<\/p>\n
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. \u2014 Families of Navajo war veterans who were honored at the White House say they were dumbfounded that President Donald Trump used the event to take a political jab at a Massachusetts senator, demeaning their work with an unbreakable code that helped the U.S. win World War II.<\/p>\n
Trump turned to a nickname he often deployed for Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren during the 2016 presidential campaign: Pocahontas. He then told the three Navajo Code Talkers on stage Monday that he had affection for them that he doesn\u2019t have for Warren.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was uncalled for,\u201d said Marty Thompson, whose great-uncle was a Navajo Code Talker. \u201cHe can say what he wants when he\u2019s out doing his presidential business among his people, but when it comes to honoring veterans or any kind of people, he needs to grow up and quit saying things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pocahontas is a well-known historical figure who bridged her own Pamunkey Tribe in present-day Virginia with the British in the 1600s. But the National Congress of American Indians says Trump wrongly has flipped the name into a derogatory term, and the comment drew swift criticism from American Indians and politicians.<\/p>\n
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, asked about criticism of Trump\u2019s remarks, said a racial slur \u201cwas certainly not the president\u2019s intent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump made the comment as he stood near a portrait of President Andrew Jackson, which he hung in the Oval Office in January. Trump admires Jackson\u2019s populism. But Jackson is an unpopular figure in Indian Country because he oversaw the forced removal of American Indians from their southern homelands.<\/p>\n
The Navajo Nation suggested Trump\u2019s remark was an example of \u201ccultural insensitivity,\u201d and they resolved to stay out of the \u201congoing feud between the senator and President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll tribal nations still battle insensitive references to our people. The prejudice that Native American people face is an unfortunate historical legacy,\u201d Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Still, Begaye and relatives of Navajo Code Talkers said they\u2019re honored the story of the men recruited from the vast Southwest reservation to become Marines could be told on a national stage. Peter MacDonald, a former Navajo chairman and trained Code Talker, who stood beside Trump, also took the opportunity to ask for support for a Navajo Code Talker museum. Trump obliged.<\/p>\n
MacDonald didn\u2019t return messages left Monday by The Associated Press. He didn\u2019t visibly react to Trump\u2019s \u201cPocahontas\u201d comment and later told the president he was certain he would succeed, crediting military generals.<\/p>\n
Michael Smith, a Marine whose father was a Code Talker, said most of the Code Talkers would be skeptical about going to the White House because it could be construed to mean they support a political cause.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, why did they go? Why were they there? He\u2019s putting them in the Oval Office to say \u2018You did a good job, and say hi to Pocahontas?\u2019\u201d Smith said. \u201cThey should be taken care of as heroes, not as pawns.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael Nez, whose father helped develop the code based on the Navajo language, said his father would have been upset to hear Trump\u2019s Pocahontas comment. But, as other Code Talker relatives said, his father was taught to respect the president as the commander in chief.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s too bad he does put his foot in his mouth,\u201d Nez said. \u201cWhy he does it? I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Helena Begaii said her 94-year-old Navajo Code Talker father, Samuel T. Holiday, declined an invitation to the White House on Monday. She said he would have a better feel for what happened once he reads the newspaper.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel really sad that they didn\u2019t get treated with respect,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s Pocahontas comment is the latest in a long list of remarks Trump has made about people from specific ethnic and racial groups. In announcing a run for the presidency in 2015, Trump said many Mexican immigrants are rapists. He\u2019s sought to ban immigrants from certain Muslim-majority nations. He\u2019s come under fire for what some said was a too-slow federal response to hurricane damage in Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n
The president has long feuded with Warren, an outspoken Wall Street critic who leveled blistering attacks on Trump during the campaign. Trump seized on questions about Warren\u2019s heritage, which surfaced during her 2012 Senate race challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Scott Brown.<\/p>\n
Warren said in an interview on MSNBC that, unfortunately, Trump cannot make it through a ceremony honoring heroes \u201cwithout having to throw out a racial slur.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democratic New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall, vice chairman of the Indian Affairs committee, added: \u201cDonald Trump\u2019s latest racist joke \u2014 during Native American Heritage Month, no less \u2014 demeaned the contributions that the Code Talkers and countless other Native American patriots and citizens have made to our great country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kellman reported from Washington, D.C. Fonseca is a member of The Associated Press\u2019 Race and Ethnicity team. Associated Press writer Catherine Lucey in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018He needs to grow up and quit saying things like that\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[5692,21,13,28,561,144,1147],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-75849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-civil-war","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-native-american","tag-towaoc","tag-war"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75849"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=75849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}