From <i>Indien</i> to <i>Autochtone</i>

Abstract Over the last few years, the native peoples of Quebec have begun rejecting the general designations Indiens and Amérindiens widely used until recently to refer to them. Since the early 2000s, several events (such as the Idle No More movement and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission) have brought the sociopolitical issues of First Nations to the forefront in Quebec and Canada. Since these tipping points, as part of an empowerment process, indigenous peoples have expressed a preference for the general denominations autochtones and Membres des Premières Nations . The choice of a denomination stems from an attempt to acquire symbolic capital by the dominated groups. This paper offers a linguistic contribution to the understanding of this phenomenon by studying the evolution of denominations through various corpuses: legal texts, history textbooks, dictionaries, and the written press.