Graduate Articles
Teams shouldn't use American Indian names
12 September, 2000 Times Writers Group, St. Cloud Times
Leland Rueb
Editor's note: This week marks the debut of submissions from the Times Writers Group. They are 20 volunteer columnists whose opinions will appear on this page Mondays through Fridays.
Recently, the Washington football team lost copyright protection for its name and logo because they are offensive. Anyone can reproduce products using their logo or their team mascot name.
This is only part of a long dispute to eliminate the use of American Indian mascots for non-American Indian sports teams. With this victory many still say that using American Indians as mascots is not offensive. That assumption is still taking something for granted.
The dilemma is in our history; by depicting American Indians as fierce, blood-thirsty savages, it helped to gain support for the near complete genocide of 500 nations of people.
Now, some teams still want to use that same symbol to scare their opponents. (Really?) To use American Indians as representative of courage and bravery is like taking a small plastic bag half-full of bits of a culture, filling the rest with testosterone, and trying to say in so doing, you are "Honoring a People."
Placing distorted logos of any people next to logos of animals is not honoring anyone. Aren't there any mainstream military icons that stand for courage in battle?
If you really want to honor American Indians, try learning to respect the land and be sure that your decisions on how to take care of the earth will sustain life (at least) seven generations from now.
American Indians are a giving and cooperative people. Using them for icons of competition is just inaccurate. Much of the courage in battle came from desperate attempts to defend women, children and elders who were only feet away. Much of the seemingly mysterious abilities of American Indians stemmed from an intimate awareness of natural laws and respect for Mother Earth.
In 1492, the country that is now India was Hindustan. Columbus was an Italian working for the Portuguese and he spoke poor Spanish. He was probably referring to the people he met as "In Dios" or "In God," people in God or spiritual people.
Indians! Tell me how the tomahawk chop honorably depicts spiritual people. Vikings are named after a team from an area that is heavily populated with Norwegians. New England has a history of "Patriots", and the University of Notre Dame had a majority of Irish Catholic students.
If Norwegians, Patriots or Irish are offended by these mascots, I will support their right not to be offended. If a team is owned and/or dominated by American Indians, I would not argue with their right to be called "Braves" or "Warriors."
But it is not right for a dominant number of the mainstream to tell any minority what should and should not offend them. Did you know that at the time many of these team names were established, American Indians did not have the right to practice their own freedom of religion?
The "Ghost Dance" was outlawed because, as one senator said, "I don't even like the sound of it." American Indian kids were still being forcibly taken from their homes to be "conditioned" in boarding schools. There also was prohibition on the reservations that extended past the repeal of prohibition for the rest of the United States. There was and still is the hope of completely eliminating all American Indian treaty rights and reservations to enable assimilating Indians into mainstream society.
That is a fraction of the history of people the Braves, Blackhawks and Seminoles claimed to be honoring.
American Indians have repeatedly voiced opposition to American Indian mascots but the argument in favor of mascots is consistently a matter of telling people how they are supposed to feel.
Thankfully, the Communists didn't come here and tell the free thinking people how they are supposed to live, to feel, and how to be properly spiritual. If those tables had been turned that way, sensitivity to this simple minor issue would not be so harshly resisted.
For a final note, I would like to bring up a matter of precedence: On Oct. 16, 1946, Julius Streicher was hanged. He was convicted in Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the lead prosecuting attorney at Nuremberg, knew that Streicher had not "killed anyone nor had he committed a violent act." But that a "permanent benchmark of justice" was established.
Streicher was the editor of a publication that depicted Jews in a derogatory and dehumanizing manner. One of the caricatures he used is similar to the image of the mascot for the Cleveland Indians. Do you see the inconsistency? Are some saying that what is abhorrent for he Nazis is "honor" in the United States?
