The Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows ski resort in California, near Lake Tahoe, has announced it is changing its name: “After extensive research into the etymology and history of the term ‘squaw,’ both generally and specifically with respect to Squaw Valley, outreach to Native American groups, including the local Washoe Tribe, and outreach to the local and extended community, company leadership has decided it is time to drop the derogatory and offensive term ‘squaw’ from the destination’s name.”
Last issue, I mentioned how an arbitrary standard about what “offensive” terms need deletion is being applied in newsmaking. I’ve tracked accusations that the names of the Tomahawk missile, the Eskimo Nebula, a “Colony Coffee” shop, the Masters golf tournament, and a host of others are “problematic.” And lately, most demands for a more morally proper language have been met with hasty capitulation. It’s very interesting that this resort was, like the Washington, D.C., football team, denamed before it could be renamed (early signs point to “Olympic Valley” as the eventual replacement).
There are now calls for professional and high school teams with names such as Kansas City’s football team, the Chiefs, to be removed. Native American symbolism has been an especially fragile subject. After Land O’Lakes took its allegedly offensively stereotypical Native American mascot off its butter in April, the grandson of the artist who drew it, who himself is from the Red Lake Ojibwe Nation in Minnesota, wrote that the image “simply didn’t fit the parameters of a stereotype.”
If “redskin” is quite clearly a slur, “chief” is quite clearly not. “Squaw” is more complex. CNN leads its story on the ski resort by quoting that “squaw” is a “racist and sexist slur.” The term’s Wikipedia entry, edited rather a lot recently, agrees. NPR affiliate KQED goes with “racist name” in its article’s title, and SFGate goes with “racist slur.” The Chicago Sun-Times says “derogatory word,” and Fox Reno is more feline, with “racially insensitive.” However, in a 2014 Indian Country Today article on the subject of renaming places with “squaw” in their names, no cited dictionary gives a definitive ruling that it is a slur, though some note it putatively has that quality. The piece quotes an indigenous scholar, who says, “The word has been interpreted by modern activists as a slanderous assault against Native American women. But traditional Algonkian speakers, in both Indian and English, still say words like ‘nidobaskwa’ = a female friend, ‘manigebeskwa’ = woman of the woods, or ‘Squaw Sachem’ = female chief.”
So, there you have it. Either great progress in scholarly etymological research has been made since 2014 to clear up this complex and uncertain issue, or else we have become more morally strident as a culture, for good and bad. The playground game Cowboys and Indians and the use of Native American terms as sports mascots does reduce peoples to a character. I’m glad to see some of these things in the rearview mirror rather than through the windshield — even if they’re small fry compared to, say, the onerous mortgage lending regulations Native Americans face on tribal land. But in our moment of tearing down words first and asking questions later, one should wonder if we are effectively banning all loanwords from Native American languages in case they might be offensive. This would be its own form of erasure. Is renaming American mountains after European peaks really how we decolonize our culture?
