Posted on 02/23/2021 1:29:45 PM PST by nickcarraway
Jeep has been using Cherokee as a model name since the mid-1970s, but its next generation of vehicles arrives during a heightened national discussion of racial and social justice issues.
Jeep sells vehicles named Cherokee and Grand Cherokee. It also uses Mojave, the name of a Native American people and a desert in the American Southwest, as a trim designator on the Gladiator. The Cherokee Nation has commented on the record several times since Jeep started using the name in North America in 2013 after a 12-year hiatus. A representative of Cherokee Nation said that until recently it had been several years since it had any communication from Jeep regarding the name. For the first time, the Cherokee Nation is asking Jeep to change the name of its Cherokee and Grand Cherokee vehicles.
“I’m sure this comes from a place that is well-intended, but it does not honor us by having our name plastered on the side of a car," Chuck Hoskin, Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, told Car and Driver in a written statement responding to our request for comment on the issue. "The best way to honor us is to learn about our sovereign government, our role in this country, our history, culture, and language and have meaningful dialogue with federally recognized tribes on cultural appropriateness."
What If New Cars Had Old Names?
Who Wore It Better? These 10 Cars Share Names Jeep has been building cars that wear the Cherokee Nation's name for more than 45 years. In that time, the company has gone on the record several times defending its decision to use the name of a Native American nation on its cars. Over the past eight years, since the reintroduction of the Cherokee nameplate to the U.S. market in 2013, the Cherokee Nation has gone on the record, too, but it had never explicitly said that Jeep should change the cars' names.
Now, as Jeep prepares to launch the next generation of the Grand Cherokee against the backdrop of high-profile name changes in the world of sports, that has changed.
In his statement, Chief Hoskin alluded to the mainstreaming of racial justice concepts following the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, as well as those sports stories. In December, Cleveland's Major League Baseball team made the decision to drop its nickname and mascot. Last July, Washington D.C.'s NFL team announced it would stop using a nickname long considered a racial slur. The team spent last season known only as the Washington Football Team.
Both changes were a long time coming. The National Congress of American Indians began working to address issues of Native American imagery in 1968. In 2005, the National Collegiate Athletic Association began prohibiting colleges and universities from displaying hostile or abusive nicknames, mascots, or imagery. Last spring, the dairy company Land O' Lakes removed the image of a Native American woman it has used on its packaging.
"I think we're in a day and age in this country where it’s time for both corporations and team sports to retire the use of Native American names, images and mascots from their products, team jerseys and sports in general," Chief Hoskin said in his statement.
According to Amanda Cobb-Greetham, a professor at the University of Oklahoma and director of the school's Native Nations Center, the use of Native imagery in sports and popular culture started around the turn of the 20th century. At that time, there were fewer than 300,000 Native Americans living in the United States. "Because of the prevalence of the ideology that Native peoples would eventually disappear . . . Native Americans became part of the national mythology of the frontier and the west and the settlement of America," Cobb-Greetham said. "And that's when suddenly you have Native American mascots and products, cultural kitsch. Car names are a part of that."
Jeep first used the Cherokee name in a 1974 two-door wagon (one available trim was called Cherokee Chief). It has since built cars called Cherokee continuously, but from 2002 through 2013 the cars were known as the Liberty in the North American market. When Jeep brought the Cherokee name back to its U.S. in 2013, a Cherokee Nation representative told the New York Times, “We have encouraged and applauded schools and universities for dropping offensive mascots,” but that “institutionally, the tribe does not have a stance on this.”
That same story noted that the Cherokee Nation had not been consulted before Jeep brought the nameplate back to the U.S. The Grand Cherokee is Jeep's best-selling vehicle, and the Cherokee is its third-biggest-selling model. Together the vehicles made up more than 40 percent of Jeep's total sales in 2020. Since that same year, Jeep has used Mojave for certain Gladiator trucks. The Fort Mojave Indian Tribe's reservation covers parts of Arizona, California, and Nevada near the Mojave Desert.
Last June, as protests over the death of George Floyd spurred discussions about racial justice, Chief Hoskin told the Wall Street Journal, "We hope the movement away from using tribes’ names and depictions or selling products without our consent, continues. We much prefer a cooperative effort than an adversarial one.”
The most recognized example of that type of effort is probably the arrangement between Florida State University and the Seminole Tribe of Florida. It includes a scholarship program for students from the reservation. In 2005, the Seminole Tribe issued a resolution calling its relationship with the school a "historic partnership." The Cherokee Nation said it has no such relationship with Jeep.
Told of Chief Hoskin's call to end the use of the Cherokee name on its cars, Jeep said in a statement, "Our vehicle names have been carefully chosen and nurtured over the years to honor and celebrate Native American people for their nobility, prowess, and pride. We are, more than ever, committed to a respectful and open dialogue with Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr."
But Cobb-Greetham, who is a member of Chickasaw Nation and stresses the Cherokee Nation's sovereignty in choosing how to respond to the use of its own name, takes a different view: "If you're going to honor somebody, give them an award. If you're going to name a product after them, you're selling."
An official with Cherokee Nation says representatives from Jeep reached out to Chief Hoskin via phone earlier this month, but the nation's stance on Jeep's use of the name has not changed.
Translation- want much wampum for use of name or get heap big lawsuit.
Thank GOD I got a Comanche before things got any sillier.
Probably frequent casino visits would suffice in honoring them. There are at least 5 within a short drive from me with 3 different tribes.
Don’t tell that to big Chief Melts In Sun.
Rename the to Navajo or Hopi, and tell the Cherokee that they have improved their brand.
They would have to change the names of half of the towns in Wisconsin.
Chicago should be changed too, they should go with the anglo version, Stinky Onion.
By next year, the big race here will be called the
FLATLAND 500.
So I guess they want us to abolish any hint of Native American culture, right?
How about we stop naming anything after tribes and take down all statues to your ancestors? Chief.
But this stupid son of a bitch doesn’t realize that the naming of things after indians is a tribute. Next thing you now idiot democrats like this will be complaining that they are being ignored.
When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland in the 50s, everybody knew that the team was named after their one time star player, Louis Sockalexis.
True that!
My heritage is Scotch/Irish. None of my family wore green suits and generally were not ready to fight at the drop of a hat.
Somehow I get by.
The Jeep Pequot? The Jeep Mohegan? Jeep Seminole?
An American Indian not being productive with his time...imgaine that. /sarc
“Chief of Cherokee Nation Says ‘It’s Time’ for Jeep to Stop Using Name..”
Anybody have some spare smallpox blankets?😎
There should be 2 models of Jeep; General and Purpose.
I was on vacation in Massachusetts in 2019 to see the historical sites, and I definitely got an Anti-Trump vibe.
Paul Revere & The Raiders - Indian Reservation:
John D. Loudermilk: The Story Behind “Indian Reservation” on the “Viva! NashVegas® Radio Show”
A well-known story surrounding one of Loudermilk’s songs is that, when he was asked by the Viva! NashVegas radio show about the origins of the Raiders’ hit song “Indian Reservation,” he fabricated the story that he wrote the song after his car was snowed in by a blizzard and he was taken in by Cherokee Indians. A self-professed prankster, he spun the tale that a Cherokee chieftain, “Bloody Bear Tooth” asked him to make a song about his people’s plight and the Trail of Tears, even going so far as to claim that he had later been awarded “the first medal of the Cherokee Nation”, not for writing the song, but for his “blood”; further fabricating that his “great-great grandparents, Homer and Matilda Loudermilk” were listed on the Dawes Rolls. Had this tall tale been true, he would have been a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, which he was not.
John Loudermilk also wrote Tobacco Road
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