Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 07:41:23 +0800
From: Jon Stratton <rstratto-AT-cc.curtin.edu.au>
Subject: Re: American "Indian" - Origin of the Name


   Dear Asher,
      I respect Ward Churchill's work and feel that his suggestion needs to
be thought through seriously. What I can add, for what it's worth, is that,
in the early days of settlement in Australia, that is the late eighteenth
century, the indigenous people were often called 'Indians'. I have often
wondered why and can only presume that, in this case, it was at least partly
on the model of the New World -- ie that newly discovered indigenous peoples
were simply thought of as 'Indians'. Certainly, by this time the
connotations were of India though there was no suggestion then that the
Aborigines came from India -- to my knowlwdge anyway! At one time, there was
an idea to bring Indians, from India, to Australia as indentured labour. 
Jon


At 05:52 PM 20/05/01 -0400, you wrote:
>Ward Churchill suggests in a 1995 interview with Z Magazine
>(http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/dec95barsamian.htm) that the term Indian
>comes from the Italian "In Dios" meaning close to god, rather than from a
>geographical reference to India (which he says was known as the time as
>Hindustan). 
>
>Does anyone have any more information/cites regarding the origin of the term
>and the accuracy of this suggestion?
>
>
>David Barsamian Interview with Ward Churchill in Z Magazine, 1995.
>http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/dec95barsamian.htm:
>
>DB: "In any discussion of indigenous peoples, Native Americans, the question
>must be asked, Who is an Indian?"
>
>WC: "An Indian is who an indigenous community says is an Indian. An Indian
>is an abstract concept anyway. It's something that was created by Europeans
>to define a population that they were encountering. It's not, as is commonly
>assumed, that the first European adventurers to wash up on the beach in the
>Caribbean thought that they had encountered the peoples of India. India
>wasn't even called India at the time, it was called Hindustan. But if you
>follow the Italian, and Christopher Columbus was an Italian, presumably,
>recording things in Italian, they felt that they had encountered the in Dios
>people who were with or next to God. That generic term has been applied to
>all the indigenous peoples of the Americas essentially ever since."
>
>Appreciate any info.
>
>---
>
>Asher Haig           ahaig-AT-warped-reality.com
>Dartmouth 2004
>
>"The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to
>interpret law."
>
>-- Bush, Austin, Texas, Nov. 22, 2000
>
>
>
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