Native Americans: They Call Us Indians, Miao, Even If We Are Not
The meaning of Hmong…
hmongviking. To: chidorix0x. If you are going to look for some documentation of us calling ourselves “Hmoob” in the 1800’s, you probably won’t find it. It’s like trying to find early documentation of the term “Native Americans” before 1960, you aren’t going to find it. You will find “Indians”, just like you will find, “Miao”. But does that make it right? The first time “Native American” was used to label “American Indians” was in the 1960’s… so are you saying, since there isn’t any documentation predating 1960, that the term “Indian” is more accurate? There have already been references to the term, “Miao” as a term the Han Chinese used to label us because of either belittling us or that they just could not pronounce “Hmoob” correctly. Here are examples: This is what I believe refers to us always calling ourselves “Hmoob”, before the Han labeled us “Miao”. From Zhang Xiao: the Miao called themselves “A hmaud” in ancient times.
According to linguists, in the ancient time, “Miao” and “A hmaud” would have the same pronunciation. Now the Miao call themselves “Hmong” and also use “Miao” since both derive from the tone changes of “A hmaud”. Robert Jenks also states that the Chinese could not say “Hmoob” and in their efforts to recreate the sound, they use “Miao”. Robert Jenks wrote in his “Insurgency and Social Disorder in Guizhou: The “Miao” Rebellion, 1854-1873,” – “The most convincing explanation of the origin of the term ‘Miao’ is that it represented an effort on the part of the Chinese to recreate the sound of the word (pronounced ‘Mong’ or ‘Mu,’ as the ‘H’ is unaspirated) used by members of the ethnic group to refer to themselves.”
Norma Diamond states it as, Ignorant Han Chinese’s calling us Miao as a label for all people who live in that area, like calling all people who live in Africa as “Black” when there are many ethnic groups who live there, Kenyan, Zulu, Hutu, Somalian, etc… Norma Diamond wrote in “Defining the Miao: Ming, Qing, and Contemporary Views”, The term “Miao” does not mean only the antecedents of today’s Miao national minority; it is much more general term, which had been used by the Chinese to describe various aboriginal, mountain tribes of Guizhou and other south-western provinces of China, which shared some cultural traits. They consisted of 40-60% population of the province. I believe we are like the Native Americans, they call us Indians and Miao, even if we are not. So called scholars did not call us by who we really are, until now. Which is why there are no records of us being Hmoob, as much as we wanted to be called Hmoob, they insistingly call us Miao in their writings.
History proves this to be a reoccurring truth. Indians and Miao, which are incorrectly labeled by idiotic and stubborn Europeans and Han Chinese. Native Americans are only called that because Amerigo Vespucci calls this place America, so they are now Native Americans, in which they should not be called neither “Indian or Native Americans”. 2 names that they are termed, not by themselves, but by others who are not even one of their peoples, but outsiders. We may never know what they should truly be labeled, because those people decided to call them something they are not. Same as for us, I believe we were never Miao, but always Hmoob, they just never wanted to call us by who we are, instead they labeled us by what THEY think we are. You will never find that in documented history, it just is. I am Hmoob because I know I am and not because some idiot European and Han Chinese say I am not.
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