Many Feathers and Much Paint Don't Make an Indian

March 30, 1870 the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified. It finally recognized the natural right of all men to vote, including Indians. Women continued to be second-class citizens.

2015 March 29 The News Journal 

Horn irked over names by Ron Cook 1987 March 28, Northwest Herald        St Petersburg, Fla - You see or read about the Cleveland Indians, St John's Redmen, Chicago Blackhawks, Atlanta Braves and Washington Redskins.       In most cases, such team nicknames are taken for granted. But, Gabriel Horn notices. And he said he wants to cry every time he sees or hears them.       Horn, 39, is an American Indian. More accurately, he is an American Indian on a mission. He wants to abolish sports nicknames, mascots and logos that relate to Indians. He said they are degrading and worse, racist.        "Put yourself in our place for a minute. If you are a black man, how would you feel if the team were called the Washington Negroes? Or if you are a white man, the Washington Honkies? Is there any other race that would stand for that?       "Every time those nicknames and symbols are used, it lets loos...

1991 March 26, The Courier Journal 

"The understanding of the racial question does not ultimately involve understanding by either blacks or Indians. It involves the white man himself. He must examine his past. He must face the problems he has created within himself and within others. The white man must no longer project his fears and insecurities onto other groups, race, and countries. Before the white man can relate to others he must forgo the pleasure of defining them." ~Vine Deloria Jr (1933 – 2005), “Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto”

2009 March 25 The Santa Fe New Mexican 

2003 March 25, The Hays Daily News 

and when these are done for entertainment at sporting events, it makes a mockery of the culture and beliefs. 2001 March 25, Battle Creek Enquirer 

2001 March 25, Argus Leader Sun

1998 March 25, The Facts 

1998 March 24, Daily World 

1993, March 24. Journal Gazette 

2002 March 24, The Santa Fe New Mexican 

Revision of Indians Names March 24, 1903 - Washington - A complete revision of the names of Indians in the United States is now being made by the government. The object is to eliminate the many almost unpronounceable and vulgar Indian names and to substitute permanent names that will show the family relationship, retaining any existing names that are proper and which will enable title to allotments, etc. to be kept clear.  1903 March 24, Green Bay Press Gazette  New Names for Indians Order is Issued which probably will make the Red Men angry       Washington - The Indian bureau has decided on a policy which will probably cause as much indignation, and excitement among the red men as in the now famous order of Commissioner Jones, since revoked, instituting compulsory hair-cutting among the Nation's wards.       This policy contemplates a wholesale rechristening of all the Indians in the United States, substituting for their usually unp...

March 23, 1877 John D. Lee was brought to trial for his part in the Fancher Party Massacre of 1857. He was convicted by an all Mormon jury. On March 23 he was executed by firing squad at the site of the massacre, after denouncing Brigham Young for abandoning him. His last words are for his executioners: “Center my heart, boys. Don’t mangle my body.”

1995 March 22, Feather River Bulletin 

1903 March 22, Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette 

magazines such as Sports Illustrated that keeps pushing us backwards," Charlene Teters.  2002 March 21, The Burlington Free Press 

2000 March 21, The Daily Herald 

“Over the last six or seven years, I’ve fielded concerns about the mascot,” [Mark Pruitt, Conrad principal] said. “I’ve heard from parents who don’t want to join an organization called the Redskin Athletic Boosters. We had homecoming and we got a letter from one of our opposing team’s parents saying how disgusted they were at our reenactments of the Native American history. The parade and floats, those kinds of things, with headdresses and tomahawks. Those things happened more frequently as the years went on.”  2015 March 20, The News Journal 

It is “ important for the university to recognize that we need to reinvest and reappropriate these spaces in the names of indigenous people,” said Leo John Bird, from the Blackfeet Reservation, who is part of a movement at Stanford that takes aim at Father Junipero Serra, the 18th-century Spanish missionary – whose role in the assimilation and exploitation of Native Americans added controversy to his canonization last year. The campaigners believe there should not be dorms, halls or streets named after him.  2016 March 20, The Anniston Star 

2000 March 18, Poughkeepsie Journal 

“I am three-fourths Iroquois and find it very upsetting to hear and see people use our Native American names and dress for things that are not theirs to use. They would not like the Native Americans to use their names, etc, so please, let us, the Native Americans, have our ways, as we were here first and it’s wrong to imitate us.” – Jean Red Wing Hill “I agree with Chief Gibson that the mascots are demeaning and insulting. If a group of people are empowered enough to complain, then the school board should respect those concerns.       I and other members of the Keepers of the Circle (an Albany-based Native American organization that promotes native culture), met with members of the school board and local clergymen in Clifton Park a few years ago concerning the absolutely heinous mascot of the Shenendehowa School District. Some of the school community did not agree with us and tried to stop us, but we prevailed and that school district no longer has a native mascot. ...

 South administration to change 'Redmen' logo       As the controversy over the Indian “Redmen” logo at South High School ended with the school administration’s decision to change the name, a new level of discussion was reached among the students, faculty, alumni, parents, and others tied to the school.       Some common questions heard by athletic director Jamie Berlin were: Why do the Indians feel the logo is racial, or Why do we have to change?       Hugh Danforth, an Oneida, United Nations Indian, was the first speaker to open the program announcing that he was an “urban Indian or one who has moved off the reservation in order to assume the culture of modern Americans.       “The Indian sports figures were bothersome to me, but I didn’t know why, I had become so modernized that I didn’t understand my own culture, said Danforth after he talked about moving at a young age.        ...

      Madison, Wis - A US District Court suit filed by the Forest County Pottawatomi accuses a northern Wisconsin school district of failing to provide equal education for Indian youngsters.       The suit filed .. against the Crandon School District also names the state Department of Public Instruction, whose officials are quoted as saying they are powerless to impose sanctions on the district. 1986 March 18, The Daily Tribune 

... Dancing around the basketball court and football field wearing feathers, leather and beads as the band plays and thousands of fans clap and cheer, Illiniweks have been performing their faux native rituals for seven interminable decades.       Just last week, the university's board of trustees overwhelmingly voted to keep the Illiniwek tradition alive for future generations of Illinois fans to embrace and adore.       Illinois loyalists, including John Madigan, the white grad student who puts on feathers and face paint to perform as Illiniwek, consider the Illiniwek ritual a tribute to American Indians and to the heritage of the university and the state.       Try selling that to actual American Indians who strive daily to maintain and preserve sacred tribal cultures and traditions that have existed for thousands of years.       The operative word is authenticity.       By definition, everything about rea...

      Lancaster NY - A western New York school district will do away with its Redskins mascot and nickname after other districts in the region turned up the pressure by boycotting games because of it.       The Lancaster Central School Board voted to retire the longtime symbol.. during a special session called after three districts with sizable numbers of Native American students canceled lacrosse matches.        A spokesman for the Oneida Indian Nation of central New York, which is involved in the NFL campaign, said districts that have replaced their mascots, including neighboring Cooperstown, have not seen a decline in school spirit.       “Not only did the school make a powerful statement to the Native American community that they no longer wanted to use a term that is a dictionary-defined slur against native people,” spokesman Joel Barkin said. “But it made a statement to the kids in that school to be self-aware...

A few highlights from the struggle to change the mascots and their names:  In April 1999, after seven years of testimony and deliberation, a three-judge panel of the US Trademark and Patent Office ruled the Redskins team name is a racial slur. But the victory was mainly symbolic for Suzan Shown Harjo, a Chippewa and Muscogee Indian from Oklahoma, and six other American Indians who filed the lawsuit. The patent office did not recognize the National Football League, which holds the Redskins trademark, to change the name. The NFL went to federal court to appeal the ruling and the cause is pending. “We do not intend to change the name,” Redskins spokesman Carl Swanson said. “We think it’s an honorable use.” In September, Rep Frank Pallone, D-NJ, a member of the Congressional Native American Caucus, introduced a bill to create an incentive program for schools to abolish names and symbols that insult American Indians. The bill died, but it was important to give the issue nationa...

 2005 March 17 The Salina Journal             Ottawa - An organization that campaigns against using American Indian symbols as sports mascots has expressed "shock and dismay" that Ottawa University barred it from advertising in the student-run campus newspaper.       Leaders of the group Religious Americans Against "Indian" Nicknames and logos said the ads were intended to educate OU students and staff about religious organizations that oppose university use of native American nicknames, mascots and logos.       OU's sports teams use the nicknames the Braves and Lady Braves. The otter, the sacred animal of the Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma, is the team mascots. The tribe was instrumental in the founding of the university and retains close ties to it.        Ottawa tribal Chief Charles Todd has maintained that the tribe has no problem with the university's use of the symbols.     ...

      Speech of an Indian Chief – The following speech was made by Grey Eagle, Chief of Senecas, through an interpreter, before the Committee on Indian Affairs, in the Assembly of this State, March 1st: --       “I wish to say a few words to the Committee about the wrongs of the Red men. You are rich – we are poor. You have lands – you have ships on the sea – we have none – no not one, and some of us are so poor that they beg from door to door. The once great Six Nations are no more compared to what they were. Once they were a great people, But the Indian has passed away, while the pale face has increased to be what they are. We have had trouble among us by bad men. We appeal to you and through you, to the great Committee, of the Assembly. I find fault with my White brethren for their action last year, they judged wrong. I hope it will be different now, as they have heard longer talk. The White man is the friend of the Red man. The Grey Eagle has no more...

2002 March 16, The Pantagraph 

Image Suffers; Indians Take Warpath 1969 March 16, The Cincinnati Enquirer        Los Angeles - A gentle uprising against the stereotype picture of the American Indian as (1) a blood-thirsty savage or (2) a slovenly, a lazy drunk is being launched nationwide by the Indians themselves.       "We feel the Indian is intelligent enough to compete at all levels," says Earl Old Person, head chief of the Blackfeet.       "But too often he doesn't get the chance because too many people, once they learn he is an Indian, immediately picture him as the type Indian they see on television or in the movies."       Old Person and a dozen other chiefs came here .. for the kickoff of a campaign -- sponsored by the National Congress of American Indians -- to improve the image of the American Indian.       When the group finds something it considers derogatory -- in a TV commercial, say, or a newspaper story, or ...

Scalp Hunting for Pay 1899 March 16, The Evening Democrat  It is not generally known in latterlay Minnesota history that the state treasury once paid out cash as bounties for Sioux Indian scalps, just as this and many other states are now paying for wolf scalps. State Treasurer Koerner, in looking over the 1836 report of State Treasurer Charles Schaff, discovered the following item among the disbursements of that year:                          “J.C. Davis, Sioux scalp, $25.” This item occurs in the list of disbursement’s amounting to $7,870.06, under the head “Suppressing Indian War.”  The $25 paid to J.C. Davis for the Indian scalp in question, therefore, had its niche in the cause of suppressing, or spreading the Sioux outbreak. It doubtless strikes the general reader that $25 is rather small inducement for securing Sioux scalps. Few hunters today would care to contract for belts of that kind f...

Indian-hunting expeditions, and offering bounties for scalps. 1866 March 16, Cleveland Daily 

Battling over a school's symbols 2009 March 15, The Los Angeles Times        Eli Coredero, a student from Carpintria, home of the Warriors, asked the school board to eliminate the warrior school symbols. …. Board member Beverly Grant, who believes the images are damaging stereotypes and who was the target of an unsuccessful recall effort led by [Jeff] Moorhouse (a Carpinteria High alumnus and leader of a group whose name is taken from the school’s unofficial mottos “Warrior Spirit Never Dies!”) , expressed the same urgency.       “When this first happened, I couldn’t squeeze a tomato in the grocery store without someone coming up and saying something nasty to me,” said Grant, a retired parole officer. “They act like we’re trying to kill them, but we’re just trying to bring them into the 21st century.”        At the center of the story is a 16-year-old junior who said he wears his hair shoulder-length as a tribute to his for...

'Indian wannabes' soil culture, Native American groups say 1993 March 15, Clarion Ledger        Old Town, Maine - They gather in spots across New England to use the ways of Native Americans - council circles, ceremonies, sweet lodges -- as part of a spiritual quest led by self-proclaimed teachers of the old ways.       There are shops that cater to these seekers, such as the Mystic Indian in Freeport, which advertises itself as "Supplier of All Your Holistic and Native American Needs," shops that, as Rene Attean, an elder of the Penobscot Nation put it, "deal in feathers, drums and old bones."       But few of the seekers, the sellers or the teachers are Native Americans, and elders of the Penobscot Nation are asking that followers of what they call the New Age Movement leave their spirituality and their culture alone.        "Indian wannabes," they say, are practicing spiritual genocide by taking from th...

      Clyde H Bellecourt, a leader of the Twin Cities paid a $100 fine for a breach of the peace charge branch of the American Indian Movement (AIM), dating July 1971.       Bellecourt, 35, was charged with breach of the peace after a group of Indians interrupted the Aquatennial torchlight parade July 21. The Indians reportedly objected to a float entered by the Sleepy Eye, Minn, Chamber of Commerce because it depicted "stereotyped" Indian figures. The float reportedly was damaged by Bellecourt's group.       He pleaded innocent to the charges but was found guilty by a Hennepin municipal judge in October 1971. The case was appealed Nov 1, 1971, but Bellecourt later dropped the appeal. The case was returned to municipal court and Bellecourt paid the fine. 1972 March 15, The Minneapolis Star 

Smargon.net lists school nicknames from A to Z, said school nicknames are used either to intimidate or celebrate some feature local to the school’s environment. [Some] nicknames… are meant to “stroke fear into the hearts and minds of the opposing team” or to intimidate.    Native Americans say some names are no-nos       Most team names – whether the Golden Gophers of Minnesota or Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish – are pretty uncontroversial. Not so Native American team names.     The National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media works to end the use of Native American names for sports. Charlene Teters, the organization’s vice president, points out that Indian team mascots are commonly depicted as buck-toothed, big-nosed clowns.       Native American activists also say their religious practices are distorted during half-time, and drunken fans yell made-up “war chants” and practice “tomahawk chops.”       “You’l...

Teams disregard American Indian labels   by Brad Herzog 1991 March 13, The Ithaca Journal        The idea of changing sports nicknames and mascots is not new.       Although pro sports fans still cheer on their Indians, Braves, Redskins, Chiefs, Warriors and Blackhawks, many institutions at the college and high school level have opted to drop American Indian references and mascots.       Here are some of them: Dartmouth. In the early 1970s, Dartmouth College, long known at the Indians, officially became the Big Green.  Kathy Slattery, Dartmouth's sports information director, said the original nickname arose because the college was founded in 1765 with the specific purpose of “educating the natives of the area.” However, riding a wave of sensitivity to racial and cultural issues during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Dartmouth went to “voluntary discontinuance” of the nickname. And in 1972, Dartmouth truste...

Mascot divides Huntley Groups urge school to drop 'Redskins' by Owen R. Brugh  1999 March 12, Northwest Herald         Huntley – The calls and letters still come to Huntley High School, no matter how much the school tones down its nickname.       Some groups allege the term “Redskins” is racially offensive and degrading, portraying American Indians as savage marauders.       Alumni and booster clubs want to retain the nickname. They maintain it has been a part of Huntley’s identity since the 1920s, and say the school is just another victim of political correctness run amok.        Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines a Redskin as “A North American Indian – usually taken to be offensive.”       “It’s a recurring issue, and we have been approached by a number of different groups and individuals, not in a threatening and protesting way, but out of concern,” Hunt...

2001 March 12, Journal Gazette  2001 March 17, Argus Leader 

'Fighting Whities' team name mocks school's Indian mascot 2002 March 12, Green Bay Press Gazette        Greeley, Colo - Unable to persuade a school to change a mascot name that offends them, a group of American Indian students at the University of Northern Colorado named their intramural basketball team "The Fighting Whities."       The team chose a white man as its mascots to raise awareness of stereotypes that some cultures endure.       "The message is, let's do something that will let people see the other side of what it's like to be a mascot, said Solomon Little Owl, a member of the team and director of Native American Student Services at the university.       The team, made up of American Indians, Hispanics and Anglo's, wears jerseys that say "Everythang's going to be all white." The students are upset with Eaton High School for using an American Indian caricature on the team logo. The team is called the Red...