February 04, 2021
Volume 51 - No. 05
By Friedrich Gomez
Unless your resident zip code is under a large rock, or at a cloistered Himalayan monastery, then you are well aware of all the recent controversy surrounding the U. S. military using American Indian names, icons, emblems, and mythology such as: Thunderbirds (Air Force), Tomahawk (Navy cruise missiles), and “Geronimo” (military code names and fighting units), to cite just a few examples.
Occupying center stage in this hot The Paper - 760.747.7119
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topic debate is the current controversy over the attachment of Native American names and symbols to U. S. military warfare helicopters (such as Apache, Black Hawk, etc.) -- a scenario which some (but not all) Native Americans object to as being insensitive exploitation and racially offensive. With all the protests and demonstrations, many neutral observers standing on the sidelines are, naturally, scratching their heads with some confusion and are asking some pretty tough questions behind
these proposed name changes.
Indeed, more and more Americans are now quietly raising their hands in classroom fashion and merely expressing genuine confusion: “Didn’t the Native American people first give proud approbation for the U. S. Army, for example, to use Indian names for their warfare helicopters?” Such earnest questions are not asked in antagonistic fashion. Rather,
such
questions
from
observers only express sincere curiosity – and often confusion – and therefore merely request clarification and, hopefully, edification and rationale for renaming military hardware which bear American Indian names.
Understandably, the hard-line questions persist: “Didn’t the U. S. Army set up guidelines long ago to only use Native American names to express honor, and boldness, and courage in U. S. combat? And didn’t the U. S. Department of Defense officially and formally only use the
Tribal Names for Military Helicopters See Page 2