When do you publish a derogatory slur?

I’m talking, of course, about the front page article, “Feds to rename derogatory Mount Rainier National Park lake”, which uses a word, several times, that many find to be misogynistic and racist against Native Americans, especially Native women.

I happen to be one of those people — there is no reason to ever use this word in casual conversation, and it’s never to be directed at anyone; I applaud Secretary Deb Haaland’s decision to rename more than 600 various geographical locations around the country that contain this word.

But I also believe that a news article that attempts to lay out the situation at hand accurately and without bias is not casual conversation. In general, journalistic integrity means presenting pertinent, reliable, and clear information to the public, even if that information is uncomfortable to digest.

This is not a general situation, though — it’s a highly unique and sensitive one that requires careful, deliberate thought.

And it’s not inaccurate to say I lost sleep over this. I spent several days poring through my profession’s creed and code of ethics; read multiple news articles (including from Native American-focused publications) that have already dealt with this specific issue, or others like it; wrote to other journalists who similarly agonized over this situation; conversed with a local Mt. Rainier expert; and contacted the Muckleshoot Tribe in order to get a local perspective on how to move forward.

Long story short, I never did come up with a definite answer. All I had left, at the end of the day and with a looming deadline, was my gut.

Many who aren’t in the industry may not know this, but journalists do share a common Code of Ethics, managed and updated by the Society of Professional Journalists.

There are four principles, in this order: Seek truth and report it; minimize harm; act independently; and be accountable and transparent. All are important in their own right, and, for the most part, should be considered equal to each other, but I also think there’s a reason for the descending list these ethics are put in — accuracy and truth is paramount above all else.

And although the “spark notes” version of these principles doesn’t cover the use of slurs, I feel the spirit of the “seeking truth” and being accurate lends itself to publishing such words, in full, when it comes to civil discourse and debate (it would be a completely different story were I to quote someone hurling a slur at another).

But at the same time, minimizing harm calls for me to consider cultural differences in my reporting. As this particular word targets a group of people I am clearly not a part of, by blood or tradition, I have to consider the fact that publishing this word could be painful to some who read it, or even perpetuate the idea in others that this word is not offensive.

For example, my wife (a teacher at the Puyallup tribal high school) mentioned to me that one of her students was subjected to such an insult by a white man, who defended his use of the word by saying it couldn’t be a slur — he read it in the newspaper.

Personally, I think this particular individual was either looking for any excuse to use this slur, or that he was truly ignorant; I doubt the latter, as I think someone who is actually unenlightened about this word would inquire as to why someone was offended by its use, rather than become defensive. Both situations, of course, are assumptions on my part.

Since my Code of Ethics doesn’t have a clear answer for this conundrum, I turned to source material, starting with the federal government and Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to have a cabinet seat, and who is pushing for these geographical name changes. She recently ordered all official communications to censor the word as “sq—”

Native American news publications, though, have taken different approaches.

I mostly focused on two: Indian Country Today and Native News Online, and found a couple patterns I found helpful.

First, proper names were almost always spelled out, without quotes; second, on its own, the word was used with quotation marks, even inside quotes from officials.

Many articles declined to use the word in the headline; those that did censored it as well. A few publications spelled the word out on first reference, and censored the rest. Only on the rare occasion did the word appear without quotation marks, and only one article used the phrase “s-word” throughout the article, though the word was not censored when referring to a brand of peas (and the same publication spelled out the word in a headline and article two years later). No article contained any sort of disclaimer about language.

Two articles did note some Native Americans — including Abenaki scholar Marge Bruchac and her 1999 article, “Reclaiming the word ‘s-word’ in the Name of the Ancestors” — have tried (and maybe are still trying) to reclaim the word, but the authors opined that this group is a small minority.

Of course, all these articles focused on just one particular word, and I expanded my search to see how other publications handled different slurs. I was surprised by the results, as there seemed to be no shying away from publishing proper names, despite their clear offensiveness. Feel free to research a Crosscut article about a particular controversial creek in Chelan County — its name changed from one of the most offensive slurs to a less offensive (?) slur in the 1960s — as an example.

Finally, I contacted Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, as he wrote a piece about the Mount Rainier lake in question, and asked what sort of conversation the editorial room had around using such a word. In short, they ended up deciding that being clear and direct was the best way to approach the issue, though there was no need for repeated, unnecessary use of the word. His column followed many of the same pattern Native American publications appear to have established, with one crucial difference: the map the paper created of all of Washington’s geographical locations using the slur were censored with “sq—”.

Like I said before, I came away from this research without a defined set of rules I ought to follow when it comes to this sort of situation — more like guidelines, with occasional exceptions.

So, yes, I decided to use “squaw”, and name Squaw Lake and other landmarks in Washington that share a similar name, so as to be accurate and direct. I attempted to minimize how much I used it, and kept the word out of the headline and subheads, to be sensitive to the fact this word is, in fact, derogatory.

It’s a middle-of-the-ground approach that could leave me open to criticism on multiple sides of this debate, though my potential critics can’t say I didn’t give this enough thought.

Now, I realize this whole issue may only affect a small number of readers, if any, and I may have just written this column for myself, rather than you.

Still, I can finally close these dozens of web tabs and put down my rhetorical pen in peace. Have I made a mistake? Maybe. But at least I can say I did my due diligence, and that, today, is enough.