An article on Indian Mascots

[Leif]

First off, it's been too long since I've last posted here, I'm now the opinions editor in my school paper and my senior year is quite hectic. However it is around Thanksgiving time and I've decided it's time to bring up the issue of our school mascot, the Indian. We are the Shawnee Mission North Indians, and I argue that the Indian mascot is inappropriate and racist on several levels. Firstly 'Indians' are a race of people, so that means somewhere there could be the Olathe South Negros and the Platt County Asians, it's simply crass. Secondly we are in the Shawnee Mission district, named after an Indian mission used to strip a people of their culture and force western values upon them.

I'm writing it as I'm typing here, I would like some help on other issues I could address. I have one page to work with.

Thank you everyone for the reading and the consideration

In solidarity
-Leif

[FatFreeMilk]

At my university the mascot is Monty Montezuma. We're the Aztecs. There's been debates and complaints and all that goodness but I don't even know where I stand when it comes to this. I honestly haven't taken time to evaluate everything...

Maybe if you googled SDSU Aztec or something you'll find some stuff to look into.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

It's shouldn't even be a question of "where to stand". Obviously the portrayal of indigenous people as "mascots" for sports teams and commercial brands should be completely condemned.

Alot of times it's even openly racist, like with "the Redskins" (American)football team. You would never see a team called the "Niggers" or the "Dagos".

It shows the level of subjugation and oppression indigenous people really face in the U.S. Especially because most people don't even second guess it in general. They don't even realize that calling a baseball team "the Reds" is rotten as fuck.

[Leif]

Here's the article

It’s thanksgiving time, celebrating a wonderful time in our nation’s early history when European colonists survived thank the generous gifts given to them by a local tribe of Indians. What do we as a society do to thank them? We make them our mascots of course!

We should sincerely consider changing our school mascot to something other than the Indian.

First let’s consider the history of our district. We are the Shawnee Mission district, that is a religious institution to reeducate the local ‘savages’ and make sure they adopt western Judeo-Christian thinking so when we further screw them in the name of divine providence, they’ll know who we’re talking about. That’s a cruel thing, to proclaim proudly our history of removing a people from their land and erasing their lifestyle and thought from the face of the earth, a sort of cultural genocide.

Secondly, we’re using a whole broad race of people as a mascot. Let’s consider this for a second, if we’re the Shawnee Mission North Indians, what would prevent Olathe North from deciding it’s time they renamed themselves the Olathe North Asians or Blue Valley High school from becoming the Blue Valley Negroes, what about the Blue Springs Honkies or the Lawrence Free state Arabs? If it’s a stupid idea to not use most ethnic types as a cartoonish mascot, it’s probably a bad idea to butcher any ethnicity in the name of a high school mascot.

And Finally, how about we consider the people who this really affects the most, the true Americans or the Shawnee tribe specifically thinks about the subject? Consider that while playing football at Haskell University, we didn’t wear or use any Indian imagery out of respect. Well fine, you might say, that was some mighty enlightened self-censorship we enacted. But if it isn’t a good idea or if it isn’t right to do in front of a specific group, is it really a good idea to do at all?

We as a school are more creative than this, we can think of a better mascot than ‘the Indian’, maybe one that isn’t a racist stereotype, maybe one that gives us more purpose as a school. We can come up with a better name for ourselves, maybe the SMN Raptors, maybe the SMN Trojans, maybe the SMN Ninjas…. Who knows, but we need to find a reasonable alternative.