After Pocahontas: Strength in diversity

“They call her Pocahontas,” said President Donald Trump, speaking from the Oval Office during a meeting Monday with elderly Navajo Code Talkers who had served in the Pacific during World War II.

Actually, no one but Trump calls Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren by the name of Pocahontas. Most people have better manners. Trump’s long-standing feud with Warren had nothing to do with the Code Talkers, of course, and the use of “Pocahontas” is a racial slur. (Pocahontas was a young Indian woman of the Pamunkey Indian tribe who, according to legend, saved settler John Smith. She is not a generic name for any Indian woman ever.)

Although Trump has been told that using the term is derogatory, such quibbles never bother this president. Calling Warren — who has claimed Cherokee ancestry but cannot prove it definitively — Pocahontas is just part of his shtick. Doing so while meeting with Code Talkers to discuss a national Navajo Code Talkers Museum showed once again that Trump should never be allowed to go off script.

Sadly, the slur and subsequent noise drowned the reason the Code Talkers were in the White House. In most coverage of the event, the heroes were not even identified — their names are Peter MacDonald, Fleming Begaye and Thomas Begay. Instead of their service being celebrated, the focus turned to the president and his rudeness. Adding to the strangeness of the meeting, the Code Talkers spoke before a portrait of Andrew Jackson, one of the most anti-Indian presidents in history.

The president told the Code Talkers he would support such a museum, but that discussion was drowned out by reaction to his rudeness. Lost, too, is the historic context that along with Navajo tribal members, men from other tribes were recruited and used their Native languages to build a complex code to confuse the enemy, both in World Wars I and II.

In a turnabout for Trump, judging from the transcripts, MacDonald managed to steal the spotlight — no wonder, he’s a former chairman of the Navajo Nation and was used to giving speeches back in the day.

MacDonald introduced himself and the other Code Talkers and described their role in World War II, saying, “in the early part of World War II, the enemy was breaking every military code that was being used in the Pacific. This created a huge problem for strategizing against the enemy. Eventually, a suggestion was made in early 1942 — February ’42, essentially — to use Navajo language as a code.”

That worked so well that more Navajo men were recruited to join the U.S. Marines Corps, serving with honor in the Pacific, proving indispensable to eventual victory. Here’s how MacDonald described their efforts: “In every battle — from the frontline, beach command post, command ship, all other ships — Code Talkers were used. On the island of Iwo Jima, Maj. [Howard] Connor said, the first 48 hours of battle, more than 800 messages were sent by the 5th Marine Division. Maj. Connor also said: ‘Without the Navajo, Marines would never have taken the island of Iwo Jima.’

“So thank you very much. The 13 of us, we still have one mission — that mission is to build a national Navajo Code Talker Museum. We want to preserve this unique World War II history for our children, grandchildren, your children, your grandchildren to go through that museum.”

Why? MacDonald concluded like this: “Because what we did truly represents who we are as Americans. America, we know, is composed of diverse communities. We have different languages, different skills, different talents and different religions. But when our way of life is threatened, like the freedom and liberty that we all cherish, we come together as one. And when we come together as one, we are invincible. We cannot be defeated. That’s why we need this national Navajo Code Talker Museum — so that our children, the future generation, can go through that museum and learn why America is so strong.”

Instead of an insult from Trump, how wonderful if the nation had heard MacDonald’s message instead. America is diverse. Diversity is a strength. Together, we are invincible. Together, we cannot be defeated. Trump, seemingly bemused that someone else had something to say, told MacDonald that he had stolen the president’s speech. “That was so incredible, and now I don’t have to make my speech. I had the most beautiful speech written out. I was so proud of it. Look. And I thought you would leave out Iwo Jima, but you got that in the end, too.”

He meandered along, thanking the Code Talkers for their service, calling them “special, special people,” before saying, “You were here long before any of us were here, although we have a representative in Congress who, they say, was here a long time ago. They call her ‘Pocahontas.’ ”

With that, Trump drowned the message. Very few reporters covering the incident even bothered to name the Code Talkers attending the meeting. They became the side show rather than the main event. They became the Code Talkers in the room, rather than MacDonald, Begaye and Begay, representing the other 10 surviving Navajo Code Talkers and hundreds from other tribes. They became irrelevant, except as a foil to this president. Like the rest of the country, existing in Trump’s shadow, seldom to see the light of day.