The most populous Indian Nation in Canada is within earshot of Buffalo, and its head of government is now asking Mayor Byron Brown to support the efforts of Jodi Lynn Maracle and Agnes Williams to remove the slur “Squaw” from the island that sits between the United States and Canada.
Chief Ava Hill is the elected leader of Six Nations of the Grand River, where the Haudenosaunee people (or Iroquois, as we call them) reside. The Nation is located only about an hour and a half drive from downtown Buffalo. Thousands of Six Nations’ citizens live in and around the city.
The call for renaming the island comes amid a nationwide discourse across Canada on the issue of murdered and missing indigenous women. This same week, 16 year old Rinelle Harper is calling for a national inquiry into murdered and missing aboriginal women, only a month after she was left for dead in a riverbank near Winnipeg.
The text of Chief Hill’s letter can be read here:
December 2, 2014
Mayor Byron W. Brown
City of Buffalo
65 Niagara Square
Buffalo, NY 14202
Dear Hon. Byron W. Brown:
I write to you in support of Jodi Lynn Maracle and Agnes Williams’ recent effort to remove the slur “Squaw” from your city park, traffic signs, and in reference to the island that sits in the Niagara River between the United States and Canada. I hope to share with you a brief history that too many people are unaware of – a history that is at the core of America’s founding and has caused enormous intergenerational trauma in indigenous communities across North America.
Residential schools forcibly removed Native children from their families; they were systematically assimilated and taught to be ashamed of their culture rather than proud of it. In practice, the children who attended those schools – both in the United States and Canada – were often sexually, emotionally, physically, and spiritually abused. Over the course of 139 years, with the last residential school in Canada closing in 1996, this form of cultural genocide has had a profound impact on our people and we continue to feel those affects today. The intergenerational trauma has manifested itself in many forms: alcoholism, domestic abuse, self-hate, and lateral violence.
The continued use and acceptance of the word “Squaw” only perpetuates the idea that indigenous women, children, and culture can be deemed as impure, sexually perverse, barbaric, and dirty. The usage of derogatory slurs like “Squaw” and the depiction of Native women in historical and contemporary popular culture as being promiscuous and savage has created a dangerous mindset in which our women continue to be victimized.
Together we can build a better, brighter, more robust future for all people of all races, religions, genders, cultures, creeds, abilities, and orientations. But it will require thoughtful discourse, inspired leadership, respect, and understanding.
I applaud the activism, courage, and leadership of Ms. Maracle and Ms. Williams, who have brought this issue to your attention. Our community needs many more activists of their caliber. I offer them my wholehearted support and thank them for their work.
Please do eliminate the slur “Squaw” from your community.
Nya:weh,
Chief Ava Hill
Native women have long suffered from inordinately high rates of sexual violence, including murder, rape, and domestic abuse. It stems from a colonial project that used sexual violence as a tool of genocide – since the days that Indian scalps and genitalia were dismembered so that pioneers could collect state sponsored bounties.
That colonial project later evolved into systems of residential schools that forcibly removed Native children from their families with the aim of assimilation and cultural termination. In practice, the children who attended those schools – both in the United States and Canada – were systematically abused by pedophiles that inhabited those boarding schools, for decades upon decades.
The Truth Commission on Genocide in Canada issued a 2001 report, stating that churches and the federal government were involved in the murder of over 50,000 Native children through this system. Offenses committed by church officials include murder by beating, poisoning, hanging, starvation, strangulation, and medical experimentation. When children spoke their Aboriginal language, they were beaten as punishment. Children were involuntarily sterilized. Their dead bodies still sit in those school yard graves. That intergenerational trauma has manifested itself in many forms: alcoholism, domestic abuse, self-hate, and even lateral violence.
As Native scholar and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Andrea Smith writes eloquently in her seminal text, Conquest: Sexual Violence and the American Indian Genocide, in no historical context has the word “Squaw” been used to express respect. Consider the text of this widely published 1885 Proctor & Gamble advertisement for Ivory Soap:
We were once factious, fierce and wild, in peaceful arts unreconciled.
Our blankets smeared with grease and stains, from buffalo meat and settlers’ veins.
Through summer’s dust and heat content, from moon to moon unwashed we went.
But IVORY SOAP came like a ray, of light across our darkened way.
And now we’re civil, kind and good, and keep the laws as people should.
We wear our linen, lawn and lace, as well as folks with paler face.
And now I take, wherever we go, this cake of IVORY SOAP to show, what civilized my squaw and me and made us clean and fair to see.
Even a 2013 Report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), has acknowledged the crisis:
- Police-recorded incidents of Aboriginal female homicides and unresolved missing Aboriginal females in this review alone total 1,181;
- This single review identified 225 unsolved cases of either missing or murdered Aboriginal females: 105 missing for more than 30 days as of November 4, 2013, whose cause of disappearance was categorized at the time as “unknown” or “foul play suspected” and 120 unsolved homicides;
- The total indicates that Aboriginal women are significantly over-represented among Canada’s murdered and missing women and that most homicides were committed by men.
Native women are certainly not alone. The United Nations has declared that violence against women is a health problem “of epidemic proportions.” In the context of a history that continues to play out, removing the slur squaw in reference to an island and a city park is the very least we can do.
Lead image: Chief Ava Hill speaking with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.