Talk:Northern Paiute people

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 September 2018 and 20 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mhughes189.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 01:42, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Gender Roles

Hi everyone,

i am thinking of added a section on gender roles within the Northern Paiute people. It would include what roles men and women had as well as why they had do them. I would try to add things on the sexual division of labor and/or domestic/public divide. What are your thoughts?

--Iamnotgabe (talk) 02:50, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

There is nothing unique about this in relation to the Northern Paiute. Unless this were a topic that is widely covered in articles on ethnic peoples, then there is no encyclopedic point to it. --Taivo (talk) 02:55, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Is it not important to note how the people worked and lived? It is not on the page already so I thought people should know. The page is also very short. --Iamnotgabe (talk) 16:31, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Something that is absolutely average across all preindustrial ethnic groups is not encyclopedic. "The Northern Paiute had two legs and two arms" is about as informative as "the men hunted and the women gathered plant foods, prepared them, and cared for the children". Just because the article as currently written is short doesn't mean that it should be expanded with trivia or with sentences that are absolutely not unique to the Northern Paiute or their lifestyle. --Taivo (talk) 19:54, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I see your point and agree that most societies did divide labor like that but I think it is important to specify that gender roles did exist during this time. [[1]] There are other sources http://perspectives.americananthro.org/Chapters/Subsistence.pdf and http://perspectives.americananthro.org/Chapters/Gender_and_Sexuality.pdf to clarify anything that I did not make obvious. --Iamnotgabe (talk) 04:42, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Of course there are sources to say that precontact Northern Paiute were absolutely average when it comes to gender roles in almost all preindustrial societies. But that doesn't make it encyclopedic. --Taivo (talk) 09:14, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Gov pic.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 13:34, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Western Mono, Eastern Mono, and Mono Lake peoples

My understanding of the literature is that there are three groups that are often conflated: Mono Lake, Owens Valley Paiute, and Western Mono. The Mono Lake, aka Kucadikadi, spoke Northern Paiute, while the Western Mono and Owens Valley Paiute spoke the Western and Eastern dialects of the Mono language, respectively. While both languages - Mono and Northern Paiute - are Western Numic, they are not the same language. So the segment of this page that lumps together these three peoples should be changed, right? Or does @TaivoLinguist know some other advancement in the literature that says these three peoples are actually the same? OctaviusIII (talk) 18:00, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

The situation was precisely what you describe: The Mono Lake people were Northern Paiute. South of Long Valley in the Owens Valley were the Eastern Mono, aka Owens Valley Paiute. On the western slope of the Sierras were the Western Mono. The two Mono groups spoke dialects of the Mono language, while the Mono Lake Northern Paiute spoke Northern Paiute, a related, but different, language. There are no reliable sources that claim that these were one people speaking one language. You can refer to Volume 11, the Great Basin volume, of the Handbook of North American Indians (Smithsonian 1986) for lots of good maps. The scholarly situation has not changed since then. As I stated, there are no reliable sources that revise or replace that. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 20:25, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

There are two principle sources of confusion, especially among amateurs in the field who don't know any better. 1) The widespread practice among white explorers in the 19th century to label Natives of the Great Basin as "Paiute". Thus, we have the "Paiutes" of northern Nevada and eastern California, whether they spoke Northern Paiute, Shoshoni, or Mono, and the "Paiutes" of southern Utah and northern Arizona, whether they spoke Southern Paiute (only distantly related to Northern Paiute) or Shoshoni. The "Weber Utes" of the Salt Lake Valley were Shoshoni, and on unfriendly terms with the Utes of Utah Valley, but many old sources misname them. The Timbisha don't speak Shoshoni, but most of the speakers called their language "Shoshoni" anyway. Untangling the confusion sometimes takes the specialists. 2) The widespread practice among Numic speakers to label other bands as X-eaters, whether Comanche (e.g., Yaparɨhka, "Yampa Eaters") or Shoshoni (e.g., Hukkantɨkka, "Pickleweed Eaters") or Northern Paiute or Mono or Ute or Southern Paiute, etc. (The Comanche even called the white farmers of southeastern Oklahoma Woarɨhka "Worm Eaters", thus the town name Waurika, Oklahoma.) --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 20:36, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

But we need to be clear here. The ethnic designation of the people who live in the Owens Valley south of Long Valley is "Owens Valley Paiute". But the Owens Valley Paiute speak the Mono language, not Northern Paiute. The people of Mono Lake, the Mono Lake Paiute, however, speak the Northern Paiute language, not Mono. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 22:58, 27 January 2023 (UTC)