I just got up from conversation with a couple of older black men, that I said “well I got to go back to work and start cracking the whip.” And it occurred to me then that it was probably a really insensitive stupid thing to say.
Sadly, it hadn’t occurred to me until it’s already said.
You can still be called Indian, there’s no reason they get a monopoly on the name… Just like people call people from USA “Americans” even though that literally applies to 35 countries, you can still call canadians “americans” or peruvians “americans”. Context clues give people a lot of information, you don’t need to always be explicit. You can also do exactly what I did above and specify “American Indian”, which clearly gave you enough information to proceed to make the comment you did…
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Because that is what they were primarily called for hundreds of years, and what many still prefer to be called today.
Note that the American Indian Movement, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian reservations, etc all still use the term.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_name_controversy
It’s been changing there much quicker than in the US, but, yes. And Canada’s Indian Act is still in force (and still called that) today.