Quechan Tribe demands apology after Imperial County supervisor uses racial slur

Editor’s note: This story contains offensive language, including racial slurs, that may be unsettling to some readers.

Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe officials are calling on Imperial County Supervisor John Hawk to issue an in-person apology after video surfaced of him using a racial slur to describe a meeting with tribal members earlier this year.

Hawk made the comments during an April meeting of the Imperial County Transportation Commission, the regional transit agency. Hawk said he felt like county officials had been “scalped” during their meeting with Quechan members.

The word “scalp” has a violent and racist history in North America. For centuries, government officials in the U.S. and Mexico paid white settlers to massacre Indigenous people and take their scalps and other body parts as trophies.

Egregious remarks of this kind rely on racial stereotypes about Native people,” Koteen wrote. “The Quechan Nation will not tolerate them from anyone, least of all an elected representative.”