Tribes, Gov't Want 'Squaw' Names Changed

[Jolie Rouge]

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, Associated Press Writer

SISTERS, Ore. - Olivia Wallulatum finds it hard to even look at the sign, a marker for the Squaw River. It reminds her of all the names she was called as a girl. And she wants something done about it. She wants the name changed. "I don't care what they change it to. I just want to see it go," said Wallulatum, 50, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs.


Nearly a thousand places across the country — rivers, buttes, meadows, mountains — are named "squaw," and most American Indians want them to be called something else. Changing the names, though, isn't happening with any great speed and certainly not without a struggle.


American Indians' heightened sensitivity to the word came about in 1992 after an activist announced on a television talk show that squaw is derived from a vulgar Mohawk word. Linguists maintain "squaw" means "woman" in the language of the Massachusett tribe, which once lived on the East Coast.


Three years later, activists and the government joined forces to change the names, but their efforts have been far from stellar. The U.S. Geographic Names Board shows that a decade of work has brought about different names for only 74 of the 967 places, less than 8 percent. In Oregon, which has more places named "squaw" than anywhere else in the nation, only six of the roughly 170 names have been changed since 2001, the year lawmakers passed a bill banning the word.


The board's executive director, Roger Payne, said part of the holdup is that tribal officials can't agree on what word should replace the offensive term.


Payne cites a board survey of American Indian tribes. Although the majority wanted the squaw name to go, each tribe wanted to replace it with a word from its language, he said.


Oregon's Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs is an example. In 2004, after three years of debate, the Warm Springs tribal council passed a resolution approving 42 words to replace squaw on the tribe's ancestral land.


Public opposition also has slowed the process of erasing "squaw" from the U.S. map.


In Arizona, officials faced a fury of public opinion after they renamed Squaw Peak for Lori Piestewa, a Hopi servicewoman killed in Iraq.


Still, there have been times when eradicating "squaw" has gone smoothly.


In Maine's Piscataquis County, commissioners voted to universally change "squaw" to "moose." In Colorado, the endangered squawfish is now the Colorado pikeminnow. Glacier National Park's Squaw Mountain is now Dancing Lady Mountain.


In Minnesota, 18 of the 19 squaw land and water forms were rechristened without objection. The exception is the town of Squaw Lake, population 99. "Are we supposed to change our entire language to justify a few people's misgivings?" asked Mayor Art Mertes, who maintains that the word is not derogatory.


Linguists say that Mertes is essentially right about the original meaning of "squaw." It was a word from the Massachusett tribe used as early as 1663 in a translation of the Bible to mean "woman," said Ives Goddard, a senior linguist at the Smithsonian Institution.


But Goddard cautions that the meaning of words change over time: "As we know, lots of words are considered offensive that have perfectly innocent etymologies. The famous 'n' word just meant black."


The swift change in awareness came with a 1992 appearance on "Oprah" by writer and activist Suzan Harjo, who said the word comes from a Mohawk word for female genitalia — and the etymology has since become accepted by many tribal leaders.

The belief that it comes from a vulgar origin has made delays in removing it even more difficult for Oregon women to tolerate. "To even hear the word makes you feel less than the woman you are," said Myra Johnson, also a member of the Warm Springs tribe. "Especially as an Indian woman."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=718&e=10&u=/ap/20050401/ap_on_re_us/squaw_debate

[Jolie Rouge]

Indians Lament U.S. Neglect of 'Original Promise'
Tue Mar 29, 2005

By Adam Tanner

SAN FIDEL, N.M. (Reuters) - In the mid 19th century, the United States forcibly removed Bill Thorne Jr.'s Cherokee ancestors from Georgia and marched them to barren Oklahoma in the middle of the United States.


Only his great-grandmother survived the "Trail of Tears" that killed thousands in the forced migration aimed at clearing territory for white settlers. That history and broken U.S. promises of services and sovereignty for Indians remain strong in Thorne's mind. "It just seems unfair that people are treated that way and are not in some fashion, I guess, compensated," said Thorne, the chief executive of a New Mexico hospital serving Indians. "They owe something to me."

"There's been no apologies or anything and there has just been this half-baked attempt by the government of furnishing Indians a certain amount of discretionary education and things."


In the 19th century treaties, Washington shunted Indians onto reservations in exchange for promises of continuing education, health care and other services. Just about everyone says the government did a poor job of honoring the deal. "Whether the system of Indian treaties were ever meant to work is a matter of debate, but in reality, most Indian treaties were broken," the State Department says on its Web site.


In Indian country, sentiment remains very strong that Washington should still live up to what some call the "Original Promise" in which tribes gave up land for sovereign status on reservations and federal help. They say the government has long provided inferior services and underfunded its programs.


POLITICAL BACKLASH


At the same time, some tribes are experiencing a political backlash as some citizens and politicians have lashed out against Indian casinos which are legal on Indian land but not elsewhere in many states. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said last year that "the Indians are ripping us off" by not paying state taxes.


More radical groups in states such as Montana have used even more strident language in efforts to curtail Indian efforts to exercise their sovereignty.


Such sentiments infuriate Indian leaders. "On the side of the U.S. government, they're working on doing away with those treaties," said Joe Shirley Jr., president of the Navajo Nation, the largest U.S. reservation. "It wouldn't surprise me if there would be an announcement tomorrow that would abrogate treaty rights."


Complicating Native American relations with the federal government is a long-running multibillion dollar lawsuit by Indians who allege the Interior Department mismanaged trust accounts set up in the late 19th century to handle proceeds from oil, gas and minerals extracted from their lands.


"There truly were grave injustices inflicted upon Native Americans," said U.S. Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. "At the same time it shouldn't put you on such a guilt trip, as it does some people, that whatever Native Americans do today is excused by history," he told reporters this month. "We did sign sovereign treaties that made certain guarantees which does give Native Americans a unique status in the United States of America."

The growth of Indian casinos in recent years is the most visible way tribes have exercised sovereignty to their advantage in recent years. Still, many Indians and experts say the present U.S. relationship with the tribes is broken, full of hypocrisy and in need of a fundamental revision. "Tribes today are not sovereign," said Ross Swimmer, a Cherokee who is the special trustee for American Indians at the Interior Department. "You can't sit there and be a sovereign and be dictated to by another sovereign,"

"There needs to be a whole new paradigm," he said. "We have to start over."

Back in New Mexico, Bill Thorne Jr. said the vast majority of Native Americans believe the federal government still has a special responsibility and a final financial settlement might be a way of recasting ties without cheating Indians anew. "If they wrote a check for a million I'd say thank you very much," he said.

Although treaties that last for more than a century may be uncommon, Robert Williams, a University of Arizona professor of law and American Indian studies, said many nations with indigenous people such as Canada and New Zealand have similar agreements without an ending date. "Congress can terminate a treaty tomorrow if it wants to," he said. But "there may be obligations of compensation."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=572&ncid=572&e=4&u=/nm/20050329/lf_nm/rights_indians_dc_3