Because after all, we have been taught that the pilgrims that squanto taught them to warn them of had a good crop that first year. In exchange 21 they wanted to have a big cities to celebrate and to give thanks and play a little folk all. And that is how all of this began. Our modern understanding of thanksgiving is very much a 20th century invention. It was not a holiday that was marked throughout the first 300 years of europeans being permanently settled in the new world. But now it is entered American Mythology as true and squanto as a central part of the myth. What is not so much a part of our understanding of this. Was king philips war which followed about 40 years after the arrival of the pilgrims was an absolutely devastating war between the english and the dutch and it was ferocious probably the greatest percentage of the population of all of these peoples was killed, more than in any other american conflict. So it was absolutely defining of their relationship in the historical memory in new england for generations thereafter. King philips head was severed and placed on a pole that was planted at the entry to plymouth for 20 years as head sat on that poll. So that gives you some sense of how strongly they felt about indians. Many of the indians by the way of our allies, but they fared no better for having been allies of the pilgrims and not allies of king philip. In new england i absolutely hated indians. And yet 100 years later when they sent to the Boston Harbor to throw the t. Over and challenge the wording of the king, they chose to express their desire for liberty and their identity is not english men as americans by doing what . By dressing up as indians. Isnt that interesting . You see how indians become defined and made into whatever people need at that time and in that place and this is just the best example. They go from king philips head on a pole to within 100 years been the very symbol of what it means to be an american and we are fascinated by that and we think it is important people understand the connections and understand the story with us so we can figure out just how all this works. Why do we remember what we remember . Why do we forget the things we forget . Because the more significant event was king philips war. It was not the first thanksgiving. But we dont learn about king philips war in our formal education. We learn a sanitized version of the first thanksgiving and we want our visitors to ask themselves a couple questions. We want them to say i didnt know that and then we want them to say why didnt i know that . Why wasnt i taught this . Because it is kind of important. Its more important than knowing they had dinner together one day to note the subsequent history was. Similarly pocahontas has a lot of mythology associated with her. Pocahontas was essentially the most famous teenager in the world. She was like a kardashian or something, gossip about throughout the world. This is a depiction of the famous story or she save john smith from being executed by her father. There is but one source for this story. Everyone has learned this right . Most of us will told the story and it was in the disney movie so it is got to be true. There was one source for this story and it took hold. The source was a highly fictionalized biography of john smith, autobiography. So john smith ffoxtrot to sell some books. As to be a great story but most historians agree this would never happen. Think about the whole that pocahontas still here fighting with light pocahontas so much . Once again pocahontas was the friendly indian who realized the need for civilization and did her level best to accommodate it. The pocahontas was a real person and not a very short and tragic life. She died at 23 in england having married john rolfe. They had a single fun together. In virginia their jim crow laws and their miscegenation statutes did not acknowledge indians at all. If you are indian, under virginia law to your color. They have the one drop rule. If any of your ancestors with african african american, if you two were colored in your subject to the segregation laws that jim crow embodies. There was a single exception to that and it was the pocahontas exception that if the indians whom you were related happen to be pocahontas commented you are not just white. You are extrawide. It didnt get any better than being related to pocahontas. All of the first families of virginia spent enormous effort trying to establish that they too were descendents of the one child of pocahontas and that was embodied in the laws of virginia. It is right there. So thats really weird right . Once again we want people to say why on earth would they do Something Like that . Once again theyve taken pocahontas a real person and made her into something they need to establish just how american they are and that is what is got us intrigued. There she is. Okay. I am going to skip through these because we are just about out of time. I do want to point out the stereotyping starts out early wistar propagandizing our children at a very early age. This is a common play item. You would be stunned if you are to Google Indian costume. Youll be amazed how many versions of this there are and how many kids are dressing up as indians for thanksgiving just like the member said that tammany society. Blue indians. So these kids can be forgiven for not having a particularly good idea especially kids in parts of the country where there arent a lot of indian people, where they are unlikely to encounter indian people in their daytoday lives or certainly their school lives, so they do get confused. They can be forgiven for not knowing that indians dont look like that in fact there still are indians. Now, this is a wellintentioned teachers somewhere who is teaching her students about thanksgiving as thanksgiving is required content in almost every state in the union. Teachers are expected to teach about giving in some way. This is what they have been teaching. This is innocent play, isnt it . These are kids and they are pretending, which is why kids do and it seems innocent enough. A couple of things. First of all, its rather unlikely they would pretend to be people of any other race than what they are. That would be understand as inappropriate but not when it comes to indians. The other thing is that innocent play turning to this group of Sorority Girls dressing up as indians or frat boys dressing up as indians or a little later hipsters dressing up as indians. These guys. I mean i dont know what that is all about. What is this thing with dressing up as indians . And then it turns into this and becomes commercialized. Victorias secret every year. And of course this. So what starts out as innocent play eventually becomes ignorant and racist and that is why we object. We want to understand the deep roots of this. It is not as simple as some mean man choosing a mean name for his Football Team. Is much more deeply cultural much more embedded in the way we have been taught to understand history and we absolutely believe at the museum that if we can teach history properly and give teachers the proper tools to teach the material that we wont have to worry about this sort of thing in the future because it simply wont be acceptable. Im going to stop fair because they have a very distinguished panel of people who i would like to call upon to come forward now and join me and we can begin a discussion of the issue together. [applause] albright, everyone. We are going to resume now. We have witnessed a very distinguished panel that i want to introduce briefly and then i will begin the conversation before we begin taking questions from all of you. First to my right is Amanda Blackhorse. Amanda is a social worker and citizen of the Navajo Nation. She is known as her work as an activist in this controversy over the name of the Washington Football Team. She is in fact against pro football inc. [applause] to her right is leo killsback. Professor killsback is an assistant professor of American Indian studies at Arizona State. He is a citizen of the cheyenne nation of southeastern montana. His dissertation was entitled the chiefs prophecy, destruction of original cheyenne leadership during the critical area 18761935. It is an epic history of northern cheyenne leaders, governance and leadership system. Please welcome professor killsback. [applause] to my left is jim warne. Mr. Warne has a bachelors of science are at Arizona State university and an ms from san diego State University. He also earned postgraduate certificate in rehabilitation administration. He is the pr corning trade nader threw the san diego State University and her work institute. Jim administers the post Employment TrainingAmerican Indian rehabilitation Postgraduate Certificate Program and a trainer at inner work institute. Hes also president president of his own Consulting Firm and very significantly was a Football Player for Arizona State university when they won the rose bowl. [cheers and applause] and played in the National Football league. [laughter] last but not least, dr. Suzan shown harjo. Suzan is muskogee and an advocate for American Indian rights. Poet, writer, lecturer, curator and policy advocate who has helped me to the recover more than 1 million acres of tribal lands. [applause] after a career in media she moved to washington d. C. To work on National Policy issues. She served as Congressional Liaison for Indian Affairs and the president Jimmy Carter Administration and later as director of the National Council of american im sorry, the National Congress of American Indians. I knew that sounded wrong. Suzan is president of the morningstar institute, National NativeAmerican Rights Organization and most recently was the recipient on November November 24th of last year at the president ial medal of freedom, the United States highest civilian honor. [applause] so lets start with the one of lies who has dealt with this issue facetoface so to speak. And that is june. Jim, you spent some time as a professional Football Player. What are your memories and how do you remember this mascot and how did you feel about that when you were playing . First of all thank you is this on . I dont see them on or off button. Thats about as far as i go. Is this better . Again, thank you for an excellent presentation and providing a quick history regarding not only mascots, but Indian Country. I guarantee you that some of our nonindian kids in the room right now will probably get more Indian History than their whole curriculum will teach them in america. That is the reality and that is the ignorance by design that i like to say is what we are dealing with in america is ignorance by design. Products of the Education System in america, therefore how would they know the truth unless they went outside of our curriculum to know that. I was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals and has some experience with tampa bay bucs in years. In a hobbit they call themselves a professional journeyman. It was a professional refugee and the football leagues. But that experience with all of the different mascots. As i have grown older, i like to call myself. Its been even more so with the efforts of many of the panelists here in Indian Country trying to get the truth out there. I did play against Florida State and they did have the horse on our field at sun devil stadium. As a young person, a product of American Education fortunately had my mother, Beverly Warne who many of you know was at Arizona State. It is encountering our teachers and many of my teammates. What do you think my nickname was at Arizona State . Yep, chief. With some of the nicknames my teammates had i reliably took it because some of them were pretty bad. That was coming from a level of respect because no one else in this world can call me chief other than my teammates. Its an interesting dynamic that i was one of the first to have long hair in professional football and this was in the nfl europe days. I got a lot of attention and Sports Illustrated wrote an article called the urban indian for one i grew up in urban phoenix but still had my native roots. His lengthways terror flu. I said well, i wish i had waist length hair. But that imagery when i saw the young men grow that beard in the middle of our field aye that aint a seminal guy. And so i remember that it wasnt necessarily the players. In fact it was never the players. Only once did i have an issue regarding race and i had a great game i will admit because that got me an extra element of anger that i did not have before. But he was usually the fans and that was a very depicting picture. I dont have the power points but i will put this up there. How many of you here in this room are insulted by this . How many would you allow this to happen in your homes or in front of your children . This is not right in america today. Why are we still discussing this now . It is so loud. The last bastion of racism here when we cannot use the or the f. Word for gay and lesbian, but they are trying to keep ss as caricatures and that is something insulting to me but fortunately i didnt see the fans because i was too busy on the field was somebody in front of me. That is something that is a result of that and as a player i didnt get too much because fortunately i was a good player and most people did not want to irritate me on the field. True racism is ignorance and unfortunately true american curriculum we have ignorance by design and that is what we are experiencing. Leo you teach native american studies. Is this an issue you discussing your class and how does the conversation tend to go . We cover this in her introductory course. I see the introductory course as a starting point for what we offer because there is so much to cover. A lot of a lot of folks enter thinking they will learn about rather shallow topics about indian leg buckskin and beats or learn how to do rituals. I have students from the very beginning what they expect and some of them are very honest and sometimes they are naive. The fact that they are involved in my class i commend that effort because it shows they actually want to learn something about indian people. We cover a lot of the topics that were already discussed not in depth of course because that would mean more reading for the student and want students to learn how to read and write as well. The other classes that i teach the film class that i offer focuses directly on the stereotypes of indian people are beginning what the initial colonization of native america and we talk about movies even mainstream movies. One of the movies that have come out now is to move the american sniper and the character in there, a lot of newspaper articles published that talk about how he actually viewed the iraqi people as savages and one of the renowned scholars has an entire boat dedicated to this savagery. Actually two books. When introduced the concept of this seemingly endless battle between civilizations and tribalism or parade around as the indian wars, indian conflict. A lot of times i will get students to perceive history as if it were a Football Game as if it were two opposing teams playing when you deconstruct the paradigm and introduce a different paradigm and you focus the issues of colonization around land that is really very quickly because everyone in america is from some indian land especially for my nonindians to us to ask them where they are from and what indian tribe or nations live there now, which once were there before contact. Very surprisingly, a lot of folks even Indian Students dont know too much about their local histories. So after the initial discussions about area types, i think we can move the conversation forward but there are still some folks who want to remain in this notice study because it has become such a national issue. I encourage them to dig deeper to examine some of the origins of these images and we get a lot of good discussions and presentations about scalping the bounty that indian people, the image is at the indian people drenched in red blood and some of the sources of these names. So for the most part my experience as a professor has been initially very positive. Take up the field experiences were students there at first very standoffish where they have long hair and speaks an indian language and comes from an indian community. Some students really appreciate that. Some students are concerned that i may be too biased and they would rather learn Indian History from a white person i guess. [laughter] already. So amanda, how is it that he became the lead plaintiff in a suit challenging the trademark of the Washington Football Team at your tender age . Him okay. Good evening everyone. Amanda blackhorse [speaking in native tongue] so i became involved in this case in 2052 mac 2006. I was attending the university of kansas at the time and i was just learning actually about the history of our people. I did not receive the education when i was in middleschool or high school. I received the educat