[fla-left] [human rights] American Indians fighting mascot bigotry (fwd)

[Michael Hoover]

forwarded by Michael Hoover
> 
> Protecting their history and sharing their pain
> 
> Many American Indians hope that by dispelling
> ignorance they can keep from being trivialized by the
> majority.
> 
> By SUSAN ASCHOFF
> 
> =A9 St. Petersburg Times, published February 6, 2000
> 
> ST. PETERSBURG -- For many American Indians, the bigger insult is not
> the slur in a book read by Pinellas County schoolchildren, the name of an
> NFL team, or the prance of a pretend chief on a Tallahassee football field.
> 
> The true affront comes, they say, when their objections are met with
> indifference.
> 
> In recent weeks, hundreds of e-mails from across the country inundated
> Pinellas school officials after a student complained about the word "squaw" =
> in
> a novel read by fifth-graders. The protest ignited when the Tyrone Elementar=
> y
> teacher rejected the complaint as misguided political correctness.
> 
> A demonstration at the Jan. 15 playoff game at Raymond James Stadium, one
> of countless appearances at Washington Redskins games by American
> Indians asking the team name be changed, found Bucs fans unimpressed.
> "Get a life," they yelled at the group. "It's just a game."
> 
> And for more than 20 years, a non-Indian has pretended to be one at Florida
> State University, riding bareback on the football field while 80,000 fans wa=
> r
> whoop in the stands despite objections by American Indians.
> 
> "It's okay to stereotype Indians. It goes for the mascot issue to the book t=
> o
> what you see on TV," says Sheridan Murphy, executive director of the
> American Indian Movement of Florida.
> 
> "People do not want to recognize their racism."
> 
> Depictions of American Indians as buffoons or savages still riddle American
> culture, activists say.
> 
> Elementary children who refuse to participate in Thanksgiving pageants in
> which Indians play gullible sidekicks have been ostracized in schools across
> the country, AIM members say.
> 
> Those who march on game day to protest Cleveland's toothy "Chief Wahoo,"
> the Atlanta Braves and their tomahawk chop, and FSU's Chief Osceola mascot
> are ridiculed.
> 
>  "If we can't talk about something as innocuous as Chief Wahoo, how can we
> talk on something as serious as (human) rights?" Murphy asks.
> 
> Last fall Murphy wrote a letter to Tyrone Elementary principal Jim Lott and
> teacher Marcia Jacobs after a student in Jacobs' class reported that the wor=
> d
> "squaw" appeared several times in a novel read by the students. The word is
> derived from a Mohawk term for female genitalia, and has always been used
> to insult, Murphy says.
> 
> The Sign of the Beaver, a Newbery book written by Elizabeth George Speare,
> is a story about a 12-year-old white boy and a Penobscot Indian who become
> friends in the 1760s. Teachers throughout the district use the book to
> supplement American history lessons.
> 
> Murphy asked the school to either stop using the book or explain to children
> why the word is inappropriate.
> 
> Jacobs, in a written reply, said she would continue to use the book and that
> such "twisted thinking" leads to censorship.
> 
> "That kind of set off a firestorm," says Ron Stone, Pinellas County schools
> spokesman. "AIM wanted us to fire the teacher. We've gotten literally
> hundreds of e-mails . . . complaining about the incident."
> 
> "This has nothing to do with political correctness," said one sent by Alan
> Pyeatt, a Cherokee in California. "Rather, it is part of our struggle for
> respect
> and equal treatment."
> 
> Jacobs did not return calls seeking comment.
> 
> Stone, in an e-mail to all Pinellas schools on Monday, asked administrators =
> to
> alert staff and teachers about the controversial word and encourage them to
> "take a few minutes, and explain to students that this is an unacceptable te=
> rm
> and should not be used despite the fact it may appear in a reputable piece o=
> f
> literature."
> 
> Murphy says AIM wants a more definitive policy and has filed a complaint
> with the state and federal education departments.
> 
> In Tallahassee, a student dressed as Seminole Chief Osceola has for more
> than 20 years charged down the football field on an Appaloosa to throw a
> flaming spear into the ground at midfield. FSU's Web site says the mascot's
> clothing was designed and approved by the Seminole Indian Tribe and credits
> =46SU with inventing the tomahawk chop.
> 
> "I support the Seminole name because anybody who has studied the Seminole
> knows they have a proud tradition and are a strong people," says FSU Senate
> President Brian Tomlinson.
> 
> The Seminole Tribe of Florida has no objections, chairman James Billie has
> said.
> 
> Others are appalled by the disrespect of a people.
> 
> "They can always find a hang-around-the-fort Indian to say it's okay," says
> Vernon Bellecourt, president of the National Coalition Against Racism in
> Sports and Media and a national AIM board member. "This issue is larger
> than the Seminole nation. The mascots are used to represent all Indians."
> 
> Bellecourt says that when he and fellow board member Michael Haney
> protested the mascot at an FSU game in October, "we went into the game and
> by the time this fool . . . rides onto the field, the environment was so
> hostile
> we had to get up and leave."
> 
> AIM intends to file suit over the mascot, using the 1974 Civil Rights Act an=
> d
> its requirements for equal access to public accommodations. AIM contends
> such depictions create a hostile environment and keep American Indians from
> using tax-supported facilities.
> 
> In contrast, Miami University in Ohio, which has a longstanding relationship
> with the Miami Tribe, changed its "Redskins" name after tribal leaders in
> 1997 asked that it be dropped.
> 
> The word "redskin" does not refer to an American Indian's pigmentation. The
> phrase refers to the practice of paying bounties for dead Indians, their
> bloodied scalps presented for payment, Bellecourt says. Eagle feathers, body
> paint, dance and other symbols frequently used by schools and athletic teams
> are sacred to American Indians.
> 
> "To say they honor us with these mascots," he says, "is asinine."
> 
> Since the late 1960s, when American Indians began a concerted effort to oust
> stereotypes in media and sports, some schools and franchises complied.
> Stanford University has dropped its team name, "Indians." St. Mary's College
> changed "Red Men" to "Cardinals." The Toronto Blue Jays farm team in New
> York switched from "Chiefs" to "Skychiefs."
> 
> Ten schools in the Dallas district have dropped American Indian mascot
> names -- Indians, Apaches, Warriors, Aztecs, Braves -- and school board
> members last year budgeted $60,000 to order new T-shirts and band
> uniforms.
> 
> "We just said, "Look, we wouldn't allow a Black Sambo mascot or a Frito
> Bandito mascot,' " intercultural relations director Clarence Glover told the
> Dallas Morning News.
> 
> Parents and administrators at many other schools refuse to relinquish what
> they view as treasured traditions.
> 
> Clyde A. Erwin High School in Asheville, N.C., last year became the first
> public school to be investigated for discrimination by the U.S. Department o=
> f
> Justice over its use of American Indian mascots. A parent complained in
> November 1996 about the athletic team names, "Warriors" and "Squaws."
> 
> Those who wanted to keep the nicknames said government was now in the
>  business of suing over hurt feelings.
> 
> In a compromise reached in March, the name "Squaws" was dropped,
> diversity materials incorporated by the district, and school facilities
> slated for
> inspections to remove insensitive imagery. The "Warriors" name remains.
> 
> The debate at Erwin High School drew widespread publicity. "We received
> about 500 e-mails from American Indians from across the nation saying how
> happy they were that this was finally being dealt with," says Monroe Gilmour=
> ,
> coordinator for the nine-year-old Western North Carolina Citizens for an End
> to Institutional Bigotry.
> 
> In Florida, Sheridan Murphy says schools remain "incubators for racism."
> 
> In Pinellas County, the district has one of the best multicultural programs =
> in
> the state, says director Sheila Keller. The challenge is to "get adults to t=
> he
> point where they know what they don't know."
> 
> Neither she nor Stone knew of the offensive roots of the word "squaw."
> 
> "This is a good object lesson for us. We haven't said to teachers enough: "I=
> t's
> important you talk about it"' with your students.
> 
> Keller says the department has written to Murphy and AIM each of the last
> six years seeking American Indian representation on an advisory committee
> for multicultural issues. Each year she has received no response, she says.
> Murphy says he did not get any letters.
> 
> The reaction over the children's book is just another example of society
> rejecting American Indians, Murphy says. People chastise them for taking
> offense at a word or marching over a caricature. There are more important
> things to worry about, they say.
> 
> "Our issues go beyond that: education, jobs, treaty rights, desecration of o=
> ur
> sacred sites," says Bellecourt, a member of the Anishinabe Ojibwe Nation.
> 
> "But we do not wish to go one more year with those pennants flying over
> stadiums."
> 
> ****************************************************************************=
> ****
> ******************
> 
> It's a matter of pride
> 
>      One woman fights to end Indian stereotypes on the playing field,
>      from racist team names to mascots.
> 
> By SUSAN ASCHOFF
> 
> =A9 St. Petersburg Times, published February 6, 2000
>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Artist and activist Charlene Teters, the "Rosa Parks of American Indians,"
> was a mother before she was a rebel.
> 
> The New Mexico resident was a graduate art student at University of Illinois
> in the late 1980s when she took her two children to a basketball game. She
> was shocked to see the dancing Chief Illiniwek at center court.
> 
> "I saw my daughter try to become invisible. My son tried to laugh," Teters
> says in the 1997 documentary, In Whose Honor? The film chronicles what was,
> for a long time, a one-woman campaign against the offensive mascot. Her
> effort propelled Teters into national prominence as a spokeswoman against
> damaging Indian stereotypes.
> 
> Teters, of the Spokane Tribe, is vice president of the National Coalition on
> Racism in Sports and Media. The group, formed in October 1991, is best known
> for its game-day demonstrations against the names and mascots of the Atlanta
> Braves, Cleveland Indians, Washington Redskins and others.
> 
> As one of the artists invited to participate in SITE, Santa Fe's Third
> International Biennial, a collection of art installations from around the
> world, Teters created Obelisk: To the Heroes. The adobe sculpture is
> embedded with mementos and artifacts donated by the community. It is a
> response, says Teters, to a monument in Santa Fe's downtown plaza honoring
> the soldiers who forced the Navajos' surrender.
> 
> The soldiers' monument reads: "To the Heroes who died in various battles
> with Savage Indians." The only text on Teters' obelisk is the words
> "Savages" and "To the Heroes."
> 
> Who is who? she asks.
> 
> In another art installation in November and December at Magnifico gallery,
> called Route 66 Revisited: It Was Only an Indian, Teters transformed the
> space into a neon reflection of the highway and of America's stereotypical
> images of American Indians. She then inserted black-and-white photographs
> and icons of real Indian people.
> 
> Teters travels extensively to speak about American Indians' rights, past and
> present. Meanwhile, her nemesis, Chief Illiniwek, remains the mascot at the
> University of Illinois.
> 
> Lecture is Monday
> 
> Charlene Teters' lecture, "Heroes and Savages: Native American Images from
> the Cradle to the Grave," is 7 p.m. Monday at the Campus Activities Center
> at the St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida. The center
> is at the corner of Second Street and Sixth Avenue S in downtown St.
> Petersburg. Free. On-street parking is available, and permit parking has
> been suspended.