I'm also very interested to know from what time period - and among whom exactly - "Anasazi" developed a meaning so offensive that the National Park Service needs to purge any texts using it from its park shops (along with the rock art titles). I'm unfamiliar with this, er, controversy, so I'm going to try to dig around on it a bit more. Preliminary poking about reveals contradictory claims as to the meaning, and explanation for the offensiveness, of the word. The above link states:
The dispute over "Anasazi" is even dicier. According to one interpretation, "Anasazi" is a Navajo pejorative meaning "ancient enemy." Yet many scholars dispute this translation, saying that it simply means "ancient ones."
Researches[sic] have long referred to the people living in the Yellow Jacket region as Anasazi. But that is a Navajo word meaning “enemies of our ancestors,” Carr said.Researchers then picked up the name through the oral history of Navajo still living in the area, though “Anasazi” is not what these people would have called themselves or their ancestors.
“It was one culture’s somewhat derogatory term for another culture,” Carr explained. “In my opinion, (renaming them ‘ancient Puebloans’) is not so much a matter of political correctness as a matter of historical correctness and good manners.”
And:
"Whether one word or another is used is not the issue," [ Tessy Shirakawa, a spokeswoman with Mesa Verde National Park] said. "It's not a matter of censorship - it's actually respect. Out of respect to tribal members, we honor their requests about what's appropriate and inappropriate to present to the public."Leigh Ku-wanwisiwma, director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office in Kykots-movi, Ariz., said his people led the protest against use of the term "Ana-sazi" because of its meaning - "enemy of old."
"In Hopi culture, to call another person an enemy is not proper - it is against Hopi ethics to call anyone an enemy … we feel it's a derogatory term," he said.
But:
But Eddie Tso, program director for the Navajo Nation's Office of Language and Culture, said the word - pronounced nah-SAHZ-ah in Navajo - simply means "ancient ones."
Er, I thought that the Anasazi were long dead by the time the Europeans set foot in North America. We're tying ourselves in knots to avoid offending people who aren't around to be offended?
Posted by: Angie Schultz on February 15, 2005 09:54 AM
I think the Hopi, who have ancestral ties to the Anasazi and a long tradition of "issues" with the Navajo, resent the use of the Navajo word. The Navajo, due to the vagaries of NAGPRA, have been granted affiliation with some Anasazi sites, including Chaco Canyon, iirc - even though their arrival in the area post-dates the Anasazi. Certain perverse persons - who have followed certain other NAGPRA cases - might find some humor in seeing one tribal claimant invoking historical scholarship to dispute the claims of another tribal group, who make their case based on oral history and the fact that they happen to now occupy the area where old stuff is found.
Posted by: Moira on February 15, 2005 12:31 PM