Navajo Nation leaders call Trump out for his Pocahontas comment
President Donald Trump invoking Pocahontas as a derogatory term during an event honoring Navajo Code Talkers cuts deep for many Native Americans.
The White House denied the president was using the name as a racial slur, but several Navajo Nation leaders and residents said on Tuesday that Trump has once again managed to make the name offensive.
Navajo Nation council delegate Amber Kanazbah Crotty called Trump’s remark “problematic” and said his words diminish the experience of Pocahontas and all Native Americans.
Crotty said in a statement that Trump’s “careless” comment is the “latest example of systemic, deep-seated ignorance of Native Americans and our intrinsic right to exist and practice our ways of life.”
Trump has used the name as a moniker for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., since last year’s presidential campaign.
On Monday, the president left many dumbfounded as he used the term to take a jab at Warren while honoring Navajo war veterans whose work helped win World War II.
“You were here long before any of us were here,” Trump said. “Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas.”
The derisive dig has deeper connotations for Crotty and others who said Pocahontas’ life should be honored and studied, not used as a joke.
“The intentional disregard of the historical trauma of Pocahontas as a sexual assault survivor directly resulting from colonization is disturbing,” she said.
Pocahontas, born around 1596, was the daughter of a Native American chief from what is now Virginia.
While her life story has been romanticized in the writings of European settlers and in movies and books, Pocahontas was an integral intermediary between Native Americans and colonists in Jamestown who was also kidnapped and raped while in captivity, according to historians.