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Donald Trump’s actions will forever keep him in a sunken place. Native Americans have confirmed that he uses the word Pocahontas as an offensive term.

On November 27, the POTUS hosted an event honoring Native American code talkers where he put his foot in his mouth again when trying to slight Senator Elizabeth Warren. “You were here long before any of us were here, although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas,” he joked.

Naturally, White House representatives defended the statements but the Native American community has taken umbrage with his choice of humor. “Pocahontas is used as a racial slur in the United States all the time,” Andrew Curley, a member of the Navajo Nation who has a Ph.D. in the Department of Development Sociology at Cornell University, told Newsweek.

“I grew up with these kinds of remarks. It’s not the name itself but the way it’s used. Trump is using it to attack Senator [Elizabeth] Warren and belittle Native Americans at the same time. I take it as a personal insult” he explains. The origins of the name trace back to the European colonization and genocide of the tribes who originally inhibited what is now America.

“Scholars have stated that the myth of Pocahontas helps to perpetuate white Eurocentric values because she leaves her tribe and becomes a Christian, and this insinuates that Christianity is better than traditional Indigenous religion. Thus, the myth of Pocahontas becomes a method of promoting Eurocentric values and norms and is a tool of colonialism,” Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz states in her 2016 book All the Real Indians Died Off”: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans.

To add extra wack sauce to the moment the ceremony took place right in front of an Andrew Jackson portrait; yes the President who signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Sigh.

You can peep video of the awkward moment below.

Via Raw Story

Photo: screen cap