My boyfriend pointed out thathe continents that are west of Europe and east of Asia that doesn’t use colonizer language. I pointed out Turtle Island, but he said 1. We’re still using English words 2. It is mostly used for the north continent 3. Just through a cursory search we couldn’t find the phrase as said in the actual Lenape language.
So we searched around on Wikipedia and found an alternate term that feels right and HAS been used in the past, though I think mostly in Spanish-speaking areas: Abya Yala ‘mature land’, from the Guna people of what is currently called Panama.
It feels right to *me* because their language developed in the middle of everything. We know that the south peoples like the Incans traded up north, that there was a highway of war and goods and culture and services that traveled through and sailed around the isthmus for centuries. It’s in the middle! It would make sense to call the indigenous peoples specifically from these continents ‘of Abya Yala’ or perhaps ‘Abyalan’, if we anglicized the demonym a bit (open to suggestions)
However, I’m not even a little bit Indigenous. My boyfriend is a little Taino but is completely unconnected from the culture, and feels it would be disingenuous for him to have a say. So, I was hoping to hear the opinion of anyone who feels like they can offer a more connected perspective. Thanks!
(For the record I’m pretty sure both Asia and Africa’s names are also European words, and I know for a fact Australia and Oceania are European, but that’s a different matter)
