When other kids visited Cherokee, North Carolina, their parents bought them rubber tomahawks and leather moccasins. Their day’s activities included getting a photo made with the “chief” standing next to a teepee on a street corner. When I visited Cherokee, my parents would have none of this. That so-called chief wasn’t wearing Cherokee clothing, and Cherokees didn’t live in teepees. We went to the Oconaluftee living history village or the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, followed by a trip to Qualla Arts & Crafts Mutual. My parents showed me newspapers still being printed in the Cherokee language. On special occasions, we went to see President Andrew Jackson betray treaties in the “Unto These Hills” outdoor drama. My parents made a real effort, however imperfect, to show me a real, living people with their own history, language, cultural heritage, government, lives, and hopes.
They were resisting a powerful current. American culture is brimming with mish-mashed, two-dimensional, demeaning, and offensive portrayals of Native Americans, and sports mascots are among the worst.
Regardless what they might say, non-Indian schools and other sports teams are not honoring Indian peoples and cultures by turning them into crude caricatures. We cannot pretend that whooping mascots with absurdly red skin waving tomahawks are holistic and realistic representations of Native Americans. These schools, sports teams, and their fans (not to mention the media and advertisers) are not respecting Indians as living, self-defining, and self-determining persons. Even when they do not employ repulsive epithets like “redskins” they are objectifying and dehumanizing Indians, appropriating and exploiting cultural and often sacred images for their own entertainment, propagating and perpetuating misinformed and humiliating stereotypes that damage both the way other people view Indians and the way Indians see themselves. (Studies have shown that Indian mascots are especially damaging to the self-esteem of Native American children.)
(Can you imagine? Is this OK? White friends, be honest, how might you feel if images like this were the most common portrayals of white people in our culture?)
It is simply absurd for white people to insist that these images are not offensive while ignoring, dismissing, and overruling the majority of actual Native Americans. Even in those rare cases where a tribe has granted permission to use a name, plenty of tribal members and related tribes disagree with the permission.
No appeal to longstanding tradition and pretense of respect can be used to defend this practice. This 2002 article by Suzan Shown Harjo illustrates the point well:
On Crossfire, [Illinois alum Robert] Novak echoed other Illinois fans when he claimed, “There was no intention to have these Indian nicknames offensive. We have a tremendous war dance by Chief Illiniwek. Isn’t this part of the deep American tradition of respect for the fighting qualities of the Indians who gave the white people such a hard time on the battlefield?”
That “respect” came about as Native Peoples were being subjected to the slow torture of confinement, starvation and deculturization. That period exactly brackets the emergence of the Fighting Illini and Chief Illiniwek at the Illinois University.The Illini showed up in 1874 as the name of the school paper, which is a dignified and respectful way to use a name. It gradually became the name of the team, which subjects a name to indignities and disrespect, at the very least from the opposing fans. At that same time in history, Army officers and Smithsonian “scientists” were collecting Indian heads from graves and massacre sites, and otherwise showing “respect” for Indian people.
Chief Illiniwek started dancing at half-time in 1926, when federal Indian agents were punishing Indians for dancing on reservations. The federal government specifically banned the Sun Dance “and all other similar dances and so-called religious ceremonies” from 1880 to 1936. Interior secretaries and Indian commissioners ordered federal Indian agents to undertake a “careful propaganda” to “educate public opinion against the dance.”
Federal notices were posted prominently on reservations, warning that Indians would be treated as “hostiles” if they danced.
One [of these notices], in 1921, reiterated the prohibitions and penalties regarding “any dance which involves … the reckless giving away of property … frequent or prolonged periods of celebration … in fact any disorderly or plainly excessive performance that promotes superstitious cruelty, licentiousness, idleness, danger to health, and shiftless indifference to family welfare.”
…While Indian people were outlaws for the federal crime of Indian dancing, white guys in educational and professional sports arenas were dressing up like Halloween “Indians” and dancing the fool.
Chief Illiniwek has since been retired, but racist mascots have not.
I invite readers to watch this video at RetireTheChief.Org.
I am with you 100% on this!
I”ve heard the cock-and-bull story that the “Redskins” team was named out of respect for Native Americans. There are SO MANY problems with that theory…chiefly among them that there are hundreds of tribes of Native Americans, and they cannot all be lumped into one cultural group.
Black-white racism in this country keeps the memory of slavery alive. The slaves of the civil war era have many descendants walking around who remember past injustices. Native Americans, however, have mostly been relegated to ‘reservations’. The Trail of Tears, perhaps the most conspicuous example of Native American oppression, gets maybe one class period of discussion in American History classes.
Drug use, alcoholism, and suicide is rampant in impoverished Native American communities, and nearly all Native American communites are impoverished. It’s a sad fact…I think we don’t feel as bad discriminating about these ethnic groups because they’re a stark minority, and because most of us don’t encounter Native American people on a daily basis.
And lastly…I think there are lots of people who have some degree of Native American heritage. For example, I’m white, and looking at me you’d never guess any differently. But my grandfather’s mother was a Cherokee. That makes me… 1/16th Cherokee. And I think there are other people like me…and who think that having this tiny portion of their heritage in Native American culture means that it’s OK to pass judgement on that culture, or to reference it in a joking manner.
Great post, Kate!
I realize I’m a hypocrite for saying this, as I am (or at least was, back when I used to watch baseball on a regular basis) a Cleveland Indians fan. My dad is from Cleveland. I think a part of him would be a little sad if Cleveland retired the Indians mascot, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen – and it doesn’t mean he’d be any less of a fan if it did.
In the town where I grew up – see: Battle of the Rogue River; see also: white settlers’ persecution of Native Americans – there’s a country road called Dead Indian Road. Well, that’s what it used to be called, anyway; it has since been renamed to – get this – Dead Indian Memorial Road. Except…no one calls it that. And we all snicker about it, not because dead Indians are funny, but because, really, the best the powers that be could do in renaming it to make it “less offensive” was Dead Indian MEMORIAL Road? As if we all don’t know why it was called Dead Indian Road in the first place? Oh, southern Oregon.
Dead Indian MEMORIAL Road? That’s hideous!
That reminds me of the “compromise” regarding the Confederate flag flying above the South Carolina State House. When the flag was finally taken down, the “solution” was to put it next to the Confederate war memorial behind the State House.
Trouble is, the back of the State House is the side that gets the most traffic. It’s the side everyone sees and takes pictures of. In other words, if you asked people which side was the front, they’d probably point to this side. Hardly anyone ever sees the real front of the building.
So now the Confederate flag is flying right behind the statue in the foreground of this photograph. You can see it here. This is Main Street.
Generally I do not post on blogs, but I would like to say that this post really forced me to do so, Excellent post!
My parents’ efforts did not end with my childhood, by the way. Back in 2007 we went to see an exhibit at the Smithsonian about one of my British relatives who went to the Cherokee as an early goodwill emissary.
My favorite quote from the exhibit: “Well, [the Bible] seems to be a good book– strange that the white people are not better, after having had it so long.” –Chief Yonaguska, Drowning Bear
[…] to misappropriate Native Americans names, cultural images and symbols as their mascots. In her post “Racist Mascots”, she explains: American culture is brimming with mish-mashed, two-dimensional, demeaning, and […]
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A definite great read….
[…] to misappropriate Native Americans names, cultural images and symbols as their mascots. In her post “Racist Mascots”, she explains: American culture is brimming with mish-mashed, two-dimensional, demeaning, and […]
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