A historical take on the Native American mascot debate

In the midst of the nation's ongoing civil crisis regarding racial tensions and the shifting cultural paradigm, one of the debates that has risen back to the forefront is the use of Native American stereotypes in sports team nicknames, mascots and logos. In July, the Washington R*dsk*ns NFL team reopened discussion about changing the team's nickname and subsequently changed their moniker temporarily to the Washington Football Team, until a new permanent name can be decided. As this discussion took place in Washington, similar conversations were being revisited across the world of professional, collegiate and local sports. The National Congress of American Indians, a civil rights organization made up of American Indians and Alaska Natives active since 1944, issued a joint-letter with more than 1,500 signatories, including 100 Native-led organizations and members of 150 federally-recognized tribes, calling for the ban of offensive Native-oriented nicknames and imagery in sports. In the letter, which was emailed to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on July 6, the NCAI requested the NFL cease the use of the term "r*dsk*ns," which the organization referred to as a "racial slur" (and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines as an "offensive" name for American Indians), and to encourage journalists and writers to use the term in print only with the use of asterisks (as has been honored in this article). The NCAI also asked that the Washington Football Team "be held accountable to the various research studies conducted by scientists and scholars which find stereotypical images, names and the like are harmful to Native youth and the continued progress of the wellbeing of Native Peoples." The Advertiser-Tribune has been building coverage about the debate around the use of Native American stereotypes and imagery in team nicknames and branding, as the issue hits close to home – six of the 13 high schools in the Advertiser-Tribune's coverage area use Native American tribal names and/or symbols for team names and branding. The Advertiser-Tribune continues to develop stories providing context for this phenomenon, including historical perspectives. Dr. Michael Goodnough, Assistant Professor of History at Tiffin University, was interviewed as part of this ongoing process. "In terms of using Native American imagery as a mascot, we can think of it as going all the way back to the beginning of the nation with the American Revolution, when the Sons of Liberty dressed up in indigenous clothing to dump tea into Boston Harbor," Goodnough said. Goodnough said the trend continued through the early years of the nation and the use of Native Americans as school mascots grew in popularity after the end of the Great Sioux War in 1877. "During this time (late 1800s), the federal government forcibly put indigenous children into boarding schools to erase their connection to their native culture and turn them into 'good' assimilated Indians," Goodnough said. "These boarding schools were essentially reeducation camps. "As Native Americans were put into these schools, many college students at the time started identifying their sports teams with different Native American groups to further dehumanize indigenous peoples, which then filtered down to high schools, elementary schools, etc." Goodnough said at that time in American history, when the Boarding School Movement was in full-swing, the use of Native American mascots was actually implemented to belittle Native American groups. "We need to remember these mascots were never adopted to 'honor' Native American groups … I've noticed many people are completely unaware of this and often think the mascots were done to honor Native groups. This is not the case," he said. The burgeoning trend of Native American mascots in the early 1900s, Goodnough said, was part of a larger cultural shift to "further dehumanize and trivialize indigenous peoples in new ways." This trend was put to widespread use in many of Northwest Ohio's schools, and schools the state over, as they came into existence in that era. "By using a Native American as a school mascot, you erase the human attributes of First Nations people and transform their culture into a signifier for a sports team," Goodnough said. "It effectively transforms them from real people into mere symbols for our entertainment. "This is obviously a problem that needs to be fixed," he said. Goodnough added that he doesn't think all schools and organizations that use Native American mascots and team names are racist, but that "the racist symbolism behind these mascots must be addressed and dealt with if we are to ever move forward from the shameful legacy of how our nation treated indigenous peoples." "Until then, there will be no justice for those who were here first," he said. The movement to have Native American mascots and imagery removed from sports is not a new one. There are some who argue against the renaming and rebranding of teams, citing the expense of creating new logos and merchandise or the notion that the widespread opinion of indigenous people on the matter may be more complicated. But the movement to eradicate the use of Native American stereotypes and naming in sports has existed in a "fairly unified" fashion amongst Native American groups since at least the era of the Red Power movement in the 1960s and 1970s, Goodnough said. "During the Red Power movement … indigenous groups worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the problems associated with using Native American names or imagery for sports team mascots," he said. And the movement's work continues today, though it's not without glimpses of victory on the part of its advocates.