Squaw


The English word squaw is an ethnic and sexual slur, historically used for Indigenous North American women. Contemporary use of the term, especially by non-Natives, is considered offensive, derogatory, misogynist and racist.
The English word is not used among Native American, First Nations, Inuit, or Métis peoples. While a similar morpheme is found within some longer words in some of the Eastern Algonquian languages, these languages only make up a small minority of the languages spoken in the hundreds of Indigenous communities affected by this slur. Even in Algonquian, the related word-fragments used are not the English-language slur, but small components of longer, Algonquian words that contain more than one morpheme. Eastern Algonquian morphemes meaning 'woman', which are found as components in other words and may have been transcribed into English include the Massachusett language squa, skwa, esqua, sqeh, skwe", "que, kwa, ikwe, exkwew, xkwe'', and a number of other variants.

Current status

The term squaw is considered universally offensive by Indigenous groups in America due to its use for hundreds of years in a derogatory context, and due to usage that they state demeans Native American women, ranging from condescending images to racialized epithets. Alma Garcia has written, "It treats non-white women as if they were second-class citizens or exotic objects."
While some have studied the smaller fragments of Algonquian words that might be related to the word, no matter the linguistic origins, many Native women feel that any "reclamation" efforts would only apply to the small percentage of Native women from the Algonquian-language groups, and not to the vast majority of Native women who feel degraded by the term. Indigenous women who have addressed the history and depth of this slur state that this degrading usage is now too long, and too painful, for it to ever take on a positive meaning among Indigenous women or Indigenous communities as a whole. In 2015, Jodi Lynn Maracle and Agnes Williams petitioned the Buffalo Common Council, to change the name of "Squaw Island" to Deyowenoguhdoh. Seneca Nation President Maurice John Sr., and Chief G. Ava Hill of the Six Nations of the Grand River wrote letters petitioning for the name change as well, with Chief Hill writing,
The continued use and acceptance of the word 'Squaw' only perpetuates the idea that indigenous women and culture can be deemed as impure, sexually perverse barbaric and dirty... Please do eliminate the slur 'Squaw' from your community.

Anti-racist groups have also worked to educate about, and encourage the elimination of, the slur. When asked why "it never used to bother Indian women to be called squaw," and "why now?" an American Indian Movement group responded:
Newer editions of dictionaries such as American Heritage, Merriam-Webster online dictionaries, and the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary now list "squaw" as "offensive", "often offensive", and "usually disparaging".

Derogatory and historical usage

In most colonial texts squaw was used as general word for Indigenous women. It also became a derogatory adjective used against some men, in "squaw man," meaning either "a man who does woman's work" or "a white man married to an Indian woman and living with her people".
Colville / Okanagan author Mourning Dove, in her 1927 novel, Cogewea, the Half-Blood had one of her characters say,
If I was to marry a white man and he would dare call me a 'squaw'—as an epithet with the sarcasm that we know so well—I believe that I would feel like killing him.

Science Fiction author Isaac Asimov, in his novel Pebble in the Sky, wrote that science-fictional natives of other planets would use slurs against natives of Earth, such as, "Earthie-squaw".
LaDonna Harris, when speaking about empowering Native American schoolchildren in the 1960s at Ponca City, Oklahoma, recounted:
We tried to find out what the children found painful about school . The children said that they felt humiliated almost every day by teachers calling them "squaws" and using all those other old horrible terms.

Sexual references

An early comment in which "squaw" appears to have a sexual meaning is from the Canadian writer E. Pauline Johnson, who was of Mohawk heritage, but spent little time in that culture as an adult. She wrote about the title character in An Algonquin Maiden by G. Mercer Adam and A. Ethelwyn Wetherald:
Poor little Wanda! not only is she non-descript and ill-starred, but as usual the authors take away her love, her life, and last and most terrible of all, reputation; for they permit a crowd of men-friends of the hero to call her a "squaw" and neither hero nor authors deny that she is a squaw. It is almost too sad when so much prejudice exists against the Indians, that any one should write up an Indian heroine with such glaring accusations against her virtue, and no contradictory statements from either writer, hero or circumstance.

Explicit statements that "squaw" came from a word meaning "female genitals" gained currency in the 1970s. Perhaps the first example was in Sanders and Peek :
That curious concept of 'squaw', the enslaved, demeaned, voiceless childbearer, existed and exists only in the mind of the non-Native American and is probably a French corruption of the Iroquois word otsiskwa meaning 'female sexual parts', a word almost clinical both denotatively and connotatively. The corruption suggests nothing about the Native American's attitude toward women; it does indicate the 's view of Native American women in particular if not all women in general.

Early use by English colonists

One of the earliest appearances of the term in print is "the squa sachim, or queen" in the colonial booklet Mourt's Relation, one of the first chronicles of the Plymouth colony, by the European colonists.

American Usage in the 19th century

Records of the picture by Alfred Jacob Miller document mid-19th century usage in America. The art collection's on-line caption for this picture explains that "Bourgeois W----r" names an individual fur trader, abbreviated in the literary convention of the period The picture was commissioned at that date and is based on sketches made in Wyoming in 1837, "a unique record of the closing years of the western fur trade.... The term 'Bourgeois' is givien in the mountains to one who has a body of trappers placed under his immediate command. Capt. W----r, being trustworthy and intelligent, received an appointment of this kind... and with his men had many battles with the Indians.... The Squaw's station in travelling is at a considerable distance in the rear of her liege lord, and never at the side of him. W----r had the kindness to present the writer a dozen pair of moccasins worked by this squaw - richly embroidered on the instep with colored porcupine quills."

Efforts to rename placenames and terms with ''squaw'' in them

The United States Board on Geographic Names currently does not ban the use of the word squaw in placenames. Despite this, Indigenous activists have continued to work both locally and in more general educational efforts, to rename the locations across North America that contain the slur, as well as to eliminate the slur from the lexicon in general.
The term persists in the officially sanctioned names of several municipalities, such as Squaw Grove Township, Illinois and Squaw Township, Iowa.
As of November 2018, Squaw Valley Ski Resort, Squaw Valley, Squaw Valley, Squaw Peak Inn, Squaw Lake, Squaw Lake, Squaw Lake, Squaw Grove Township, Squaw Mountain Ranch, Squaw Valley Academy, Squaw Canyon Oil Field, Squaw Cap, Squaw Creek Southern Railroad, Squaw Gap, and Squaw Creek, to name a few, remain unchanged.