Politics - News Analysis

Trump Faces Online Backlash for Disrespectful (and Dumb) Tweet About a ‘Wonderful Indian Tribe!’

There was a time when “Native Americans” were called much worse. Redmen, redskins, savages, “Indians,” it was all colonial bullshit, same as happened all over the world, although our gift with smallpox blankets was uniquely sick. We have all tried to learn, or at least most of us have tried to learn, to learn that distinct cultures were the product of a world where it took six weeks to sail across an unpredictable ocean to get somewhere, or a two-week “walk-ride” across fairly unforgiving lands (they didn’t have weather forecasts back then, either.) Back in those days, when there was little interaction between people who rarely saw each other distinct cultures and distinct distrust could be somewhat more understandable. (Not slavery, that’s never “understandable,” nor “genocide,” I think we’re getting the right meaning here, it’s just more understandable to look at others as “different.”)

Nowadays, I get emails from four continents, instantaneously. If you have the means, you can literally be on the other side of the world tomorrow at this time. There is almost no excuse at all for looking at anyone as “different” or “weird” or distrustful. Different cultures are great, where would the U.S. be without Mexican culture? A shittier place, that’s for sure. What about Japanese and Chinese culture? So all that is great, mix it all in, keep the good, get rid of the bad feelings and distrust.

Part of the bad is caring too little about a people to even learn the name of their group, their “tribe” (Or “First Nations” as they’re called in Canada, which I think is even more correctly descriptive).  Today, Donald Trump visited a “wonderful Indian Tribe,” he just doesn’t know or care which one:

It is called the “Lumbee Tribe” and they’re Native Americans, not Indians, you jackass. You took a trip to “India” this last year (while COVID was raging), you know what an “Indian” looks like. This was part of a huge celebration in that this tribe just received federal recognition. The federal government just recognized their existence as a distinct and separate nation as a people and Trump couldn’t call them by name, or Native to this land on his way out the door.

Sometimes we feel like we criticize Trump just to be critical (guilty), but not today. How fcking hard was it to honor the people he met by “inquiring” into the name before he fired off the tweet? How disrespectful. He damn sure got “Wisconsin” and “Ohio” right. Maybe if we gave certain tribal nations electoral college votes, Trump would learn the names.

Twitter quickly called him out:

****

Peace, y’all
Jason
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meet the author

Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He now enjoys life as a single dad raising a ridiculously-loved young girl on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He is very much the dreamy mystic, a day without learning is a day not lived. He is passionate about his flower pots and studies philosophical science, religion, and non-mathematical principles of theoretical physics. Dogs, pizza, and love are proof that God exists. "Above all else, love one another."

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