Wally Brown, Navajo/ Diné Educator
The above video explains where the word Navajo comes from and Ute is another description for his people. He uses both the proper name for hos people -- Diné -- and the more well known word Navajo.
I haven't actually watched the entire video. I'm medically handicapped and frequently have a terrible attention span.
I like his not angry and not accusatory practical approach to trying to educate which recognizes that yelling at people for calling them Navajo won't build bridges and refusing to use the word Navajo and only use Diné won't reach the people who don't already know. Which is really a lot of people that he would like to reach.
His point -- about "Not Indigenous" -- is there are more than 600 tribes in North America, all with their own language, stories, culture etc. Indigenous is a little like calling someone European.
Telling someone "He's EUROPEAN!" doesn't even tell you what language he speaks. Most people from Europe wouldn't identify themselves as "European." They would say French, German, British etc.
They would tell you something more specific.
The term Indigenous is a form of cultural erasure and caves to the expectation that most people don't know anything at all about the difference between Najavo and Cherokee the way we typically have a broad understanding of the difference between French and German.
There are a billion Chinese and most people -- myself included -- wouldn't know regional differences within China but we do know that Chinese and Japanese are different people and different languages and can to some degree recognize those differences.
Brown's approach to trying to provide a rich source of information about his people is the correct remedy to the following complaint:
It is also the correct remedy to complaints about lack of representation in media, which I've commented on elsewhere as a largely bogus complaint.
I would like to start my own clothing line. One of my criticisms of the fashion industry, including fashion magazines, is that it's mostly from New York city and Los Angeles in the US.
Big city life is not what most Americans have. The weather of New York or Los Angeles is not what most Americans dress for.
America is generally top heavy. The antidote to that is not desperately trying to get in on that garbage.
It's going the other direction and growing a rich ecosystem of smaller, more local or regional or niche brands, publications etc.
I hope he's actually paying his bills comfortably with his online stuff. I'm not.
But if you want soulless megacorps to stop eating the world, THIS is the answer and it needs to pay the bills of the people providing it.