Teach ‘Em How to Fish

“Native American” Mascots

As I have gotten more into blogging as a professional, with adults as my audience, it occured to me that some thoughts I have expressed during the past school on various issues might be of interest to readers of this blog.
So, it is with that in mind that I share an edited version of something that I sent to some of the administration of my school district (the principal of one elementary school, and the superintendant) regarding the (Native American) mascot of one of our elementary schools. The local harvest parade the previous year had included an entry by this school that referred to the mascot in a way that I felt was “over the top” and offensive. I was suggesting that the issue at least be talked about. Even if the mascot wouldn’t be changed, I felt compelled to at least begin a dialogue about it. Here, I have edited out the specific references to the schools in question and names of individuals, because that’s not the point, and I have no gripe with the individuals in question. I have also edited out the specific mascot, since the dialogue about this issue should be more broad than to nitpick about that. I hope this is thought-provoking and interesting to you. As I look at this email that I sent over a year ago, I feel now that there are much higher-priority issues to try to resolve, but having dialogue about this is nevertheless valuable. As you’ll hear, if you listen to the NPR story that I reference, the context nationally for this issue was the decision by the NCAA to ban “Indian” mascots, and the ensuing national conversation about that.

Dear [superintendant and principal],

I have struggled with [the school's] mascot for a while, now. I was especially concerned about [the] Parade entry (in which a dressed-up Indian was ordered to “scalp” random parade-watchers).

I heard a story on the radio recently that reminded me of some of these concerns.
Here is the story:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4665930

The Pillars of Character (including Respect, Caring, and Citizenship) are embraced by our District.
http://www.charactercounts.org/
I find the [Native American] mascot, especially the way it was handled at the parade, in conflict with the Pillars of Character in the following ways:
Mainly, it is disRespectful to Native Americans (and probably unCaring, and an example of bad Citizenship) because mascots like Warriors, Chiefs, Redskins, Braves, etc.:

•Trivialize a race’s identity,
•Characterize them as only aggressive, bloodthirsty savages,
•Reduce them to a charicature,
•Cause us to view them as only a part of the past,
•Limit the perspective that students have of these peoples (our curriculum strives to teach them how multi-faceted they are, as well as peaceful, intelligent, and many other positive characteristics).

I believe that our District should
#1 Seriously consider changing the school’s mascot (after all, when I was a student at [another local elementary school], the school changed our mascot…). I don’t remember the reasons for changing (beyond guessing), but the process was rather smooth. I believe there was input and consideration from many stakeholders.

Or, at the very least, we should
#2 Do as much as we can to mitigate the harmful effects of having [the mascot] as a mascot (definitely not emphasizing the very characteristic that is the most damaging, as in the … parade)

It used to be my view that since [our town] has such a small number of Native Americans, that this issue wasn’t important enough to say anything about. However, I have decided that this seems a lot like saying nigger-this, nigger-that, until an African-American walks in the room. It’s wrong to be disrespectful to a person’s race whether they hear about it or not.

An interesting side note: There is an intramural basketball team at the University of Northern Colorado, which is a satirical response to the school’s mascot “Fighting Reds”. The team is called the “Fighting Whites”, complete with its own stereotypical icon.
http://www.fightingwhites.org/

Thanks very much for your time in considering my thoughts,
Ed Warkentin

PS (Please listen to the radio story. It isn’t very long, and it expressed some ideas very well that I haven’t been able to state as clearly here. FYI – the statement that Redskin actually refers to scalps, as opposed to merely the color of the Native Americans’ skin was shown to be false. There was a follow-up report about this correction.)