The use of the word in the US is equivalent to Indian Band in Canada. Tribe and Tribal Government are terms that are written into law in the US that describe indigenous people. Those indigenous people did not choose nor describe themselves by those terms before they were forced to by US government. After this was done there was a period where the term tribal was used as derogatory slang towards indigenous people, particularly in the Colorado to New Mexico region. I think it is super localized to that lived experience. Hence the small number of people that asked for them to stop. To me this is just them being nice to their neighbors. It is not a statement about the term Tribe in the global understand but a localized reality that does not harm them to make good on.
July 22, 2020, 10:58 a.m. - Peter Carson
The use of the word in the US is equivalent to Indian Band in Canada. Tribe and Tribal Government are terms that are written into law in the US that describe indigenous people. Those indigenous people did not choose nor describe themselves by those terms before they were forced to by US government. After this was done there was a period where the term tribal was used as derogatory slang towards indigenous people, particularly in the Colorado to New Mexico region. I think it is super localized to that lived experience. Hence the small number of people that asked for them to stop. To me this is just them being nice to their neighbors. It is not a statement about the term Tribe in the global understand but a localized reality that does not harm them to make good on.