Once again Trump has demonstrated his profound ignorance of history or his lack of sensitivity while insulting Sen. Elizabeth Warren. In a tweet last Saturday, he taunted Warren again, as he has done on numerous occasions, by referring to her as “Pocahontas” and then pushed the indignity to another level:
“Today,” he tweeted, “Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for president. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz.”
He deliberately and quite maliciously put the word trail in caps, using this as a way of rubbing it in that he was obviously conjuring up the image of the “Trail of Tears” when thousands of Native Americans were forced from their homelands in the South and marched to reservations out West. In this forced march, which took place mainly in the 1830s, some 4,000 Native Americans perished from disease, famine or warfare. This was a horrendous chapter in American history and directly related to the genocidal extermination of indigenous people.
Trump’s insult and his jabbing at Warren with the Pocahontas designation comes at a time when African-Americans are celebrating Black History Month; it also comes at a time when we are recalling that 400 years ago the first African captives were brought to this land at Jamestown, Virginia.
Pocahontas, or Rebecca as she was later called, was a Powhatan Indian whose role between the invading English and the native people is at best complicated. For a year she was a captive of the English after being kidnapped and later resolved the conflict between the two groups by accepting Christianity and agreeing to marry John Rolfe, a tobacco planter.
We doubt whether any of this history or Pocahontas’ role as part peacekeeper and facilitator of colonialism is known to Trump. For his purposes her name is merely used to disparage Elizabeth Warren, particularly after her DNA test riled a few Native Americans.
Pocahontas’ legend is convoluted and has been, to some extent, expropriated by Trump to collectively malign Native Americans and resurrect a terrible chapter in our nation’s history.
To this end, we salute the petition now circulating to condemn Trump’s racist comments, and add this to our charge that to Make America Great Again—Trump Must Go!