Offenses Never Stop Coming

While waiting for a table at the Sawtooth Grill, my wife told me not to turn around.

I was dying to know who was behind me. Tax collector, salesman, Satan?

Curiosity got the best of me, and I spun around to see a framed picture of a white woman in faux American Indian garb. She wore a headband, braids and some kind of imitation buckskin dress.

Whenever I see someone playing dress-up as an American Indian, I try to stifle an old and familiar anger.

“I told you not to turn around,” my wife said.

I tried to say something jovial and shake off my frustration.

“Oh, good,” I said. “We can’t have enough of these pictures around town.”

But during lunch, I grew quieter as my mind began churning.

This photo depicts a Spokane woman named Marguerite Motie, who was used to promote Spokane. In 1912, Motie (pronounced Mo’chee) became the first Miss Spokane.

She was a celebrity who appeared at ceremonial events and was held up as the image of Spokane.

To most, it’s simply a historical photo.

To me, it’s a document that shows how casually racist those times were.

Miss Spokane’s dress had a sun on her chest, a nod to the Salish word, Spokane, which was commonly held to mean “Children of the Sun.”

Her romanticized costume was probably intended as a tribute to the tribe. I see it as a sad American story.

The July issue of Nostalgia Magazine printed a photo of Motie at the Playfair Race Course, with her “maids of honor” who wore buckskin and feathers.

This was about the time when the Spokane Indian Reservation was being chopped up into allotments. A local newspaper story that appeared Jan. 25, 1909, said Spokane Indians “Gobbled Best of Spokane Reservation.”

After tribal members were removed from their homes by the river, city leaders stole their name and image too.

Now you can see Miss Spokane hanging in a hot new restaurant.

Whenever I’d get on a rant about things like Crazy Horse Beer, the Land O’Lakes butter Indian maiden, and horror movie plots built on “old Indian burial grounds,” a well-read friend who attended Reed College would tell me, “It’s the American way. We kill people and name places after them.”

That ugly history swam through my mind as I looked at Motie’s picture on the wall.

Growing up as an Indian in this region, there were so many times when something offended me. Sometimes I’d speak up and be told by well-meaning friends that I’m too sensitive. Or that I took something wrong and should let it go. Some of the kindest souls in the world thought the best thing was to stifle these feelings.

Staying quiet made them feel better. But it only made me mad.

Expressing uncomfortable opinions does come with a cost.

I remember the time a good friend showed me her favorite movie, “Holiday Inn,” done in 1942 by Irving Berlin. It’s a light-hearted musical with Bing Crosby that is charming until Crosby performs a musical number in blackface.

I couldn’t get over that part.

Because she could, my friend felt like I was calling her a racist.

It is easy to look back and pick on outdated notions that were once acceptable.

Who among us doesn’t have an elderly relative we love dearly but who says things about race and religion we hope no one else hears?

The Motie photo in the restaurant came as a shock to me, like hearing someone’s grandmother use a racial slur.

Just once, I want people to see what I see when they gaze at Miss Spokane, with her angelic face framed by a headband, in her fringed dress and primitive necklace, at the height of her glory.