LOL

I got a little injun in me as well, though according to my Cherokee/Cheyenne brother if I cut my finger again I will be out of the tribe.

My daughter being half Cherokee also uses the term injun, as does my wife who undoubtedly has some Lakota injun in her, though no record of it exists because back then it was bad medicine to proclaim injun heritage.

I think I started using the term as a reference when one of the old injuns at a pow-wow I was at in Pendleton Oregon used it to refer to all the injuns that were there from all over the country. Now, me being so fair skinned, I won't say what they called me, mostly cuz I forgot how to pronounce it. Let's just say I was danged glad to have my very injun looking daughter with me at the time. We'd sit in the bleachers and the injun women would come around with lunch and offer some to her but not to me sitting there with her, so I knew none of them were thinking I was injun at all, but that's okay. As I told my brother, heritage plays a relatively small part in who we really are. Whether injun or irish or whatever our ancestry is, in point of fact we were all Americans now, and the blood Grandad had running through his veins didn't have much bearing on who I turned out to be, unless I choose to let it. In other words, if you think you are injun, then you are injun. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, it just depends on how I feel at the time I suppose. I try not to let other people define who I am if I can help it. If you see me wearing buckskins and feathers and trying to speak injun then you can figure I am injun at the time, or not.

My daughter figured that out last year while attending a very liberal "Native American Cultural Studies" class. They were having a tough time trying to define her by the color of her skin, asking her how she felt about what someone did to someone else a hundred or so years ago. She pretty much concluded that most of them were just trying to find someone or something else to blame for their problems.

Sorry for the confusion, but any connotation or assumption you make about my intentions is purely subjective, and dictated solely by your own convictions. I've never used the term in a derogatory context, so I don't understand or agree with the basis for your claim.