T
o sports fans, the colorful characters that adorn the uniforms and branding of their favorite teams speak to the tradition and community created by those professional, minor- league and high school squads.
But for Native Americans, some of those symbols bring up a darker, more painful history.
A panel hosted by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Nov. 7 sought to bring to light the deep hurt and offense felt by the Native American community through the use of stereotypical mascots in team sports. Many find the use of images depicting Native Americans reductive and racist.
The event was held to launch the museum’s newest exhibition, called “Mascots,” which looks at the struggle of the Native American community across the country to remove commonly used team names and mascots like braves, mohawks, indians and redskins from high school, college and professional teams across the country.
The panel featured former Cincinnati Reds manager Dusty Baker, Dennis Limberhand of the Cheyenne tribe in Montana and Alex Tortes of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian Tribe in California, as well as Xavier University Clinical Psychologist Rose M. Wetterau.
Native American activists have worked for years to point out the historical problems of calling a team something like “redskins,” but die-hard team fans and owners don’t easily part with tradition.
Baker admitted during the panel that while growing up in California, the term “offensive” never came to mind when he thought of his favorite Washington D.C.-based NFL teams.
“I was a Redskins fan growing up. I didn’t think about anything being derogatory at all about it,” Baker said.
The Washington Redskins came up during the panel as a frequent example of the kind of obstacles the movement has faced. Redskins owner Dan Snyder has famously refused to change his team’s name.
“That tradition — the song, the cheer — it mattered so much to me as a child, and I know it matters to every other Redskins fan in the D.C. area and across the nation,” he wrote in a letter in the Washington Post in 2013.
But Tortes of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian Tribe said he doesn’t buy Snyder’s reasoning and thinks the real reason is money.
“There are so many honorable names that they could give that team that is deserving of Washington D.C., the capital of our country, and when you know that name is unacceptable to a group of people, why would you continue to hold on to it?” he said.
There are 566 federally recognized Native American tribes across the United States, none of which are in Ohio. While Native Americans make up 1.2 percent of the population nationally, they represent just 0.3 percent of Ohio. But that hasn’t stopped the offensive mascots from creeping into the state.
The most famous might be the Cleveland Indians, one of the state’s two professional baseball teams. Last year, amid the controversy over the Redskins, a group called People Not Mascots filed a federal lawsuit against Cleveland’s name and logo, which still has yet to be resolved.
Limberhand of the Cheyenne tribe said he doesn’t like Chief Wahoo, the team’s logo.“The big smiling comic character — I’ve never seen an Indian that looked like that,” he said.In the greater Cincinnati area, several high schools have Native-American-themed mascots, such as the Indian Hill High School Braves, the Fairfield High School Indians and the Anderson High School Redskins.
Forest Hills School District, which includes Anderson High School, previously faced pressure to find a new mascot, but has not backed down. In 1999, the school board voted unanimously to keep the name after the American Indian Movement supporters asked for it to be changed.
A year ago, Anderson High School Principal Mike Broad told Fox 19 that he planned to keep the name, saying he had received no complaints on it during his two years as principal and, like Washington Redskins owner Snyder, cited the importance of tradition.
“The community has spoken pretty loudly that it is a name that is steeped in tradition, and it’s meant to show dignity and we treat it with as much respect as we can,” he said.
Miami University in Oxford changed its mascot from the Redskins to the RedHawks in 1997 after a long battle with activists .
Xavier University psychologist Wetterau says these mascots are generally harmful to Native Americans.
Native Americans tend to be invisible in modern society, and their culture is either discussed in an outdated way or misrepresented in mascots, according to Wetterau. This can lead populations that have limited contact with modern Native American culture, like people in southwestern Ohio, to attach negative and false ideas to their culture.“Those connections are really powerful. Those connections are very difficult to break,” Wetterau said.
These negative connections are harmful for everyone, not just Native Americans, according to a study that came out this year by the University of Buffalo involving a mostly white pool of participants.
The study found that Native American nicknames and mascots not only triggered negative stereotypes in people’s minds, but that participants exposed to these images were more likely to stereotype other ethnic groups.Wetterau said Native Americans’ feelings shouldn’t be a matter of debate for the general population.
“If Native Americans think it’s hurtful, then it’s hurtful,” Wetterau said, “and then it shouldn’t be used. And if you’re a non-native, why do you get to say what’s hurtful to Native Americans? We don’t get to do that.”
Baker said the struggle of Native Americans for recognition and respect in the sports arena somewhat mirrors that of other minority groups.
In the past week, Baker was announced as the new manager of the Washington Nationals, which will make him the only African-American manager of an MLB team for the upcoming season.
“We don’t have much support at the top, especially when people are hiring their friends or their fraternity brothers, and herein lies the problem,” he said.
Torres says the fight over mascots is another example of how minorities, and especially Native Americans, are often largely ignored by the rest of the U.S.
“Even though Native Americans were always here, and first to be contacted by Europeans,” he said, “we’re the last to be recognized, the last to be respected.” ©
This article appears in Nov 11-17, 2015.
