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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George Coyne who wrote (706723)	10/10/2005 3:44:44 PM
From: paret	Respond to of 769670

Roots of 'redskin' Waterbury Republican-American ^ \| October 9, 2005 \| Editorial Among thin-skinned elites, the worst name one can call an American Indian is "redskin." According to a recent Washington Post report, the term is considered a "gross pejorative" that has been used "for centuries to disparage and humiliate an entire people." Not so, says Smithsonian Institution linguist Ives Goddard. He spent months researching the term's history and determined it was coined by 18th-century Indians to distinguish themselves from white people. When redskin first appeared as an English expression in the 1800s, "it came in the most respectful context and at the highest level," he told the Post. The most notable example was President Madison, who honored a group of visiting chiefs by compassionately referring to Indians as "my red children." Mr. Goddard's findings refute the dubious and stereotypical information circulated by some Indian groups that claim redskin always has been a belittling term. He even determined the most cited evidence to support that position, a late 19th-century letter, was an obvious forgery. "While people seem to be happier with the agonistic interpretation of past events, the real story is much more complicated and much more interesting," he said. University of Connecticut Historian Nancy Shoemaker supports his conclusions. She told the Post that by the end of the 18th century, Indians were using "red" to "assert their pride of being North America's original inhabitants." Actually, the Indians took over the Americas thousands of years ago by killing off a race of people known as the Paleo-Indians and taking their land. The redskin flap is of particular interest to the Post because Indian agitators have demanded for more than a decade that the NFL's Washington Redskins change their nickname. If they bothered to trace the genealogy of the nickname, they would have discovered it is a tribute to a Delaware Indian chief who was revered by colonial settlers and who in 1682 signed a treaty of friendship with William Penn. But the peddlers of political correctness don't care about facts or historical context; they want desperately to be insulted so that they may cover themselves with the cloak of victimhood that enables them to reap the public sympathy and the considerable financial benefits that come with it.