It’s early morning. As you walk around your classroom before your day starts, you overhear two boys talking about how “disgusting” they find it that women can breastfeed in public. You give them a cut-eye that you hope conveys your own disgust at their conversation. You haven’t had coffee. Nearby, Stephanie is being called either “Headphanie” or “Heifernie,” but before you have the chance to put a stop to it or debate Young M.A lyrics, you see one of your students walk in wearing an offensive t-shirt. Someone, perhaps from a classroom down the hall, uses the R-word. Somewhere, it seems in another galaxy altogether, a bottle flips.

As a teacher, I’m responsible for the creation and implementation of my classroom’s rules. What is unacceptable? What battles am I willing to fight? What will I pretend not to hear?

You’re probably not a teacher, yet this is something you do every day, perhaps not with students, but with friends, family, co-workers, and definitely with strangers on Twitter.

Of the battles I choose to fight with students, friends, and egg avatars, one is met not only with the familiar defensiveness, but with a unique confusion that borders on bemusement: the use of the word “savage.”

Replace ‘Crazy’ With The Adjective You Actually Mean

In my experience, here’s how most other conversations go when calling someone out on their choice of words:

P1: “Please refrain from using that word; it’s quite offensive to a lot of people.”

P2: <expected reaction> (“true” / “fuck you” / “I didn’t mean it like that” etc.)

Here’s how calling someone out on their use of “savage” usually goes:

P1: “Please refrain from using that word; it’s quite offensive to a lot of people.”

P2: “Oh? Why?”

It’s time we answered that question.

If you’re like me, you see “savage” used pretty much every day. On Instagram. On Twitter. On TV. I hear it from my students. I took a break from writing this article to watch the newest episode of the YouTube series Hot Ones only to have the interviewer start a question with, “What was the most savage…?” If you’ve not come across it, simply do a search for “savage” on Twitter (perhaps even restrict it to results from people you follow), and you will quickly understand the word’s ubiquity.

Even reputable media outlets have taken to casually using the term, as Vox did on Facebook when discussing the GOP’s handling of health care, or Bustle did in a story about a woman who took a selfie while her sister gave birth, or Complex did when it published the story “Fifth Harmony Makes Savage Statement About Camila Cabello at 2017 VMAs.”

“Savage” is usually used to describe someone (often a person of note) who does or says something particularly cold-blooded or ruthless (good replacements for the word, by the way) and shows no remorse for their actions. The term’s been used this way for quite a while.

But more importantly, before that, it was used to dehumanize Indigenous peoples and to advance and normalize their erasure from this land.

Thomas Jefferson wrote about the “merciless Indian savages” and thought it the duty of the government to “pursue them to extermination.” He was the first president to propose policies of forced assimilation and forced removal, which violently displaced Indigenous peoples from their lands across America. He called the West “the crowded wilderness,” a term that suggests he acknowledged the fact that the land was settled, but not that it belonged to someone else. The language Jefferson used was important, as language tends to be, since it allowed the government to spin a narrative that would influence violent expansion westward, which continues to affect Indigenous lives to this day.

Since Jefferson’s days, “savage” has been used repeatedly as a mechanism of oppression. Several U.S. Supreme Court cases have directly or indirectly referred to Indigenous peoples as savages in order to deny them equal rights. Les Couchi, a member of the Nipissing First Nation, recently pored through the Toronto Star’s archives and noted the abundance of “language that depicted the Indigenous community as savage, unruly, drunk and lazy” that “reinforced the racist attitudes in the social system.”

'Savage' was used to dehumanize Indigenous peoples and to advance and normalize their erasure from this land.
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“Savage” also played a key role in the perpetuation of boarding schools, which were constructed to eradicate the language, customs, beliefs, and bonds of Indigenous peoples. In 1879, Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister, commissioned a study of these boarding schools, arguing that:

“When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write his habits, and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write … [T]he Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.”

The repeated use of the word “savage” in this statement — and the dehumanized way with which Macdonald refers to the children — are very much related.

Residential/boarding schools were designed and used to destroy “the structures and practices that allow [a] group to continue as a group,” which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada* defines as cultural genocide. This narrative of the “savages” — often coupled with that of the “noble savage,” which fetishized the “freedom” of Indigenous peoples while simultaneously seeking to take it away — was used as fuel for this cultural genocide. The last federally run residential school closed in 1996. The effects are ongoing.

“Savage” is a colonialist term that has, in effect, been used for centuries to cast Indigenous peoples as less than human in order to make it easier to justify abuses against them. Today, when we use the word so flippantly — often in the context of “funny” social-media memes or blithe clickbait stories — we say we either don’t know or don’t care about the word’s historic relationship with ignorance and erasure, violence and hate.

More troublingly still, this flippancy seems rooted in a long-standing ignorance about what colonialism has done to these communities. Dr. Susan D. Dion has written and spoken about teachers adopting the position of the “perfect stranger,” which allows them to essentially say they don’t know enough about Indigenous peoples to challenge dangerous narratives about them to students. In my own experience teaching, I’ve found that many teachers teach as if they don’t know a single Indigenous person, so when it comes to teaching about these communities, they’re quite comfortable adopting a “perfect stranger” position.

‘Savage’ has been used for centuries to cast Indigenous people as less than human in order to make it easier to justify abuses against them.
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This position is not, of course, exclusive just to teachers. Many people, in many fields, act as “perfect strangers,” preferring willful ignorance to confronting an ugly history of abuse, and the privileges we hold as treaty people living on stolen land.

Every time “savage” is used without consideration for its unique connection to the oppression of Indigenous peoples, we cling more tightly to this ignorance, looking the other way on a history we would rather not face. But for equality to be achieved, we must face it.

So the next time you hear or see someone casually use the word “savage,” take the chance to deny them the position of “perfect stranger.” Ask them to think about how “savage” has been employed to hurt Indigenous peoples for centuries. Ask them to think about the impacts of colonialist brutality.

Then ask them to simply consider using a different word instead.

by Taté Walker

We’ve told you to stay away from headdresses and not get the dreamcatcher tattoo. We’ve asked you to burn the Indian princess Halloween costumes and stop referring to everything as your spirit animal.

Trust me: Your attempt at irony has failed.

Still, even when it clicks with things like mascots, y’all keep finding new ways to twist the knife. The line between casual and overt racism is getting thinner and thinner, folks.

As I write this, there are a few such anti-Native gems circulating across pop culture, from movies, to politics, to fashion.

“Savage” slang, fashion’s legal thievery of the tribal name “Navajo,” and politicians and superheroes going “off the reservation” are some of the most despicably buzz-worthy items happening now.

Good-intentioned people keep coming up with new ways to prove racism isn’t going anywhere soon.
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Good-intentioned people keep coming up with new ways to prove racism isn’t going anywhere soon, especially when they dig defensive trenches full of dismissive and self-centering rhetoric like, “But I’m honoring you!” or “Stop limiting my creativity!” and “It’s just a movie — stop being so sensitive!”

Here, we’ll discuss why these items (and excuses for them) are problematic and where you can go for better Native representation.

1. ‘Savage’ Slang

I see this word being used a lot on places like Twitter to describe when someone does something badass or gutsy or without remorse, i.e. “Damn @KimKardashian did @taylorswift13dirty. #savage” (actual tweet referencing Kanye/Kim/Taylor beef).

I remember people using it back in high school (late nineties) for the same reason. Its recent resurgence can be traced back to the British, which is interesting considering their ancestors used the term in colonist propaganda to describe Indigenous people the world over.

Savage, meaning wild and untamed, was a term to dehumanize; it excused everything from land occupation and Native genocide to slavery.
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Savage, meaning wild and untamed, was a term to dehumanize; it excused everything from land occupation and Native genocide to slavery.

While I despise Disney’s Pocahontas on several levels, the scene in the film where the bad guys sing “Savages” is pretty accurate in terms of how the British felt about Native Americans.

More to the point, the term spreads the systemic racism Native Americans experience here in the United States. The founding fathers called us “merciless Indian savages” in the Declaration of Independence, a document paraded out every July while Natives continue to flail at the bottom of every socioeconomic ranking imaginable.

If you’re operating under the impression the term no longer applies to people, think again: A quick glance at “savage” on Thesaurus.com shows “aboriginal” and “native” as relevant synonyms.

The founding fathers called us ‘merciless Indian savages’ in the Declaration of Independence.
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It’s not a term welcome among Indigenous communities. Stop using it.

2. Tribal Names as Fashion Trend

In a decision that left many of us who follow cultural appropriation issues angry and confused, New Mexico Federal Judge Bruce Black ruled in July to accept Urban Outfitters’ fair use defense in an ongoing suit filed against them by the Navajo Nation in 2012.

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According to The Fashion Law, Urban Outfitters claims the term “Navajo” has “acquired a descriptive meaning within the fashion and accessory market… the fashion industry has adopted ‘Navajo’ to describe a type of style or print.”

Before I get into how gut-wrenchingly awful this perspective is (I mean, can we talk about reducing a whole tribe of people to a style or print?!?), some backstory.

A few years ago, Urban Outfitters came under fire primarily for featuring a set of tribal print (cringe) underwear they called — wait for it — “Navajo Hipster Panty.”
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It’s important to note many Navajo people refer to themselves and their language as Diné; some prefer Diné over Navajo, and some use both terms.

This is common in tribal communities. We have “legal” names made official by the U.S. government and these names were often given to us by outsiders. When in doubt, ask for individual preference.

For better or worse, Navajo is the official, legally recognized name for which the tribe has many live trademarks.

A few years ago, Urban Outfitters came under fire primarily for featuring a set of tribal print (cringe) underwear they called — wait for it — “Navajo Hipster Panty.” At the time (2011-ish), the company sold more than 20 items with “Navajo” in the name.

After the retailer ignored a cease and desist order, the Navajo Nation filed suit.

This isn’t the first (or last) time we’ve seen tribally-specific cultural appropriation used by mega brands.
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The largest federally recognized tribe in both land and citizenry alleged the use of the word “Navajo” on products like panties and flasks violated trademark laws and the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, which says you have to be a member of a federally or state recognized tribe or certified as a Native artist by a tribe in order to sell items marketed as Native-made, or tribally-specific products.

This isn’t the first (or last) time we’ve seen tribally-specific cultural appropriation used by mega brands — the automobile industry loves driving over us, i.e. Pontiac, Jeep Cherokee, or Dodge Dakota.

It’s also not the first time tribes have taken these companies to task: The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina recently dropped a suit it had filed earlier this year against Anheuser-Busch for using its tribal trademark in advertising its beer products. The company took the ad down and agreed to make “a substantial donation” to a tribal nonprofit.

The Navajo case is different. A decision like this has the potential to open the door for companies to plaster their products with whatever tribal-themed trend comes their way.

Our culture and spiritualities and languages are not a trend. We’re not panties, flasks, t-shirts, cars … The fact that we even have to spell this out highlights the systemic oppression we face.

Our culture and spiritualities and languages are not a trend. We’re not panties, flasks, t-shirts, cars.
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A government whose policies brought our lands, bodies, and cultures to the brink of extinction via colonialism, genocide, and assimilation now uses its judicial system to not only arrest, kill, or imprison us at rates well above any other racial demographic, but to also decide that not even our names and images are our own.

Because capitalism.

3. Going ‘Off the Reservation’

Both Hillary Clinton and Ironman’s Tony Stark were recently heard using this phrase against their rivals.

Clinton said she has worked with men who go off the reservation in behavior/speech and can therefore handle a political challenger like Donald Trump; and Stark said Steve Roger’s Captain America had gone off the reservation in rescuing his one-time-bestie-turned-brainwashed-villain Bucky Barnes aka the Winter Soldier.

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In most cases, people use “off the reservation” to refer to someone deviating from the expected or authorized. This is similar to using the phrase “gone Native” to describe a defector sympathetic to uncolonized/enemy ways.

In all cases, regardless of intent, it’s an oppressive throwback to anti-Native sentiments of yore.

Too many people called out for using it, including Clinton, claim ignorance to the phrase’s racist origins. Well, here you go.

In most cases, people use ‘off the reservation’ to refer to someone deviating from the expected or authorized.
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From the nation’s founding in 1776 through the late 1800s, the US government treatied, swindled, and stole some 1.5 billion acres of land from tribes. During this time, the government forced tribes onto reservations and promised government assistance for food, housing, protection, education, healthcare and more (not welfare but a bill of sale; assistance in exchange for land).

Reservations, as well as the promised assistance, were assimilation tactics meant to subjugate Natives and turn them into dependent white people. No really. These reservations were monitored by the US federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Natives needed federal permission to leave the reservation. For those tribes removed from their traditional homelands and sacred sites, reservations were like prisons, and many tribes, like my Lakota people from the Great Plains, resisted, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

Essentially, the phrase ‘off the reservation’ was U.S. government code for ‘escaped captive.’
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Essentially, the phrase “off the reservation” was U.S. government code for “escaped captive.”

In this 2014 story from NPR, the phrase’s origins and usage are described, including:

Many of the news articles that used the term in a literal sense in the past were also expressing undisguised contempt and hatred, or, at best, condescension for Native Americans — “shiftless, untameable … a rampant and intractable enemy to civilization” (New York Times, Oct. 27, 1886).

Besides its problematic origins, there are other issues with the phrase.

“Off the reservation” has a negative connotation. And yet today, though many face extreme socioeconomic disparities, reservations are filled with positivity, which outsiders can fail to recognize due to mainstream media’s poverty porn fixation. Interestingly, urban Natives like me will often say we’re “going back to the rez” to reconnect with families, lands, and spiritualities, especially during this time of year.

Not every tribe has a reservation. There are 567 federally recognized tribes in the U.S.; hundreds more tribes are not federally recognized.
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The phrase also furthers the stereotype that all Natives live on reservations and all tribes have reservations. Both assumptions are harmful in that they erase many Native people’s lived experiences in urban areas and devalue “unrecognized” tribal people.

Not every tribe has a reservation. There are 567 federally recognized tribes in the U.S.; hundreds more tribes are not federally recognized. Just 326 reservations exist.

Hearing someone — especially popular public figures — use “off the reservation” is an unwelcome reminder of how little we and our histories and our contemporary selves matter.

The message in all these examples is Native Americans aren’t living, contemporary people. To the average American, Natives look a certain way, act a certain way, and are neat props for trendy vernacular, fashion and politics.

Acknowledging our humanity doesn’t have to cramp your style.

Stop shopping at stores like Urban Outfitters that appropriate Native cultures and designs. Side-eye that generic, tribal print t-shirt, then head over to Native-owned enterprises like Beyond Buckskin, NDNcraft, and Eighth Generation, and buy something that truly represents that tribal spirit you love to honor so much.

Invest in a thesaurus. If you’re called out for ignorantly using a phrase like “savage” or “off the reservation,” listen, learn, remove from vocabulary, and continue on with human decency.

Uplift Native voices and demand better from your heroes, be they politicians or ironmen. These tips will help ensure your trends don’t tread on real people.

This story originally appeared on Everyday Feminism. Republished here with permission.

We Can’t Talk About Standing Rock Without Talking About Cultural Appropriation

The Standing Rock fight isn’t just about the Dakota Access Pipeline. It’s also about cultural theft, colonialism, and white supremacy.

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Despite the bitter cold, thousands of First Nations people, environmentalists and others gathered in D.C. on Friday, March 10, to fight for native sovereignty, and protect the rights of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe who own the land the Dakota Access Pipeline would cut across. The #NativeNationsRise march and rally come roughly a month after the Standing Rock camp in North Dakota was forcibly removed, and they prove that although the protest stronghold is not longer there, the resistance is far from over. Four days after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, he signed executive orders that nullified Obama’s temporary construction halt last fall. Now, indigenous Water Protectors and their accomplices have brought the fight to him.

The environmental concerns regarding the pipeline are obvious: Part of the Dakota Access Pipeline would be built beneath the Missouri River reservoir, threatening the drinking water supply of the entire Standing Rock Indian Reservation. In the last year alone, there have been reports of multiple oil leaks from pipelines located in cities across the country. One leak, spilling more than 176,000 gallons of crude oil into a hillside and a river tributary, happened a mere 150 miles away from the Standing Rock protests. But taking an environmentalist approach to the conflict is a cop-out, and considering the urgency of this moment, we cannot afford to settle for a surface-level analysis of the powers at play. The water protectors and allied protesters at Standing Rock aren’t just fighting against the DAPL. They’re fighting against white supremacy, resisting its centuries-old colonialist and capitalist impulses.

The water protectors and allied protesters at Standing Rock aren’t just fighting against the DAPL. They’re fighting against white supremacy.

At the core of the injustice is the same white supremacist nationalist arrogance that prompted early American colonialists to rationalize the displacement and genocide of millions of indigenous people. To be clear, as Kelly Hayes perfectly laid out in an essay re-printed by Truth-Out.org, “This moment is, first and foremost, about Native liberation, Native self-determination and Native survival.”

In order to develop stronger, more effective tactics to combat state-sanctioned white supremacist violence, we have to be willing to deconstruct the sources of its power, beginning with even the seemingly mundane. In the case of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and indigenous liberation more broadly, the question I wrestle with is this: How does cultural appropriation empower white supremacy?

It may seem off-topic, or even superfluous, to discuss cultural appropriation in this politically violent moment. I wince to even mention it; the media space has definitely been saturated with the topic in the past. But cultural appropriation — which I prefer to call cultural theft — is the exact kind of drawn-out cultural violence that makes room for the literal violence we’ve witnessed against the indigenous people at Standing Rock.

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Using the more accurate word “theft” helps to highlight the way that cultural colonialism enables physical harm. In the mainstream American imagination, the term “appropriation” has been dulled, often placed alongside less threatening words like “borrowing” or “adopting” or “appreciating.” Cultural theft, however, is a more active term. More importantly, it also implies that the act involves a renegotiation of power, visibility, and more, which is why cultural theft is so harmful to marginalized communities of color in the first place.

If we don’t understand cultural theft as a derivative of white supremacy, then calling out some carefree, trendy lifestyle brand for selling dreamcatchers and Native-inspired accessories on its website quickly becomes an oversimplified argument about cultural ownership. Without a proper analysis, challenging a “bohemian” white girl for wearing a misappropriated native headdress at a music festival will always turn into a reductive, patronizing playground back-and-forth about sharing. But cultural theft is an extension of white supremacist power specifically, not just power in general. It is, at a base level, a white supremacist project.

Cultural theft is an extension of white supremacist power specifically, not just power in general.

Over the last few years, the constant gaslighting by opponents has somehow managed to turn the mainstream narrative about “cultural appropriation” into its own isolated battleground. For those invested in maintaining the status quo, having drawn-out arguments about whether or not something counts as cultural theft is much less threatening than talking about how their team mascot or Halloween costume relates to the genocide of an entire population. People who deliberately debate the significance of cultural theft effectively minimize the issue, forcing the rest of us to expend a ridiculous amount of time and energy on each instance.

Understandably, the whole thing can be emotionally and mentally draining, but the debate about cultural theft takes up more space than it should. In reality, white supremacy is the battleground; cultural theft is the fallout. It’s one very visible and particularly painful symptom of a power imbalance that is both systematic and directional. The minute a people’s attributes are reduced to fodder, substance, material to be culled and used at the whim of a dominant group, power shifts. When we normalize the cultural theft of indigenous traditions, decorations, images, histories, language — the very details that facilitate identity — indigenous people are reinforced as the playthings of white supremacy.

For the Lakota Water Protectors at the Oceti Sakowin resistance camp at Standing Rock, the threat of theft was real and imminent, just as it had been countless other times before across history. After holding the camp for more than 9 months, the Governor of North Dakota and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued an evacuation order, stating that the camp would be forcible removed, and any remaining protesters arrested. But the land that the resistance camps stood on belongs to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, according to the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868. It is literally, legally, their property — making the evacuation order in violation of the treaty rights of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation.

When we normalize the cultural theft of indigenous traditions, decorations, images, histories, and language , indigenous people are reinforced as the playthings of white supremacy.

The Dakota Access Pipeline, whose construction has continued steadily since Donald Trump’s January order, will travel beneath Lake Oahe, putting the entire Tribe’s water supply at risk. And according to a U.S. Internal Department memo written by Hilary C. Tompkins, the Interior Department’s top lawyer, the pipeline’s route also infringes on the Sioux Tribe’s federally protected hunting and fishing rights. “The Corps’ reasons for rejecting the Bismarck route also largely apply to concerns regarding tribal treaty rights associated with the Lake Oahe route. As such, if the Bismarck route is impermissible, the Lake Oahe route should be equally impermissible,” Tomkins writes.

The actual land that the pipeline would cut across belonged to the Sioux Tribe as of the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty, but was supposedly ceded in the 1868 Treaty. The legitimacy of that Treaty, though, should be called into question, considering several Sioux chiefs didn’t sign the document, and at least one chief who did sign claimed he was misled, according to the Huffington Post. Since the United States has a long history of misleading, manipulating, and deceiving indigenous leadership into signing Treaties and documents, this should come to no surprise.

We’re witnessing the contemporary iteration of American colonialism — now armed with rubber bullets and tear gas, but perpetuating the same anti-indigenous aggression as before. The forced removal and displacement of indigenous peoples is both a historical and contemporary violence. The violation of the Treaty rights of indigenous people is an occurrence of both the past and the present. The restriction of resources and the violent theft of land first belonging to the First Nations people is a horror that has continued for centuries. If cultural theft is a child, then domestic colonization — this country’s history of indigenous erasure and genocide — is its proud mother.

If cultural theft is a child, then domestic colonization — this country’s history of indigenous erasure and genocide — is its proud mother.

White supremacy is not a simple thing. Its multiple branches and varied faces all serve to bolster its power, strengthen its reach, and ensure its survival. Cultural theft is a deceptively normalized, sinister part of that. If we develop the narrative that cultural theft is a symptom of white supremacy, then perhaps a sense of urgency will alter the mainstream conversation around “cultural appropriation,” revealing just how far-reaching and many-sided white supremacy actually is. And of course, the better we can understand white supremacy — its shape, its habits, its strategies and derivatives — the more effectively we can challenge it and threaten its stability.

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