Hi everyone, time for an overdue mea culpa. There’s something that I’ve avoided addressing for way too long about a potentially harmful mistake that I made in my book the Eastern Curlew. Nobody’s ever raised it with me but it’s been nagging at the back of my mind for a long time.

In chapter 3 of the book I listed the various curlew species, and I referred to one of them - the Eskimo curlew ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_curlew) - as being named after a group of people.

At the time I was vaguely aware that “Eskimo” was regarded as an offensive term, but I mistakenly believed that the source of that offence was that it was often applied to *all* Indigenous people of the American Arctic rather than just one specific group of people.

After the book was published I learned that the term is offensive regardless of who it’s applied to, but by then the book had been printed.

When the book was reprinted in paperback and I had a chance to correct mistakes from the hardback edition I completely forgot, again until it was too late, about this particular mistake. That’s an explanation, but not an excuse. It should have been more prominent in my thoughts.

I’ve avoided addressing this mistake, and apologising for it, for far too long. I should have faced up to it from the moment I realised what I’d done. It was a fuck up which was entirely down to me, and it’s continued to be so. I’m sorry.

As I mentioned at the start of this thread, nobody has ever raised this mistake with me - but that doesn’t mean nobody’s noticed. If my choice of words has upset or offended anyone, I’m sincerely sorry, and I take full responsibility.

I hope the fact that the same chapter in which I made this mistake also critiques extensively the colonialism inherent in the way Western science names organisms, shows that this was initially a genuine misunderstanding on my part.

That’s all.