Depiction of Indian teepees incorrect? 



It seems so.  Two American Indian students have complained about a drawing of teepees that appeared in the student magazine of the very Liberal Amherst college.  The "problem" seems to be that teepees are represented as an inferior form of accomodation.  Below is an excerpt from the letter of complaint

Recently, your school news journal, The Indicator (Volume XXXIII, Issue 2, page 19), ran a cartoon depicting the “Lord Jeff approved” housing solution in the form of tipis. We find this incredibly insensitive, and ultimately, racist. Let us be clear, the person who drew the cartoon (Tricia Lipton), the editors who approved it (Nadirah Porter-Kasbati and Laurence Pevsner), and the student body, faculty, and staff of Amherst College who subsequently read it and perhaps even laughed are not necessarily racists. They have, however, participated in racist behavior, unintentionally or not.

Source

A lot of the heartburn seems to be caused by the very name Amherst.  The college is named after a British army General:  Jeffery Amherst, who certainly despised American Indians and did consider sending them smallpox-infected blankets.  There is no evidence that he or anyone else did so, however.  Indians died of smallpox in droves anyway.

That was before the American revolution and during the French/Indian wars.  The  hate-filled allegation by Ward Churchill that the AMERICAN army later handed out smallpox-infected blankets is debunked here


Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).