We know the DEA manufactures cases. Michele Leonhart is another Bush cancer Obama decided to keep around. She is off the reservation and needs to be thrown into jail. The PBS documentary also mentioned the FBI does it as well.
1. (literally) To leave a reservation to which one was restricted.
2. (US, politics) To break with one's party or group, usually temporarily.
3. (by extension) To engage in disruptive activity outside normal bounds.
Why would this term even be seen as negative in an HN context? It sounds like every startup founder/rebellious techy would want to "go off the reservation."
So I'm quite confused by what the intended pejorative was supposed to be.
If you want a brief, brutal look at what "the reservation" really means, see this short film from Aeon called "Honor the Treaties". You'll see exactly why the casual acceptance of reservations as places where anyone "truly" belongs is so problematic.
http://aeon.co/film/the-real-legacy-of-manifest-destiny/
Getting back to the expression, it should be avoided for the same reason that you'd avoid analogies to slave plantations or concentration camps that imply these institutions were benign, defensible things. It's far better to use the phrase "way out of line", which conveys the same meaning, but without the unthinking disregard for genocide, theft of land, and institutionalized deceit that underpin most reservations. For the people who live on reservations, or are connected to those who do, the term is loaded with a lot of bitterness, futility, alienation, and despair. Not to put too fine a point on it, but suicide rates among young people who grow up on reservations are double what they are anywhere else in America.
As an aside, the Navajo reservation is an interesting exception to this rule in that it encompasses the territory on which the Navajo have lived for more than 10,000 years, and not some crappy godforsaken piece of land to which they were forcibly relocated. So there's a bit more pride in that case. But a history of dismissal and segregation means there's still an unbelievable amount of poverty. As time goes by they look more and more like wounds that never heal.
I didn't get that intention from the definitions found on the interwebs. Slang dictionary [1]:
> used to slam people who are thinking differently than what their group considers acceptable.
I believe what you are saying is true, its not a phrase I would use but...why do all of these dictionaries get the phrase so wrong as to mean something positive?
[1] http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/off-t...
You can also see why having circumstances reduced to a handful of godforsaken reservations was - and remains - a profound trauma. Indeed, the fact that most people have no idea why the terms causes pain is, itself, a source of ongoing pain since is so clearly signals how thoroughly Native suffering has been airbrushed from American history.
We can agree that the VCs are the white traders, then, yes? Let's talk about equity.
How exactly is "off the reservation" not offensive in the way that several commonly used idioms are now considered offensive, such as "that is retarded", "that is gay", "you Jewed the price down", "I got gypped"?
>are not offensive.
Right, literally nobody takes offense to "off the reservation" because you of course don't mean Native Americans. Are you seriously saying that slightly racist terms are only ever offensive in literal contexts?
http://psychologybenefits.org/2014/02/07/anti-lgbt-microaggr...
I can't even tell if you're referring to "retarded" or "gay" here.
Take away that reality and "that's gay" becomes an idiom lost in time.
You can pretend it's the PC police, or if you want to be the kind of person who isn't insensitive towards some subcultures you could try to avoid the phrase. There are plenty of alternatives.
On a related note, they're not okay with "Redskins" either.
It's useful for them to be aware of idiom that might cause trouble. That's not telling people to avoid it. It is just giving them extra information.
The real reason for avoiding "off the reservation" is that it is an Americanism that doesn't have much use in other English speaking nations.
Edit: Anyone able to inform me how "FYI" could be offensive?
You are being trolled.