November was National Native American Month. I didn’t learn this until the last day of the month, when I listened to "Charlotte Talks," a radio talk show on WFAE-FM.

The show’s host, Mike Collins, devoted the show to the status of Native American culture in this country today. He had members of the Catawba and Lumbee tribes as guests, and they quickly informed us that, while "Native American" is the politically correct terminology today, most "Native Americans" would prefer to be called "American Indians." One said, "We’ve been American Indians all our lives, and it has more meaning to us."

The show covered a broad range of topics of concern to American Indians, including the traditional stereotypes of the American Indian as either a bloodthirsty savage or an impossibly noble person in some sort of mystical contact with the forces of nature. The American Indian is seen as either ready to go on the warpath or walking around with his head in some mystical cloud.

"Actually," said one of the guests, "we’re just like everyone else, trying to make a living and live a decent life."

This supposed mystical connection between American Indians and nature is a major factor in the increasingly favorable view of American Indians in popular culture, and in the increasing number of whites who have discovered or claim to have discovered American Indians in their ancestry.

Mike’s Catawba guest is connected with the Catawba Indian Museum on the reservation in York County, S.C. He expressed displeasure with Caucasian tourists who claim a mystical connection to the reservation because they are one-sixteenth or one-thirty-second American Indian. "They say that American Indians are the nation’s fastest-growing minority group," he said. "I think that’s true only if you count the wannabes."

That interested me, because my wife’s father was Cherokee — not full-blooded, but on the Tribal Roster. She has noted for quite some time that it seems that almost everybody claims to be part Cherokee these days. She also notes that many of these part-Cherokee folk know nothing about the tribe or its culture.

We laugh about this sometimes, because I am of Irish descent and almost everybody also claims to be part Irish. We think this is funny because, not too many years ago, the Irish and the American Indians were despised outcasts in American society.

The importance of gambling to the economy of Indian reservations was also discussed. Casinos such as the one at Cherokee have been controversial in states, such as North Carolina, that bar gambling on non-reservation land. The host asked if the gambling operations actually are beneficial to ordinary American Indians.

He was quickly informed that gambling is very beneficial to ordinary American Indians residing on the reservation. Each resident of the Cherokee Reservation who is on the Tribal Roster receives an annual stipend from the profits of the casino. In addition, casino profits are used to finance projects of the Tribal Council. Finally, the casino is a source of good-paying, year-round jobs at Cherokee, which normally has a horrific unemployment rate during the winter months.

They also discussed athletic teams that use American Indian names, such as the Atlanta Braves, the Cleveland Indians and the Washington Redskins. The guests don’t like such names but are sort of resigned to them. One said, "Some high school and college teams have changed their names, but the pros won’t. There’s too much money involved. But how would people react to a team called ‘The Caucasians’ or ‘The Chicago Jews’?"

I can see their point, but I still don’t mind Notre Dame’s being called The Fighting Irish," even though I don’t root for them.

Glenn Sumpter is the retired editor of the Richmond County Daily Journal. He lives in Hamlet.