what the article is about. Is it about people from the Americas in general? No, it is not. Same with African Americans. There are plenty of people of African descent in Brazil, for instance. But is that article about them? No, it is not. Why people think this article should be any different is anybody's guess. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:53, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's not a neologism, and it doesn't really matter if it's "PC" or not. Nor does it matter what "Americans" usually means on its own. To redirect this title to Native Americans in the United States would require demonstrating that a clear-cut majority of sources for "Native Americans" refer to people within the United States to the exclusion of all other countries. That's not in evidence.--Cúchullain t/c 14:59, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I beg to differ. I think the sources quite clearly show that without qualification it almost exclusively refers to people from the United States. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:21, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
My list of sources show that 6 of 10 sources for "Native Americans" from the 1st page of Google Books include peoples outside the United States. No contradictory evidence has been presented.--Cúchullain t/c 15:31, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
6 of the 10 books from the first page of searches, all of which include the term "Native Americans" in the title, include peoples outside the United States.--Cúchullain t/c 18:07, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I don't recall anyone challenging the idea that the term has sometimes been used more broadly to mean "indigenous people of the Americas". This RM explicitly acknowledges this is true. It's just not the WP:PRIMARY usage. Your six books are not a statistically significant sample. It's much more instructive to do a whole series of N-grams on specific phrases in aggregate usage, like "Native Americans of [placename]" [5], etc., and note in particular that ones like "Native Americans of Brazil", "Native Americans of Guatemala", etc., typically come up with zero results. Same goes for "Native Americans of Central America" and "... of South America" and "...of Latin America". Contrast that with plenty of results for "... of New Mexico" and "... of Texas". You get similar results if you start using alternative constructions like placename first and adjectival placename first. E.g., lots of results for "California Native Americans", much, much lower for "Mexican Native Americans" and "Canadian Native Americans", also fairly low for some US states (especially East Coast ones – where the indigenous population has been suppressed for a few extra centuries), also low for Alaska[n] (Americans are pretty clear that the Inuit are distinct), and zilch for Latin American countries like Brazil [6] [among other such searches] The term is just overwhelmingly US-centric [7] The only noteworthy blip I could find that was "North American Native Americans" scored fairly high compared to the rather informal "U.S. Native Americans", but it's still totally dwarfed by "Native Americans in the United [States]" [8] Can't actually search on the full phrase (5-word limit!), but there are probably very few false positives for things like "Native Americans in the United Way", etc. There are some curious gaps [9] until one remembers that in the rural Western states the usual term is "Indians".  — SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  06:48, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough, and I do understand where you're coming from. But I just don't see that most people, in the US or anywhere else, use the term "Native Americans" only for peoples in the present boundaries of the US. They use it in the same sense as "Indians", "American Indian", "indigenous Americans", etc., which may or may not refer to the US specifically.--Cúchullain t/c 14:59, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Do you know what, I am sorry - I didn't even read the proposal and when I was tagged I just assumed that it was a repeat of the discussion moving the article to "Native Americans in the United States" which I already opposed once, so I just added that rationale. Sorry for being sloppy like that. Of course this should be either a disambiguation page or a redirect to "Indigenous peoples of the Americas". ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:44, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Maunus, I think you're confused - the proposal isn't to redirect Native Americans to Indigenous peoples of the Americas, it's to redirect it to Native Americans in the United States.--Cúchullain t/c 14:59, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I definitely am confused, but I wouldn't support a redirect to that article - but would prefer for it to be a disambiguation page if that is the question.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:20, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.