Transcripts For CSPAN American Indian Stereotypes In Sports

And a native rights advocate who is trying to eliminate thousands of native american mascots. We begin with the director of business owning institutions National Museum of the American Indian. This is just over two hours. [applause] thank you very much for hosting us tonight. It is good to be back in the valley. I was expecting different weather than we have got but we all know rain is always a blessing in the desert. It is very good to be here at the museum. It is one of our important Partners National late and nationally and works with armies and to help us sharpen ideas and share information and objects quite often. It is always good to be here. For those of you who have not seen it, i hope you will check out the exhibition on native americans in sports. I think you will be surprised. One of the things that many people are surprised by our the range of things that native americans have achieved excellence in. This is one of those areas. We all know about jim thorpe. There were many other native athletes of whom you should be aware, one of whom we will hear from. Let me jump into it. I will have to turn my site do you from time to time so i can see which slide we are on. I am at the National Museum of the American Indian. One of the things that interest us greatly is the persistence of stereotypes. Our visitors dont come as blank slates, they come with a preconceived set of ideas, not uninformed but misinformed. As you can see just a couple of years ago at the vatican. This is a man there at the vatican celebrating as she understands native american culture. This is one of those examples where we can hardly alter at fault. She does not know any better because this is what she has been taught. This entire notion of Cultural Appropriation and taking from native people of their authority to define who they are emerged at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. This is part of the imagery that laid the groundwork for what would later become this business of using indians as mascots. Really, abusing our history in more significant ways. This is the end of the trail them in, a famous one. It indicates defeat but also the disappearance of intimate native americans. In fact, the very object of a government policy at this time was the disappearance of native american tribes. What they did not want was for people to act like indians and be part of indian tribes. That is when the mascot business began. This mascot was adopted in the 1930s by a particularly vicious racist. The owner of a team that at the time was in boston. The team was initially called the boston braves, the same as one of the baseball teams. But, later, in order to distinguish the team from the baseball team, the owner chose this particular name. Theres a lot of mythology around the name. They each have an origin myth for their mascot. They are very elaborate and fantastically untrue. A fellow who went by the name of lone star gates there were a couple of problems. First, the owner himself not time is quoted in the newspapers saying that is not why we named it that. It is kind of a name like red sox. Except, it is this. That is alive. The other lie is that one star gates himself was an indian. He was convicted of fraud for pretending to be an indian because he was trying to dodge the draft. Yet, the team maintains on its website that is the origin of the name. Similarly, this team has an origin myth. They say it was a fellow named henry who was a baseball player for the team. They say they named their team and order to honor him. If you really begin to dig into that history, what we find is henry was treated incredibly badly by the fans. Second he was not that good. He was not the kind of guy you would name your team for. He was not bad, but he was not that good. He was not a very nice guy. All of this sort of suggests that they made that up. This is part of what goes on when dealing with indians and the public discourse. Things get made up and indians become very malleable and they are formed in order to fill whatever particular role the institution or entity or state or country needs them to fill. This is the logo for the chicago hockey team. There actually was a name men named black hawk. He turned the team into the blackhawks is a little strange. The team has made efforts to reach out to be sick auto chicago indian community. If you really wanted to honor black hawk, why isnt it and everyone of her game programs . Why isnt there a biography of backtalk . A description of the war and how he was to be trade how he was betrayed . This is a retired mascot. This of course is the former mascot of the university of illinois. This involved a fairytale about an incident that took place in this part of the country where the illinois indians died very noble yet terribly tragic demise. The ending was their leader. It did not happen. Once again, they made up things in order to suit their need for a mascot for their sports teams. This fellow is particularly outrageous. He is the mascot for the Florida State Football Team. There are too many things wrong with this fiction to picture to describe them all. I am fairly certain that the seminoles who were very formidable fighters did not fight on horses and did not carry flaming lances. Who would do such a thing . Yet, before every game, this guide will write out to the center of the field, throw a flaming lance into the ground as if this is some sort of accurate portrayal of a real and formidable seminole leader. This business of playing indian goes way back. It is something that has been done from the very beginning. Back in the early 1800s, they formed societies, for example in new york city. You may have heard of them because they were central to the corruption in the 1920s. It ended up with a lot of of people going to jail. The tammany hall scandal. This chief was a real person who dried is very best to form stable relationships with the surrounding nonindian community. He Tammany Society was created to honor him. They did the strangest inks. They would have secret meetings where they would dress up again the ends just up like indians, assign each other indian names, beat drums and carry out rituals in order to channel the spirits. When the nation came to new york to negotiate the treaty of new york with George Washington, they were greeted by the Tammany Society in full regalia. The Tammany Society paraded them down the streets of new york to the capital where George Washington awaited. Imagine what those leaders must have thought when these guys showed up. Playing indian is something that has gone on. You may recall the numbers in philadelphia. That was another offshoot of the type where they would just up like indians. There is this weird kind of need in some way to establish yourself as an american by connecting an pretending to be a native american. This is the result. I dont know what this guy is but, it is a real thing at the washington football stadium. This is a wellknown figure in washington. One of the problems with the mascots is that even if we educate the supporters of a team to be a themselves and express themselves in a respectful manner that does suggest there out to honor the native American Heritage of the country or their community, what do can really do is control the conduct of the opposing team. Back when north dakota might very well in good faith claim theyre honoring the souix people by having the mascot. Scalp the souix from the other teams. This is a philadelphia fan expressing his appreciation for washingtons Football Team. These fellows showed up at the last time Cleveland Baseball Team managed to make the playoffs. That is the sort of conduct that does notion of a disappearing native american to be replaced by mascots leads us to. What has happened is indians have been made imaginary. The indians that most washingtonians are mostly minor with are not the kind of indians that are in the room tonight. It is this imaginary indian they have constructed. He is noble, brave strong. We keep having to remind them that he is imaginary. That is not a real person. To put us on the side of a football helmet is no particular honor, thank you very much. To refer to us by that name is the exact opposite of an honor. Yet, they have a hard time accepting that. We have even heard them say that this is their tradition. What, mocking indians is your tradition . There are very serious about that. This is our tradition. This is how we express ourselves. This is our team. Breaking through that and getting them to consider how a native american person might experience that sort of conduct has been very difficult. The ultimate rebuttal to my mind is to say if being made into a mascot is such an honor, why is it that our africanamerican and asianamerican and Latino American people have not been similarly honored anyplace in the country. Surely we are not the only ones worthy of that honor. The answer is very simple. It is simply that there are so few indians and a few of the folks in that part of the country have had direct experience with them that it never occurs to them that this is generally destructive conduct. We are dealing with people whose information about indians has come primarily from two sources. First is our formal education system, which is billing rather dramatically in teaching history in general and teaching history involving native americans particularly badly. The second place they get their information is from the Popular Culture, including this sports mascots coulter. When they come to us culture. When they come to us to learn something, they dont come through the door without already reformed ideas about what indians are. You would be surprised how many people come in and look at this array of different tribal cultures presented and say yeah, but where are the indians . Because their notion of what an indian is supposed to look like is that guy on the set of the football helmet. We dont happen to have any indians like that on display in the museum so they are puzzled and they dont realize indians are everywhere. And that one indian tribe can be as different from another as china is from france. It would never occur to them that indians are many different things. In fact, there is no such thing as an indian. Indian is a something that was made up. Yet, when we see the imagery associated with the mascots they all tend to look alike. That in itself tells us people are being misled. We begin a series of exhibitions at the museum. Patient was guest curated by suzanne harjo. Part of this is that we simply want people to gain a simple understanding of history. We dont want them to think of it as strictly native American History, it is American History. In many respects, World History. It is just history. Not American Indian history. When we teach about a situation like this, that is the point where trying to make. This is everybodys inheritance. Its not just an indian thing. We talk about the treaties of c anandaigua. The central figure of a house is on either side of it. The figures represent the mohawk nation as the keepers of the eastern and western doors. Then, the 13 figures associated with that represented the 13 colonies. A belt like this was commissioned by none other than George Washington to mark the entry of the United States into this treaty relationship with the tribes. This was no small matter. This is not a trinket not jewelry. This is a diplomatic exchange. This was protocol. This is how one nation entered into an agreement with the tribes of that part of the world. We go into the removal policy and focus specifically. Most people have heard of the trail of tears. We come back to that. A lot of people dont know that the policy was quite thorough going. It extended to the great lakes and ohio valley and it was intended to remove all indians east of the mississippi to west of the mississippi. We tell them about this removal journey referred to as the trail of death. We then go into the civilization regulations. The creation of boarding schools. This is a class of Indian Students at carlisle, about 100 miles from washington dc. They would take these children from all over the country, remove them to carlisle, pennsylvania, and many of them would never see their parents again. That was the objective. They were not to return home. They were to be educated and released into society. We then say after this narrative arc, first there was real diplomacy, then there was a betrayal. Then, a restoration. And, a resumption of a more respectable relationship between the tribes and the United States. But it did not come simply from the largess of the United States. It was something many people fought for. That is the only reason it happened. These are great lakes fishermen challenging state regulation of their treaty fishing rights. The great lakes nations also won Supreme Court litigation. Now, we see policy made in a much different way than it was when progress was basically congress was busily telling the end and this is the way you should be. There was an effort at the beginning of it want your century to eradicate native american culture, to eradicate native americans, to break up the family, the tribe, the reservations with a very specific objective of having no tribes remain. They suppressed tribal religions. They prohibited some tribal dancing. They prohibited these children the use of their language in the boarding schools. They suppressed the tribal government. Basically anything that made them indians, the government tried to make them stop doing. They failed because of course they were going to fail. But they really thought that was something they could do. Policy was being made, the United States was saying, we know what is best for you so here is how we will do this. I included this picture to show that that is no longer how policy is made. While it would be a stretch to say that we resumed a treaty relationship between the drives and United States, it is certainly moving in that direction and much of the Business Done now is on a negotiated basis where both sides consent and agree on how things should move forward. We basically say now we are on the right track. Since this policy was resumed this policy of bilateral negotiated, friendly arrangements was resumed, Indian Country has begun to drive again and the results are indisputable that Indian Country has recovered during this time. One of the great myths of our formal education, of our Popular Culture is that the americas were wilderness prior to the arrival of the europeans. New Research Shows the americas were a happening place in 1491. There were literally hundreds thousands of different cultures that were operating in the two continental the western hemisphere. There was no part of this continents this continent that was unknown to the Indigenous People at the time. There were 2000 different languages being spoken, all neutrally unintelligible to the others. That suggests a long time in which they were evolving separately. The latest research has some of the scientists believing there were as many people in the americas in 1492 than there were in europe. That overturns the notion of an american wilderness. There was no wilderness in 1492. The americas were fully occupied, they were owned. Every part of these continents was owned by somebody. It is important to the american origin story to refer to the americas as being wilderness at that time because that makes it ok. That others tame and displays the people already there because those but displaced the people already there. This is the depiction of a city which was near current day st. Louis. This city in 1100 was larger than london. London was the largest city in england. There were cities throughout the western hemisphere that rivaled in size of their european counterparts. There were people here, a great many people here, perhaps as many as 40 million on the two continents. Have many of you have been to peru . In the end is, the current estimates are there were 10 Million People living in that part of the world. They were selfsufficient. They were growing a variety of food. Hunger was unknown in the inca empire. We want people to know that. We are working on some exhibitions that will bring forward this genuine history of the americas. This is cahokia. This is a smaller empire. Several hundred years before the emergence of the incas, they were building a vast civilization throughout mesoamerica. The aztecs as well. This is a city on the lake. This culture in the american southwest was elaborate. The park ranger in ms. Ever day mesa verde said there were more People Living in the area then there are now. This is my favorite slide. We have to return to basics in our Educational Program and make sure people understand basic propositions. Even bart simpson gets it. Now i would like to get to this idea of American Mythology and the imaginary indian. We are deeply in the american dna. Every major american myth, major american origin story has to account for the indians in sunlight. Here we see columbus arriving in the new world looking remarkably fresh. But hiding in the righthand corner are the indians who were there when columbus arrived. We want to get into this business of the Columbian Exchange. Indians have not only then he raised from American History they have any raised from World History not only have the indians then he raced erased f