March 17, 2003 - "When you mascot them, it diminishes them. For your own amusement, you can use their name to have a good time at a basketball game."

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 national attention, said Pallone’s spokesman Andrew Souvall. 

Native American student groups in Colorado and at the University of North Dakota are protesting American Indian team names they consider offensive, Bailey said. The University of North Dakota mascot is the “Fighting Sioux,” a name many American Indians dislike.

The National Congress of American Indians, a coalition of 250 tribal governments, passed a resolution in February, to back efforts nationwide to abolish derogatory American Indian names and symbols, Bailey said.

California Assembly member Jackie Goldberg, a Democrat who represents northern Los Angeles, introduced a bill last month to get 130 or 8700 California public schools to drop American Indian names and mascots that are offensive. …

The Alliance Against Racial Mascots, a Los Angeles group that formed in 1996, formed a coalition including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and American Civil Liberties Union to push for the ban on derogatory American Indian team names in California. The alliance in 2001 persuaded the California Department of Moto Vehicle to ban use of the word “redskins” or any variation on state car license plates, steering committee member Lori Nelson said.

No Names Benign

      Fewer than 260,000 of the more than 16 million people who lived in the Los Angeles metro area are American Indians, according to Census 2000. But Goldberg said American Indian team names are hurtful because American Indian children and teenagers sometimes face the “slings and arrows” of racism when they go to school football and basketball games and hear the crowd yelling “Kill the Chiefs.”

      “When you mascot them, it diminishes them,” she said. “For your own amusement, you can use their name to have a good time at a basketball game.”

      Are all American Indian names offensive? The name of the Atlanta Braves baseball team evokes an image of a fearless American Indian warrior.

      But Jonathan Hook, president of the American Indian Resource Center in San Antonio, said all the kitsch that goes with Native American team mascots – the rubber tomahawks, to tom-toms, cheap feather headdresses, and fake war whoops – insult authentic American Indian religious and cultural symbols. 

      “Those are all sacred images,” said Hook, the American Indian who visited Jourdanton High to try to get the school to change its team name. In at least one Indian language, squaw is an offensive term that refers to a portion of the female anatomy. 

      “Those are like using a communion cup, or having (team mascots) dressed like nuns and priests,” he said. 

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I just don’t think it’s an issue,” said Keith Chapman, principal of Jourdanton High School. “I think our community has been used to being the Indians and the Squaws.” 

“A lot of victory were are seeing is increased dialogue. A lot of school boards are taking it up,” said Adam Bailey, legislative associate at the National Congress of American Indians in Washington. “Unfortunately, it seems that most of the votes don’t turn out positively for us, and we recently have seen a few schools go back to (Indian) names.” 

2003 March 17, The News Messenger 

2003 March 17, The News Messenger