Freely they move from mind to mind, mouth to mouth. They become a part of the common vernacular. "The issue with 'off the reservation' and similar phrases is that these things are said without any thought. He asked his readers, "Is this a term that needs to be abolished and ranks right up there with vulgar racial slurs used in the streets?"Īndrew Bentley writes a blog for the National Relief Charities, a non-profit group that works with Native people in the Plains and Southwest.
"UPDATE I AM NEVER USING THIS TERM IN ANY CONTEXT AND NO ONE SHOULD!" he added, emphasis his. The metaphor is rooted in traders' lingo, referring to Indian reservations in the days when unscrupulous whites would trade 'firewater' for goods, and off the reservation was a lonely and dangerous place for an aboriginal American to be."Ī diarist for the Daily Kos, who identified himself as a "blood descendent of the Northern Blackfoot Nation," wrote last year about "how I was attacked for using the term 'Off The Reservation.' " The phrase first surfaced in the Atlanta Constitution in 1909. "Remaining nominally within a party, but refusing to support the party's candidate. In its literal and original sense, as you would expect, the term was used in the 19th century to describe the activities of Native Americans: It appeared frequently in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it's not unusual to find it in recent headlines and articles as well. I did some searching in archival and current newspaper databases, for both literal and figurative uses of the phrase. government, and their freedom was severely limited by the terms of the treaties they were often forced to sign. Namely, that Native American peoples were restricted to reservations created by the U.S. Off the reservation is a common phrase, which many people use without considering the context of its original meaning. Maybe living lives without thinking about what we say and do is of greater concern.Īndrew Bentley, National Relief CharitiesĮDITOR'S NOTE: Each week, we take a look at a word or phrase that's caught our attention, whether for its history, usage, etymology or just because it has an interesting story. Maybe the meaning of these sorts of phrases never should have been the issue.
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