Historically, the first people to reach the Americas weren’t Leif Ericksson and the Vikings, nor were they Christopher Columbus and the Spanish. No one could claim to have “discovered” America because you can’t discover a place where people are already living. Those people were the Native Americans.
When the Americas were “discovered,” the natives were met with disrespect cloaked in nicety, which eventually became outright hostility. First, the Europeans got them drunk and took their land. Then, they either chased them off their land or gave them gifts: blankets with the smallpox virus to kill them off. After that, those who were left were forced onto the Trail of Tears to tiny bits of barren land to suffer and starve. Their way of life was destroyed with the killing of the buffalo. Between 90 to 95 percent of natives were wiped out with the arrival of the Europeans, and, today, less than two percent of the U.S. population is Native American.
The U.S. government repaid them with slightly larger pieces of land called reservations and the laws to regulate the lucrative casino business in an attempt to right the Europeans’ countless wrongs. Now, they’re continuing to suffer through Facebook’s claim that their names aren’t real — that they must be authenticated.
When Dana Lone Hill, member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe from the Pine Ridge Reservation, logged into Facebook, she received a message that read “Please change your name. It looks like the name on your Facebook account may not be your authentic name.”
Facebook’s real-name policy says the following: “Facebook is a community where people use their authentic identities. This helps keep our community safe. The name you use should be… [what] your friends call you in real life and as our acceptable identification forms would show.”
There is nothing more authentic that a Native American name. Native American names carry a person’s identity and their pride in their family line, along with the tribe’s legacy; their names are a big part of who they are. Lone Hill’s family still practices the ceremony of individual name-giving. She often includes her Lakota name, Oyate Wachinyanpi, in parentheses or by using the nickname option on Facebook. That name was given to her by her father, and it means People Depend On. Her children and siblings and their children also carry their own individual Lakota names, all given by her father.
Now who’s to say that the Native American surname Lone Hill is not a real name when I’ve seen countless people on my feed with crazy names with number signs and ridiculous middle names? I guarantee that’s not what’s on their drivers licenses or birth certificates.
If Facebook in foreign countries allows users to use their native name, special characters included, then why can’t someone in the U.S. who happens to be Native American be able to use their legitimate name? Just because a name isn’t what we consider normal, which is simply different from the white North American perspective, it doesn’t mean it’s any less authentic.
There’s a big difference between a name that’s obviously fake, such as Jake BigGan$ta McMurphy and a Native American name like Charlotte Little Wind. Names are a big part of identity, and Facebook shouldn’t be able to dictate how you culturally identify when there are other people with names that legitimately break the real-name policy.
There’s nothing wrong with people like me, who don’t use their full name, or people who use a pseudonym for privacy, fun or whatever reason they choose. But as soon as someone uses an uncommon, non-English name, Facebook doubts it’s a real person and targets them. They ask for three kinds of identification to verify, while your account is locked, to make sure the account is authentic, while Grumpy Cat and Left Shark have no problem with the authenticity of their accounts.
Less than authentic accounts, such as celebrity pages and those with unusual middle names, aren’t forced to prove their identity or that they’re a real person. It shouldn’t be the charge of a social networking site to weed out those who don’t fit the cookie-cutter mold of an American name.
So instead of letting Native Americans use their given, authentic names, Facebook, it seems, would rather them use a fake American-sounding name, which directly opposes the policy they’re trying to enforce.
By targeting the Native American minority, Facebook is just adding to the list of atrocities committed against a group of people who have suffered for far too long. We denied them land, life and happiness, and, now, they can’t even enjoy the name given to them by their family and tribe without being labeled “fake.”
