Old postcards (Part 3: what we call Indigenous women around here)
The sender wrote an explanatory message on this one, involving Chinook Jargon…
(A link to all installments in this mini-series.)
And of course this was non-Native people being casually offensive.
Image credit: flickr
“Squaw” east of the Rockies — “Klootchman” is what an Indian woman is called in B.C.
That wording, racializing łúchmən, the Chinuk Wawa word for any ‘woman’, shows us that the writer was actually telling us about English-language usage.
In CW the word has no such ethnic overtones.
Borrowed into Pacific NW English, it predictably took them on. Hardly anyone would dare call a White woman, in English, “klootchman”.
Here’s a link to all installments in this mini-series!
