Palin Plays the Race Card, Badly

Shannon LC Cate — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:00:00 GMT

"[Our] kids are Alaska native, they're Eskimos"
-Sarah Palin to People Magazine

"Some myths, and questions, persist about Todd Palin's Yup'ik ancestry. A few:

For starters, the PC terms...would be Yup'ik or (groan) Yup'ik Eskimo if the person is okay with it. Eskimo is not the most popular term to be used by non-"Eskimo" people in reference to them. Yup'ik is best."
- Writing Raven, Tlingit/Athabascan (Alaskan Native) blogger

Apparently, quite a bit of controversy has been swirling in Alaskan Native circles about republicans claiming that Todd Palin's fragment of Alaskan Native ancestry (he's 1/8 Yup'ik, the same amount of Cherokee in my lily white body) somehow makes Sarah Palin a pro-Native issues candidate. Her comment to People about her children being "Eskimos," given the status of the term among, er, actual people so-called might seem to betray her lack of knowledge of or sympathy toward their interests.

But we all know that language isn't Palin's forte. So let's check her record on the issues. According to poet and blogger Joy Harjo, (a Muscogee Indian), Palin's record on every Native issue to come before her as governor is abysmal. It seems Palin opposed subsistence hunting and fishing rights for Alaskan Natives repeatedly, in favor of unfettering commercial and sport hunting and fishing. That is, she opposed the ages old traditional methods of the Alaskan Natives for feeding themselves and their children to allow for easier access for tourists taking Moose trophies.

Her sympathies with the "Eskimos" seem to begin and end with cutesy, if non-PC references to her own children who regardless of their "blood quantum" of Yup'ik, seem to enjoy as many white privileges and snow-machining rights as their mother herself.

Strollerderby : Eskimo

Palin Plays the Race Card, Badly