I went to the clinic this chilly October morning for my annual flu and covid vaxxes. It’s been cold enough overnight lately to bring the house down to the 50’s if we forget to close windows, but not cold enough to frost outside yet, so I still have a few plants out in pots enjoying the fall sunshine at the moment. I know, I know, weather talk is boring. It’s apropos to the story, promise.
The clinic check-in lady and I were chatting about weather because we’re in the middle of a gorgeous stretch of golden autumn sunshine where the turning leaves are a painting of wild color shivering in the wind and it’s warm enough to shed the sweatshirt layer by early afternoon, but cold enough for bonfires after dark. This weekend it’s supposed to hit the mid-80’s again, and she called it “Indian Summer,” then immediately asked if that’s the wrong term. I said I didn’t know, but it’s worth looking into?
First, can I say as a person now pushing fifty that it’s fucking wonderful to have a random interaction where someone older than me will at least consider whether a commonly used term (Indian Summer is common not only in America, but also in areas of Europe) is appropriate or insulting? I went upstairs in the clinic to get my jabs and she went back to her computer to investigate whether there’s a better term for the phenomenon.
Of course I did the same when I got home, and found that the upcoming weekend warmup doesn’t even count, regardless of the terminology. The term “Indian Summer” appears to have been coined in the late 1700’s by a white man (shocking, I know), but didn’t really take off until much later. It was used to describe a warm spell occurring after the first deadly frost of the season, generally in November, and referred to his understanding of Indigenous terms.
But the Indigenous version seems to have varied between November and January thaws, and, since no Nation called themselves Indian, their name for that thaw varied as well. The sites I found with background on the etymology and history of the term had a variety of European and Indigenous words and phrases that describe the warm days in late fall or the January thaw. The one most concise and complete, including an utterly beautiful origin tale, is here: https://www.powwows.com/indian-summer/.
I chose “Another Summer” because I live in the Anishinaabe and Great Lakes area, so that seems most appropriate based on the sites I found. Obviously, I’m not Anishinaabe: I’m a white American with mostly Scandinavian heritage, so I’m using the English phrasing.
Perhaps it’s a small thing to think after 300 some years it’s time to be better about a single term used for a single weather phenomenon in a cold part of the world. Perhaps it’s a term that makes no difference to Indigenous peoples either way, but that’s not MY call to make, right, so it seems like the respectful thing to do is at least consider and ask. If there’s another appropriate terminology to use instead, I’d love to know it.
In the meantime, it’s gonna be warm this weekend, but we haven’t had a killing frost yet, so it’s still just abnormally warm normal autumn around here, so far. Now someone explain how that Godsdamned fake ladybug orange beetle thing managed to get inside my window screen yesterday. Pernicious little buggers.
