A message sent Sunday from a team of U.S. Navy SEALS to Washington announced bin Laden's death: "Geronimo EKIA" (enemy killed in action). The use of Geronimo's name to identify the most-wanted terrorist in the world enraged many Native Americans.
"To associate a Native warrior with bin Laden is not an accurate reflection of history and it undermines the military service of Native people," Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indians, told CNN.
Geronimo fought the U.S. and Mexico when the American West was being settled.
His 1909 obituary in The New York Times is particularly biased: "Geronimo gained a reputation for cruelty and cunning never surpassed by that of any other American Indian chief. For more than twenty years he and his men were the terror of the country, always leaving a trail of bloodshed and devastation."
Geronimo managed to never be captured. He died a prisoner of war, after surrendering to the U.S. when a general promised to reunite him with his tribe.
"When people representing the U.S. reach back a century to take a gratuitous swipe at Geronimo as an enemy and to equate him with a terrorist, they are insulting all Native American nations and people," Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute, told a senate committee hearing Thursday. The hearing had been scheduled before bin Laden's death to address racist names of sports teams.
On Thursday, Indian Country Today asked its Twitter and Facebook followers to change their pics for the next two days. (Some of the Facebook fans asked if they could extend or change the time frame, because they had photos of their mothers up for Mother's Day. ICT consented.)