Native American Mascot Research Paper

Let us take a closer look at the Major League Baseball team, The Atlanta Braves. Over the years the team has changed their logo, but one thing has remained constant, the overall concept of the mascot. Today’s logo is displayed with the word Braves with a tomahawk directly below. During games, Braves fans band together to perform what is known as the tomahawk chop, where they cat as if their arms are tomahawks chopping through the air all the while chanting as if they were Indians. This is one of the many ways that the Native American is imitated in a negative may as if being mad a mockery of. Another example of how the American Indian is mocked is how not only are they the only culture to be portrayed as a mascot, but they are also one of the only cultures to be portrayed as a logo on tobacco an alcohol. The chewing tobacco, Red Man, as well as the alcohol brand, Firewater, use the image of the Native American as well as use the slang given to degrade the culture. Each of these franchises have furthered what the early films have begun and not only degraded the culture but made it to where the culture is a non-existent myth that is hidden away on reservations.

Proponents believe tribal symbols display honor and respect towards the Native American people. They cheer that the inclusion of this iconography in the athletic arena serves to pay admiration and ongoing tribute to the identity of the Native American culture. They believe that rather than extinguishing Native American mascots as a symbolic reference for schools and sports teams, the choice to sensitively use such imagery should be without sanction.

When one typically thinks about a Native American, they picture this ideological representation of a Native American as depicted by popular culture. Native Americans are underrepresented on television, in books, in news, and all other forms of media. We, as a society, have chosen a path of ignorance in which we have chosen not to educate ourselves or our future generations on the true culture of Native Americans. We have ignored the negative impacts of using mascots such as “Redskins” and instead let it serve as a stereotype to fill our heads with unrealistic views and understandings of Native American culture. The resulting misconceptions leave many Native American students with a feeling of inferiority and questioning their self-worth.

Roppolo insists, “The real problem with the kind of dysconscous, symbolic, abstract racism that is perpetuated today by sports mascots… is that it enables very real, very concrete, and very conscious acts of violent racism that American Indian people still face in this country and this hemisphere on a daily basis”(228). This demonstrates how the mascot does have a detrimental impact towards Native Americans. People who are subjected to seeing Native Americans through these mascots already have fallacious perceptions of what Native Americans behave like. Due to this, people will start to react accordingly to how they feel the Native Americans are supposed to act due to the distorted stereotypes that are presented to the public. People do not even realize that they are acting this way towards Native Americans, because Roppolo claims that Americans have gotten used to being racist towards Native Americans for so long that it is now invisible, aka dysconscious racism(226). People do not realize that it is ingrained in them, so when they come into contact with a Native American they may perceive the situation different than what actually happened. Roppolo justified this by going on to add, “One young man had his brother nearly beaten to death - his skull cracked open, not just cracked - when several bouncers at a local nightclub had to control his ‘rowdy’

The year is 1991.  The Atlanta Braves had just completed their first trip to the Fall Classic in four decades, and the Washington Redskins were undefeated, well on their way to their third Super Bowl title.  All across the eastern seaboard, sports fans were tasting success - while American Indians were in an uproar.  This year witnessed the peak of the protests over the use of mascots with American Indian themes.  With two of the major professional sports teams in question making front-page news across the country, many of us heard American Indians' complaints for the first time.  Suddenly, thanks to the cries of thousands of demonstrators, the names of many Americans' favorite teams had become synonymous with "nigger."

Historically, Native Americans are the weakest minority economically and politically in the United States. Unlike African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans, the indigenous-American population has received very little political power and even less economic status than they had in the 1950’s. The use of the image of Native Americans, tribal names and images, though romanticized as great chiefs and warriors in the sports arena, are none-the-less being exploited to the great monetary gain of the franchisee but not to the financial or psychological reward of the people whom

Thus, it seems odd to suggest that naming a team after an Indian tribe is a calculated insult. A team or school embraces a mascot that represents the favorable traits and characteristics of its members. Such is the case with the Florida State Seminoles, who are named after a tribe with its origin in that southern state. The Seminole tribe optimistically favored the use of the Indian mascot and even facilitated the design of authentic dress that is proudly worn at sporting and community events. Similar to the Seminoles, the University of Illinois preserved their mascot, Chief Illiniwek, for almost 80 years. Named after the indigenous Illiniwek tribe, the Chief was a customary sideline figure at football and basketball games until 2007 when the NCAA forced the University of Illinois to remove this historic mascot. Unfortunately, the collegiate governing body failed to realize what this symbol meant to the collegiate Illinois community. Illini students were polled regarding the action and a majority disapproved of the decision. Sixty-nine percent of the students voted to keep Chief Illiniwek as their mascot. (Haugh). These students believed that removing Chief Illiniwek as the University of Illinois’ mascot would diminish the passion associated with their university. After the forceful removal of the Native American mascot by the NCAA, the students felt

To start the article, Shakley tells the audience a story about the time he came home with a Cleveland Indians hat with the famous Chief Wahoo logo (The Cleveland Indians mascot is Chief Wahoo and is one of the most controversial mascots in American sports). This hat was later thrown in the trash by his mother (that had been fighting against Native American stereotypes her whole life), who Shakley describes as having “the look of betrayal”. Shakley uses strong words to describe his negative opinion on Native American mascots by stating that the North Dakota Fighting Sioux provoked a feeling in him that was embarrassed and angry. Shakley described it as “It was an irritant, like a long forgotten piece of shrapnel working its way to

The American Psychological Association had found that using representation of the mascots “undermines the educational experiences of members of all communities- especially those who have had little or no contact with Indigenous peoples” (APA). When people view a culture being paraded as a mascot, it can become their singular view and knowledge on the ethnic group. There is nothing to stop the formulation of what students know about Native Americans when there are few natives around. With the allowance of mascots to represent Native American in a way as they do now, wearing headdresses or war paint and using “peace pipes” has become a trend and something “cool” to do. Headdresses are traditionally a part of the Plains tribes and are considered sacred. Only revered warriors or significant people could wear war bonnets or headdresses. Feathers, especially eagle feathers, are very sacred to Native Americans. These appropriations continue to be a negative and demeaning aspect of using Native Americans as

Endres did a good job with her lecture in the category of Dispositio. She started off the presentation by giving a brief introduction into the topic by explaining the controversy behind the discussed topic and explaining why it is important for this discussion was important to have. Dr. Endres then jumped into the topic starting out with the first use of the Ute name and mascot at the beginning of the twentieth century. She then proceeded to go through, decade by decade, how the Ute name and its mascots were used in each of the decades. In each of the decades, she would explain which symbols were used and how they were used, going into the use of certain racist symbols by the school, for example, starting in the 1940s, the university began to use Hoyo, a stereotypical portrayal of a native american, as a university mascot. Dr. Endres then proceeded to the more modern era, explaining the the massive departure from the use of native american imagery at colleges at the beginning of the century with NCAA changing its rules on the use of mascots, and explaining why it was that the university was allowed to keep its mascot while other universities were forced to change. Lastly, she explained the current state of the use of the northern Ute name and symbol and where the current debate on the matter stands. This chronological and systematic flow of the lecture demonstrated a good use of Dispositio and thus the presentation gets a 5/5 in this

The Cleveland Indian’s baseball team is in the playoffs again. I have been attending class wearing my Indian’s apparel with the team symbol, Chief Wahoo, to show my support. But the political correctness crowd, keep trying to dampen my enthusiasm with their constant condemnation of that venerable, smiling caricature that has served the team so well. Over and over again, we hear how the innocent Wahoo symbol is disrespectful of American Indians. I just don’t buy that argument.

Many races are unjustly victimized, but Native American cultures are more misunderstood and degraded than any other race. College and high school mascots sometimes depict images of Native Americans and have names loosely based on Native American descent, but these are often not based on actual Native American history, so instead of honoring Native Americans, they are being ridiculed. According to the article Warriors Survive Attack, by Cathy Murillo (2009) some “members of the Carpentaria community defended Native American mascot icons as honoring Chumash tradition and the spirit of American Indian Warriors in U.S. history and others claimed that the images were racist stereotypes” (Murillo, 2009). If people do not attempt to understand

Some peoples who support the use of Native American mascots indicate that they are respectful Native American. Many arguments that Native American mascots represents the team's bravery, courage and persistence. And these qualities are the representatives of the players and the other team in the game to achieve glory. Native American mascots also arouse the people to understand the

Until fairly recently the popular culture of American literature and film did not attempt to study the true representations of Indians in North America. Instead they chose to concentrate on the romanticized/savage version of Native people: which is an idealistic view of a Native with long, beautiful flowing hair riding on a horse obsessed with chanting and praying to the savageness of a rowdy, wild Native causing unnecessary mayhem to the white people. This portrayal of Native people in mass media had led to the stereotyping of Natives, which in turn had ricocheted into real life. Not only do non-natives succumb to these ideals, but Natives do as well.

There has been an ongoing argument since the 1960’s on whether Indian names and mascots should be used in sports. Critics feel that the use of Indian related images and names make fun of the Native American Indians. On the other hand, activists for the Indian tribes state that the use of Indian names show honor and respect to their tribes as a symbol of Native American Culture. The purpose of this essay is to determine if schools should stop using Native American images as mascots.