redskins

The term "redskins" has been used in the United States as a pejorative aimed at Native people since the 19th century and was a common racial slur when Hargreaves was writing her novel. Because she often wrote sympathetically about Indigenous people, it is possible she leaned on the term's early use as a descriptor; but the title would have been jarring for Native people and indicative of the hostility, prejudice, and indifference of white writers and readers to the lasting effects of settler colonialism.