NCAA learning what it's like to be Indian (Harjo on Mascots)

[hardrainfallin]

The NCAA is learning what it's like to be mocked, cartooned, lampooned and vilified - in short, what it's like to be Indian in the world of sports. After only days of this treatment, the NCAA should appreciate even more keenly the importance of their decision to the health, safety and emotional well-being of Native and non-Native students, who are and should be their first concern.

The NCAA decided that their teams can represent themselves as they will at home, but they need to be on their best behavior in public. It's a mature decision that provides an instruction about what is and is not appropriate, fitting and proper for good sports and champions. It's the rough equivalent of the civil rights movement sending the message that the N-word is not acceptable in polite society. Is this PC? Yes, as someone said long ago, it's Plain Courtesy.



... the decision is pro-Indian - the human being, not the mascot - but a lot of folks just can't tell the difference. Most of the commentators on this issue lump ''Indian'' sports references in with the bears, tigers, banana slugs, geoducks and leprechauns. They don't seem to notice that they are species hopping from humans to creatures and mythical beings, and that only the ''Indians'' are based on living people.


And, they come up with the ever-popular question: don't you have more important things to do for American Indians? No one who's ever asked that question is doing anything to help Native people. Here's my question to everyone who's in a dither about the NCAA's decision: don't you have anything better to do than hang on to these toys of racism?
*****

Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, is president of the Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C., and a columnist for Indian Country Today.

http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096411390


 

[Mabus]

1. Suzan is great

she was behind the trademark litigation against the "Redskins". She hit the nail on the head years ago when she said, "it is the oppressed that get to name the oppression" and she repeats that sediment when she says "There is dignity and respect in a school's name, but a mascot is not dignified or respected."

Like me, she is an enrolled member of the Southern Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, so I have known of her for years. I didn't get the chance to meet her for myself until about ten years ago. She's an incredible woman who is an inspiration to me.

It was people like Suzan, Ben Nighthorse Campbell and Walter Echo Hawk that helped protect American Indian artists and their works from cheap rip-offs. Suzan has helped Indian people in so many ways. I applaud her for her continued work.

[hardrainfallin]

2. it is the oppressed that get to name the oppression

Yes.