Guest column: Navajo Code Talkers should be honored, not disrespected

President Donald Trump, right, meets with Navajo Code Talkers Peter MacDonald, center, and Thomas Begay, left, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 27, 2017. 
AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

President Donald Trump, right, meets with Navajo Code Talkers Peter MacDonald, center, and Thomas Begay, left, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 27, 2017. AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Watching the Navajo Code Talkers being “honored” by Trump takes me back to 2013, this very month, and even the SAME DAY, when the Washington NFL team brought the Navajo Code Talkers onto the football field to honor them.

Honor through the eyes of the colonizer is dangerous.

What is this trend we’re seeing here? With all due respect to my elders, to the Code Talkers, why must they shake hands with the smuttiest of them all? What’s going on in our communities that we can’t look after our own elders to tell them exactly what is going on behind the scenes and even what may happen?

If you put Trump, a group of Natives, and a mic in the Oval Office only disaster can occur. This is the reason Native people, especially our most vulnerable people should not be in a room with this perpetrator. This doesn’t excuse Trumps behaviors, but I hope the Navajo Code Talkers Association would stop supporting and protecting people like Dan Snyder and Donald Trump.

Racist mascots are the reason we have people like Trump. They’re cut from the same cloth.

As for the racist bile that continues to spew from Trump and to the masses who continue to degrade Pocahontas — let her spirit rest. She’s our ancestor who suffered enough; she’s not your racist pun.

Amanda Blackhorse,

Diné by way of Big Mountain, Kayenta, Arizona

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