Hillary Clinton drew ire from Native Americans on Saturday over her use of the phrase “off the reservation” in a CNN interview.
Activists pointed to the saying’s dark origins in late-19th-century laws restricting Native Americans to reservation lands.
“When reservations were first established, going #OffTheReservation meant you were going to be hunted down and killed,” Ruth Hopkins tweeted.
The social-media firestorm forced Clinton’s campaign to apologize — also on Twitter.
“Divisive language has no place in our politics,” tweeted Amanda Renteria, Clinton’s national political director. “Hillary Clinton meant no disrespect to Native Americans. She wants this election to be about lifting people up, not tearing them down.”
Clinton employed the idiom in reference to her husband Bill’s bad behavior in an interview Friday with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“I have a lot of experience dealing with men who sometimes get off the reservation in the way they behave,” she said, dismissing a question about Donald Trump’s boorish attacks on the Democratic front-runner.