Ostensibly, I have been way behind the eight ball on this subject. During the holidays when we all spend time with a lot of family that we don’t really see very often throughout the year, I had this experience I’d like to share with you.
While we adults were sitting around my living room drinking “special eggnog” and the kids of the family were playing on the floor with the array of new toys Santa was kind enough to leave with the good and not so naughty kids of our family, one of the kids yelled out, “Criss cross apple sauce” and all of the kids sat Indian style. I looked at one of the adults and said, “Hey, that’s cute.” Then I was informed that this was not some cute comment that the kids thought up, but rather another mission accomplished for the politically correct police.
I was told that years ago the public schools started using this term as not to offend Native American Indians. I was stunned. Apparently, I was the only one left in America who didn’t know this trepid axiom. It made me start to think about the fluid nature of language and how sometimes certain terms we were so fond of or used comfortably just fall into the ash bin of society’s evolution.
This one kind of seemed a little inscrutable to me. I mean, after all, the American Indian isn’t actually the “woe is me” crowd anymore. I rather look at them as a vast conglomerate of multi-billion dollar casino owners living in a tax free world of get-back. I find that when we get charged seven dollars for a cocktail and fifty dollars for some average steak dinner at one of their casinos, that my level of sensitivity wanes. Despite how it all started, the American Indian has found a niche in our culture that should wipe away clean any white-man stole our country guilt. I would love to not pay taxes.
How far should this political correctness go with all these different groups and where is all this sensitivity when it comes to the Christians living here in America? Christians, the only group left we can bash without the ‘word police’ showing up at the front porch of our consciousness. How on Earth is saying the term sitting Indian style offensive? It even has the word ‘style’ in it. Isn’t that how they really sat?
Then it made me think. Before the new world was created, before Ponce De Leon and Columbus made it here to the new world, what term did we use to describe sitting that way?
C. Rich
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Most European languages describe it as sitting “Turkish style,” so probably that. The PC movement generally strikes me as more prejudiced than the opposite – saying “sitting Indian style” is offensive seems to me more a way of saying that referencing Indians at all is offensive than anything else.
This was a great article!
This was an offensive article. Native-Americans deserve respect, and I think you should give them that! No wonder our world is so close-minded!
i dont like to think of myself as closed minded, i just dont understand what is disrespectful about sitting “indian style.” i have black, asian, mexican and gay friends. there are words that i dont use not because they (my non white friends) are around but because they are hateful and degrigating. i hope i am not coming across as a smartass but i honestly would like to hear why from a native american who is offended by the phrase “sitting indian style”
Scot-they are not offended. In everyone of these cases, the vast majority Indians are actually against the changes. Take the Florida St. Seminoles, whose name was almost changed, and several other college football programs that were forced to change their names. In every case, the Indians approved of the name as a sign of respect-they liked the names. Yet in every case, liberals, who think that they are above, smarter, and better than everyone else got it in their heads that we are offending the Indians with our phrases. Instead of listening and caring about the true opinion of the Indians, they decided to enforce their shortsighted, egoistic, self-satisfying changes.
No, no about the sitting “Indian style”. Does not refer to Native Americans. Indians from India. Also refered to as tailor style or Turkish style by other Euro countries or in India kahsahana “style” not to be confused with “lotus style” which is sitting with legs folded but palms of feet up. But yes, The PC movent is otherwise annoying.