Navaho in Harvard Square

Marash Girl has been waiting a very long time, carrying this story in her heart, and now it must appear in print.  The incident related below occurred in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, early in the 1960's.

Marash Girl and her good friend and classmate at Harvard University (his name omitted to protect the innocent) were walking through Harvard Square late one afternoon when a stranger approached them and asked Marash Girl's friend (who was  a member of the Navajo Nation), "What are you anyway? An Eskimo?"

And the taunts did not stop there.  When they entered the Harvard Square package store to buy a bottle of wine for their friend's 21st birthday, the vendor refused to sell to them, refused with the following statement:  "We don't sell firewater to Redskins!"

A cruel lesson for young Marash Girl and her friend to have to face early on in life, a lesson never to be forgotten.