Identifying and naming of groups of people...

If you're wondering about how to properly refer to a group of people, a good rule of thumb is to find out how they like to refer to themselves.

In terms of the groups whose issues you are exploring for your blogs, here are some guidelines for how to refer to them:

Avoid "elderly". Instead, use "older adults" or "seniors". I suggest also avoiding the term "elders" to refer to older people, because it has a very specific meaning among Indigenous people and not all of their older people are elders. The reason we avoid "elderly" (even though lots of researchers, especially in the medical professions still use it) is because it gives a picture of people who are frail and sick. The APA manual says it's considered pejorative and says not to use it.

Use "people with disabilities" instead of "the disabled" or "physically disabled people". The reason is that the "person" should come first. A person with a disability is not mainly a disability; they are mainly a person who also happens to have a disability.

"Indigenous" is the preferred term in our Faculty of Social Work and we are guided in this by our Indigenous faculty who have expressed this preference. However, you will encounter different people in this group who have different preferences for how they are named and you should always respect that person's preference. Actually, before calling an individual Indigenous, you should identify them as Cree or Ojibway or Mik'maq... if it's even relevant to the discussion at all.

The Canadian government uses the term "Aboriginal". This is not offensive and it's commonly used, but some people don't like it because it's the colonizer's term.

Both "Indigenous" and "Aboriginal" refer to First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and Dene peoples. These are the most inclusive terms. "Native" has fallen out of use in recent years. It's also important to remember that "First Nations" covers many different nations, with different languages, histories, cultures, beliefs, and traditions.

There is a similar situation among the Queer community, as I mentioned last class. Your best option is to ask people how they want to be named. You can't go too far wrong with LGBTTQ. Queer is also in use, but some people in the community find it a problematic term because they still have memories of how it has been used as an insult. Be careful again to recognize that there are many different identities all lumped together under this label and it's almost impossible to make generalizations that apply to all the members of this community.

That's it for now. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions about naming and identities.

Silvia