'It Happens Here' explores how language feeds into racial stereotypes

CATHY WURZER: Every word I'm saying right now has a history. Of course, some of those histories are more trouble than others. And this next story from our friends at WTIP in Grand Marais untangles the meaning of one word in particular. Here are co-hosts Staci Drouillard and Leah Lemm with an installment of the series, It Happens Here, The Roots of Racial Inequality on the North Shore.

JOHN MORRIN: What's a [BLEEP]? An uncivilized person. Look it up in the dictionary.

LEAH LEMM: [NON-ENGLISH], hello. I'm Leah Lemm, a Mille Lacs Band member and independent producer and host of the Native Lights podcast.

STACI DROUILLARD: And I'm Staci Drouillard, a Grand Portage Ojibwe descendant and WTIP producer. It Happens Here is an ongoing series that highlights the history and experiences of people of color on the North Shore.

LEAH LEMM: Wild, untamed, barbarous, uncivilized, and unmannerly. These words are part of how Merriam-Webster defines the word "savage," a word we censored at the start of the show because it can trigger negative emotions for many Native people. John Morrin is a Grand Portage Band member and diversity trainer for the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond. He talked about how words like this contribute to the long list of stereotypes that have become associated with people of color in the United States, especially those of Indian country.

JOHN MORRIN: The stoic Indian, the silent Indian, I mean, there are many stereotypes. There's the wild Indian. There's the [BLEEP]. There's the merciless Indian [BLEEP] like in the Declaration of Independence that kids learn every year in history classes. So it makes me very angry.

STACI DROUILLARD: Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Livingston, and Sherman included those exact words in the 27th grievance against King George III with the accusation that, quote, "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian [BLEEP]."

LEAH LEMM: Christina Woods, a Bois Forte Band member and trainer for the Diversity Institute, explains the modern implications for people of color when words are used to demoralize or dehumanize people.

CHRISTINA WOODS: I don't think people realize that in the early time of our nation, part of the regular education curriculum, whether it was in schools or in the churches or around the dining room table, was that the Indians are [BLEEP] and beasts. And so there was this demoralizing perspective. And we know. We know. If you do that to another person, if you're an abuser and you demoralize someone in your family, it justifies your abuse of them. We know this in trauma. That is a tactic that justifies somebody being abused by another person.

LEAH LEMM: Perpetuating negative stereotypes is one of the enduring facets of linguistic racism, one aspect of racism that has been used to tell an incomplete story about Native American people from 1776 to now.

STACI DROUILLARD: In a recent Fox News report from January 2022, a school tutor in Lakeville, Minnesota referred to Indigenous people as, quote, "[BLEEP] who killed my people," end quote, while working with an Indigenous student as part of Lakeville's after-school program.

LEAH LEMM: The student's mother spoke out about the incident at a January 10 school board meeting and asked school administrators to take action. In response, the school reassigned that employee to a position in the school library. According to Christina Woods, the words we use to talk about each other over time contribute to what is known as implicit bias about others.

CHRISTINA WOODS: This is the power of narrative. And that had been passed around for generations. So even if you were a person who didn't agree with it, you might still act implicitly on it. Here's a good example. You may have an implicit bias about Black men.

So you're walking down the street. You're a person who is an ally. And you are sure that you do not stereotype. But yet, you have an implicit behavior, like moving your purse to the other side of your body, and you don't even realize you do it, because it's unconscious, and it's deep inside of you, the belief that certain people can't be trusted.

STACI DROUILLARD: I asked Christina why she believes that these words have such staying power, and she said--

CHRISTINA WOODS: Words have staying power because they're working. It works for you. And then it becomes central to the cultural context of success, or whatever your culture is. And then it just becomes automatic.

LEAH LEMM: When it comes to these negative stereotypes, John Morrin admits that it is upsetting. But in his work as a trainer, he employs an equal and opposite approach to counteracting the harmful words of history.

JOHN MORRIN: Even the thought makes me angry. What I've learned is I've learned how to deal with that anger in a positive way. It almost sounds like an oxymoron, but really, it works to deal with anger. I've been an angry person my whole life, especially when I started learning history and our culture in a more meaningful way. Very angry, but I remember my mom saying, you got to teach people about us. So you can't teach people about us in an angry way. You've got to teach about them in a positive way. And I've learned that works. You can change people's thinking and the way they view things.

LEAH LEMM: For WTIP, I'm Leah Lemm.

STACI DROUILLARD: And I'm Staci Drouillard. This series is a production of WTIP North Shore Community Radio. Support for this series comes from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

CATHY WURZER: Staci Drouillard, Leah Lemm are co-hosts of It Happens Here, The Roots of Racial Inequality on the North Shore, which comes to us from WTIP in Grand Marais.