With an expanded definition to reflect the times, Merriam-Webster has declared an omnipresent truth as its 2021 word of the year: vaccine.

“This was a word that was extremely high in our data every single day in 2021,” Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large, told The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s announcement. 

“It really represents two different stories. One is the science story, which is this remarkable speed with which the vaccines were developed. But there’s also the debates regarding policy, politics and political affiliation. It’s one word that carries these two huge stories,” he said.

The selection follows “vax” as word of the year from the folks who publish the Oxford English Dictionary. And it comes after Merriam-Webster chose “pandemic” as tops in lookups last year on its online site.

“The pandemic was the gun going off and now we have the aftereffects,” Sokolowski said.

At Merriam-Webster, lookups for “vaccine” increased 601% over 2020, when the first U.S. shot was administered in New York in December after quick development, and months of speculation and discussion over efficacy. The world’s first jab occurred earlier that month in the UK.

Compared to 2019, when there was little urgency or chatter about vaccines, Merriam-Webster logged an increase of 1,048% in lookups this year. Debates over inequitable distribution, vaccine mandates and boosters kept interest high, Sokolowski said. So did vaccine hesitancy and friction over vaccine passports.

The word “vaccine” wasn’t birthed in a day, or due to a single pandemic. The first known use stretches back to 1882 but references pop up earlier related to fluid from cowpox pustules used in inoculations, Sokolowski said. It was borrowed from the New Latin “vaccina,” which goes back to Latin’s feminine “vaccinus,” meaning “of or from a cow.”  

The Latin for cow is “vacca,” a word that might be akin to the Sanskrit “vasa,” according to Merriam-Webster. 

Inoculation, on the other hand, dates to 1714, in one sense referring to the act of injecting an “inoculum.”

Earlier this year, Merriam-Webster added to its online entry for “vaccine” to cover all the talk of mRNA vaccines, or messenger vaccines such as those for COVID-19 developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. 

While other dictionary companies choose words of the year by committee, Merriam-Webster bases its selection on lookup data, paying close attention to spikes and, more recently, year-over-year increases in searches after weeding out evergreens. The company has been declaring a word of the year since 2008. Among its runners-up in the word biography of 2021:

INSURRECTION: Interest was driven by the deadly Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol. Arrests continue, as do congressional hearings over the attack by supporters of President Donald Trump. Some of Trump’s allies have resisted subpoenas, including Steve Bannon. Searches for the word increased by 61,000% over 2020, Sokolowksi said.

INFRASTRUCTURE: President Joe Biden was able to deliver what Trump often spoke of but never achieved: A bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law. When Biden proposed help with broadband access, eldercare and preschool, conversation changed from not only roads and bridges but “figurative infrastructure,” Sokolowski said.

“Many people asked, what is infrastructure if it’s not made out of steel or concrete? Infrastructure, in Latin, means underneath the structure,” he said. 

PERSEVERANCE: It’s the name of NASA’s latest Mars rover. It landed Feb. 18, 2021. “Perseverance is the most sophisticated rover NASA has ever sent to the Red Planet, with a name that embodies NASA’s passion, and our nation’s capability, to take on and overcome challenges,” the space agency said.  

The name was thought up by Alexander Mather, a 14-year-old seventh-grader at Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia. He participated in an essay contest organized by NASA. He was one of 28,000 K-12 students to submit entries. 

NOMAD: The word had its moment with the 2020 release of the film “Nomadland.” It went on to win three Oscars in April 2021, including best picture, director (Chloé Zhao) and actress (Frances McDormand). Zhao became the first woman of color to win best director.  

The AP’s film writer Jake Coyle called the indie success “a plain-spoken meditation on solitude, grief and grit. He wrote that it “struck a chord in a pandemic-ravaged year. It made for an unlikely Oscar champ: A film about people who gravitate to the margins took center stage.”

Other words in Merriam-Webster’s Top 10: Cicada (we had an invasion), guardian (the Cleveland Indians became the Cleveland Guardians), meta (the lofty new name of Facebook’s parent company), cisgender (a gender identity that corresponds to one’s sex assigned at birth), woke (charged with politics and political correctness) and murraya (a tropical tree and the word that won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee for 14-year-old Zaila Avant-garde).
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Talks about reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal resume Monday in Vienna after a five-month break and for the first time since a new president took office in Iran.

Like six previous rounds of negotiations, which began in April, the United States is participating indirectly, similar to the 2015 deal, which was known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran will talk directly with the remaining signatories of the 2015 deal — Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany — with European diplomats shuttling back and forth to consult with the U.S. side. 

At stake is the resumption of the agreement that brought limits to Iran’s nuclear program lasting between 10 and 15 years in exchange for sanctions relief.

The United States withdrew from the agreement in 2018 during the administration of President Donald Trump, after which Iran began stepping away from its commitments.

To date, Iran has exceeded its agreed limits on the amount of uranium it stockpiles, enriched uranium to higher levels and utilized more advanced centrifuges in its nuclear facilities.

The original agreement came in response to fears that Iran was working to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran has denied, saying its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes such as research and generating power.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Carrie Meek, the grandchild of a slave and a sharecropper’s daughter who became one of the first Black Floridians elected to Congress since Reconstruction, died Sunday. She was 95.

Meek died at her home in Miami after a long illness, her family said in a statement. The family did not specify a cause of death.

Meek started her congressional career at an age when many people begin retirement. She was 66 when she easily won the 1992 Democratic congressional primary in her Miami-Dade County district. No Republican opposed her in the general election. 

Alcee Hastings and Corrine Brown joined Meek in January 1993 as the first Black Floridians to serve in Congress since 1876 as the state’s districts had been redrawn by the federal courts in accordance with the 1965 Voting Rights Act. 

On her first day in Congress, Meek reflected that while her grandmother, a slave on a Georgia farm, could never have dreamed of such an accomplishment, her parents told her that anything was possible. 

“They always said the day would come when we would be recognized for our character,” she told The Associated Press in an interview that day. 

In Congress, Meek championed affirmative action, economic opportunities for the poor and efforts to bolster democracy in and ease immigration restrictions on Haiti, the birthplace of many of her constituents. 

She also was known for her liberal opinions, folksy yet powerful oratory and colorful Republican bashing.

“The last Republican that did something for me was Abraham Lincoln,” she told the state delegation to the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago. 

Meek joined her son Kendrick, a former state trooper and state senator, in a 2000 sit-in at then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s office to protest an end to affirmative action policies. She had long argued in favor of such policies, since earning her master’s degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1948. At the time, Blacks were not admitted to graduate schools in Florida. 

Meek decided not to seek a sixth term in 2002. Her son Kendrick succeeded in winning her heavily Democratic district, a seat he held for four terms before an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate in 2010. 

After leaving Congress, Carrie Meek returned to Miami and created a foundation to work on education and housing issues. She was also criticized for some of her business dealings. 

She lobbied for a biotech park that was planned for Miami’s impoverished Liberty City neighborhood but never materialized. County authorities eventually started a criminal investigation, and the park’s developer was arrested in October 2009 on charges that he stole nearly $1 million from the project. 

Congressional records showed that Meek was paid while her son sought millions of federal dollars for the project. Meek said she was paid as a consultant, and both mother and son denied their efforts were linked. 

Before entering politics, Meek worked as a teacher and administrator at Miami-Dade College. 

She was elected to the Florida House in 1978, succeeding pioneer Black legislator Gwen Cherry, who had been killed in an auto accident. She became one of the first African Americans and the first Black woman to serve in the Florida Senate since the 1800s.

Carrie Pittman was born to Willie and Carrie Pittman in Tallahassee on April 29, 1926, and was the youngest of 12 children. Her father worked in nearby fields as a sharecropper and her mother took in laundry from white families. 

She graduated from Florida A&M University in 1946 with a degree in biology and physical education. The university named its building for Black history archives in her honor in 2007. She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

She accepted a position at Bethune Cookman College as an instructor and became the institution’s first female basketball coach. In 1958, she returned to Florida A&M as an instructor in health and physical education. She held that position until 1961. 

Meek continued her teaching career at Miami Dade Community College as the first Black professor, associate dean, and assistant to the Vice President from 1961 to 1979. 

Then, she began her trailblazing political career, representing Florida’s 17th Congressional District as a Democratic Florida State House Representative.

In Congress, Meek was a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee and worked to secure $100 million in aid to rebuild Dade County as the area recovered from Hurricane Andrew. 

She retired in 2002 and shifted her focus to the Carrie Meek Foundation, which she founded in November 2001, to provide the Miami-Dade community with much-needed resources, opportunities, and jobs. Meek spearheaded the Foundation’s daily operations until 2015 when she stepped down due to declining health.

Meek is survived by her children Lucia Davis-Raiford, Sheila Davis Kinui and Kendrick B. Meek, seven grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and multiple nieces and nephews.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

In a statement, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava called Meek a “true trailblazer.”

“She was never afraid to use her voice to speak out against inequality or to fight for the disenfranchised and the vulnerable — and her towering legacy will continue to shape our community and the nation for generations to come,” Levine Cava said.
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Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter is changing his name to “Enes Kanter Freedom” to celebrate becoming a United States citizen.

Kanter’s manager, Hank Fetic, told the Associated Press that Kanter will have his citizenship oath ceremony on Monday afternoon and at the same time will complete his legal name change. 

The news was first reported by the Athletic. 

Kanter, 29, is a native of Turkey who has been an outspoken critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish government. Kanter has said his passport was revoked by his homeland in 2017.

The 2011 first-round draft pick has also taken to social media to support Tibetan independence and criticize Chinese treatment of the Uyghur people. During games, he has worn shoes decorated to say “Free Tibet” and argued for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
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Ask most Native Americans about Indian boarding schools, and they will tell you that from 1879 through the late 1970s, the federal government forcibly removed thousands of Native children from their families and placed them in remote, military-style boarding schools. There, the children were abused, stripped of language and culture, and in some cases died under mysterious circumstances and were buried in unmarked graves.

In announcing a federal investigation into the boarding schools, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland recently said, “The legacy of Indian boarding schools remains, manifesting itself in Indigenous communities through intergenerational trauma, cycles of violence and abuse, disappearance, premature deaths, and other undocumented bodily and mental impacts.” Haaland is the first Native American to serve in the U.S. Cabinet.

But some Native historians worry that narrative is one-dimensional.

In her book, “Boarding School Seasons,” Brenda J. Child, a citizen of the Red Lake band of Chippewa and the Northrop professor of American studies at the University of Minnesota, notes the actual history of government boarding schools differs from the historical memory of the current generation.

“History is enormously complicated, and we sometimes want easier explanations for the past,” she told VOA.

Child believes many Native Americans blame boarding schools for everything bad that ever happened to them under colonialism.

“The narrative doesn’t reflect the complexities and contradictions of the boarding school system, which was different for each generation,” she said.

Hard decisions

Amanda Takes War Bonnet, an Oglala Lakota journalist from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and a former managing editor of Indian Country Today, now works at the Native Women’s Society of the Great Plains, an organization dedicated to stopping violence against women.

She tells the story of her grandmother, Helen Cottier, who in September 1930 received word that her 13-year-old son Albert — Take War Bonnet’s uncle — had died after only a year away at the Indian Industrial School in Genoa, Nebraska.

“My grandmother had to travel by buckboard wagon to Merriman, Nebraska, to fetch her son’s body at the train depot,” Takes War Bonnet said. “My mother, Rebecca, was a little girl then. She wrote in her diary that she was excited that her brother was coming home. Only she didn’t know he would be coming home in a box.” 

Helen’s marriage did not survive the grief of losing a child. Her husband abandoned her. Shortly afterward, she sent her surviving children to another boarding school, this time located about 70 kilometers away — a decision that might be baffling to some. 

A closer look at that era in U.S. history offers insight into her decision.

Traditionally, Native Americans lived communally and could rely on one another for support during hard times. That changed after 1887 when the U.S. government carved up reservations into small allotments and parceled them out to individuals and families registered on federal rolls. 

The government then sold off the remaining land — about 40.5 million hectares — mostly to non-Natives. The result was that reservations ended up in a “checkerboard” of ownership that left tribes divided and families torn apart.

In 1928, the government commissioned a study of conditions on Indian reservations. The so-called “Meriam Report” concluded that reservation Indians had not assimilated into the “dominant economic and social system” and were living in a state of extreme poverty on mostly unfarmable land. 

After the stock market crash of 1929, the nation plunged into the Great Depression, and no one suffered more than the Indians of South Dakota, according to a 1935 study by the South Dakota Emergency Relief Administration. Case workers described families living in “wretched” and “demoralizing” conditions, subsisting on inadequate rations and vulnerable to tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.

In 1930, facing the prospect of rearing four children by herself, Cottier likely saw the boarding school as a place where her children were at least guaranteed food, clothing and a warm bed. 

According to Child, the 1930s became the period with the highest enrollment in Indian boarding schools.

A look at the facts 

The federal government, contrary to common belief, operated only 25 off-reservation boarding schools as part of its effort to assimilate Native youth into American culture. The remaining boarding schools — roughly 340 — were located on reservations and run by religious groups on land provided by the government.

Originally, attendance in government boarding schools was voluntary. Forced attendance wouldn’t come until more than a decade after the first federal boarding school — the Carlisle Indian Industrial School — was founded in 1879.

In his memoir “Battlefield and Classroom,” Carlisle founder Richard Henry Pratt described his visit to the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where he hoped to recruit students.

At first, Brulé Lakota Chief Spotted Tail was unimpressed by the idea. 

“The white people are all thieves and liars,” he told Pratt, pointing to the federal government’s seizure of the Black Hills. “We do not want our children to learn such things.”

In the end, the chief relented and sent his four sons, daughter and her husband, a Lakota interpreter of mixed blood, to Pennsylvania. But when Spotted Tail visited Carlisle the following year and saw his sons dressed and drilled like soldiers, he became angry and took them out of school.

In 1891, the government authorized reservation agents to withhold benefits from families who refused to send their children to school; some agents resorted to force, abducting children from their homes at gunpoint.

Many parents hid their children or found other ways to resist federal authorities. In 1894, for example, 19 Hopi “hostiles” refused to give up their children and were imprisoned for a year on Alcatraz Island off the coast of California.

K. Tsianina Lomawaima, a retired Arizona State University professor of Native American studies and unenrolled Muscogee Indian, interviewed dozens of former students at the Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma for her book, “They Called It Prairie Light.”

“My dad was at Chilocco from 1927 — when he was about 8, 9 years old — until he ran away in 1935,” she told VOA.

She contradicts the notion of boarding school students as submissive victims, describing the creative ways students rebelled against authoritarianism. 

“The boys organized themselves into gangs, and they got into mischief,” she said. “It ran the gamut from sneaking out at night to ride the draft horses to setting fires to distilling home whiskey.” 

The boarding school curriculum may have been designed to “kill the Indian” in students. But that didn’t stop them from speaking their languages or covertly practicing their traditions. 

Lomawaima said that Chilocco students held “stomp dances” around bonfires, sang tribal songs and beat gourd drums; she relates one instance in which Ponca students used peyote in a dormitory ceremony.

Seeds of activism 

In 1913, Carlisle students petitioned Washington, complaining about unfair discipline, poor food and sanitation, and financial mismanagement under the school’s third superintendent, Moses Friedman. This resulted in a joint congressional hearing, where lawmakers heard testimony from teachers and students. Eventually, the government removed Friedman from his post.

Sometimes boarding school grievances overflowed into violence: In her book, Minnesota professor Child describes a 1919 incident at the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, in which students cut off the school’s electricity and staged a riot, looting food and destroying school property. 

Historians have noted that the intermingling of youths from many different tribes in boarding schools helped pave the way for early intertribal activist movements, such as the Society of American Indians and the Brotherhood of North American Indians, both of which organized in 1911, and later, the League of North American Indians, established in 1935.

Mixed legacy 

Today, Native Americans offer conflicting narratives about their families’ boarding school experiences. Most agree that the schools all but destroyed family and tribal ties. 

“My mother spent 11 years at school, so she never was able to connect with her mother, brothers and sisters,” said Takes War Bonnet. “So, after she married, she had a hard time parenting us.” 

Some parents took advantage of the system, according to Lakota journalist James Giago Davies. His mother attended the Holy Rosary Mission Boarding School in Pine Ridge, where children could go home at Christmas and during the summer. 

“My mom said a surprising number of parents just left their kids at school over Christmas,” he said. “And this still exists on reservations today. Schools become refuge for children because their home environment is dysfunctional, or their families can’t support them.”

Davies notes one positive impact of the boarding school era. 

“We knew exactly how the Indian world worked and now we knew exactly how the white world worked. So, we were savvy to both,” he said. 

Today, Native Americans are hoping the federal government will be able to account for ancestors who never returned from boarding schools. They are also pushing for a truth and reconciliation process to help them heal from boarding school trauma that still lingers. 

Retired professor Lomawaima said she hopes that in so doing, they won’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” It’s a common American idiom for losing something important while trying to get rid of something unwanted. 

“If you do that, you lose all the rich reality of folks who survived or even thrived,” she said. 

 

 
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Luz Rivas remembers seeing the word on her mother’s residency card as a child: alien.

In the stark terms of the government, it signaled her mother was not yet a citizen of the U.S. But to her young daughter, the word had a more personal meaning. Even though they were going through the naturalization process, it meant the family did not belong.

“I want other children of immigrants, like me, to not feel the same way I did, that my family did, when we saw the word ‘alien,’” said Rivas, now an assemblywoman in the California Legislature.

The Democratic lawmaker sought to retire the term and this year authored a bill — since signed into law — that replaces the use of “alien” in state statutes with other terms such as “noncitizen” or “immigrant.” Her effort was inspired by a similar shift earlier this year by the Biden administration.

Immigrants and immigrant-rights groups say the term, especially when combined with “illegal,” is dehumanizing and can have a harmful effect on immigration policy.

Lawmakers in at least seven states considered eliminating use of “alien” and “illegal” in state statutes this year and replacing them with descriptions such as “undocumented” and “noncitizen,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Only two states, California and Colorado, actually made the change.

“I want all Californians that are contributing to our society, that are small business owners, that work hard, to feel that they are part of California communities,” Rivas said of the reason behind her legislation.

State Sen. Julie Gonzales, who co-sponsored the new Colorado law, said during a legislative committee hearing that words such as “illegal” were “dehumanizing and derogatory” when applied to immigrants. Gonzales said the legislation aimed to remove the only place in Colorado statute where “illegal alien” was used to describe people living in the U.S. illegally.

“That language has been offensive for many people,” she said. “And some of the rationale behind that is really rooted in this idea that a person can certainly commit an illegal act, but no human being themselves is illegal.”

Using “alien” to describe those who are not U.S. citizens has a long history, dating to the nation’s first naturalization law, passed while George Washington was president. Fearing a war with France, Congress also passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which sought to suppress political subversion.

Changing the long-standing government terminology around immigration is not universally accepted as necessary or desirable.

Sage Naumann, spokesperson for the Colorado Senate Republicans, said the Democratic-controlled Legislature should be spending its time on matters of deeper importance to residents, such as taking steps to fight inflation, tackle crime and improve education.

 

Naumann said he doubted that “the average Coloradan — or American — cares about what semi-controversial words are buried in their state statutes.”

The Biden administration also received some pushback after its change in policy.

In April, U.S. Customs and Border Protection ordered employees to avoid using the word “alien” in internal documents and public communications and instead use “noncitizen” or “migrant.” “Illegal alien” also was out, to be replaced by descriptions such as “undocumented noncitizen.”

“We enforce our nation’s laws while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact,” Troy Miller, acting commissioner, wrote to employees of the largest U.S. law enforcement agency, which includes the Border Patrol. “The words we use matter and will serve to further confer that dignity to those in our custody.”

Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott objected, writing to others in the agency that the edict contradicted language in criminal statutes — although Miller made an exception for legal documents — and plunged the agency into a partisan debate. Scott, a Trump-era appointee, refused to sign off on the order and believes his outspokenness on that and other issues contributed to him being forced out of his position in June.

“To change the law is fine, but until then you’re really politicizing the mission,” Scott said in an interview.

An analysis by The Associated Press — which doesn’t refer to people as “aliens” except in direct quotes — found that more than a dozen states still use the terms “alien” or “illegal” in statutes referring to immigrants. Among them is Texas, where a legislative attempt to transition to different terminology advanced out of committee with bipartisan backing this year but failed to get a hearing before the full Texas House.

State Rep. Art Fierro, a Democrat, said he expected pushback when he proposed the change. But following committee discussions, he found the change was seen by both parties as an effort to use more “dignified, respectful” terms. He said he suggested the change because he felt the original terms were belittling to those seeking to work through the immigration process.

Fierro said he plans to introduce another bill to replace the terms during the state’s next regular legislative session, in 2023.

“We are just trying to treat people humanely,” he said.

Rosalidia Dardon knows from personal experience why the language surrounding immigration is so important.

After fleeing violence in El Salvador, she spent roughly 16 months in an immigration detention center in California before arriving at a refugee home in Texas in 2016. She was determined to find a job while she sought asylum but had lost her work visa after her protected status expired.

Dardon, 54, blames the ankle monitor she was required to wear and the description of immigrants with terms such as “illegal” for a job search marked by rejection after rejection.

“I would ask myself and God why I was given an ankle monitor if my only sin was to go to a country that was not my own,” said Dardon, whose immigration case remains pending. 
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