Lions or Tigers or Bears...Here's Why

    It is time for athletic teams--high school, college or professional--which use Native American mascots to end the practice.
    Select an animal of choice or find some other symbol which expresses pride, captures school spirit and projects a powerful personna.
    Just don't use Chiefs, Chieftains, Indians, Fighting Sioux, Fighting Illini, Seminoles, Braves or Warriors (with a visual of a Native American).
    Can anyone truly say the Redskins mascot is in no way offensive?
    There are enough other mascots to go around, so pick one and cheer, cheer, cheer that your alma mater or favorite team has finally done the right thing.
    While I have leaned in the direction of the abolishment of Native mascots for some time, conversations and experiences in the past few months provided me with a rare moment of clarity.
    Well-meaning people, or at least those who are apologists for those who persist in perpetuating the use of Native mascots, often claim to be honoring or showing respect toward Native people by using symbols and images they say demonstrate strength, power, pride and a sense of honor.
    Here is the problem with that: non-Native people have no clue what honor and respect is within the Native culture.
    Eight years into my life as principal at a high school on a reservation where the student population is 99% Native American, I have learned many lessons.  The greatest and foremost is that I don't know enough about the culture of the American Indian to honor or respect it. If I were to try, I would look the part of a fool.
    I live within it every day and I am trying to learn. I want to learn. Every moment it seems I gain another glimpse into a culture as foreign to me as those thousands of miles across an ocean.
    Non-Natives simply view and see American Indian culture through a set of eyes and experiences that doesn't allow them to completely understand or comprehend what is meant by the Native concept of honor and pride and strength and power.
    Non-Natives don't belong to the culture, so it is impossible to honor or respect it. That doesn't mean we can't have feelings for it or have an appreciation of it.
    But if you aren't an Indian, you can't honor Indian ways. It is that simple. Perhaps in that simplicity is the stumbling block for so many.
    Unless you are Native, there is an incomplete understanding of how and why pride, honor and respect are demonstrated toward Indian people. If shown in the wrong way, it is meaningless at best and offensive at the very least.
    Put all your arguments together, but there is no way a simple mascot can show the complexity of the mix of family and tradition and spirituality which pervades all of Native life. And if non-Natives think their best intentions cover for the mistakes they might make along the way, they are deceiving themselves.
    Me? I am simply privileged to be part of the experience, an outsider who has been invited to learn as much as possible. But I can't pretend to say I can honor or respect Native ways. If I tried, I would only fail. Non-Natives can't do Native things.
    I can only be grateful to those who so openly share those customs and traditions and ceremonies and stories, and hope one day I will have a more complete understanding.
    Those who persist in perpetuating the myth that they know something--anything--about Native people and want to demonstrate it by using Indian mascots while claiming the mascots are a compliment to a culture and a proud people are living a lie.
    So, pick a new mascot. There are lots of animals out there to be adopted, honored and showed respect.  

(October 5, 2006)

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This Page was last update: Friday, December 8, 2006 at 8:22:42 AM
This page was originally posted: 11/27/06; 5:19:40 PM.
Copyright 2008 David Friedli

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