I was reading the wall street journal and why this story made it in there I don't know. However it did and I can't belive how far pc correctness has come. Spare me the comments about what the indians have been through blah blah blah we all know and this is not about that. In Stockton, Maine a dead end road has been arguing over it's name of "squaw". At some point in the 90's suddenly the name for indian women which had been the english way of saying it from some Indian Nation's language. However one Indian man in 1992 said on Oprah (if it's on Oprah it's as if Jesus, Buddha, or Allah had come down from heaven and said it directly!) that it actually ment vagina. Ironic coming from puritans (the early american settlers who had fled europe for religious reasons) would not have called someone a 'vagina' in any way. THe fact of misunderstanding of as I said, some native American language.This really seems like political correctness gone crazy! I included the link to the WSJ for the story and you can read the whole thing included the name changes and other things.

the correct term is Native American you fool; Indians are a people from the asian subcontinent.

The guy on Oprah (so you believe what you see on that as well as Fox News?) was talking ****. Squaw is an Algonquian word and means woman. As a borrowed word in English, it means a woman of any indigenous tribe of North America!

Why the heck do I always open your journals?!? Why? Waste of time...

Some but not all Native American condemnation of "squaw" results from claims that it comes from a word for the vagina. (The Algonquian term for "female (reproductive) organs" does contain the feminine "-skwa" morpheme, however.)[citation needed]

An early comment in which "squaw" appears to have a sexual meaning is from the Canadian writer Pauline Johnson (1892), whose father was a Mohawk chief. She wrote about the title character in An Algonquin Maiden by G. Mercer Adam and A. Ethelwyn Wetherald:

Poor little Wanda! not only is she non-descript and ill-starred, but as usual the authors take away her love, her life, and last and most terrible of all, reputation; for they permit a crowd of men-friends of the hero to call her a "squaw" and neither hero nor authors deny that she is a squaw. It is almost too sad when so much prejudice exists against the Indians, that any one should write up an Indian heroine with such glaring accusations against her virtue, and no contradictory statements from either writer, hero or circumstance.

Explicit statements that "squaw" came from a word meaning "female genitals" gained currency in the 1970s. Perhaps the first example was in Sanders and Peek (1973):

That curious concept of 'squaw', the enslaved, demeaned, voiceless childbearer, existed and exists only in the mind of the non-Native American and is probably a French corruption of the Iroquois word otsiskwa [also spelled ojiskwa] meaning 'female sexual parts', a word almost clinical both denotatively and connotatively. The corruption suggests nothing about the Native American's attitude toward women; it does indicate the wasichu's [white man's[3]] view of Native American women in particular if not all women in general.

The controversy increased when Oprah Winfrey invited the Native American activist Suzan Harjo onto her show in 1992. Harjo said on the show that "squaw is an Algonquin Indian word meaning vagina". As a result of these claims, some Native people have taken to spelling the word sq***, or calling it the "s-word" (Bright n.d.). This etymology has been widely adopted as the rationale for removing the word from maps, road signs, history books, and other public uses (Adams 2000).

However, according to Ives Goddard, the curator and senior linguist in the anthropology department of the Smithsonian Institution, this statement is not true (Bright n. d.; Goddard 1997). The word was borrowed as early as 1621 from the Massachusett word squa (Cutler 1994; Goddard 1996, 1997), one of many variants of the Proto-Algonquian *eθkwe·wa[4] (Goddard 1997); in those languages it meant simply "young woman". Although Algonquian linguists and historians (e.g. Goddard 1997, Bruchac 1999) have rejected Harjo's proposed etymology, the incorrect definition has been repeated by several journalists (e.g. Oprah Winfrey).

so...not so much political correctness gone mad, more just American stupidity in action.

Posted by toma [ 20 June 2009 | 1:38AM ] Why the heck do I always open your journals?!? Why? Waste of time...

It's a form of self harm i think.....altho FAR more painfull than cutting one's own wrists !

someone give me a razor and an ounce of smack...

Obviously the ***** doesn't know sh*t about Squaws. amerikan injuns, not t*welheads. The less inteeijunts, the more posts in a row without feedback. Heh heh.

I remember a comment from one of my flight instructors about the shape of a particular lake (as seen from the air) and how the Indians referred to it as the worlds womb entrance, or c*nt, as a ***** would call it. The point of the conversation being how they didn't have air travel back then and how interesting it was that they identified it as that shape from the ground.

Since I was not interested in being stupid, I didn't tell HIM he was being insensitive about some stupid point, I just said that I agreed. If that information was correct, that was indeed a very interesting point about pre-air travel humans.

???????

Em, German; the lovely phrase 'towelheads' usually refers to Arabs; I was referring to Indians, from India as in on Indian subcontinent.

You off the meds?

I'm a ***** is a correct term .... so since one woman decided it ment vagina and you are so f'ing pc you won't type squaw. Funny that you often point fox for reference yet most of the news I comment on is from another place as this was reported in the paper from Maine and picked up in the WALL STRRET JOURNAL the same magazine who had a journalist beheaded for just reporting. It's also funny that you're only source is wikipedia! Real nice! Plus one with citation needed! awesome

em, mr turd; I DID type squaw, several times; the woman who appeared on Oprah was WRONG, and I tend to believe the Smithsonian above Oprah!! I mention Fox as it sums up your mentality most of the time, though im a way we agree to a point on this; changing place names etc based on erroneous information is bloody stupid (more so than being pc) As for Wiki, it is a quick and easy source but usually its most useful feature is its external links to more credible sources.

Trust me, if I do care about something, I will research it thoroughly and through accredited and reputable sources. This just wasn't worth the effort.

How about this Letterman/Palin crap?

Or the Obama/bug crap?

Squaw isn't just a name for a female indian it is a derogatory term which is very insulting to natives. Might as well call a road ***** Avenue, does it all deserve such study ?

between paul the turd making an ass of himself as usual.........and GermanUsa calling people towelheads AND pointing out how someone ELSE is insensitive ..............

it astounding

eagle...I think The ******* point was that, according to the "curator and senior linguist in the anthropology department of the Smithsonian Institution", the word means quite simply "young woman", so in reality there is nothing at all derogatory about it - but obviously the word has been hijacked by the less well informed (usually means the press and mass media) and taken to be something it isn't... I am also aware of the fact that the word has a less than pleasant connotation but I now suspect this is more to do with the misuse of it by the early American white community, who used it in a derogatory manner, again when in fact it is simply a normal word like "girl" in English... sadly it seems that the incorrect meaning has been adopted by the brainless masses...

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