Suppose this might get me in trouble with the pro-squaw people again, but isn’t this the epitome of using the word as a racial epithet?
From New York Magazine:
Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood is a pompous, interminable hash. Billed as a precursor to the legend we know, it’s rich in bogus historical context, along with enough mud, blood, and clutter to overwhelm our happy memories of Errol Flynn’s grin and Olivia de Havilland’s radiance. Here, Robin and Marian are played by a scowling Russell Crowe and a grim Cate Blanchett, who has the face of a wooden squaw stained by decades of cigar smoke. I can’t remember a more un-fun-looking couple.
Turtle Talk 
Any word, especially those with ethnic or sexual reference can be turned to abuse people. And plenty of people say cruel things about American Indians. Notre Dame coach Knut Rockne (a Norwegian) called another Norseman (Norse person?) “a dumb Swede”… The stupid NY Mag writer probably had the “cigar store Indian” in mind and could have written something like “Easter Island statue”, but that would have offended Polynesians. St Patrick’s Day cards are rife with the racial stereotypes of English caricaturists. Samuel Manning Welch had very pleasant memories of Seneca squaws in his ‘Home History. Recollections of Buffalo [NY] during the decade from 1830 to 1840, or fifty years since. Ithaca: Cornell University Library Print source: Buffalo: P. Paul & bro, [c1891]. http://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moamono;idno=welc0069
Andrew Garcia was living among the Nez Perce Indians in 1878-1879 when the US Army was destroying them. Garcia wrote up his adventures and kept the notes in a trunk, one day to publish, he hoped. But Garcia died in 1942. The trunk was opened in 1948, the MS edited and published by Bennet H. Stein in 1967 as “Tough Trip through Paradise 1878-1879.” (Boston: Houghton Mifflin.) Garcia found the love of his life in a Nez Perce squaw, whom he married (with benefit of clergy). He called himself “squaw boy” to underscore the ambivalence (double meaning). His attitude was pride and defiance, in the face of bigots who used the word to express hate.
I am a Native woman living in 2010, and while I appreciate that there are various explanations of why someone might choose to use the “s-word”, I can tell you that I experience it as a highly offensive word. It is the kind of word that can fundamentally alter the interaction between two people. Even reading the word in this context is painful. I disagree that this is equivalent to calling someone a “dumb Swede.” The s-word, for many of us, is equivalent to the n-word. The word has been used as a weapon, and there is simply no need to use it in this context.
I also don’t think the reference to “cigar smoke” does anything to help the writer. The cigar store Indian prototype is yet another stereotype of Indian people. So he’s basically used two different offensive references in the same sentence.
I do not take comfort in knowing that a non-Native man used the word affectionately in the late 19th century.
I agree 100% with Sarah Deer that the intention of the NY Mag article was doubly malicious and that the S-word is used by bigots to hurt. No question. My argument is two-fold: (1) that the most neutral ethnic word can be pumped full of venom. the terms “Irish” and “Roman Catholic” are used by Anglo bigots in England, Ulster and the American Bible Belt in the most hateful way. The “Reverebnd Ian Paisley” in his church called on parishioners to tahe up the gun against “Papists” or else contribute” money to those who will. Jew” in the mouth of an anti-Semite is deadly in intention, but not in the mouth of a Jew. “Polak” is not an insult among Poles; it’s the Polish word for “a Pole”. Look at the anti-Mexican hate-mongers regarding Arizona’s new law. “Mexican” is not offensive if the speaker is not a bigot. (Guatemalans and Cubans also use it disparagingly.) (2) My second point is that when we read the word “squaw” in writers like Welch or Garcia it is not to be taken as “the S-Word”. Will I use “the S-Word” or “N-word” myself? Only in the context of a discussion like the present one.
David Edelstein has issued an apology.
http://nymag.com/movies/reviews/66024/index1.html
* Several readers have brought it forcefully to my attention that the word “squaw” is not a quaint residue of old Westerns as I had thought but an offensive slur, both racially and sexually charged. I apologize for its use in the above description.