Re: Teaching book using the word squaw.
Where would the term squaw come from? Just a little research would help people find out for themselves. Squaw means the totality of being female. It is not an English word. It is a phonetic rendering of an Algonkian term. Traditional speakers in both native and English languages still say words like nidobaskwa (a female friend), manigebeskwa,(a woman of the woods) or squaw sachem (a female chief). When the Abenaki people sang the birth song, they addressed nuncksquassis (little woman).
Susanna Moodie lived in Ontario dealing with the hardships that she and her family found making a life for themselves. Having left England with the Industrial Revolution making jobs and life difficult there, they decided to seek a more promising life in Canada. Susanna wrote about their life which is now history for generations to learn just what life was like in the late 1800s. She speaks about her native neighbours and how they helped her in desperate times, and she spoke very highly of them bringing her food and natural medicines when they were desperately in need.
Susanna Moodie is my great, great, great grandmother, so I have heard and read lots of history, her books and her poems. One of the homes she lived in while in Belleville, Ontario, in later years, is there to visit. In the cemetery there, her huge angel statue stands tall still to this day.
Margaret Lloyd
Prince George
