Posted on 03/17/2002 4:43:27 AM PST by real saxophonist
Mascot spotlights Indian grievances
'Whities' fightin' for a cause
By Coleman Cornelius
Denver Post Northern Colorado Bureau
Sunday, March 17, 2002 - The Fightin' Whities of Greeley erupted as an international phenomenon last week, grabbing headlines and airwaves with their satirical mascot protest.
But will the intramural basketball team's biting humor help change mascots that many American Indians find dehumanizing?
It's a question Indians across the country are asking - in e-mails, conference calls and meetings - as they watch the provocative strategy unfold.
Some mascot activists said they got a good laugh from a novel twist in a long-running debate, and they hope the Fightin' Whities prompt useful discussion about the core issue of Indian stereotypes. But others said they are loath to mock racism, knowing irony is often misinterpreted.
"If the Fightin' Whities gets the message across, we fully support it. It would be a major contribution to our effort," said Vernon Bellecourt, a member of the Anishinabe-Ojibwe Nation and a leader of the American Indian Movement, which has battled for three decades to end the use of Indian mascots.
Meanwhile, some Greeley residents are considering a campaign that would urge informal teams elsewhere to adopt the Fightin' Whities tactic.
"I look at it as a reverse perspective," said Dan Ninham, a member of the Oneida Nation. "I think this kind of approach could be used nationally. It touches people."
Early this year, Ninham formed a multiethnic committee to oppose the Fightin' Reds mascot at Eaton High School - a caricature of a defiant Indian with a misshapen nose, eagle feather and loincloth. Ninham has called it "one of the most blatantly racist mascots in the country," but school officials in the farm town north of Greeley have refused to meet with the committee to discuss concerns.
The University of Northern Colorado intramural basketball team, made up of American Indians, Hispanics and Anglos, took the name Fightin' Whites as a jab at the nearby high school. The team, whose name evolved into the more in-your-face Fightin' Whities, has its own mascot on player T-shirts: a caricature of a middle-aged white guy with the phrase, "Everthang's gonna be all white!"
Charlie Cuny, 27, team founder and a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, said he and his college buddies never predicted the response. They've been swamped with T-shirt requests, and news of the Fightin' Whities has been in countless media outlets, from talk radio to The New York Times.
"If it opens the lines of communication, that's great," Cuny said. "I would hope people would be smart enough to see through to the real issue - that we have to respect all cultures."
Eaton school officials have questioned the team's motives and complained that their tiny district is being unfairly targeted. The superintendent and principals have called the Fightin' Reds mascot a "nonissue."
Indian mascots have long provoked debate. Mascot protesters estimate that 3,000 high schools, colleges and professional sports teams use Native American nicknames and caricatures - including the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians, with their grinning Chief Wahoo mascot.
At least 20 Colorado schools are on that list, including the Loveland High School Indians, the La Veta High School Redskins and the Lamar High School Savages. (Lamar, on Colorado's Eastern Plains, is near the site of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, where Col. John Chivington and his cavalry slaughtered more than 150 peaceful Indians.)
About 600 schools and teams nationwide have changed names and dropped Indian imagery, and the list is growing.
In Colorado, Arvada High School switched from the Redskins to the Reds in 1993; the school stopped using its Indian mascot and recently adopted a bulldog.
Likewise, the University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo transformed from the Indians to the Thunderwolves in 1995, and Adams State College in Alamosa switched from the Indians to the Grizzlies in 1996.
Mascot debates are emotional, with defenders typically arguing that Indian nicknames and imagery are meant to honor Native Americans and are important elements of school and team pride.
A recent Sports Illustrated poll reported that many American Indians don't oppose such mascots. But for those who do, sensitivities run deep.
"These mascots distort a living people's culture and identity," said Bellecourt, president of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media. "When they say they're honoring us, they become culture vultures."
The terms "Redskins" and "Reds" have their roots in what Bellecourt called the "rhetoric of genocide." The phrases were first used by European colonists referring to the bloody scalps of native people killed for bounties, he said. "Envision a scalp dripping with blood, like a rancher clips a coyote's ears to collect the bounty," Bellecourt said. The terms later were used as slurs referring to skin color and ceremonial paint, he said.
Merry Ketterling, a Cheyenne River Lakota, has protested the University of North Dakota's mascot, the Fighting Sioux. She and other mascot foes note that American Indians are the only race used as mascots, a role most often filled by animals.
Ketterling, at 64 a Lakota elder, said it is painful to see Fighting Sioux hockey fans tromping across an arena floor that bears depictions of eagle feathers, which are sacred cultural and religious symbols to her people. At the same stadium, fans can eat "Sioux dogs."
"They're not honoring us - they're dehumanizing us," Ketterling said. "You get to the point that you don't know what you can do anymore."
Yet she and others said satire must be used carefully in the mascot debate so that it doesn't backfire by inflaming hostilities or trivializing human rights. Case in point: Some people clamoring for Fightin' Whities T-shirts have said in e-mails that they cheer white dominance.
Charlene Teters, a professor at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, has fought to change the University of Illinois' mascot, the Chief of the Fighting Illini, because she thinks the representation prevents others from understanding Native Americans as real people with contemporary concerns. Indian caricatures, she said, cause painful racial divisions.
"We see the results of that pain in our children. We see it in the low self-esteem, the high suicide rates and the self-hatred," said Teters, a Spokane Indian. "Those of us on the front lines, we see this as an important issue."
In the end, said Susan Ninham of Greeley, an Ojibwe Indian, the success of the Fightin' Whities will turn on this question: "Are school officials willing to sit down and talk with us?"
May I suggest to these people that they switch to Scottish Highlanders/Islanders (Gaels) as mascots instead? And not just "generic" Gaels but specific clans, so they can differentiate. And in so many ways:
There's the tough Clan Chattan ("Touch not the cat but a glove" - touch the cat without a glove, you'll get hurt), for example.
Or, for honour, the Keith: "Veritas Vincit" ("truth will win out").
And on it goes... Alba gu brath!
(And of course there's the Lewis--Harris thing...)
The Indians want to practice separatism and be relegated to the history books? No problem here.
White people are the ones who deserve to be honord and rememberd. We made the country what it is today. Good, bad, or indifferent, lets honor and champion us. We deserve it.
And yet the mascot for the Red Mesa High School in the Navaho nation remains the "Red Mesa Redskins."
The funniest thing that could come out of this is if all the 600 schools renamed themselves after whites. Then, in about five years, minorities would start begging for more representation in mascots.
LOL! OK, OK, credit you shall recieve. It's that big $$$$$$$ you'all want for that high tech stuff that's most troubling though!
And yet the mascot for the Red Mesa High School in the Navaho nation remains the "Red Mesa Redskins."You never hear about these kinds of controversies in the areas where large numbers of Amerinds live. When I was working in Oklahoma (biggest % Amerind population in the nation) it seemed like half the high schools had Amerind names and/or symbolism, and no one was complaining.
I still want to see the PC liberals tell the Amerind Bloods sets in their Redskins gear or Crips sets in their Indians gear that those logos are "insensitive".....hehe.
"Case in point: Some people clamoring for Fightin' Whities T-shirts have said in e-mails that they cheer white dominance.
That's what the leftist ideologues want to believe. But in truth, regular old non-supremacist type white folks I've talked to (and certainly many on FR) think the idea ranges from amusing to overdue. But all I've talked to find the idea entirely inoffensive.
But of course, that makes sense. People name teams after things they admire, not things they despise. That's why Bellecourt already posesses the perfect technique to get people to end Indian team names without even realizing it. If he keeps his travelling complaint show running, his version of the Indians as whiners will replace the vision of Indians as strong warriors in the public view. Then no one will want their teams named after Indians.
Maybe this statement is true if you consider no more than 10 years a long time! It has been only since political correctness began to hold sway that folks have been getting exorcised about this!
There is a big difference between WHITES and WHITIES - in vernaclular, it is the difference between Black and the N- word.
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