April 12, 2008

This is a good thing

In two ways. First, renaming a peak called "Squaw Peak" seems a good thing, in this day and age, and way too late. And then the person they chose to honor.
"A federal agency with dominion over such things has renamed it Piestewa Peak, in honor of Lori Piestewa, who became the first Native American woman to die in combat as a member of the U.S. military when she was killed in Iraq in 2003."
Piestewa was killed in the same hostile action where Jessica Lynch was captured. All of the attention was lavished on the white girl capitve, and ignored the service and sacrifice of Piestewa. Ignored, that is, except by Lynch who referred to Lori Piestewa as the true hero of that day, and later named her daughter in memory of Lori.

2 comments:

leighton said...

I was on the bus in January with some recent high school graduates fresh out of boot camp who were on their way to be deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. One of the girls was complaining that she was considered old enough to use a Humvee's 50-caliber machine gun to cut people in half with bullets, but not old enough to have a couple beers the night before she shipped out. We are a very strange society.

steves said...

Good for them. I never understood the need for some people to cling to a name that is offensive to some people.