Tomahawk Chop Research Paper

Native Americans symbols and culture exemplify the things that we admire in our athletes strength, endurance and courage. However ,the way that we use these symbols can be offensive and hurtful to the very people that we want to honor. In this paper , I will discussed how teams are mocking and being disrespectful to the Native American culture.

After reading this article I believe that it is not racist for a school team to keep their Indian mascots. A school has its right to keep a name that they have had for years. I believe that every team has their name for a reason. That they have taken it too far with the racist stuff. No one is being racist these schools have had their Indian mascots and their Indian names for years and they have absolutely no right to now come out and say these schools are being “racist” towards the tribes. I don’t believe they have any right to tell a team or force a team to stop using a mascot that they have had for years. The Redskins first roster included 4 Native American players in 1933. They have had their name for more the 40 years there is no right

In a majority of cases, this view is even endorsed by the tribes themselves (Morrison). They argue that the restriction and ultimate elimination of the Native American mascot would also abolish the nation’s historic view of this cultural entity as characters of strength, determination, boldness, resourcefulness and courage. They contend that these same positive attributes are not only required by athletes, but are held expectations of the sporting community. The pursuant argument entails that there is an inherent oddity in the suggestion that naming a team after an Indian tribe is a calculated insult.

There are many reasons for this. First of all, people are often disrespectful to Native American religious symbols. Native Americans seem to be the only race that this happens to in this way. When there was an incident with disrespect to Notre Dame religious symbols by the Stanford University band, the offending party was punished severely. That doesn’t happen when it’s Native American religious symbols. Also, the stereotyped beliefs about Native Americans through the mascots often create treatment that pokes fun at their beliefs and traditions. One example of this is how Native American chiefs receive eagle feathers for good deeds. This is made fun of by fake “rituals” involving the mascots dancing around wearing feathered headdress. All of these thoughtless acts combine to anger the Native Americans and create a hostile environment towards them, especially when it is not happen to other races. Hostility towards a sole innocent group is extremely rude and inconsiderate. Why would we want this to continue?

School mascots help to unify a school. The mascots can represent strength,power and excellent sportsmanship. A community likes to rally behind their local team. They show support by wearing team jerseys or they just wear whatever color their team is a to represent and to show support to the team/school.”Mascots provide a symbol that can be a focal point for a fan community. At a very simple level,when fans wear a jersey with a Redskins or Cowboys logo they are identifying themselves as part of a fan community.”(Mascots Value

Snyder and others strongly believe it’s sacred and deserves to stay with history behind it. The tradition started from tribes and chiefs back in the settlement time. Everything now is respect for the tribes in our nation. The biggest point that the United States wants to get across to the public is pride. In today 's society there is a blind love for the teams and mascots we have today. The hidden picture is seeing that the sports side of our world has the biggest appreciation for Native Americans. Harjo says, “it’s not about choosing sides, it’s about doing the right thing” (Wulf).

There has been many controversy with teams using Native American name for mascots and has become a major issue in today’s society. Many have viewed the Washington Redskins as honor for Native Americans, others see it racist, insensitive, and demeaning. Woods (2016) claims that “the complaint is that the use of stereotypical team names, mascots, and logos perpetuates an ideology that dehumanizes and demeans the cultures of Native Americans” (p. 298). Since the issue arise, many scholars, journalists and leaders have joined the battle to ensure that each team will eliminate the nicknames since it is considered abusive or hostile. It may take time but the trend is growing. More than 1,400 professional, collegiate,

Chief Wahoo is a derogatory and racist figure that indirectly represents Native Americans. With Chief Wahoo’s blood-red skin, swollen cheeks, triangular eyes, a bulbous nose, an expansive grin and a single feather protruding from the back of his head. There is no reason to suspect that Chief Wahoo is less racist than other logos that represents Native Americans that are considered racist. As Lindsay Lowe explains in her article, “Honor or Insult?” She says that “American Indian mascots often look the same: They wear paint on their faces and carry weapons called tomahawks. Many American Indians say these portrayals promote negative stereotypes by making them seem violent or like cartoon characters,” explaining that these logos not only promote stereotypes towards Native Americans, as well as insulting Native Americans saying that they all look the same. Although people say that Chief Wahoo is just a harmless cartoon, some people

Teams that have the name like Redskins, Indians, and Red Raiders are racist terms used as mascots. Interchange the name with the Negroes, the Jews or the Asians and that sounds even worse but, it all means the same thing. They are all racist terms that no one should use to represent something like a team name. According to racismagainstindians.org, Native Americans were banned from practicing their own religion and would be often thrown in jail if they were caught all the way up to 1978. But when nonnative people at sporting events would dance and sing their songs it would be completely okay. This makes no sense,

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’

Many people look at the Washington Redskins logo and see it just the same as any of the other NFL teams’ logos. So, why take the time and money to change their brand for the very few amount of people that think it’s little offensive? In the past couple of years, a lot of people see many pro and college sports teams differently because of their mascot or logo. Native Americans, whose culture diminished ever since Europeans stepped onto the shores of the East, are used as branding for all levels and divisions of athletics teams. A lot of people argue for both sides of the conflict, with one side reasoning that the logos look racist and disrespect Native American culture, and the other side reasoning that they honor Indians and there is not even an issue. However, a ton of people fighting for the Indian mascot’s removal do not know how Native Americans themselves truly feel about them. Also, the general public probably does not know either that many schools actually work with specific tribes to make sure that they respect their culture. The United States should not ban Native American mascots because most Native Americans don’t get insulted from sports teams’ logos and many teams work with tribes to make sure that they don’t disparage Indian customs and traditions.

The dispute over whether Native American mascots should be used as a team symbol dates back to the 1970’s (Price 2). There are those who are passionately against Native American mascots. These advocators insist that Native American mascots are degrading to

     Many people do not consider themselves supporting Native American mascots that depict them in a bad manner. But when people walk around with a Atlanta Braves shirt on with a Indian with a tomahawk in his hand, it is degrading to the Indians. It is stereotyping them. School mascots and Sports team’s mascots are named after groups of people for no reason known. Notre Dame was founded by Irish Catholics, but their sports team was named the Fighting Irish. The name Fighting Irish has nothing to do with the Irish Catholics, it depicts them in a wrong way.(Price, 3). Team names can be changed to similar names that do not depict certain groups of people. Like the Redskins can be called the Red Hawks or the

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