Erase Which “Indian” Name to What End?

With all due respect …

Compiled and edited by Carolyn LaDelle Bennett

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ame giving, taking or changing is not about “Justice” nor can name-tinkering secure justice, ensure redress or respect, change history or mend relations. Only people with people can accomplish and ensure substantive change. Anything other than this is transitory, merely show. Moreover the varieties of “Indian” are almost too many to count.

“Indian”: (adjective/noun) inhabit of India or South Asia; pertaining to India (c. 1300); from Late Latin indianus, from India; Applied to the aboriginal native inhabitants of the Americas from at least 1553 as a noun (1610s as an adjective), reflecting Spanish and Portuguese use, on the mistaken notion that America was the eastern end of Asia (it was also used occasionally 18c.-19c. of inhabitants of the Philippines and indigenous peoples of Australia and New Zealand. The Old English adjective was Indisc, and Indish (adj.) was common in 16c. ● Red Indian: used to distinguish the native Americans from inhabitants of India; first attested 1831 in British English (Carlyle) but was not commonly used in North America. ● 

More than 500 modern phrases include Indian, most of them U.S. and most impugning honesty or 

intelligence, such as Indian gift: An Indian gift: a proverbial expression signifying a present for which an equivalent return is expected. [Thomas Hutchinson’s ‘History of Massachusetts Bay’, 1765]; Indian giver ‘one who gives a gift and then asks for it back’ (1848). Indian elephant (c. 1600); Indian corn (from 1620s); to walk Indian file (from 1758); Indian club (from 1824), a weapon (clubs noted in Lewis & Clark as characteristic weapons of native warriors in the American West), (1825) exercise equipment; Indian-head (from 1862,adjective): referring to U.S. copper pennies with a portrait of an Indian in profile. Injun: (1812, from 1683 ‘Ingin’), a spelling representing the early American English colloquial pronunciation of Indian; Honest Injun: (first recorded 1868) as an asseveration of truthfulness; noun phrase honest Indian (attested from 1676, Massachusetts). (Etymology Online]

Merriam Webster: Indian [n. (14c)]: 1) a native or inhabitant of India or of the East Indies; a person of Indian descent; 2) American Indian: one of the native languages of American Indians— Indian, adjective; Indianness, noun

Wikipedia: of India: Something or someone of or from the nation of India: Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who are citizens or residents of India; non-resident Indian and person of Indian origin, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country.

I

n the Americas: Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North

and South America and their descendants; Native Americans in the United States, the indigenous people in the United States; Plains Indians, the common name for the Native Americans who lived on the Great Plains of the United States; First Nations, the various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis; Indigenous peoples in South America, peoples living in South America in the pre-Colombian era and their descendants; Native Mexicans, indigenous people of Mexico; West Indians, people from the Caribbean region and the Lucayan Archipelago; Mardi Gras Indians, African-American Carnival revelers in New Orleans, Louisiana, whose suits are influenced by Native American ceremonial apparel.

Of Australia: Aboriginal Australians, called ‘Indians’ until the 19th century; Languages: Indigenous languages of the Americas, spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America; Languages of India, including Indo-Aryan languages and Dravidian languages.

In the Arts/Music/Film/other Entertainment:  Indian (1996 film), a Tamil film; Indian (2001 film), a Hindi film; Indians (musician): moniker of Danish singer Søren Løkke Juul accompanied by some musicians also collectively known as Indians; ‘Indian’ (song), by Sturm und Drang; Indian (soundtrack), an album from the 1996 film; Indians (song), by Anthrax; Indian (card game), a simple card game that involves strategy; Indian soap opera/soap operas written, produced, and filmed in India; Indians (play), a 1968 play by Arthur Kopit

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usiness and Sport: Indian (airline), now defunct state-owned airline of India; Indian Motorcycle Manufacturing Company, an American company later called Indian Manufacturing Company, that produced the brand ‘Indian motorcycles’ from 1901 to 1953 ● Cleveland Indians, a professional baseball team based in Cleveland, Ohio; Frölunda HC or Frölunda Indians, a Swedish professional ice hockey club based in Gothenburg; Indianapolis Indians, a minor league baseball team based in Indianapolis, Indiana; Indios de Mayagüez, a baseball team in the Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League; Mumbai Indians, a franchise cricket team representing the city of Mumbai in the Indian Premier League; Springfield Indians, a minor professional ice hockey franchise, originally based in West Springfield, Massachusetts.

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laces: Indian, West Virginia, an unincorporated community in Kanawha County; Indian Creek; 

Indian Island; Indian Ocean; Indian River, several rivers and communities; Indian Run, streams in the U.S. states of Pennsylvania and West Virginia; Indian subcontinent; The Indians, British Virgin Islands islets group (Wikipedia) ● Indiana: (1765 in English): name given to the region north of the Ohio River (mid-18c. by French explorers or settlers); Indian + Latin-derived place-name suffix –ana); Indianian (1784) (source: Etymology online) ● West Indies/West Indian: Caribbean islands explored by Columbus, 1550s, reflecting the belief (or hope) that they were western outliers of the Indies of Asia; West Indian (from 1580s in reference to the native inhabitants, 1650s in reference to European settlers there, and 1928 in reference to people of West Indian ancestry) ● Indonesia: ‘East Indies’ (1850); formerly called Indian Archipelago or East Indies Islands (source: Etymology online)

Other: Indian cuisine, a wide variety of regional cuisines native to India; Indian Head cent, a coin produced by the United States Mint from 1859 to 1909; Indus, a constellation in the southern sky (Wikipedia) ●

I

ndian Summer (n., 1774): weather: occurring anywhere from mid-September to nearly December, varying by location, a “spell of warm, dry, hazy weather after the first frost” (origin disputed) (Etymology online)

Sources:

Merriam Webster, Etymology Online, Wikipedia

References

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Indian

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=indian+summer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian

News pegs: October 17, 2016: LA Times sports reporting Toronto, Ontario, Judge dismisses attempt to prohibit Cleveland Indians’ use of their name and logo during the American League Championship Series; and CHCH TV Online reporting “Cleveland ‘Indians’ controversy”

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-cleveland-indians-name-controversy-20161017-snap-story.html

http://www.chch.com/cleveland-indians-controversy/

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

Another View: Contrived Hysteria, Feigned Outrage, What is, What Should Addressed

Drivel drives out Substance
By Carolyn LaDelle Bennett

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owerful people, public figures, people placed high have the power over life and death. They allow some to speak. They silence multitudes—multitudes never seen, their voices never heard. Because of this, we—the people of the United of America and indeed the peoples of the world—now and for a long time have been handed “leaders” and prospective “leaders” (high placed people) who have been fielded and supported and who rise to public office, high office, for which they are unspeakably, entirely unfit.

This is the situation Americans again face in this election season. Those permitted access and speech—those sided with by the masses—are thoroughly unfit for purpose. Instead of Americans seeing and cutting through the charade and show, instead of demanding inclusiveness of people and ideas and substantive speech focusing on policy past, present and consequence, real needs, issues and answers domestic and international—they are giving in (succumbing) to the inordinate power of manipulation and flinging back and forth, up and down, wherever blows the wind of distraction.

“Sex sells” but it does not question qualification and character for leading what could be a great nation. I don’t really want to comment on another embarrassing speech by the US First Lady; read the transcript provided by NPR (I did) or watch some portal or tube of Web Viral. 

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ut as to substance and the measure of qualification and character, I have a few words. While words, a leer, furtive touch can hurt—the truly vulnerable have neither voice nor choice. Human beings blown up by US bombs (ordered, approved or sold by US leaders) have no recourse, no resurrection, no rise from death.  

I am alarmed and concerned about a country that holds most of the world’s nuclear weapons and unmanned/remote (drone) missiles; harbors most of the world’s arms dealers and sellers; and  whose inordinately powerful leaders (many still in office and or aspiring to high office) have pretty near destroyed the world and relations among peoples and cultures of the world. I am deeply concerned that these corrupt, incompetent, immoral “leaders” have engaged endlessly in war, belligerence, violent aggression, and directly or indirectly caused the exacerbation of tribal and regional suffering and conflict and the death, displacement, homelessness and statelessness of hundreds of millions of people (then further punished, disparaged, rejected and or denied them asylum or refuge). I am concerned that these “leaders” have assassinated or caused to be assassinated, removed or conspired to remove other heads of state; that these mainly  (though not only) US leaders have abducted and interned (without charge or trial) and tortured other nationals (some US citizens); that they have ripped to shreds vital US (and international) documents and institutions; and concomitantly with world violence they have neglected their (our) homeland, its common defense and general welfare, the health, education and welfare of our people and lands. Until these concerns are addressed, there is nothing out of the mouths of the monopoly and their minions that is worth listening to.

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et’s face it. The current crop of kin and kind—Nobel laureates notwithstanding or carelessly mendacious graduates of Yale or Harvard, Columbia or Stanford, Chicago, Princeton or Duke, Wellesley or Radcliff—they are unfit for the purpose, unfit to assume either US public office or world leadership.

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Pegs: 

Press TV October 14, 2016.Michelle Obama rebukes Trump's 'sexually predatory behavior' October 14, 2016 “US First Lady Michelle Obama has launched a scintillating attack against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s ‘sexually predatory behavior.’ http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/10/14/488968/Michelle-Obama-powerful-rebuke-Trump; 

NPR (National Public Radio, USA) Transcript: “Michelle Obama’s Speech On Donald Trump's Alleged Treatment Of Women, October 13, 2016 http://www.npr.org/2016/10/13/497846667/transcript-michelle-obamas-speech-on-donald-trumps-alleged-treatment-of-women; 

Washington Post Blog: The Fix “Michelle Obama’s speech on Donald Trump was remarkable” By Chris Cillizza October 13, 2016 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/13/michelle-obama-just-put-a-huge-and-emotional-exclamation-point-on-trumps-hot-mic-tape/]

________________________________________

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora