[OT] Inuit? Eskimo?

[Floyd Davidson]

Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
>Floyd Davidson wrote:
>> 
>> In Canada and Greenland Inuit people will not appreciate the
>> term "Eskimo" as a specific term for them when used by locals.
>> That is particularly true of Canadians.  They do not seem to
>> mind the general (correct) use of the term by others who do not
>> have any intent to insult them.
>
>Okay, thanks for taking the time to clarify, Floyd!
>
>The impression I get then is that because some people (although
>I think more so in the distant past than in recent years?) 
>might hold ill will towards their northern neighbours, the
>rest of us with nothing against them might as well avoid the
>term Eskimo entirely, to minimize the risk of someone making false
>assumptions about us and how we feel about them.

That doesn't follow, logically, from the facts.  No other word
in the English language can be used in place of the term
"Eskimo", and therefore if you want to correctly refer to the
group of people known as Eskimos, you have no choice but to use
that term.

>> Note that in Canada and Greenland, *all* Eskimos are Inuit,
>> hence there is little need to use that term to describe those
>> people.
>
>Probably where the institutionalized advice comes from in the first
>place.  If all Eskimos in Canada are Inuit, and all Inuit can be
>called Eskimos (but only by those who don't have intent to insult
>them, apparently :-), then it's best to avoid the whole issue and
>just use the term Inuit.

But you *cannot* correctly call all Eskimos Inuit.

What title would you suggest for these works:

   "Comparative Eskimo Dictionary With Aleut Cognates"
      Fortescue, Jacobson, and Kaplan

   "Eskimo Essays"
      Ann Fienup-Riordan

   "Eskimo Warfare"
   "Eskimo Kinsmen: Changing Family Relationships in Northwest Alaska"
   "Traditional Eskimo Societies in Northwest Alaska"
   "The Eskimos"
      Ernest S. Burch, Jr.

   "The Eskimos of North Alaska"
      Norman A. Chance

   "Alaskan Eskimo Education"
      John Collier

   "Yup'ik Eskimo Dictionary"
      Steven A. Jacobson

   "Bashful No Longer: An Alaskan Eskimo Ethnohistory"
      Wendell Oswalt

Moreover, who is going to tell Oscar Kawagley that he can't
shouldn't use the word Eskimo:

   "Yupiaq Eskimo Education"
      Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley

-- 
Floyd L. Davidson           <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)                         floyd at barrow.com