The Indian

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Eva Marie Garroutte

Non-Indian (and some Indian) commentators contend that sports mascots are intended to honor American Indians and their historic record of bravery in battle. However, many others, including representatives of the American Indian Movement and the American Indian Education Commission, have protested. They complain that the use of Indian names and imagery suggests a blind spot where this specific racial group is concerned. Brian Barnard, in "Would You Cheer for the Denver Darkies?" wonders if anyone would fail to see the offensive implications of a team which "honored" African Americans by christening itself as the title of his piece suggests. And what if the same team sponsored half-time shows featuring mascots in blackface and Afro wigs, who danced around grunting their own version of supposed African chants?

Some Indian leaders have brought lawsuits against particular sports teams, alleging racial discrimination or human rights violations. So far, these suits have not succeeded, but protests against mascots have made some headway. For instance, in 1994, the University of Iowa announced that it would no longer play non-conference athletic events against teams which employed Indian names or symbols. Several universities have banned from their campuses the buffoonish Chief Illiniwek, a white University of Illinois student dressed as an Indian, who performs at half-time. And some newspapers (including the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Portland Oregonian) have decided not to print the names of specific teams with Indian names or mascots. Instead, they simply refer to "the Washington team," "the Atlanta team," and so on. Teams themselves have sometimes opened discussions on the question of whether they should change their names or their mascots, but the suggestions are frequently met with angry resistance from fans. Avis Little Eagle reports in a 1994 Indian Country Today article, that students at the University of Illinois recently responded to such a proposal with the slogan, "save the chief, kill the Indian people."

American popular culture has played host to a diversity of images of "the Indian" over a period of several hundred years. Through all the changes, however, certain things have remained fairly constant. One is the tendency of the Indian to function as a magnifying mirror of Euro-American values and concerns. Non-Indians have persistently made and remade their ideas about Indians to serve the social goals of every historic period. Indians have functioned sometimes as a vehicle for social criticism, as in the ecology movement's exploitation of associations between Indians and nature which reproved American irresponsibility toward the land. They have served, at other times, as a foil against which non-Indians have displayed all that is right with America and the European settlement thereof. This is nowhere more evident than in the wild west shows which boldly dramatized the juggernaut of conquest: the inevitable and laudable progress of "civilization" over all that was savage, primitive, untamed.