Nican Tlaca (nee-kahn tlah-cah) means "(We) People Here" in the Nahuatl language.
Both terms refer to "a term for Indigenous People" (Lockhart, 1992, p. 641). The terms have no original author, and the terms have been documented to mean "indigenous people" since 1992 (Lockhart).
As such, the following statement can be made based on historical sources (see below):
Note: James Lockhart's book The Nahuas After the Conquest (1992) was the first published work to define Nican Tlaca as meaning "a term for indigenous people". The term Nican Tlaca (or Nican Titlaca) has existed since the mid-1500s A.D. and was used well into the 1600s. It was first documented in the 16th century (The Florentine Codex, Book 12) and then documented again in the 20th century (by John Lockhart).
All modern usage of the terms Nican Tlaca (or Nican Titlaca) are derivative of published academic works (see sources below).
See academic citations below for more information.
The video above uses information that can be found in academic sources below on this page.
Who Is Nican Tlaca? (or Nican Titlaca? or Anishinabe?)The viewpoint of this web site is that Nican Tlaca (also "Nican Titlaca") is an historically-documented, unifying ethnic-cultural identity which includes "Native North Americans" and -- by logical implication of the term "indigenous" -- Indigenous-descent peoples of "Latin America":
These Indigenous-descent groups are usually treated as part-histories of modern nation-states (founded by European colonists). The term Nican Tlaca (or Nican Titlaca) reclaims those historical narratives and fuses them into one single historical narrative (the way "Western Civilization" unites the various peoples of European descent).
Note: a similar term -- Anishinabe - was used by Jack D. Forbes (1973) to describe Mexicans/Chicanos as fellow Indigenous people. Blood quantum -- "mixed" and "full-blood" -- is not of importance, except from a colonial mindset.
Using "National" and "Local" terms together
STATEMENT OF DISASSOCIATION FROM OTHER ORGANIZATIONS
Nican Tlaca University of Cemanahuac (NTUC) is NOT associated with ANY OTHER organization.
Prior to December 21, 2012, no other group was named either "Nican Tlaca University" nor "Nican Tlaca University of Cemanahuac (NTUC)". This can be proven by digital web archives, domain name registration records, article databases, and other information tools. (Certainly, no such name could have existed on Facebook prior to 2004 since Facebook did not exist prior to that year.)
"Nican Tlaca University of Cemanahuac (NTUC)" can be proven to have existed as the first self-named "Nican Tlaca University" on Facebook, YouTube, and on a web site, via registration records (and with Facebook, by examining the dates on the first posts).
“Nican Tlaca University of Cemanahuac (NTUC)” is on file with the United States Copyright Office under case #1-10156*****.
These books (re)introduced the term Nican Tlaca.
James Lockhart's books (1992 and 1993) are the first published works
to equate the term Nican Tlaca with "a term for indigenous people".
SEE ACADEMIC CITATIONS BELOW
The Florentine Codex - Book 12
The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries
by James Lockhart
We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico
by James Lockhart
Academic Origins of Major Ideas
(with academic citations)
This list shows that many important concepts can be traced back with academic references.
The term Nican Tlaca has been a part of the historical record for nearly 500 years.
The term Nican Tlaca can be definitively shown to have originated in the mid-1500's and was used well into the 1600s. It seems to have originated as a way to differentiate Indigenous People from Spaniards/Europeans. No individual can be identified as its originator. In 1992, with the publication of The Nahuas After the Conquest, James Lockhart re-introduced the term via scholarship and affirmed it as being synonymous with “indigenous people”. Thereafter, the term has been adopted by other people (e.g. Mexica Movement, Nican Tlaca Voices Radio Show, Nican Tlaca metal-music band, Nican Tlaca University of Cemanahuac, etc.) and applied towards different purposes.
Below are the earliest academic sources in which we find the term Nican Tlaca.
1. Florentine Codex, Chapter 12(mid-1500s A.D.)
Chapter Twelve of The Florentine Codex documents dialogue exchanges between colonizing Spaniards and the Indigenous people they encountered in Central Mexico. The term Nican Tlaca appears along with other terms like Nican tlalli (“the land here”) and Nican Mexico (“Mexico here”).
The term also show up in Sahagun's Primeros Memoriales as well as numerous colonial documents (e.g. wills, testaments, chronicles, etc.)
2. James Lockhart (1992)
On page 641 of his book The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries, historian James Lockhart acknowledges that Nican Tlaca is a “term for indigenous people” (Lockhart, 1992, p. 641).
A small segment from page 641 of James
Lockhart's 1992 book
Lockhart observes through archival documents that most colonized Indigenous people did not adopt the term indio, but rather, opted for alternative terms like Nican Titlaca, Nican Tlaca, or Nican Itoca in order to express their identity (Lockhart, 1992, p. 115). Lockhart fails to explain the etymological connection between Nican Titlaca and Nican Tlaca, although it is clear that the two terms are related and represent an evolving use throughout early Colonial Mexico.
Furthermore, another term –macehualli – was also a stand-in term meaning “the people” or “the common people”, in contradistinction to “nobles” (Lockhart, 1992, p. 115).
Lockhart states an important difference between Nican Tlaca and Macehualli (or macehualtin, plural) is that, “The collective machehualtin was more neutral”, as opposed to the more personal and conscious term Nican Tlaca (Lockhart, 1992, p. 116).
But the term Nican Tlaca is problematic if it is taken to mean “we people here”, since that meaning would be more accurately assigned to the term Nican Titlaca. Linguistically speaking, it appears that the term Nican Titlaca is the original term, from which Nican Tlaca was derived, either by social convention or some unknown decision by elites.
It would seem then, that Nican Titlaca is the more “etymologically / grammatically correct” term for expressing personal-possessive identity, even though “linguistic evolution” morphed the term into Nican Tlaca.
3. James Lockhart (1993)
On page 331 of his book We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, historian James Lockhart acknowledges that Nican Tlaca is a “term for indigenous people” (Lockhart, 1993, p. 331).
Seen above: a small segment from page 331 of James
Lockhart's 1993 book
On page iv of his book, Lockhart prefaces the historical dialogues in his book with some examples of how Nican Tlaca – and some interesting variations/transpositions of the term – are found within Chapter Twelve of The Florentine Codex (Lockhart, p. iv, 1993).
Lockhart's book specifically examines Chapter Twelve of The Florentine Codex, a 16th-century Spanish ethnography.
The term Nican Tlaca has been a part of the historical record for nearly 500 years.
4. John F. Schwaller (1993)
In his 1993 academic peer review of James Lockhart's book The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries., Schwaller addresses the 16th century origins of the term Nican Tlaca:
5. Stafford Poole (1995)
In his book Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol 1531-1797, historian Stafford Poole notes that the term Nican Tlaca was being used well into the 1600s. In particular, the term shows up in a written account of "Indian miracles" claimed to come from "The Virgin":
"The story of the Indian miraculously restored to life at the time of the dedication parade contains no Spanish loan words and uses the older term nican tlaca for natives (Poole, 1995, p. 122).(Note: Poole's book deals with "La Virgen de Tepeyac" and debunks the entire "Juan Diego appearance" story by showing how no official records exist for the story with the local Catholic Bishop during the years the event was claimed to occur.)
Also in 1995, in his review of James Lockhart's bookWe People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Poole makes a reference to the usage of the term Nican Tlaca:
6. Susan M. Steele (1976)
A linguist by training, Steele translates what she calls “Classical Aztec” language. Among her many translations is the term Nican Tlaca which she translates quite literally as “here people” (Steele, p. 44, 1976).
While Steele's examination of the term predates James Lockhart by almost twenty years, it lacks Lockhart's more specific definition of the term to mean “Indigenous people”.
Still, Steele's article implies that she sees Nican Tlaca as a reference to Nahua peoples who speak “Classical Aztec” (as opposed to Spaniards/Castillians).
7. Jack Forbes (1973)
Although he did not use the term Nican Tlaca, Forbes used an equivalent term – Anishinabe – to describe Indigenous people across the continent – in particular, Mexicans who were the subject of his book, Aztecas del Norte: The Chicanos of Aztlan (Forbes, 1973, p. 13). The term Anishinabe was a precursor to the later notion of an inclusive, pan-Indigenous term like Nican Tlaca.
Forbes states that at that time, Mexicans as a group “compose the largest single nation of Anishinabeg (Indians) found in the United States today” (Forbes, 1973, p. 13).
The name Mexica can be traced back to The Letters of Hernan Cortes, which were correspondences from the Spanish invader of Mexico to King Charles V back in Europe. The historical consensus is that the name Mexica is much older, and describes the people who are commonly called Aztecs.
The term can also be found within The Florentine Codex from the mid-1500s.
“Mexica As An Identity For Mexicans”
E. Cardoza Orozoco (1966) / Jack Forbes (1973)
In his 1973 book Aztecas del Norte: The Chicanos of Aztlan, historian Jack D. Forbes makes the case for using the term Mexica as an Indigenous affirmation (and replacement term) people of “Mexican-American” and “Chicano” descent.
But the argument for the usage of “Mexica as an identity” is even older than that. Forbes' book cites an 1966 pamphlet entitled Mexica: An Identity For Mexican-Americans, written by E. Cardoza Orozoco.
Orozoco states that, “Most persons of Mexican ancestry are mixed bloods of predominantly 'Indian' descent” [emphasis added] (Forbes, 1973, p. 168). His reasoning for the Indigenous term Mexica is that it will remove the semantic oppression of imposing foreignness upon Mexicans:
to which he proposes the following solution:
“Mestizo as a European colonial identity”
1. Jack Forbes (1973)
The idea that the term mestizo is a European-colonial identity can be traced back to Jack. D. Forbes' seminal work Aztecas del Norte: The Chicanos of Aztlan.
Specifically,Forbes wrote a section entitled “The Mestizo Concept: A Product of European Imperialism” wherein he explains that, “The Mexicans and Chicanos of today are perhaps eighty percent native Anishinabe descent” and that “Mexicans and Chicanos possess far greater continuity with their native past than do the Spaniards” (Forbes, 1973, p. 188).
Forbes proceeds to shrewdly dissect the mixed-heritage of Europeans in a section named “Mestizo Peoples Who Are Not Mestizo”. He points out how,
“Racially, the modern Spaniard probably carries relatively few indigenous genes, the latter having been greatly overwhelmed by Carthaginian, Celtic, Latin-Roman, Germanic, Arab, Moorish, Berber, Jewish, black African, and Gitano intermixture. In both a racial and culture sense, then, the Spaniard is profoundly a mestizo” (Forbes, 1973, p. 180).
In summary, Forbes states that:
2. Guillermo Bonfil Batalla (1996)
Quotes from Guillermo Bonfil Batalla's book, Mexico Profundo: Reclaiming A Civilization:
“6,000 years of civilization”
Based on an archeological study by Haas, Creamer, and Ruiz (2004), the oldest radiocarbon dates with communal architecture date back to 3720 B.C., at the Porvenir site in the Fortaleza Valley of Peru (Haas, Creamer, and Ruiz, 2004, p. 13).
This effectively places the earliest civilizations of the hemisphere at 6,000 years old.
“4,300 years of civilization”
In his classic work Mexico: From The Olmecs to the Aztecs, world-renowned archeologist-historian Michael D. Coe points out that the true starting point of civilization lies in the abundant production of ceramics, which he calls “that index fossil of fully sedentary life” (Coe, 1994, p. 38).
It was during the “Purron phase” (2300-1500 BC) that radiocarbon dates identify a definite transition into urban life. This is not to say that no pottery existed prior to this period, but that its regular production during the Purron period indicates that sedentary life was anestablished way of life.
An argument could also be made that the starting point of “civilization in Ancient Mexico” begins even earlier – during the Abejas phase (c. 3400-2300 BC) – given a patterned appearance of “small hamlets of five to ten pithouses” composed of small farming populations. Coe states that this phase demonstrates how “sedentism was gradually replacing nomadism” (Coe, 1994, p. 38). Based on this perspective of nascent urbanism, a phrase like “5,400 years of civilization” might well be justified.
(It should be noted that this is the very method used to date the earliest beginnings of Minoan civilization, and in so doing, the beginnings of an allegedly "Greek" civilization).
“Supe Valley as the oldest area of civilization”
1. Charles C. Mann (2009)
In his book Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491, author Charles C. Mann states that, “Radiocarbon dating showed that Caral was founded before 2600 B.C. The history books would have to be rewritten” (Mann, 2009, p. 7).
“Huaricanga as the oldest site”
1. Charles C. Mann (2009)
In his book Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491, author Charles C. Mann states that, “Several of these sites were older than Caral. One with pyramids, Huaricanga, dates from about 3500 BC. It is currently the oldest known American city” (Mann, 2009, p. 7).
“racial and cultural castration”
1. Jack D. Forbes (1973)
In his work Aztecas del Norte: The Chicanos of Aztlan, Forbes makes reference to the psychological poison caused by colonialism:
“75 to 100 million killed by Europeans”
David Stannard (1996)
In American Holocaust (1996), David Stannard states estimates on the number of Indigenous peoples killed as a result of Europeans. On the original Indigenous population, Stannard states that,
and in addition,
“350,000 inhabitants in Tenochtitlan”
1. David Stannard (1992)
In American Holocaust (1996), David Stannard estimates the pre-genocide population of the capital city of the Mexica ("Aztecs") :
“smallpox as a genocidal tool of Europeans”
1. James Blaut (1993)
From Blaut's book The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographic Diffusionism and Eurocentric Theory:
2. Ward Churchill (1997)
In his book A Little Matter of Genocide, Ward Churchill states that smallpox was consciously used by Europeans as a weapon of war:
3. Ronald Wright (1992)
In his book Stolen Continents, Wright provides a quote by Spaniard Francisco de Aguilar welcoming the onslaught of smallpox against Indigenous people:
“And when the Christians were exhausted from war, God saw fit to send the Indians smallpox” (Wright, 1992, p. 44).
inventions and achievements
See the excellent book American Indian Contributions to the World for an encyclopedic treatment of Indigenous inventions.
compulsory education of the “Aztecs”
Jacques Soustelle (1962)
In his seminal work Daily Life of the Aztecs, Soustelle explains that in terms of education:
"Anahuac" as a nation
1. Guillermo Bonfil Batalla (1996)
In his book Mexico Profundo: Reclaiming A Civilization, Guillermo Bonfil Batalla suggests that the creation of the modern area of "Mexico" -- via so-called "Independence" in 1821 -- could also be equated with an enlarged concept of Anahuac:
The original use of Anahuac applied mainly to the Anahuac Valley. Most scholars interpret the meaning of Anahuac to be something like "The land near the waters" or "the land in between the waters".
When "Mexico" achieved formal "independence" from Spain in 1821, its territory extended from modern-day Mexico to the far north in the "U.S. Southwest"... far beyond the original conception of Anahuac in its earlier form.
In fact, this version of Anahuac would encompass the majority of "North America".
From "A Hill on a Land Surrounded by Water: An Aztec Story of Origin and Destiny" by Wayne Elzey:
“Ometeotl has many manifestations”
1. Jack D. Forbes (1973)
Quotes from Forbes' book Aztecas del Norte: The Chicanos of Aztlan:
2. Roberta H. Markman and Peter T. Markman (1992)
In their work The Flayed God, the Markmans explain “Mesoamerican religion”:
The need for an Indigenous University
1. Jack D. Forbes (1973)
In a section of his book Aztecas del Norte: The Chicanos of Aztlan (in a section titled “Every People Needs Its University”, Jack D. Forbes states that:
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Coe, M. D. (1994). Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs. (4:e upplagan. ed.). London: Thames and Hudson.
Cortes, H., & Pagden, A. (2001). Hernan Cortes - Letters from Mexico. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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Lockhart, James, and Bernardino de Sahagún. We people here: Nahuatl accounts of the conquest of Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Print.
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Nican Tlaca. Mexica Movement. Retrieved from http://www.mexica-movement.org/timexihcah/identity.htm
Poole, S. (1995). Our Lady of Guadalupe: the origins and sources of a Mexican national symbol, 1531-1797. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Poole, S. (1995). We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico. Anthropological Linguistics, 37(2), 225.
Schroeder, S. (2010). The conquest all over again: Nahuas and Zapotecs thinking, writing, and painting Spanish colonialism. Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press.
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