Squaw Daffiness (sociolinguistics)

[Tony Johnson]

An introduction:

My name is Tony A. Johnson.  I am a Chinook Tribal member, and, amongst other things, run the language program for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in Western, OR.  I am a default linguist.  Of interest to folks would be that we have the only language immersion preschool in the area, and that our language is the only living Native American Creole language.  It is called Chinuk Wawa, and became the community language here because of the twenty plus dialects of languages that were spoken on the early reservation.  Anyway, ...

I did not believe this would be the topic to take me out of lurking status, but I have had a little experience with changing a few "squaw" place names within the ceeded lands of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.  The incentive for this action really was people believing the derogatory etymologies given for the word.  We, however, educated the people involved as to the likely origins of the word.  Despite this though, we felt the need to continue with the name change efforts.  We did this because all elders that we spoke to here universally agreed that it is derogatory.  They generally said that it is a way that white people put down Indian women.  Most expressed first hand experience with the word, and I can tell you that many younger people here in the NW will attest to it continuing to be a term applied in a derogatory manner to Native women.

I do agree with the issue of not making these decisions out of political correctness.  However, continuing the use of derogatory words, or asking people affected by them to use them seems inappropriate.  Anyway, a means of our making sure that our actions do not simply white wash history is that we have added several of the "squaw" signs that were taken down and replaced in our area into our museum collection.  Whether or not they will ever be used I cannot say, but they are stored here as a part of our history.

Tony A. Johnson
Sawash-Ili7i
(Grand ROnde, OR)

>>> JP.Leary at DPI.STATE.WI.US 09/16/03 11:52AM >>>
I am very interested in this discussion because the issue often comes up
when discussing stereotypes of Native people in my work at the K-12 level.
I am respectfully asking for list members' assistance so as to be able to
clearly and completely explain this commonly asked question.

I am particularly interested in learning more about the Mohawk etymology
because it either seems to be incompletely dismissed or I am
misunderstanding the heart of the explanation.  I have heard one Mohawk
speaker confirm the commonly repeated story, while another told me that
although it was not related to their language it was not acceptable to use
it to refer to any woman at any time.

My own academic background in history suggests that there may be something
to the story of Mohawk roots of this word, or perhaps multiple roots in both
language families.  It is safe to say that most of the French and English
traders may have learned some of the languages of the tribes they traded
with.  However, most were not linguists and while they certainly recognized
separate languages, they were not likely to recognize separate
classifications of Iroquoian and Algonquian languages.  It seems reasonable
to expect that there could be a shift in meaning as non-native speakers
bring the words into English.

As a non-linguist, it seems that the issue is also at least partially one of
similar sounding words/word parts.  For example, "say" in English and
"c'est" in French sound quite similar (at least with the diction of average
US college French) but they come from different language families and mean
quite different things.  Because squaw is a loanword, how do we know which
language or language family a sound belongs to when it is removed from its
original context?  The etymology seems murky at best, so I have trouble
seeing how the statement "Linguistic data show, however, that it is actually
a Massachusett word for 'woman'" follows from the previous statement about
the Mohawk language.

These are likely simple questions for many members of this list.  I would
greatly appreciate some assistance and clarification so that I can fully and
accurately respond to this issue when it arises.  I am a layperson so please
do not worry about 'overexplaining,' I won't be insulted.

Wado,

J P

J P Leary, Consultant
American Indian Studies Program
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction
608/267-2283 or 800/441-4563
FAX:  608/266-3643
jp.leary at dpi.state.wi.us 
AIS Program Web Page:  www.dpi.state.wi.us/dpi/dlsea/equity/aisintro.html 

-----Original Message-----
From: Andre Cramblit [mailto:andrekar at NCIDC.ORG] 
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 2:15 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU 
Subject: Squaw Daffiness (sociolinguistics)


Place names containing the word 'squaw' are numerous throughout the United
States, but have become controversial. American Indians have presented three
kinds of argument against the term. The first is that it is derived from a
Mohawk word for the female genitalia. Linguistic data show, however, that it
is actually a Massachusett word for 'woman'. A second argument presented is
that 'squaw' has been used derogatorily by whites toward Indian women. This
argument is supported weakly by literary documents, but more strongly by
frontier memoirs and journalistic writing. The  third argument is that
'squaw' is offensive to Indians, in the same way that 'nigger' is offensive
to African Americans. This raises the question of 'politically correct'
vocabulary, or in broader terms, the sociolinguistic question of the
ideological values of words; in this context, subjective associations are as
important as objective ones.

Full Linguistics @: http://www.ncidc.org/bright/unpublished.html