Why are "native Americans" called "native" when they aren't native to America at all?
I am a history major currently working on my phd in "Early Industrialization". Early Americans traveled from Asia and traveled across the land bridge between Asia and North America. So why do we insist on calling Indians native? This includes the tribal inhabitants of South America and Central America.
2021-04-07T22:18:08Z
Native: a person born in a specified place or associated with a place by birth, whether subsequently resident there or not.
According to the dictionary definition, you simply must be born to the place you are native to. This includes all races born on a given piece of land.
2021-04-10T16:00:13Z
Gerber, the answer is absolute and based in science! Its not opinion anymore. its called DNA. How do you think these DNA companies are capable of telling customers where their ancestors came from, going back a millennia or more?
Aspen2021-04-12T16:00:47Z
NATIVE Americans were here likely 15,000 years ago, pre Clovis). There is some suggestions that it could have been longer. That’s at least 600 generations. Some suggestions go back 20,000 years. Columbus arrived 21 generations ago starting colonization in Latin America. If your ancestors were here during the revolution, they have been here for 9 or 10 generations. If your ancestors arrived in Ellis island, your here less than 5 generations ago.
Native Indigenous Americans were here first. By comparison, the earliest European Americans got here the equivalent of yesterday. I think that counts as far as being “native”. And by any stretch I think that 15,000 OR MORE years in place here might as well be the equivalent of forever.
By the way, by your argument, Europeans are also not native to Europe. They first showed up in Europe around 40,000 years ago or so, and they arrived to find other humans already there (Neanderthal). The origin of the English language comes through via early proto-Germanic languages originally developed from out of proto-indie-European living in the Black Sea/Caucuses region some 6000 years ago and moved west into Europe replacing previous homo sapien groups and their even earlier languages around 4,000 years ago. They were mobile pastoralists closely linked to early populations in the Middle East but those guys had picked up agriculture, something these earliest proto Germanic speakers apparently didn’t participate in. Point is, English/Germanic speaking peoples aren't indigenous to Europe either. They were closer related to middle eastern populations of the era, and were late comers to Europe.
Generally speaking, I think Native indigenous Americans are “native” to the Americas just as I think native Europeans are “native” to Europe. But if you make this argument that Native Americans are not truly “native” to this land, then by extension neither are Europeans to Europe. And ultimately, you can extend that argument back some 70,000 years to Africa, the cradle of our species. Then ultimately we are all Native Africans, regardless of what “race” one is.
Oh, and for the guy who said first Americans came from Europe...scientifically and completely disproven. DNA studies are conclusive on that. The Solutrean hypothesis is so full of holes as to be considered today as “scientific” as ancient aliens making the pyramids, pure nonsense.
When used as adjectives, indigenous means born or engendered in, native to a land or region, especially before an intrusion, whereas native means belonging to one by birth. Native is also noun with the meaning: a person who is native to a place.