From One Raven's Eye

Page 7

Ahneen, tansi and hi, who are you? Yep you read that right. And nope it wasn't a typing error on my part either. Just exactly who are you and for that matter who are us.

This past winter we ate at two Indian restaurants here in Gretszkyville. At one place we ate parathos and samosa which we washed down with a glass of lassi. At the other it was as goat roti, sugar cake and ginger beer.

If you know Edmonton at all you're probably wondering where these two eating places are. You're probably wondering what brand these two eating places are. You're probably wondering what brand of Indians cook this food and you maybe never heard of before. Well the ones who dine on parathos are from India while the roti nibblers are from the Caribbean. They call themselves West Indians. Now besides them, there are also, of course, North and South American Indians as well.

All this means is that when a person says the word Indian they could be referring to a turban wearing Sikh from the Punjab, a Black person from Jamaica, and Misquito from Brazil or a DogRib from the North West Territories. No other group in the world has this problem. The Philippino's are from the Philippines, Hawaiian's are from Hawaii. There are no north, west, east and south versions of those people spread out all over the planet. They don't come in different colors and cultures either.

So how did this one brand name for this whole different bunch of us come about? By mistake, by accident? Yep and the worst part is that it's one of the other groups who are the real Indians while the rest of us go on living under a false name.

In 1642 the explorer looking for Indian bumped into this island of ours not even knowing it existed. He figured he had reached India so of course he started calling the brown skinned Natives he met Indians. If he had been heading for Mongolia we would

all be collecting our treaty money each spring from the Department of Mongolian Affairs.

Now with all this talk of self government and nationhood going around these days isn't it time we had our very own jazz sounding, totally unique to just us name? A name that would look good on a t-shirt or on cheap stuff to stiff the tourists with. Something easy to spell and say would be nice too.

Now we've referred to this problem of name calling off and on in previous articles. One guy already told me that Anishanabe' which is what we Ojibways call ourselves in our language just wouldn't do. He said his own people's name would probably be better. Since we tend to sometimes have a hard time agreeing to perfectly reasonable solutions these days maybe we should examine some other choices. Not everybody could be an Ojibway anyway. I know, I know that's pretty bad news for all of you non O's out there but that's just one of life's rocky realities.

Back in the early 70's, Native people in the States took to calling themselves N'Amerindians or Amerindians. The idea never caught on though. Maybe because the Vietnam was happening around then. They weren't doing so hot against the Native people of that country so they might have just taken out their frustration on any brown person with a similar sounding name back home.

The word Native is no good either. Everybody is a Native of their country of origin. Of course if we all went back to being full time residents of those former addresses this whole dilemma would just sort of sail away.

Aboriginal won't work either. The root word of that is Aborigine. That is the name of the Native people of Australia. We'd soon be right back where we started from. Tourists would always be asking us, "say is it true you invented a stick that can't be thrown away?"

The French have a couple of words that almost work.

How about "L'Sauvage?" That's got a nice ring to it. "L'Sauvage." But then we've spent all these years fighting off that image. Maybe if we had lived up to that name a lot more in the first place we'd still be out there hassling the moose and buffalo on a ful time basis yet.

Then there's Autochonous. The Assembly of Autochonous Nations. Then we'd run into that 'th' problem again. Some people with English as a second language have problems making that sound. The noun form of the word would come out of autoch-o-nite. People would always be asking why do you talk all night and who do you talk to?

After that the choices get worse. There's brownies. The word also refers to a chocolately kind of cake. Well, while we are often as sweet as that by nature who wants to be named after something to eat.

Any reference to red, as in redoned or redpeople sounds honkey. Besides the Communists have sorta given that whole color a bad name.

Now since any existing word doesn't quite meet our needs maybe a whole new

one is what's needed. Well I went ahead and took the N.A. from North America and S.A. from South America and the P from people and mixed those around. What do you think of NASAP or PASAN? Not bad but still neither is that great. A SNAPS is definitely even worse.

Well it's obvious my single little brain isn't enough to deal with this thing by itself. Maybe we should get a continent wide contest going. Name the Native. Win a weekend in Whitedog or Driftpile. If that didn't work we could get a research project going and keep six people employed for who knows how long.

They say though that these and other matters find their way to light when all is right and perhaps we just haven't reached that time yet.

One time we did eat at this North American Indian restaurant in Winnipeg. You know there wasn't even any macaroni on that menu. Besides that the prices they charged had me setting snares to see me through the next few weeks. But you know out in the bush a can of beans and a frying pan full of potatoes and freshly caught fish is about as cheap and Native a meal you can get well, at least around where I'm from anyway. You make a fire beside a river and sitting there with your body glowing in the sun. Ahh...a truly North Amerian eating experience. If I ever see you, there, come on over and we'll share it with you. Until then thanks for visiting with me in this way once again.