Emblazoned across the image of the Native American face on the T-shirt I bought in Oak Bluffs on the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard are the words “Fighting Terrorism Since 1492.” The presence of terrorist-in-chief Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president, enforcer of the Indian Removal Act, was not the only thing that tainted the White House ceremony honoring World War II Navaho code talkers last month. The portrait of the slave-holding husband of a bigamist presided in the background as the 45th president, Donald Trump, embarrassed his way through the event by gratuitously labeling Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas,” disrespecting her American Indian pedigree and all Native Americans. Increasingly, we may attribute Mr. Trump’s idiotic utterances to mental disturbances. Decades earlier, he verbally ventured into Indian territory for an old-fashioned purpose: greed. His pronouncements against the Pequots of Connecticut were no less ignorant.Robert Hill: Trump the Indian fighter (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette December 14, 2017)
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