Catering to That 10 That Love to be Mascots

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Tim Giago
Catering to That 10 Percent That Love to Be Mascots


The mainstream media and common ignorance has convinced some Native
Americans that being a mascot for American sporting teams is OK; that it
is all right to be ridiculed, mimicked and degraded for the sake of
satisfying white and black sports fans.

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Mascots usually consist of lions, tigers and bears, oh my. They are
bison, bulldogs, and horses either led out on the field on leashes or
ridden by outrageously painted Indians or Trojans. Or they are Vikings,
figments of history, with no connection to today's reality. Or they are
Fighting Irish with a fictitious leprechaun mascot dancing around the
sidelines.

They are cowboys, steelers, packers, or boilermakers that some
nincompoops mistake for an ethnic minority. If the fans of these teams
choose to honor these symbols for their sports teams, so be it. But when
they take real life American Indians and turn them into cartoon
caricatures and then mimic them by painting their faces, donning
feathers, and doing the tomahawk chop, they cross that thin line called
racism.

The University of North Dakota is fighting to retain a mascot they call
the Fighting Sioux. The people they are aping no longer call themselves
Sioux, but instead call themselves by their traditional names. Sioux was
a bastardization of French and Ojibwe which could be interpreted as
"Little Snake."

And even if UND alumni wanted to retain this apparently erroneous name,
it is what they do in presenting that image I find reprehensible. One
year when UND played its main rival, the North Dakota State Bison, a
cartoon image made the rounds of an Indian warrior sexually mounting a
buffalo with the appropriate language attached. Another time in the city
of Bismarck just before a renewal of this instate rivalry, some fans of
North Dakota State were calling their UND rivals "The F---ing Sioux."
They used the "F" word to not only insult the fans of UND, but
collaterally insulted all Native Americans in the state.

If one happened to be in Champaign/Urbana, Illinois before a big
sporting event, in order to laud their mascot, Chief Illiniwek, a white
boy dressed up in Native attire, one could see images of bleary-eyed,
drunken Indians painted on the windows of the downtown bars. On sale in
the local markets and drugstores, one could purchase rolls of toilet
paper with images of Indians imprinted on every sheet.

One year, before a big football game between the Minnesota Gophers and
the University of Illinois Fighting Illini, stuffed Indian dummies could
be seen with ropes around their necks hanging from buildings and trees
on the Minnesota campus.

Now any Indian or white that finds the things I have written above as
"honoring" American Indians holds a very different view of what the word
"honor" holds for the majority of Native Americans.

I cannot end this piece without referring to the Sunday a few years ago
when the fans of the Washington professional football team (I will not
use the "R" word here), painted a pig red, placed a feathered bonnet on
its head, and then chased it around the football field at halftime. If
they had painted a pig black and placed an Afro wig on its head and
chased it around the football field at halftime, how many African
Americans would have considered that an "honor?"

Let it suffice to say the 90 percent of all Native Americans in this
country consider their use as mascots for America's fun and games an
insult. In the U.S. Navy we used to have a saying that went, "There is
that 10 percent that never gets the word." And yes, you will find that
10 percent standing proudly while 90 percent of their brethren are being
insulted.

The mainstream media has, for 200 years or more, published articles
about Native Americans that they considered quaint or humorous. Or they
have published articles without ever checking the facts. There have been
too many to list here, but a good example is the one last week that
gushed about the Lakota Sioux (a misnomer) withdrawing from the United
States of America. The MSM never bothered to check the authenticity of
this article by talking to the legally elected presidents of any tribe
in South Dakota. They never considered that treaties are made between
nations and not individuals.

But that is just one example of how the media has never understood why
most Indians detest their use as mascots. Only Oprah Winfrey used her
television show to invite Native Americans to discuss their feelings
about this topic, but that was 15 years ago.

Ten percent does not make up a majority, so please stop catering to that
10 percent.

Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, was born, raised and educated on the Pine
Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in
the Class of 1991. He can be reached at [e-mail]