Open Season on Natives

by Special Correspondent Jessica Yee

This past Friday, I received a few e-mails with this shocker:

“Today a shock jock named T-Man on 93.3 F.M. in Seattle made some very racist remarks stating “All native women are hoes because [we] have casinos & [we're] all drunk”.

Apparently it got even worse from there. Interestingly enough, on the 9am portion of the website of T-MAN ON DEMAND, those comments are nowhere to be found.

I’m saying “shocker” with a written tone of sarcasm, because this is like the 10th e-mail I received this week with someone in my community outcrying against blatantly overt, extreme racism that has happened that barely anyone is reacting to, yet again.

Why, only yesterday, the Globe and Mail here in Canada ran an opinion piece by notorious bigot Margaret Wente, describing how high-profile Olympics official Dick Pound, who called the Canada of 400 years ago “a country of savages”, said something “dumb, but true.” [Ed Note - More on that later in the week. - LDP]

And as far as radio shows are concerned, I’ll pick two stand-out racist performances this year for you to additionally remember. One in Alaska where they said “you aren’t an Alaskan until you’ve made love to the Yukon and peed in a Native woman” and another in North Carolina where they called us “lazy” among other slanderous highlights, and said specifically that the Lumbee tribe are “inbred,” referenced Pocahontas as “Poca-ho-tas,” and Sacajawea as “Sacacooter.”

I could write on and on about my anger, frustration, sadness and disapointment with the human race in general, or about how little of the population in North America we actually make up and how huge the present-day racism we have to battle with is, and when I get more energy to I probably will, a lot more eloquently. But in the mean time, please do us a favour and if you are angry too, let the THE KUBE radio station (93.3 FM) in Seattle hear it.

And pray that one day, the First Peoples of this land might catch a break with being publicly repressed. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

(Indigenous Wonder Woman Image Credit: Comic Art Indigène via ForbiddenPlanet.co.uk)