Pri: Beaver (ekse Re: skookum)

[Mike Cleven]

>From: "Alan H. Hartley" <ahartley at D.UMN.EDU>
>
>Liland Brajant Ros' wrote:
> >
> > In the various postings touching on the provenance and meaning of
>"squaw",
> > I've yet to see mention of the problems with "Beaver". What do the
>Beaver
> > (Indians) prefer to call themselves (in English)? A recent TV special on
> > "whatever happened to freedom of speech" pointed out that Beaver College
>is
> > seriously considering changing its name, not so much because of its
> > connotations to live human beings as because it triggers a lot of the
>newer,
> > more "sensitive" browser filters, so that high school students with
> > protectively inclined parents, say, are unable to access the college's
> > website.
> >
> > lilEnd
> >
> > PS I am sending this to you because your posting on the Beaver triggered
>it
> > and I am at a terminal where I can't post to the list. Feel free to
>forward
> > it if you wish.
>
>It appears to be "Beaver First Nation".

As indeed it is, I think; Terry G will know for sure for those people the
furtrade has never gone away and the beaver is a proud emblem; myself I've
wondered about 'Dogrib' and 'Slave' (pronounced Slay-vee) and their modern
appropriateness but it's everyone's own choice.

The triggering of browser filters by "Beaver" is just plain silly, and goes
to show you how uneducated and monolithically prejudicial the censorship
mentality can be; aside from the point that it's the Canadian national
animal, to whit the following parable:

"The beaver is the Canadian national animal because it's a fat little
fur-coated critter that rarely leaves its own valley, content to chop down
trees and build dams and hunker down with the family for the winter; until
foreigners come and skin it alive....."

which is why it's on the nickel and not the dollar, I guess.

I think with some of the better censoring programs you can opt-in or opt-out
different words individually from the filter, I think CyberPatrol does this,
but NetNanny does not.  The 'patrolling' of the language by such devices is
anathema to ordinary speech; obviously male roosters have to be directly
described as such by now, as with the affectionate term for kitty-kats.  If
these neo-Puritans still had their full sway, we'd still have to have long
tablecloths to hide suggestive table supports ("legs") from public view, as
was the case about 110-120 years ago....

MC



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