Campus Report Staff

CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, IL -- Fed up with professional and collegiate sports teams appropriating Native American symbols and imagery in a "racist" manner, activists demanding an end to such practices coverged on the University of Illinois campus this spring. The first annual Conference on the Elimination of Racist Mascots (CERM) was held from April 3-4 and attended by hundreds.

The gathering was sponsored by the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media (NCRSM) and held in conjunction with a loose confederation of left-wing groups. The conference allowed activists an opportunity to develop new strategies and "empower" radical organizations in their struggle against sports mascots they believe demean Native Americans and other ethnic groups.

Energized by recent triumphs—St. John’s University’s nickname, for instance, was changed from the Red Men to the Red Storm—conference-goers set their sights on the mascot of the University of Illinois, Chief Illiniwek. So far, however, attempts to ban the Chief—like a similar past effort to remove the "Minuteman" nickname from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst ("a racist, sexist white man with a gun")—have failed. Students, alumni, and state legislators have decried the proposal as the product of an overdose of political correctness.

"The longest undeclared war in history is the war against American Indians, and this university continues to try to have that war mentality when it violates those images that we hold sacred," said Michael Haney, vice-president of NCRSM.

Haney and co-participants warned that employing one-dimensional images of Native Americans invited charges of white cultural supremacy, while dealing a serious blow to the fragile emotions and attitudes of those Native American students who must adopt the guise of the "good," non-disruptive Indian in order to peacefully coexist on presumably hostile campuses.

‘Chief’ Concerns

University of Illinois mascot Chief Illiniwek served as a lighting rod for the gathering and has been at the center of heated campus discourse for the last several years.

Proponents of the Chief insist that the school is honoring the Native American community by adopting a dignified symbol which performs ritualized dances with authenticity and respect. Conversely, anti-Chief activists argue that, regardless of intent, such mascots serve only to dehumanize Native Americans by reducing their culture, language, and tribal histories to a crude, unflattering caricature.

"You are not only ignorant, but you are arrogant about your ignorance," said Charlene Teters, a Native American artist who waged a one-woman campaign against Chief Illiniwek during the late 1980s.

Particularly infuriating to Teeter—who also protests against the Kansas City Chiefs and Atlanta Braves—is the use of the popular cheer, the "tomahawk chop."

"In order to remove this type of behavior [the tomahawk chop], you have to remove the Indian identity," she said. "We are not mascots or fetishes to be worn by the dominant society. We are human beings, and that is very simple. Regrettably, many people do not see us as real Indians unless we look like a stereotype."

The power to remove or refashion Chief Illiniwek rests with the school’s board of trustees, a politically-appointed ruling body the activists contend has treated their concerns with contempt and callous indifference. On March 9 of this year, the university’s Student-Faculty Senate voted 97-29 to abandon the Chief as an official school symbol.

Due to the fact that American Indians constitute only a fraction of the overall student body, their cause has by and large been taken up by sympathetic white students as well as liberal faculty members who feel both a personal and professional guilt stemming from the Chief’s pervasive presence at the school.

Stephen Kaufman, a professor in the school’s department of cell and structural biology, said that many of his colleagues have been compelled to speak out for reasons of "conscience."

"Many of them have experienced racial, religious or personal injustices," he said. "For the university to hide behind the board of trustees is equivalent to [the Nazi excuse of] ‘I was only following orders.’"

Kaufman, who said that considerable guilt and shame has been amassed "by us white folk" for 500 years of Indian oppression, claimed that the administration’s reasons for retaining the Chief defy logic.

"Faculty give a lot of exams and read a lot of papers, so they know bullshit when they see it," he said.

Ken Stern, an attorney with the American Jewish Committee, said that Americans for some reason are willing to tolerate the types of slurs directed against Native Americans that would never be accepted if the target was another traditional minority group.

"The most egregious double standard in contemporary society is the question of mascots and Indian people," he declared. "Imagine the Washington Blackskins with a sambo character. Imagine the New York Jews in Synagogue Stadium, handing out yamakas to people as they entered. They’re unfathomable images, but they are exactly the same as what is happening in contemporary society."

Despite Stern’s admonishment, many professional sports teams—the Boston Celtics, the Vancouver Canucks, the San Diego Padres, the Minnesota Vikings—appropriate ethnic nicknames without a hint of protest from any quarter. In the collegiate ranks as well, there has been no outcry over such nicknames as the Notre Dame Fighting Irish or the University of Southern California Trojans.

"Defenders of the Chief say they’re honoring Indians for being proud, brave, and strong. But positive stereotypes are just as dangerous as negative stereotypes," he said. "They dehumanize you. In sports, this inevitably invites racist behavior—even more so from the opposing team’s fans."

Stern implored school officials to relinquish a mascot that he believes has little to do with the institution’s educational mission.

"I guarantee you that any student who wants to come to this university because of the educational opportunities it provides would do so without the mascot," he remarked.

Floyd Red Crow Westerman, who appeared in the Academy Award-winning Dances with Wolves, stopped just short of accusing the university of buying off Native American students with loans and other forms of financial assistance.

"I don’t want to use the word ‘blackmail’ because of my black brothers and sisters, but it’s wrong for the university to ‘whitemail’ the younger generations of this university with funds in order to keep Chief Illiniwek," he said. "To watch a young white boy jump around at a football or basketball game like he’s an Indian—in a Boy Scout kind of aerobics—is embarrassing for you and for us."

Westerman then focused his attack on the President.

"President Clinton should be chastised for not putting a Native American on his diversity panel, especially since his late mother had American Indian roots," he said. "Native Americans were roadkill cultures of Manifest Destiny."

American ‘Holocaust’>

While the conference in name gave the impression that sports mascots alone would dominate discussion, considerable time was allotted to individuals who aired grievances concerning allegations of mistreatment that Native Americans have received from the hands of white America.

NCRSM’s Michael Haney, who classifies the Chief issue as a "hate crime," complained that Native Americans are all but invisible in children’s school textbooks.

"There were 30 million of us in the United States who were ‘holocausted,’" he fumed, "but you won’t find that in your history books. Nowhere do they talk about the 120 million African people who were ‘holocausted’ from their homelands."

American Indians, noted Haney, have little choice but to grovel for basic human liberties.

"Your ancestors wanted to escape political, economic and religious persecution, and it was given to you," he said. "It’s ironic that we have to beg your legislatures and your board of regents to exercise our own."

Clyde Bellecourt, founder and director of the American Indian Movement, said that contemporary Indian ills can be traced to forced cohabitation with, and inescapable domination by, whites.

"We’re one of the only living cultures in the world that had no traces of alcohol in it," he contested. "It was the first form of chemical warfare used against the Indian people. Alcohol, the devil, and Jesus Christ came over on the same boat, and look what they have done to us."

"Instead of selling [toy] tomahawks at a game, maybe us Indians should sell crucifixes of Jesus Christ," he mused. "Every time there’s a home run made you can wave a crucifix up and down. Instead of a war chant, why don’t you sing the Ave Maria? They can have some little fat guy dressed up like the Pope, with holy communion in one hand and holy water in the other."

Interviewed by Campus Report, Charlene Teters referenced the past to explain why the mascot issue carries so much resonance today.

"There’s a history behind the parading around of an [Indian] chief," she said. "When we were still at battle between our two nations, and when [whites] defeated our people, they would take our chiefs and parade them around like a trophy. So this is still the symbolic display of our leadership, i.e., we own you; we control you."

Indians for Sale?

While disturbed and insulted that professional and academic institutions have employed time-honored Indian images, conference attendees were even more incensed by the huge monetary assets accrued through the aggressive marketing and sales of merchandise bearing those images.

Gary Brouse, director of the Interfaith Council for Corporate Responsibility, an organization which manages an $80 billion "socially responsible" portfolio for a variety of U.S. churches, said that team owners have by and large received a free pass on the issue of race-based mascots.

"Why are the athletes criticized so harshly for the salaries that they get and the attitudes that they have, and we don’t use that same scale for the owners of these teams and leaders of universities?" he asked. "Owners are considered business leaders in the community, and we should be holding them to a much higher standard than we are."

Brouse, who at one panel sat in front of an American flag that he draped upside down, implored University of Illinois students to scrutinize their school’s investments with the same zeal that their predecessors did during the anti-Apartheid movement of the mid-1980s.

Billy Mills, a U.S. gold medalist at the 1964 Summer Olympic Games, berated University of Illinois officials for succumbing to threats made by alumni to withhold donations should the Chief be eliminated.

"The universities of America should not ask for alumni money," Mills said. "Otherwise, it’s not educating, it’s prostituting. Instead, they should ask for the dignity, character, pride, and morality of the alumni."

Mills, who is convinced that the greatest problem facing the United States today is the corporate philosophy of "profit at all cost," argues that those who do not take the Chief Illiniwek controversy seriously because of its connection to sports are missing the real issue.

"If you’re told over and over again that you’re inferior, subconsciously, it becomes long-term memory," he said. "The mascot issue pollutes the minds of our young people. When our need to belong is violated, we react."

Conference participants issued an ultimatum to the school, giving officials two years to rid the campus of Chief Illiniwek once and for all, while calling for the university to appropriate $1 million to endow a Native American studies chair.