IBARW: the forgotten American minority

It’s International Blog Against Racism Week and I wanted to post about something. Of course, there’s about a billion different things you could talk about, from the very general about racism and assumptions, to the more specific about certain population groups. I decided to go with something a little more specific because it concerns me personally and has since I was a child.

You see, I grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. For those that don’t know, this is the home of HAL 9000 and, until earlier this year and with much protest, the University of Illinois’s mascot Chief Illiniwek. The Chief was finally retired back in February, due to a ruling by the NCAA saying that the mascot was “hostile and abusive” to Native Americans. For those that like to judge themselves: The Chief’s Last Dance. You’ll have to forgive the quality of video; it’s on Youtube and looks like it was ripped from a video tape copy of a local news station’s coverage. The sound is a little loud, so be prepared for roaring.

You see, the U of I, in general, loves the Chief, deeply, passionately, and fought that ruling to the bitter end.

The U of I is not the only sports team to have a problematic mascot (and don’t forget the issues of using Native Americans, Native American tribal names and Native American symbols/terminology as mascots) but they are probably one of the most contentious hold-outs. The Florida State Seminoles, for example, were allowed to keep their name and symbols (Chief Osceola and Renegade) because they asked and received official sanction by the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. (AFAIK, neither FSU nor the two other schools that were exempt from the NCAA ruling don’t pay any type of license fees or other type of monetary compensation in exchange for permissive use of Native American tribe names.)

When I was growing up, I had grandparents who worked for the U of I. My grandmother was a Dean at the College of Education (which meant I was infamous with all the new student teachers at my schools) and my grandfather taught in the College of Agriculture. They were both (and still are) supporters of U of I football and basketball, so I got to go to a lot of home games of both sports. I remember seeing Charlene Teters and her children protesting at the games and I remember the abuse they suffered. I didn’t understand why people were so mean then but of course I didn’t really understand the things wrong with the Chief.

You see, the Chief plays into one of two overwhelming stereotypes American culture has about Native Americans: “bloodthirsty savage” and “noble savage.” In sports, it’s teams like the “Braves,” or the Southeastern Oklahoma State University Savages (now the “Savage Storm”), or the North Dakota Fighting Sioux (who were originally the Flickertails, but the name was changed in the 30s to The Sioux after the UND student paper noted the Sioux were good at killing, had a strong warrior-like physique and that Sioux rhymes easily for yells and chants.). Of course, my personal favorite is the now defunct St. Bonaventure Brown Indians and Brown Squaws. You can see it in practically every western ever made, in which those “damn Indians” are terrorizing the good (white) farmers/sharecroppers/cattle ranchers/etc. and killing and raping their women and scalping the men (see especially the John Wayne film The Searchers).

The noble savage, on its face, is a better stereotype. It involves the Native Americans who are connected to nature, generous and selfless, innocent, physically healthy, and with a more natural, or untutored, wisdom. Doesn’t sound so bad, right? I mean, this is the kind of group that started Thanksgiving, right? Well, look a little deeper. Don’t a lot of those attributes also sound like the attributes think of in children? It’s unrealistic and condescending and still in use. Look at the two anti-pollution PSAs, one created in 1971 and the other in 1998, which show a Native American crying at white neglect of nature. (For the record, I found these on Youtube by searching ‘crying indian,’ which says something right there.) In movies, I think generally you’d be more likely to see this stereotype with female Native American characters than male ones (but I haven’t exactly made a study of it).

The real problem here is that both of these overriding stereotypes rely on the past. Because they rely on outdated views of Native Americans, it obscures and trivializes contemporary Native Americans and Native American culture.

So, let me give you a few facts about the current state of Native Americans in the US:

Their unemployment rate is 3 times that for whites and over two times that for blacks.
They have the lowest median income. They have the lowest per capita income.
They have some of the worst housing in the nation.
They have one of the highest mortality rates in the nation.
1/5 of all Native American teenagers attempt suicide.
Their life expectancy is well below the national average.
The alcoholism rate among Native Americans is 5 times the national average.
They have the highest proportion of high school drop outs in the nation. 36% of students drop out of high school by the 10th grade.
There are legal loopholes that allow non-Native Americans to victimize Native American women and children without any consequences whatsoever. Native American women are victimized over 2.5 times the national average.
Native Americans were the last minority in the nation to receive the right to vote (in 1924). The only voting rights amendment that came after this was the 1971 change that moved the voting age from 21 to 18.

Now is the time to confess the other reason this topic concerns me personally. My older brother, Alistair, teaches and coaches on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. He married a Navajo woman, Faith, and they have two of the cutest kids ever (in my highly biased opinion). He and Faith deal with these issues first hand daily, both with the kids he teachers and with what they’re going to do with their own (Ruth is two and Elijah is about four months old right now). I wish them the best of it though I know they’ve got an uphill struggle.

This struggle is made even more uphill by the general lack of consciousness of conditions for Native Americans and now, with the introduction of casinos (which has created a whole new set of problems on reservations and begun to create something of a false stereotype of rich tribes), I fear that isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

You see, I’m conflicted about the retirement of the Chief. I wonder that, now that contentious symbols like the Chief are gone and out of public view (relatively speaking; last month I saw an auction of a Chief clock go for over $250), I worry that the discussion will stop completely and all we’ll have left in popular discourse of Native Americans are the bloodthirsty savage, the noble savage and the greedy casino owner.

Tomorrow, if I’m not lazy or busy, I just might blog about the issue of race in sports generally. Because I find sociology of sports fascinating.