A few months ago I wrote in this column about my pet peeves. One of them was the word "squaw." My friend Muriel Charwood-Litzau from Cass Lake, Minn., calls it the "s" word.

She and her daughter Dawn Litzau, Dawn's friend Angelene Losh, and a small handful of students at the Cass Lake-Bena High School want to have the name banned from all place names in the United States. They have succeeded in getting it made illegal in the State of Minnesota.

The "s" word is extremely pejorative because it refers to a woman's vagina. It identifies an Indian woman by that part of her body alone. It is equivalent to calling her the "c" word. It is only used with Indian women, one of the few restricted words in the world, I suppose.

The two students, with help from their two sponsors, Ms. Charwood-Litzau and Mike Schmid, organized a Name Change Committee at the high school in February 1994 and started writing letters. Luckily, one of their letters reached a sympathetic ear at the state capital.

Before they knew what was happening, Dawn and Angelene were testifying in support of a bill introduced by state Sen. Harold Finn. He vaguely remembers his mother being called a squaw years ago, and it did not sit right with him. He had not bothered to look up the word, but when the two teenagers defined it for him, he became upset.

His bill, S.F. 574, reads: "On or before July 31, 1996, the commissioner of natural resources shall change each name of a geographic feature in the state that contains the word "squaw" to another name that does not contain this word. The commissioner shall select the new names in cooperation with the county boards of the counties in which the feature is located and with their approval."

There were 19 such places in the state. To date, all but three of them have agreed to change their names. Squaw Point, where Angelene lives, is now Oak Point. Squaw Lake is now Nature's Lake. Two counties have held out and garnered some media attention by refusing to change their names to comply with the law.

Getting there was tough on the high school girls. They had to wade through opposition from conservative residents of small towns.

"There were men telling me I should be proud to be called a 'vagina' and that it is an honor for my people," Dawn said. This happened when they met with residents of Squaw Lake Village.

"That is not the only negative comment we have received," she adds in understatement.

There is a regulatory body on such things, which surprised me. The New York Times reported in its article on the battle by the girls that the U.S. Geological Survey's Board on Geographic Names has found 1,050 places, lakes, creeks, towns, and other things with the "s" word attached to them. This compares to only 143 places named Nigger and only 26 places named Jap, both of which were outlawed by the board in 1967. Nigger was changed to Negro, and Jap was changed to Japanese.

To get this far, the two girls had to testify not once, but three times, in front of the Minnesota Legislature. This was undoubtedly one of the best civics lessons they will ever have.

Still, Sharon Hahn, a member of the board of commissioners for Lake County in the northern part of the state, says, "We find nothing derogatory in continued use of this term." She and her allies in the county do not want to rename Squaw Creek and Squaw Bay. Some of her colleagues proposed to name them "Politically Correct Creek" and "Politically Correct Bay," but the state officials rejected their offer, according to the [girls], and "were not amused."

It turns out that the two girls and the Name Change Committee are not the only ones in the nation to object to the "s" word. The Associated Press reported last August that state Rep. Jack Jackson of Arizona has introduced a bill every year since 1992 to ban the use of the "s" word.

"He was called 'oversensitive' and criticized for political correctness," the AP reported. Rep. Jackson is Navajo, but one of the places in the state which would change is not located on Navajo lands; it is the Squaw Peak Recreation Area near Phoenix. There are 73 place names with the "s" word, the AP continued, in Arizona alone.

After winning the battle in Minnesota in 1996, the girls and the committee started thinking about national places. One of the first ones they thought about was Squaw Valley, the famous ski resort in California.

They wrote to the manager, Brent McLeoan, who did not respond. They then contacted him by telephone. Their letters went to him in October and December 1996, and the telephone call was in January 1997. He was noncommittal about changing the name, Muriel reports.

"I spent some time on the telephone educating him about the derogatory term, and he mentioned that the customers had heard about the campaign and were opposed to the changing. He said that they wanted to keep the historical perspective."

Muriel and the girls have been buoyed up by the media coverage they have received. The AP, the London Times, the Arizona Republic, the New York Times, ABC Television News, the Sheboygan Press, CBS radio news, Channel 1 news, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, USA Today, the Salt Lake Tribune, the Duluth Tribune and Indian Country Today have all carried stories about the term or their current right to get the "s" word banned.

They are particularly buoyed up by an editorial in Indian Country Today from 1993 written by Avis Little Eagle, "I am a woman, hear me roar." She wrote, "I am not a squaw."

She quotes Dr. Bea Medicine, one of our most honored Indian academics, on the "s" word: "It is a very derogatory term for Indian women. It equates them with sexuality and perpetuate[s] the stereotype that Indian women are loose and promiscuous."

It turns out that at least three Native languages have words with similar sounds to "squaw," all of which have bad meanings. Saxon Gouge reports it comes from the French corruption of the Iroquois word "otsiskwa," meaning "female sexual parts." Chief Tom Porter of the Mohawk Nation says in his language the word "gesquaw" means a female reproductive organ and is very offensive.

Dr. Medicine says the word is from one of the Algonquian languages. The Random House Unabridged Dictionary says it is from an Algonquian language, possibly Natick, pronounced squa.

I salute the young women of Cass Lake and wish them well. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could quit calling each other names?

Editor's Note: Dean Chavers, a member of the Lumbee Tribe, is president of the Native American Scholarship Fund located in Albuquerque, NM.

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7 December 1999, lrb