Hotel

It's certainly not PC--but it's not nearly as bad as some of the cartoons and drawings back then that were considered just Good Clean Fun. Times have changed--for the better, we hope! And I agree with Angelica--ignoring history doesn't make it go away.

This could only have been posted with this sort of discussion following. I couldn't have just floated it and acted like it was my idea of business as usual. Thanks, slgwv.

Hi, Tabea-Marie. The word reservation has a double meaning in this cartoon. One is as a travel or hotel reservation, the other is as an "Indian reservation", an area where America's indigenous people were sent at one time. I am no expert, but speaking personally, I think of the creation of reservations as a blot on America's human rights record and conscience. I also think the caricature of the Native Americans seems a little vicious. That's a good question, though. I hope this answer does it justice.

I would agree that it would be difficult to draw Native American stereotypes that were more crude and derogatory than those in this cartoon. I'd add, tho, that it was not the "Indian reservation" itself that was the problem so much as that the promises the Federal government made in setting up the reservations were--by and large--never kept. In recent years the courts have tended to take those promises much more seriously, such that the Native Americans living there truly now have some control over their affairs. They can use their own languages, which was heavily discouraged for many years, and have their own laws. Indeed, the tribes have been making a point of dealing with the Federal government directly as "sovereigns," by-passing the states as much as they can. Cf. the court decisions that legitimitized casino gambling on the reservations. And I've noticed, from my travels in the western US over the decades, that the tribes have tended to become much more assertive about their rights to the reservation lands. In the Navajo reservation, for example, non-tribal members no longer can travel around freely off the major thorofares. This was not the case in the 70s when I lived in northern Arizona! So it'll be interesting to see how it all works out.

Thank you so much for offering this information.