New law will remove the word ‘squaw’ from California place names, from the state seal, and change the California motto to ‘Live Free or Die’
This article is more than 4 years old
This article is more than 4 years old
California voters will soon be able to legally erase the’squaw’ or ‘bear’ from a variety of place names, the state’s motto and its seal, and from the state’s congressional district.
California now has the right to change the word to’squab’ and remove the’squaw’ or’squamous’ part of the name from state legislative district lines.
California voters will vote on the ballot measure on 19 November. The proposition goes to the ballot over the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ votes of the California attorney general’s office, which is arguing for the removal of the words.
The attorney general argues that the word names California’s tribes and Native Americans living on what is now the state’s western frontier.
‘You’re living in a tribal nation now, and you just can’t erase it,’ David Hildebrand, the attorney general’s chief of staff, told the Los Angeles Times.
California law already allowed voters in 2009 to remove the word ‘bears’ from state legislative districts and in 2013 to remove the words’squaw’ and’squamous’ from a number of place names, including the names of Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Francisco, but the attorney general’s office argues that the proposition is needed to remove the word’squaw’.
California lawmakers were not available for comment.
The California attorney general’s office argues that the phrase ‘Squaw Reservation’ is a term of disparagement of Native Americans. People living the area today who choose not to use the word’squaw’ are’squab-hunters’, the office contends.
The office says that when the federal government sold California’s public lands to the state in 1864 the word was added to the treaty to ensure the reservation was a permanent one.
‘Squaw’, the state’s motto and the state seal are
