Sheshatshit
Sheshatshit is the uniquely redundant name of a town in Newfoundland. As one might guess, it is a transliteration of the Innu "Tshishe-shatshu". "Sheshatshit" is an interesting nugget of Canadian orientalism. Certainly the name is racist to the core, as the town is populated by Innu people. Now I'm not a big fan of throwing the word racist around, but I think we must recognize the way humour works to create a derogatory term. No one wants their home associated with shit. But what 19th century English speaking explorer/pirate isn't going to find that name a little hard to resist?
Anyway, I stumbled on Sheshatshit when I was flipping through A Charm Against the Pain, an anthology of NFLD writers that I'm reviewing for Books in Canada. I'll be also looking at Hard-Headed and Big-Hearted, a series of essays by the late Stuart Pierson, edited by the great Stan Dragland. This little review article is going to be a feature in Books in Canada, and I'm excited about it. Though I'm afraid this might be a a time hog that keeps me away from my Specific Comprehensive Exam reading (57 books left to read by May 11).
3 comments:
I have been working with the Innu for over 20 years. There is nothing racist about the toponym "Sheshatshit" at all. It is simply a contraction of Tshishe-shatshit, and it means "Great River Outlet." This placename appeared for the first time in writing in Louis Jolliet's travel account of 1694 as Quichesaquiou. At that time, it seems to have refered to Lake Melville as a whole. In later documents it was spelled Kessessakiou. Any river outlet in Innu-aimun is called "shatshu," but when you add the locative ending "-it" to this generic, it becomes shatshit. Yes, there are a certain number of racists out there who like to pronounce the toponym "she shat shit," but the toponym itself is not inherently racist, and it is in current usage by all of the Innu people of Quebec and Labrador.
Peter Armitage
Thanks for dropping by Peter. I'm sure you have a rich experience working with the Innu people.
I have to say, though, that the politics that underlie the the consonant switches from Q to K to Sh seem a bit fishy to me. And an argument for popularity doesn't exactly refute the claim that the term might evidence a power difference between linguists and their subjects (especially when those linguists were working in the 19th century - the height of Britain's colonial power). The word "nigger" is still quite popular in African-American culture and we are all aware of it's problematic history.
I just think that there is something about the human psyche that likes to parody people's names . I see it in my own family, I've experienced in the school yard, and I certainly don't think that philology is free of such a bias. Every once and a while I take a look at Kaye and Watson's "The People of India" (1866) to remind myself of how superior the European powers thought themselves, and how the "superiority" trickled down into their science and was evidenced in the methodologies (men being classified as if they were dog breeds).
Now this isn't to say that I may have it wrong on Sheshatshit, just that I sense a stench around the word.
I guess there is a stink about it, but the stink is when taxi drivers say sheshshahshee. It should be said sheh ha jeet wehn it is spelt sheshashit.
In the same way Innu mikun airlines will answer the phone and say Innu migoon. Thats not how you say it its meekwun.
The problem is noone bothers to learn how to say it. And few bother to explain it to others. And even worse Innu people are using these bastardized terms to communicate to white people
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