The Nexus of Language and Politics -- "Native American"

Other than his use of the leftist delegitimizing term, "Native American",  Matt Walsh is spot on in the linked video.

The leftists invented the term "Native American" as a step toward denying that you and I are Americans at all.  This is merely a similar delegitimizing tactic to the leftist assertion that we Americans cannot call ourselves "Americans" because the USA is not the totality of the American continents.

Historically, the American Aborigines (i.e. the Indians (*) ) were not native Americans, because they were not members of the American society in the first place.  Even today, after the Federal government has made them US citizens, whether they wanted to be or not, many Indians don't want to be called "Americans"; they tend to reserve that term for *us*, not for themselves.

I am a "native American", not because I have a bit of Indian ancestry, though I do, but because I am a born member of the American civilization.  Likely, you too are a born member of the American civilization and thus are a "native American", even if you don't have a single American Indian ancestor.

(*) We all need to get over the ignorant myth that we call the American Aborigines "Indians" because Columbus was either ignorant or stupid.  The reason we call them "Indians" is because from ancient times until just a couple of centuries ago, Europeans used the terms 'India' and/or 'the Indias' to refer to all the lands of "the East"; 'India' and "the East" were pretty much synonyms.  When Columbus discovered the islands we now call the West Indies, he thought he had found some outlying islands of Chipango, the easternmost land of 'the Indies' of which the Europeans had knowledge; or, as we now call that land, Japan.  Thus, since from the European frame of reference, these newly-discovered peoples were inhabitants of "India", he (and other Europeans) referred to the inhabitants of those islands, and later of the mainland, as "Indians", as we have continued to do for the past 500 years.  And indeed as the US Constitution refers to them.

The narrowing of the term "India" to refer to a specific geographic region in the late 18th and 19th centuries, and to a specific, and recently created, nation-state in the 20th and 21st centuries, is a modern innovation.  

And, by the way, the current Hinduist government of India is trying to dictate that we English speakers may no longer refer to that country as "India".

Matt Walsh: "These Museum Exhibits Were Just Closed For The Dumbest Reason"