Trump taking heat
Families of Navajo Code Talkers upset president using Pocahontas as a racial slur
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Families of Navajo war veterans who were honoured at the White House say they were dumbfounded that U.S. President Donald Trump used the event to take a political jab at a Massachusetts senator, demeaning their work with an unbreakable code that helped win the Second World War.
Trump turned to a nickname he often deployed for Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren during the 2016 presidential campaign: Pocahontas. He then told the three Navajo Code Talkers on stage Monday that he had affection for them that he doesn’t have for Warren.
“It was uncalled for,” said Marty Thompson, whose great-uncle was a Navajo Code Talker. “He can say what he wants when he’s out doing his presidential business among his people, but when it comes to honouring veterans or any kind of people, he needs to grow up and quit saying things like that.”
Pocahontas is a historical figure who bridged her own Pamunkey Tribe in present-day Virginia with the British in the 1600s. But the National Congress of American Indians says Trump wrongly has flipped the name into a derogatory term, and the comment drew swift criticism from American Indians and politicians.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, asked about criticism of Trump’s remarks, said a racial slur “was certainly not the president’s intent.”
Trump made the comment as he stood near a portrait of president Andrew Jackson, which he hung in the Oval Office in January. Trump admires Jackson’s populism. But Jackson is an unpopular figure in Indian Country because he oversaw the forced removal of American Indians from their southern homelands.
The Navajo Nation suggested Trump’s remark was an example of “cultural insensitivity,” and they resolved to stay out of the “ongoing feud between the senator and President Trump.”
“All tribal nations still battle insensitive references to our people. The prejudice that Native American people face is an unfortunate historical legacy,” Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye said in a statement.
Still, Begaye and relatives of Navajo Code Talkers said they’re honoured the story of the men recruited from the vast Southwest reservation to become marines could be told on a national stage. Peter MacDonald, a former Navajo chairman and trained Code Talker, who stood beside Trump, also took the opportunity to ask for support for a Navajo Code Talker museum. Trump obliged.
He didn’t visibly react to Trump’s “Pocahontas” comment and later told the president he was certain he would succeed, crediting military generals.
Michael Nez, whose father helped develop the code based on the Navajo language, said his father would have been upset to hear Trump’s Pocahontas comment. But, as other Code Talker relatives said, his father was taught to respect the president as the commander in chief.
“It’s too bad he does put his foot in his mouth,” Nez said. “Why he does it? I don’t know.”
Helena Begaii said her 94-yearold Navajo Code Talker father, Samuel T. Holiday, declined an invitation to the White House on Monday. She said he would have a better feel for what happened once he reads the newspaper.
“I feel really sad that they didn’t get treated with respect,” she said.
The president has long feuded with Warren, who levelled attacks on Trump during the presidential campaign. Trump seized on questions about Warren’s heritage. She claims to have Native ancestry.