Public Usage Signage
This sign begins with the standard, "NO PARKING" in large easy to read, red letters on a white background. Beneath the clearly stated purpose of the sign, the head of a Native American in stoic profile further catches the reader's eyes. You actually take the time to study a sign that at first blush would get minor notice. After all, we see, "no parking" signs all the time. But this one compells one to read further. Once you do, you see the humor and the irony in the sign.
It communicates is purpose well because it seems to be a humorous way to get the reader and the driver NOT to park in that spot. This is an effective communication on many levels. It's eye catching and easy to understand. It compels you to read the entire sign. Finally, it leaves you with a laugh. So it has accomplished its mission effectively.
2 comments:
definitely not a very PC sign! (I'm assuming it is not designed by or for Native Americans, but as some crude attempt to poke fun)
I would agree with Gerry. I am surprised that this sign can still exist.
A side note: scalping, as history is being unraveled, appears to have been popularized as a practice by the Europeans as a way of tallying killing of the enemy Indian nations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping
It is believed that contact with Europeans widened the practice of scalping among Native Americans, since some Euro-American governments encouraged the practice among their Native American allies during times of war. For example, in the American Revolutionary War, Henry Hamilton, the British Lieutenant-Governor of Canada, was known by American Patriots as the "hair-buyer general" because it was believed he encouraged and paid his Native American allies to scalp American settlers. When Hamilton was captured in the war by the Americans, he was treated as a war criminal instead of a prisoner of war because of this. However, both Native Americans and American frontiersmen frequently scalped their victims in this era.
During the destruction of the Navajo homeland in 1863, carried out under the order of General James Carleton, a bounty was put out on Navajo livestock as a means to deplete their winter food supply. Some of the men extended this bounty to the deaths of Navajo men and consequently began cutting off the knot of hair fastened by a red string which the Navajos wore on their heads. There was another occasion during the extermination and displacement of the Santee Sioux, "The Sioux Indians must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state" (Governor Ramsey) . A failed retaliation led by the Santee on the blue coats in 1862 near Wood Lake, led to another incident of mutilation to defeated Indians. Big Eagle, a Santee Chief, had this to say: "We lost fourteen or fifteen men and quite a number were wounded. Some of the wounded died afterwards, but I do not know how many. We carried off no dead bodies but took away all our wounded. The whites scalped all our dead men - so I have heard". After the event the company's commander General Sibley was impelled to issue this order: "The bodies of the dead, even of a savage enemy shall not be subjected to indignities by civilized and Christian men"
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