Anyone who has been to San Francisco in the summer knows how cold it can get. Mark Twain is credited with saying I never spent a winter as cold as the summer I spent in San Francisco. But our Septembers and Octobers are beautiful, which we call Indian Summers. I often wondered if someday it would be considered an offensive phrase. This past week someone wrote about it in our local paper.
Is it politically incorrect to use 'Indian summer' to describe the weather?
It's dubbed "Indian summer," and for San Francisco it's an ephemeral part of October brimming with magic light and hot, still air.
The National Weather Service defines it as any spell of warm, quiet, hazy weather that may occur in October or even November. But beyond that, we begin to run into differing definitions and diverging origin stories — some more benign than others.
When San Franciscans say "Indian summer," they tend to do so affectionately, as it represents an sunny island amid a soupy sea of year-round fog. But the etymological PC test for the term appears to stand on shaky ground by today's standards.
One theory speculates that this period of hot autumnal weather was originally communicated to settlers by Native Americans, while another bases it on conditions when Native Americans hunted. More sinister is the theory that Indian summer somehow means "false summer" like the slur "Indian giver." There is even an international theory that places its origins in the Indian Ocean with cargo ships.
So, given the mystery of its history, do people actually find the term offensive? It depends on who you ask.
"In an environment where we're struggling to be addressed with any degree of respect at all, I'm not fussed," said San Francisco Poet Laureate Kim Shuck, a member of the Cherokee Nation.
Shuck was one of dozens who pushed for and celebrated the Sept. 14 pre-dawn removal of the "Early Days" statue at Civic Center, a more than 100-year-old bronze sculpture which depicted a fallen, nearly naked American Indian lying at the feet of a vaquero and a missionary.
San Francisco State University American Indian Studies Professor Andrew Jolivette, who chaired the department until 2016, said there are a host of popular terms with negative subtext such as "circling the wagons," "Geronimo," "Indian burn," "going off the reservation" and "going on the warpath."
In particular, Jolivette finds the term "tribalism" — a word rising in popularity to signify political gridlock in Washington — to have a very pejorative subtext for Native Americans.
He said using the term Indian summer might seem innocuous, but it's really part of a larger body of normalized euphemisms that keep Indians tied to nature and an imagined past in the minds of most Americans. The term "going native" also fits into this motif.
When Jolivette hears Indian summer said aloud, "I usually cringe," he said. "It's like when people say, 'that's so ghetto' but it's not supposed to be seen as a negative thing."
The website Indigenous Corporate Training, which enumerates culturally offensive phrases that business people should use at their own risk, specifically calls this phrase out.
"Again, the inference can be that all Indians are late and that an Indian summer is a late summer. Many people in response have said 'But I use this phrase in the highest respect for a beautiful time of the year,'" the post reads. "Remember that it may not be your intention to offend anyone but the phrase has a history and by using this term you may have a negative impact on the people with whom you are trying to work."
Late summer? Add that one to the list of possible meanings.
In Europe, a heat wave in the fall season can be marked by the name of a saint or with a colloquial phrase like "old woman's summer." By the 20th century, the term Indian summer had displaced European ones like St. Luke's summer, St. Martin's summer and all-hallown summer in the United States.
As the contemporary political climate in America offers revisions to both history and vernacular, it stands to reason that one day the term Indian summer could meet its social expiration date, and a new name may be needed for this little, second summer.
But for San Franciscans who endure the cold gray skies from June gloom to "Fogust," there's no need to panic — Indian summer in the city is simply known as summer.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Is-Indian-summer-offensive-politically-correct-13285287.php
