Arizona Mountain Renamed for Fallen Native American Servicewoman (Feminazis: it's done deal)

Feminist Daily News Wire ^ | April 18, 2003

[Timesink]

Arizona Mountain Renamed for Fallen Native American Servicewoman

Feminist Daily News Wire
April 18, 2003

In the hopes of righting a historical wrong while honoring the first American servicewoman killed in Iraq, Squaw Peak in Arizona-- named for the derogatory term for Native American woman-- will now be called Piestewa Peak, after Private Lori Piestewa.

Piestewa, a member of the Hopi Tribe from Arizona, also was the first Native American servicewoman ever to be killed in the line of duty, according to the Associated Press. "I'm wondering if during her short life Army Pfc. Lori Piestewa was ever referred to as a squaw." It will never happen now. She has earned that much. Not just for herself, but for every woman like her," wrote Arizona Republic columnist E.J. Montini.

Despite charges of political posturing by Republicans, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano pushed for the mountain name change and encouraged the State Board on Geographic and Historic Names to waive its five-year waiting period. In a 5-1 vote yesterday, the board also recommended that Squaw Peak Freeway be renamed Lori Piestewa Freeway-- the State Board of Transportation could approve that change by the end of May.

Piestewa, 23, was a single mother raising a 4-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl. She was among the members of the Army?s 507th Maintenance Company, attacked March 23 when it made a wrong turn near Nasiriyah. Piestewa?s remains were recovered along with the bodies of seven other members of the 507th Company when Pfc. Jessica Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi hospital. Lynch and Piestewa were good friends and roommates, according to the AP.

Piestewa was one of 12,800 Native Americans and 56 Hopis serving in the US military-- it is unknown how many of those are women. Information on female Native American servicewomen is scarce, Brenda Finnicum, a retired career Army nurse and member of the Lumbee tribe who has spent the past five years trying to gather data on Native American women veterans, told the AP. "The men bring their military home with them and the women don't," Finnicum said. "Indian women are what I call the invisible warrior. You don't see them."

[Cultural Jihad]

Main Entry: Sho·shone
Pronunciation: sh&-'shOn, -'shO-nE; 'shO-"shOn
Variant(s): or Sho·sho·ni /sh&-'shO-nE/
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural Shoshones or Shoshoni also Shoshone or Shoshonis
Date: 1805
1 : a member of a group of American Indian peoples orig. ranging through California, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming
2 : the Uto-Aztecan language of the Shoshones

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Did Peistawa even live in Arizona, let alone in the Phoenix area? Are they that thin for exemplary native American examples in the Phoenix region that they had to name it after a "native" american who was not even native to the area?

She was from Tuba City, Arizona.

(Sounds like you have some serious issues going on there.)

[glory]

After some research, it's as I thought. The Hopi tribe are not even dominant in the Phoenix area--they are a tribe more related to the Grand Canyon area(220 miles north). The Mohave-Apache and Pima Maricopa are native to the Phoenix area.

[pchuck]

Sho·shone doesn't equal Shoe-shine.

[glory]

I agree with you, what squaw means to most of the country now is not the same as what the "c" words STILL means and comparing the two is not relevant because of it. I have heard word that most Indian tribes did not even know it's offensive origins either until the liberals started harping on it--interesting eh?

[glory]

My point exactly! An honor for Peistawa would have been more appropriate on her home turf and the mountains there are more impressive to boot! If I were a Mohave-Apache or Pima Maricopa Indian, I'd be ticked that one of my own was not honored on my native ground instead of a member of a northern tribe. And for those who don't know--the tribes are independent nations, if you think they are all one big native american lump like the lefties, you are sadly mistaken.

[glory]

http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/squaw.html

Good interesting link--important part liberals may have skipped over:

During the contact period, northeastern American Indian people taught the colonists the word "squaw," and whites incorporated it into their speech. English observers described women's medicinal plants such as "squaw vine" and "squaw root," among many others. There are rumors about the word's usage as an insult by French fur traders among western tribes who were not Algonkian speakers. But the insult was in the usage, not in the original word.

[pchuck]

People have mentioned a regulation. Does anyone know the exact citation to it? I've looked in the Code of Federal Regualtions and I can't find it.

[reg45]

It would simpler be to honor the ubiquitous complaining femininists by renaming Squaw Peak as Squawk Peak.

[okie01]

But the insult was in the usage, not in the original word.

Please, let's not confuse the liberal feminists with an assertion of fact.

It's soooooooooo judgmental...

[reg45]

so "concerned" about Piewesta that she couldn't even pronounce her name properly.

Don't feel bad! Neither can anyone else.

[MARTIAL MONK]

You know I can't think of a single landmark named for Ira. I recall running across some kind of monument down on the Tohono O'odam but it was not maintained and was surrounded by trash. There are a number of plaques in the old hotels honoring him but little else.

I guess it's just the eddies of time but I doubt that 10% of Arizonans could tell you who Ira was. It's just like the airport screeners who didn't know who Joe Foss was.

I did meet a cancerous old Apache who had gone up Suribachi at the same time as Ira Hayes. His fate was not much better than Ira's.

What an opportunity to honor a true American hero. An ordinary guy who got thrown into a World War. An image for the ages.

[glory]

I hear you--what I took away from this is squaw in and of itself is by no means offensive and using it to name a mountain would be using the term in an appropriate and honorable manner. I can see parallels to other words that can be used demeaning in tone, but are not by themselves offensive ie "boy", "dear", "honey", "loose", etc.

How did NA communities come to let the liberals dictate their own language and traditions? And how did Hopis and other southwestern tribes even get involved in the offensiveness of this term to begin with? It's a term that belongs to the language of the northeastern US tribes, not the southwestern. It would seem a better way to approach *A* name change would be perhaps it's incorrect usage in the deserts of the southwest when it is a term that belongs to a tribe in the northeast, much like naming a hill after Piestawa would be more appropriate in the Mogollon Rim. My guess though is much like Native Americans used regular words to describe land areas, this is the reason why Squaw peak was named such. It was given a word from AN Indian tribe in the same vein that NA tribes themselves would denote such a name to a mountain or stream. My guess is it was meant to honor the traditions of NA's by naming things as they would and in their terms.

Another interesting tidbit I found on various words:

--many Native American words came to English through the Jamestown and Massachusetts Bay colonies, the first areas to witness extensive Indian-English contact: squash from 'asquatasquash = eaten raw, succotash = grain of corn' Other Algonquin words include: skunk, chipmunk, racoon, moose, opossum, persimmon, sassafras, hickory, wampum, toboggan, wigwam, tomahawk, papoose, squaw, powwow (holy man), caucus. Also Yankee from the Algonquin pronunciation of English

[Under the Radar]

Wardaddy, the issue isn't that the word is archaic and slightly derogatory. The issue is that the PC police have made it so, and are now using the fact that they made the word derogatory in the first place grounds to change landmarks. It is maddening.

[glory]

My apologies for offending freepers the Algonquin word MOOSE needs bolding;-)I apologize for any incorrect usage of the word MOOSE --please, don't send him to bite me;-)(joking mode off)

[SamAdams76]

Are you sure that is Shoe-shine? Come on, for a post that is so confused about what is and what isn't offensive (a legitimate confusion) you undercut some of your credibility by refering to her tribe as shoe-shine.

I'm pretty sure Sacagawea belong to the Shoeshine tribe. That was mentioned enough during the time they rolled out that golden dollar that she is pictured on. Hey, I don't make up the names. And so what? I don't see what is offensive about it. Are you just cruising to make trouble? And how come you feel compelled to throw a hyphen in there. So far as I know, the name of that tribe is not hyphenated and it has nothing to do with the modern meaning of the word. The Indians wore leather moccasins anyway, not shoes. And I don't think they were much concerned about keeping them shined. Most likely, "shoeshine" in that day meant something else entirely back in those days.

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

There's an awful lot of "Ronald Reagan This" and "Ronald Reagan That" and he's not even dead yet. I don't see what the problem is.

Mmm buildings and highways, not mountains and rivers.

[hope]

It's for real. In fact our newly clintonisque govenor forced one of the board memebers to either resign or break the current law that a person needs to be deceased 5 years before you can name a landmark after them.

[hope]

It was the Indian community that got her elected by the skin of her teeth....

[wardaddy]

Shoshone....."show-shown-ee"