Well then, good thing you are neither a resident of Minneapolis or a member of its City Council. 
You'd probably object to more than just that. Folks like PC stuff around here,
Figgered as much. ...
and think of the term PC as less a valid criticism than as a defensive wedge tactic that conservatives apply to political concepts they don't like. Mild deferral to "PC" terminology in and of itself rarely bothers me, especially in regard to what people want others to call them.
After a lifetime of "working with words," it bothers me if it's bad or awkward usage--and I'm just conceited enough to feel after that same lifetime I'm qualified to judge usage, bad or otherwise (you are, too). Even if I know I cannot affect a change, it still bothers me. I'll give some examples, even if they don't exactly qualify as "PC." Around here, districts for members of the City Council are actually called "Councilmanic Districts, " and never mind that quite a few members of the City Council are women. (What would be wrong with calling them simply "Council Districts"?) And the jurisdiction of low-level judges, who used to be called justices of the peace, are now called "magisterial districts." Technically that's not a misuse of
magisterial, but it's so far down the list and so far from common usage that it makes me want to scream.
And as for myself, I don't think of PC as applying to "political concepts," although perhaps we're using that term differently.
However, I agree that IPD is a bit clumsy -- relies too heavily on one big four-syllable word that not everybody even knows and small children can't pronounce, paired with a simpler word that's used in a non-standard way (I doubt many peoples besides anthropologists and historians use "peoples" in their daily conversation.) Yesterday I got an email from the city saying "Garbage pickup will not be delayed the week of Indigenous Peoples Day," which just sounded odd.
Adopting First Nations from Canada might be clumsy too, though, because we've never used that term and they have for a while.
Yeah, well, you have to start somewhere. I expect it took some time for the Canadians to get used to it, too.
As a rule, I like Native American. AP style still calls for Indian, at least on first reference, and it bugs me. I know many Indians use the word themselves, and it's not like it's a slur or anything, but coming from a non-Indian it seems a bit dated or insensitive.
Of course this brings me back to the anecdote from
Longmire author Craig Johnson, which I've mentioned before. If he, being a white guy, calls his Cheyenne friends "Native Americans," they just laugh at him and ask him where he was born.
Whenever possible, it seems to me that it's best to use the name of the tribe you're writing about. No doubt the tribes are no more unified in their issues than anybody else. Surely the Mohegans of Connecticut, rich from their casino, have very different concerns than the Arapaho living on a reservation in Wyoming.
I'm also not entirely convinced that
indigenous in Indigenous Peoples Day is really an accurate use of
indigenous. That really sounds PC to me. The ancestors of the tribes came here from somewhere else, too, just a lot earlier than our ancestors.
Of course,
now that I've written all the above, it occurs to me to Google "Indigenous Peoples Day" to see if I can learn where, when, and by whom that term originated.
(That's laughing at myself, BTW.)
Edit to Add: OK, I have started to read up on this, and there are lots of fascinating articles about it on the Internet. If I'm reading correctly, the holiday started in Berkeley, California. Why am I not surprised?
Edit to Further Add: I have no objection at all to a holiday to celebrate the history and culture of the tribes. Maybe we could even do it on what is now "legal" Columbus Day (this year it was this past Monday, Oct. 12; no mail delivery that day, etc.) and move Columbus Day back to October 12, where it belongs.
Topic: Cellar Scribblings (Read 12974950 times)