Does ‘Colorado native’ disregard the state’s American Indians?

You’ve seen the bumper stickers. You’ve heard the proud declaration, “I’m a native.” And you’ve probably sampled the popular local brewery, Colorado Native, which boasts “100% Colorado ingredients.”

But have you seen the other bumper sticker? The one that reads, “So You’re Native, What Tribe?”

Clint Carroll, an associate professor of Native American Studies at CU Boulder and citizen of the Cherokee nation, is not a Colorado native. He was born in Minnesota.

Carroll moved to Colorado five years ago and can recall the first time he saw that Colorado native pride on a license plate. He says it’s become a bit of an inside joke between himself and his wife, who’s a citizen of the Northern Arapaho nation.

“If you want to be honest about it, you should get a bumper sticker that says, ‘settler’,” he laughs. “To me, it represents a desire to claim roots to a place to the exclusion from more recent arrivants .”

Those “recent arrivants ” are, of course, Colorado “transplants” — a term natives use to distinguish themselves from those born out-of-state. An article by ABC affiliate Denver7 , “The 7 things Colorado transplants have the hardest time adjusting to,” describes Colorado natives as “people born in Colorado [who] feel the need to tell everyone they’re a native,” and are easily recognizable by their “over the top disdain for Texas and California.”

Light-hearted joking aside, Carroll says that although he initially thought the term amusing, he says he finds aspects of its usage concerning.

“As far as a term, it is problematic, historical amnesia,” says Carroll. “It discounts and ignores the vibrant native population in the Denver area and throughout Colorado and the continued relationship these people have to the land.”

Carroll explains that there continues to be a pervasive lack of knowledge about contemporary native peoples. That lack of knowledge combined with the casual repurposing of the word ‘native’ can minimize the historic acts of genocide towards indigenous populations and tribal nations that were dispossessed from Colorado lands.

To be clear, Carroll thinks the bumper stickers are more-or-less benign. He’s not advocating for a state-wide purge.

“There’s so much out there to be concerned about when it comes to indigenous rights, that this [isn’t as big of a deal],” he says. “It’s raising some red flags, but it’s not a number one priority.”

In Carroll’s classes at CU Boulder, the word comes up often with his students who identify as Colorado natives.

And while Carroll may not take overt offense, he still wants his students to think critically about the words they use in a scholarly setting. He might ask someone, “have you ever thought about that word that you’re using to talk about your roots to this place, and how that might infringe upon another person’s understanding to the connections to this place?”

But choosing your words respectfully can be intimidating when there are so many options: Indian, American Indian, Native American, indigenous, native people, or something else entirely.

Rick Williams, a retired professor of Indian Studies and former CEO of the American Indian College Fund, goes back to the beginning.

“It all started in 1492,” he says. Chrisopher Columbus rediscovered America, mistaking it for the West Indies, and called the indigenous people he encountered Indians.

According to Williams, the term “Native American” wasn’t coined until the 1960s , when leaders in higher education decided that the term “American Indian” was too contradictory — were they American or were they Indian?

“It was probably useful to some degree,” Williams says, ” but in theory, anyone born in America would be a Native American. So it’s kind of a misnomer in that respect. ” And while “Native American” has grown in popularity as a quasi-politically correct term among non-indigenous peoples, the official federally recognized designation is still American Indian.

Williams, who is Oglala Lakota and Cheyenne, has always used American Indian himself.

“Neither term is derogatory,” he says, ” It goes back to a time when I was growing up. Indian people described themselves as American Indian — they owned the term. It was confusing when they introduced Native American. People that lived in reservation communities would never call themselves Native Americans. That term rose outside of those communities, in cities. ”

Every individual will have a personal preference, but Williams and Carroll agree that the term American Indian prevails within indigenous communities. Williams and Carroll say the best way to be respectful of an American Indian’s heritage is to ask which nation they’re from.

” Where are you a citizen of? What tribe are you a part of? I’m not Native American, I’m Oglala Lakota, ” Williams explains. ” It’s so easy for people to classify American Indians as American Indians when in reality there are 569 distinct nations. The best thing to do is to talk about who that person is in relation to their ancestors. ”

So how does Williams feel about the term Colorado native?

“I think it’s a little bit presumptuous,” he says. ” Historically, it causes me some consternation. I wish that one day they would put some framework around that: ‘I was born in Colorado, my grandparents came here in 1869.’ The way I’ve seen it used it’s almost like it’s dismissing the fact that there were real people who occupied this land. ”

He echoes Carroll’s desire for a more politically accurate bumper sticker. “Why couldn’t they get one that says ‘pioneers’?”

The history of American Indians in Colorado is abhorrent at best, says Williams. One of the bloodiest Indian massacres in U.S. history happened 170 miles southeast of Denver at Sand Creek, where federal troops murdered at least 150 surrendered Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians in 1864. The Sand Creek Massacre is now a protected National Historic Site, but it’s still often overlooked by more publicized incidents, such as the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota.

Where there used to be as many as six tribes that called Colorado home over the course of American history, there are now just two federally-recognized American Indian reservations in Colorado’s southwestern corner: the Southern Ute Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.