Donald Trump using Pocahontas as an insult?

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The article, A note to Eric Trump: Many found Disney's 'Pocahontas' offensive, but not for its title by Michael Cavna talks about Trump's comment to the Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren. Senator Warren made a claim that she was of American Indian decent and trump responded with a comment during an event for Navajo Code Talkers saying, "You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas." Later, a Navajo spokesman flagged Trump's comment as "inappropriate" and should not be used as "the punchline of a joke."
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Soon after Jonathan Karl of Disney's ABC questioned Press Secretary Sarah Sanders why Trump made the offensive slur to which her response questioned why Senator Warren was "lying about her heritage to advance her career." As far as Disney goes, Eric Trump (Donald Trump's son) said in a tweet that he was shocked of how people thought the name Pocahontas could be offensive. The film, released when Eric was eleven, was extremely criticized for its portrayal of the Native American and English Settlers of the time period. The movie was said to have made the relationship kinder and less chaotic showing the Native Americans to be accommodating and the Englishmen to be accepting. The article termed it as "white-washing" history, and Eric Trump growing up with the film would of course have been ignorant to the criticism that Disney received for the animation. Image result for pocahontas history


This brings me back to our class discussion of the film Pocahontas. Our class mentioned the fact that before this movie was created, the name Pocahontas could have been used in a derogatory way because of the historical events that occurred with the actual Pocahontas. In that way Trump using her name as an insult could be considered correct. The evidence that Henry Giroux mentions in his many articles about how Disney is a teaching mechanism that is brainwashing the children of today is actually being displayed by Eric Trump's tweet. Eric Trump is obviously unaware of the undertones/themes of the movie compared to historical data of the story, so his tweet reveals that Disney films can in fact make serious stories out to be glorified. Our class also talked about the historical inaccuracies of of the film as well (much like the article) so I believe that delving into these Disney movies is beneficial to everybody in order to realize that what is absorbed and portrayed is not always correct. 

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