[beejaa]

I once heard that Native Americans or American Indians actually prefer to be referred to by the name of their tribe, i.e., Sioux, Lakota, etc.

[Finny]

Yes, but most of the time they're descendents of many tribes and it becomes confusing. My boyfriend's dad, for example -- he was half Cherokee, and the other half was a combination of Cheyenne and another tribe. He had no problem with "American Indian" becuase it immediately told people that he was a descendent of the the people who were already on this continent before European explorers came in the 1500s. Simple, easy, straightforward, anything but confusing ... why people create such emotional resistence to honest language is beyond me.

Then you've got people who have or likely have small portions of genetic heritage in obscure tribes. I'm a fifth-generation native of California, with white pioneers going back to the 1860s, but we suspect that somewhere along the line, there was an intermarriage or two with California Indians from God only knows which of a gazillion tiny and obscure tribes. Also, my great grandfather was a Sonoran Mexican with ZERO European in his blood -- he was of "La Raza," as the "hispanic" racists would say.

The whole thing is a bunch of crap and people who dispute how to define the obvious usually have a "politically correct" agenda that leans toward the left. I don't mean you personally, beejaa, but I do mean to say that getting bunched up over Politically Correct labels plays into the hands of deception and manipulation. There's nothing deceptive or maniuplative about "American Indian."