[Aztlan] Indian ?

[Sam Edgerton]

There's good reason why Columbus first called the "New World" inhabitants 
"Indians."   Before "America" was known, named, and mapped in Europe, the 
furthest extension of continental land mass known to the east of Europe was 
Asia, but often called "India" on the early Ptolemaic charts. Thus the two 
terms, "Asia" and "India" in the fifteenth century were practically 
synonymous, and, of course, that's where Columbus thought he was heading by 
sailing west.  Since, we now know that the so-called "Indians" actually 
migrated from "Asia/India" some eleven thousand years before, what's wrong 
with identifying them still with their place of origin?  Maybe 
"Indian/Asian- American" might be accepted as more politically correct 
since it sounds like "African-American"?  But then the latter suffix, 
"-/American" in this case implies, because it bears a European name 
post-facto imposed upon these newly revealed continents, a cultural 
domination of the latter suffix over the former prefix. What about 
"Amerindian," shifting the "American" implication to simply a prefixed 
geographical signifier, while emphasizing on the suffix side the ancient 
ethnic origins of our "indigenous" peoples?
Or, as Greg Sandor hints, why nor just keep calling them "Indians" and be 
done with it?

Sam Edgerton