by Sara Russo

Taking a strike directly at colleges and universities that use Native American images and terms as icons for their sports teams, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a statement on Friday, April 13th calling for non-Native American universities to terminate their use of such symbols.

"The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights calls for an end to the use of Native American images and team names by non-Native schools," the statement unambiguously declares. "The Commission deeply respects the rights of all Americans to freedom of expression under the First Amendment and in no way would attempt to prescribe how people can express themselves. However, the Commission believes that the use of Native American images and nicknames in school is insensitive and should be avoided."

While the statement carries no legal mandate for schools to suspend their use of Indian mascots, passages in the document suggest that the use of these symbols may be in violation of federal anti-discrimination laws.

"Some Native American and civil rights advocates maintain that these mascots may violate anti-discrimination laws," notes the Commission in the first paragraph of the statement. "These references, whether mascots and their performances, logos, or names, are disrespectful and offensive to American Indians and others who are offended by such stereotyping. They are particularly inappropriate and insensitive in light of the long history of forced assimilation that American Indian people have endured in this country."

The Commission's report also implies a link between educational problems among Native Americans and the use of Indian mascots.

"The use of stereotypical images of Native Americans by educational institutions has the potential to create a racially hostile educational environment that may be intimidating to Indian students," reads the statement. "American Indians have the lowest high school graduation rates in the nation and even lower college attendance and graduation rates. The perpetuation of harmful stereotypes may exacerbate these problems."

Compounding these issues, the Commission declares, is the difficulty Native American students experience in avoiding schools with mascots based on their heritage. "The assumption that a college student may freely choose another educational institution if she feels uncomfortable around Indian-based imagery is a false one," reads the statement.

Defenders of Indian mascots might find the legal terminology of the Commission's report unsettling. The idea that a "hostile environment" can constitute discrimination against a minority group is a longstanding legal precedent that has been invoked to justify various restrictions on First Amendment rights including sexual harassment law and civil rights cases.

Already, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, whose 75-year-old Chief Illiniwek mascot has been the subject of debate for over a decade, has taken careful note of the commission's report.

"They've expressed the opinion that Indian mascots, Native American mascots, ought to be abolished across the country," University spokesman Bill Murphy noted of the Commission's statement. "The trustees, I'm sure, will take that into consideration when that committee looks at what the next steps are going to be," he told Campus Report.

As for the issue of any legal questions the report raises for the university, "My understanding is that none of their statements are legally binding," Murphy explained. "But they do tend to be very influential," he continued. "It is not all that they don't count. They do count….And the Civil Rights Commission can and has referred all kinds of issues to the Justice Department, for instance, or to other departments that have enforcement arms. So there can be practical consequences."

With regards to the language used in the Commission's report, Murphy notes that the use of legal terminology does appear intentional. "'Hostile environment' is a legal standard," he told Campus Report. "You'd have to ask them to know for sure if they deliberately used it, but it looked like they were deliberately using that."

Many colleges and universities have recently broken with their traditions by changing the names of their Indian-themed mascots to avoid the storm of controversy currently surrounding Native American symbols. The Oklahoma City University "Chiefs" became the "Stars," the Dartmouth College "Indians" became the "Big Green" and St. John's University of New York changed its team name from "Redmen" to "Red Storm."

Collegiate teams whose names and mascots are based on other ethnic and religious groups were not mentioned in the Commission's statement. Despite the barrage of criticism that has surrounded Native American symbols, mascots such as the University of Southern California's "Trojans," Notre Dame's "Fighting Irish" and South Western Louisiana University's "Rajun' Cajuns" have attracted little notice from critics of Indian-themed symbols.

Illinois's mascot Chief Illiniwek is depicted by a student who performs at halftime during the University's football and basketball games, with a painted face and the costume and headdress of the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe. Opponents of the tradition charge that it perpetuates untrue stereotypes about Native Americans, while Illiniwek's defenders argue that the mascot which has been retained for three quarters of a century is an essential element of the University's tradition.

Murphy is careful to draw a distinction between Indian mascots at other universities, and Illiniwek who appears in an authentic costume and does not speak.

"Typically college or pro-team mascots are these kind of caricature-looking characters and they jump around on the sidelines and cheer and maybe they do a little skit with the cheerleaders," he said. "I'm not knocking that, but that's not what we have."