Xwa! XawElh ma munk nawitka ukuk! ("squaw") (fwd)

[Mike Cleven]

"Alan H. Hartley" wrote:
>
> Liland Brajant ROS' wrote:
>
> > Dave skribis:
> > >YEkwa, na tEmtEm /skwa/ dret khakwa "shawash lhuchmEn"!  Ukuk chaku khapa
> > >BastEn Wawa, wekna?
> >
> > *Almost* certainly -- certainly *probably* -- I would think, but not 100%
> > necessarily. After all, "squaw" is of Algonquian origin, and there were
> > Algonquian speakers (e.g. Blackfeet, Cree) resident not all that far from
> > Kamloops. So it *could conceivably* have come directly from one of these
> > other shawash wawa, with bastEn wawa's mediation. I think I recall that in
> > Plains Cree "woman" is "iskwew"; "girl" would be "iskwesis", I think.
>
> Eng. SQUAW definitely comes (in 17c.) from an Eastern Algonquian (prob.
> Massachusett) word for 'woman'.
>
> > PS: Are you sure about the "shawash lhuchmEn" gloss, as opposed to its being
> > a simple synonym of "lhuchmEn"? In bastEn wawa "squaw" certainly carries the
> > presumption of Indianness, but I don't think this is true in Algonquian, and
> > am not sure from the citation whether such an implication is present in the
> > CJ.
>
> The Algonquian words all mean 'woman', but it is possible that some of the
> negative force of the word had its origins in native usage:
>
> "the greatest insult to an Indian is to say to him "Go, you are a squaw (a
> woman.)"
>
> (1828 J. C. Beltami _Pilgrimage in Europe & Amer._ II. 146; the ref. here is to
> either the Dakota or the Ojibway, probably the latter)
>
> So it may be that at least a part of the disparaging character of the English
> word now considered so offensive by many Native Americans has its ultimate
> source, not in Euro-American attitudes, but in those of some Native American men
> toward women.

It's worth noting, however, that in many cases those Native
American-male attitudes are "borrowings" from white culture, the older
traditional culture often being female-empowering.  It was the influence
of "Euro-American" (a term I find uncomfortable BTW because I am neither
european nor american) culture that relegated women to a secondary,
negative role in many native cultures......

Mike Cleven
http://members.home.net/skookum/
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