[hug]

"Indigenous people" is the superset of earliest known inhabitants. "American Indians" or "Native Americans" are the indigenous people the United States. My area of Australia, we'd be as specific as saying "Wurundjeri People". There is a matching level of specificity for the United States. Indigenous people is still the catch-all term.

> And IMO it would be unreasonable to include for the same reason that a discussion of set theory would be inappropriate in a history course covering the "New World" in the 1400s, even ignoring the fact that the term is wrong.

"Set Theory" has no overlap with "New World history", I agree. The Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering has a very real-world overlap with the land on which it is built.

[DuskStar]

> "Indigenous people" is the superset of earliest known inhabitants. "American Indians" or "Native Americans" are the indigenous people the United States. My area of Australia, we'd be as specific as saying "Wurundjeri People". There is a matching level of specificity for the United States. Indigenous people is still the catch-all term.

It might be the catch-all term! But you generally don't use catch-all terms when talking about specifics - it'd be like asking for a memorial for the Europeans who landed at Plymouth Rock. Yes, they were Europeans! But saying that, instead of 'British' or 'Pilgrims' or whatever, would be weird. I stand by my thought that if this was being pushed by the tribe in question, it would either mention the tribe by name or use American Indian.

Also, "Native Americans" refers to all the native peoples of the new world, while "American Indian" is restricted to those located within the US.

> "Set Theory" has no overlap with "New World history", I agree. The Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering has a very real-world overlap with the land on which it is built.

New World history has plenty of overlap with many things that could be called "western civilization", though. Perhaps a better comparison would have been to teaching the US constitution, since that's what enabled the society that they're learning New World history within. Or how electrical power generation works, since presumably all the study materials required electricity in distribution/production. IMO those are both at least as significant an overlap as the fact that they happen to occupy the same land.

[hug]

I suspect the person writing out the bullet points of the requests themselves is just a university administrator, but that the origin of the request is someone else. Unfortunately, both your and my side of this specific point is unknowable: I'd personally proceed with it as being a request made in good faith.

As for the second point you're making. I'm sorry, and I may be being obtuse right now, but I am struggling to parse how this is an argument against including an acknowledgement statement (in CS specifically or anywhere else).

[kelnos]

> Indigenous people is still the catch-all term.

Perhaps that's the case in Australia, but that term is very rarely used in the US. As the parent states, it's "Native American" or "American Indian" when reaching for a catch-all, followed by a tribe name when specifics are required. "Indigenous people" just isn't used really at all here.