So many people fighting to claim they are indigenous. I thought it was interesting to see someone say “we are not indigenous.”
The YouTube channel, “Navajo Traditional Teachings” spoke about the variety of peoples in the American continent, and how the Navajo or Dineh are unique among them. The indigenous label lumps a lot of unrelated people together. People who may have things in common, but all people have things in common.
The video’s title is, “Not Indigenous… Don’t Lose Your Cultural Identity Navajo Teaching.”
“They will call you an indigenous person, and that is the loss of your identity,” the video tells us.
The word indigenous “was made up by some non dineh far away, who has never gnawed on a mutton head or eaten a sheep hoof.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuLg5nCftvY
If we see something, and we want to adopt it into our lives, if it is good, we take it and we improve on it. But the opposite also works. We can see that’s that are not good. And if we adopt that an improve on it then we become worse people.”
This seems to echo the wisdom of the English roundheads, a man named Owen who lived under the Republic, a quote I found about those who travel are not always improved, they are sometimes made worse. Owen did not wish to travel to all parts of the world, and so there are flaws in his writing.
However, Owen wrote a truth which cannot be hid, one that is repeated among other cultures throughout the globe, that we can learn good from each other, and improve, or learn bad from each other, and become worse. (I also say “speaks a truth.” Although the words seem dead on paper, when we read them, he speaks them to us again. We can choose to take the best of his words, or the worst of his words.)
The history of the Dineh, or Navajo, according to this video, is not exactly the same history of every tribe in the Americas. There were a people who asked the holy ones for a place to stay. They were given a place where they could live in peace. They called themselves Dineh. Many clans, perhaps hundreds, came and joined them, and asked to be Dineh.
“There are perhaps six hundred different tribes” in the United States and Canada that “have their own ways, their own language.” Each has it’s own language, and not everyone eats the same kind of food. There are different stories, different ceremonies.
There is a history of why the Dineh are called Navajo. The Dineh call themselves Dineh because they are the people, trying to live in peace. (In my interpretation, it is much like the Welsh call themselves Cymru.)
Then, a neighbouring tribe saw the way the Dineh raised their children, and called them something like NavaHOE. When the Spaniards asked, “What are those people over there,” they heard “Navajo.”
Another name given to the Dineh was the Utae. This name ended up being somehow given to the Ute Indians, and also the state of Utah.
But then, someone tried to divide people into classes. Maybe it was just an academic exercise, but dividing people, according to the Navajo Teachings, is very dangerous.
“There are some other names, in modern times, trying to sort out the race of people. And to diving people, which is very dangerous. and one of those words, of course, is indigenous. Indigenous people.”
How is it dangerous? Cultures have their own languages, their own ways, throughout the world. “Many times, they have their own features, that are physical. People are separated in that way in these times. But there was a time when that was not a thing that would determine a person’s value or a person’s intelligence of that of being. But in modern times, when words are made, and applied to people to divide them.”