The worst part of telling people I'm Native is that in any social interaction, someone will inevitably claim to also be Native American. This and "redskin" were the main slurs I got all throughout middle and high school, and hearing either one is a major trigger for me. I know some people are a lot more forgiving about this one, but I'm not. I don't really care if you say something that someone did was "savage, bro," but try to refrain from saying that specifically to your Native friends - that's when it can get personal and offensive. The worst part about it is that Dior simply deleted everything having to do with the ad, issued no apology, and went on with its day acting like it didn't just use Natives in an ad for a perfume named after the French word for one of the biggest slurs for us.
When the incredibly racist Dior Sauvage commercial came out in 2019, I was lucky to have many friends reach out and ask if I was OK. Y'all like Harry Potter, right?Īnother slur that I personally don't tolerate that has recently become colloquially acceptable is "savage." It's a lot more innocuous than you'd think but, due to the racially loaded context of the word, it can be extremely offensive and triggering to a lot of Natives. Instead, how about replacing it with a term that isn't racially loaded, like Patronus. For example, my tribe has several gods that are personified animals - my favorite being Mica, the coyote god who is a friend to the trickster spider god Iktomi, and is equally as much of a trickster. Most tribes just have what are called guides, totems, messengers, or in the case of my tribe, gods. Most tribes don't even have "spirit animals." That's just a term that was popularized because it's so easy to understand what it means. For you to dilute that by taking a quiz on Buzzfeed that says your spirit animal is a cat because you "are always up to something and don't have patience for the stupidity of those around you" is extremely offensive to us. Whether or not a tribe actually follows the "spirit animal" ideal, animals play a huge part in Native culture. I don't care what that online quiz you took told you or how close you are with your Pomeranian. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Imagesįor real guys: Stop saying that you have a spirit animal.
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