Posted on 08/24/2011 12:59:31 PM PDT by GOP_Party_Animal
GRAND FORKS – The image Bennett Brien created a dozen years ago, borne into a cauldron of zealous admiration and bitter controversy and destined apparently for retirement by the end of this year, should not be called a logo, the artist insists.
“It’s not a logo,” he said. “It’s a symbol.”
And the symbolism of the Native American man depicted in his design for the University of North Dakota has been misunderstood, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at inforum.com ...
I once had a conversation with a very nice Cherokee woman. I was my typical politically incorrect self and I asked her about her thoughts on the Politically correct issues related to Indians.
She said the only ones that got worked up about team mascots and such were what she called wanna-be Indians. The ones that had an obscure ancestor that was a Cherokee princess. She also pointed out that the Cherokee didn’t have princesses or any royalty.
I asked about the name Indian vs Native American. Turns out Indian is fine. It had nothing to do with India. India wasn’t even India when Columbus discovered America. The name Indian was a corruption of the Spanish words for People of God.
You learn all kinds of interesting stuff when you aren’t PC.
He is using the wrong tack. Instead of trying to justify the symbol to people who are obviously intolerant, who are emotionally invested in their demands, he should accuse them of racism and bigotry, “for trying to purge the Native American from the American culture, making them non-persons, faceless people with no cultural identity!”
He could cite as examples of “anti-Native Americanism” the *lack* of Indian symbols of their heritage in the culture at large. That the NCAA wants Native Americans to be invisible people, limited to just their reservations like zoo animals, and destined to die out.
Then he could even rage at the NCAA for “Wanting to purge American college campuses of any trace of these proud tribes. Will they next ban any classes about Native American history and culture? Will they bar Indians from higher education entirely?”
“People like this bunch in the NCAA are totally racially supremacist in their outlook. The same *kind* of people who took Indian children from their families and adopted them to white families to raise, forbidding them to speak their own language, and stripping them of their cultural identity.”
/Yes, I know it is utter hooey, but that is how you deal with such politically correct imbeciles. Hit them where they aren’t expecting you to.
So what happens to the Comanche and Apache helicopters?
I guess the Army demeans the Native American by naming its war machines after him.
/sarc/
the thing about art is what is says about the people who react to it.
baseball civilizes.
what are you saying, that all native american logos look alike...?
you’re a logoist aren’t you....
teeman
it’s an absolute reverent tribute compared to that Chief Wahoo on the Cleveland Indians’ caps
actually the Fighting Sioux used a knockoff of the Chicago Blackhawk logo years before they had this one
>You learn all kinds of interesting stuff when you aren’t PC.<
I never in the past 10 years called a black person “African American”. Even in conversation with them. They don’t call the opposite ‘Italian American’ etc so why do it in the first place? One of my black co-workers years ago mentioned that when i say it, they can see I have no malice at all when I say “black” so they’re cool with it.
Being from canada, our “Indians’ were/are called “First Nations”...as an FU to whitey. Seriously. One of my girlfriends was FN, and in canada, they get FREE education, free parcels of land, free healthcare, close to NO TAXES. If I ever married one, I would be set for life as we will be receiving over $1000/per “plus more” just by being an “indigenous minority”.
I thought that mascot was a parody or joke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_Whites
Exactly. When people can no longer laugh, anger creeps in.
I have talked with Bennett at a family gathering and we discussed this among much else. He said it wasn't the Indians (his term, and most American Indians I know prefer it to PC--) who are the ones offended so much as those who make a living being offended for people who aren't.
Interesting fellow who has done some nice work.
Thank you.
Hear! Hear!
As an ND alum (and a former bartender at Whitey’s Wonderbar, in East Grand Forks) I picked my nick exactly because of this controversy.
The whole anti-Sioux nickname campaign is the product of p.o.’d, belly-aching faculty members and other assorted losers who loathe, in equal measure, athletics and achievement/success.
Screw ‘em!
Novelty kind of fizzled though (thankfully).
Still...sad that it's tied to my alma mater.
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