I'd always assumed that "Native American" was the preferred PC term, because it came along in my lifetime, it evokes the standard dual-identity "-American", and it seems at once more precise yet at the same time somewhat generic (in other words, "proper" for all the wrong reasons). I found myself pleased to read that "Over the last fifty years most have come to use the term ‘Indian’, often with a great deal of pride." I'm no fan of corrupting the language and I generally take a dim view of PC terminology, so it's encouraging to see a group adopt its own label.

But wasn't that label considered at one time improper by Indians themselves, on the multiple grounds that it's a misidentification, an externally-imposed label, and has historically been used sometimes in a pejorative way?

Yet, the long history of the label "Indian" is also a profound strength. It occurs to me that if the tribes had hired a marketing consultant, they'd have been told (not that they'd need reminding) of the iconic power of "The Indian" in American history and culture. You have to teach people to use PC terms like "Native American", but we all grow up in a culture saturated by the legends and lore and mythology of The Indian. Not even a pure 1984 society could expunge all references to the term "Indian", so why not go with it? I like the idea.

The other thing I found interesting was the phenomenon of the trend toward unification and homogenization of the tribes scattered across the continent. That's a good defensive measure to preserve a culture; fragmentation allows parts of the culture to drift off or fade away, while a federation of tribes provides mutual support and the resources to preserve tribes on the edge that might fail and disappear.

I'm sure this has been going on for much longer than the Internet's been around, but I think that the Net provides support for maintaining a society whose members are scattered widely in the real world. This is the Zone, I hardly need to elaborate on that! On the large scale one of the trends people forecasted in the early days, and one that I see all the time, is that it allows establishment of civilizations parallel to that of the physical world. We're constructing a multidimensional civilization, with a phyical base dimension, and a potentially infinite number of speclialized civilizations occupying the same space. It may well be that for first time in history, we've eliminated a basic source of human conflict: liebensraum, at least in the social sense. Nobody's society needs to be destroyed to make way for somebody else's. Could the end of the "culture wars" be in sight?

I find in your final comments about the Indian view of property rights some confirmation of my own position that our current economic regime, in the broad sense that includes property rights, is an artificial one, based on arbitrary decisions we've made. The dogma of Conservatism that portrays property rights and free markets as if they've been ordained by God or are wired into the natural laws of the Universe (by an Intelligent Designer?) always comes across to my ear as rank self-serving superstitution.

That's not to say that property rights and free markets and all the rest don't work well; it's to say that they work well under certain circumstances, not so well under others. Like the proto Native Americans confronting a continent empty of people, free-market capitalism thrives in an environment of abundance and broad frontiers that supports its assumption of unlimited growth; but it hits the wall when the environment changes and limits appear. That's when a people need to think about converting to a sustainable economic system, one that's in it for the long haul and eschews the destructive "bleed it dry and move on" mentality. There's no longer anywhere to move on to, at least on this planet. We started eating our seed corn several decades ago.

It's interesting to look at the broad pattern of history and appreciate how cultural diversity is a smart strategy to hold in reserve knowledge and customs that might prove useful in the future. American Indians have been sidelined for a long time by the expansive European economic system, but as conditions are changing it seems likely that we could have some use now (again) for an ethos of balance and sustainability. Keeping cultures alive makes the same hard-headed sense as keeping a strategic petroleum reserve. I think Indian culture already knows things that the rest of us need to start learning, and right quick.