Title: Native American vs. American Indian: Which Is Preferred?
Headings: ‘Native American’ or ‘American Indian’? How to Talk About Indigenous People of America
‘Native American’ or ‘American Indian’? How to Talk About Indigenous People of America
Where these terms originated
Which should you use?
What about ‘Alaska Native’?
Can I just say ‘Indigenous’?
What about tribe names?
How to talk about it
If someone corrects you
Terms to avoid
The bottom line

Content: Avoid possessive phrasing: for example, “America’s Indigenous peoples.” Specify where someone is from: for example, “Indigenous peoples of Central America” or “Indigenous peoples of Canada.” What about tribe names? Whenever possible, aim to use a specific tribe name rather than a generalized umbrella term. No matter how polite or respectful terms like “Native American” or “Alaska Native” aim to be, these are still English names assigned by white people. These terms also lump hundreds of unique and culturally diverse tribes into one mass group. And again, while “Native American” does acknowledge the fact that members of these tribes lived on this land before anyone else, it still uses the English name for the continent. This only serves to emphasize that the land was, in fact, stolen from Indigenous people, who were then forced onto reservations and denied their languages and cultural identities.