[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Are automakers using tribal names honoring those people or appropriated their culture?

To appropriate means to take something that belongs to someone else for your own use thereby depriving them of it.

You can not appropriate a culture as they do not have owners, only followers.

So the answer is no.

Now buzz off you annoying little crustacean.

[Scrambler Bob]

Don’t you know that the Indians had little Turquoise and Silver carvings of their Chief strapped to the foreheads of their ponies.

And car manufacturers appropriated that.

Then they put 4 wheels on the cars, copying the 4 legs of the pony.

And they did not use emission controls, as the Indians also did not.