The Heard Museum on Friday evening hosted a panel discussion that tackled the issue of indigenous stereotypes in sports.
The panel, “Indigenous Stereotypes in Sports,” explored the Native American stereotypes present in many of the logos and names of American sports teams, most prominently the Washington Redskins football team. It also examined the inaccuracies taught about Native Americans in the American education system.
The event, located at the Heard Museum off Central Avenue and Oak Street, began with a keynote speech by Kevin Gover, director of the National Museum of the American Indian of the Smithsonian Institution.
With a sardonic wit, Gover went through the history of the use of the Native American as a mascot, specifically its use by the Washington Redskins, an NFL team.
“This whole notion of cultural appropriation, sort of taking from Native people the authority to define who they are, began at the end of the 19th, the beginning of the 20th century,” Gover said. “(The Redskins) mascot was adopted in the 1930s by a particularly racist owner of a team that was at that time in Boston.”
He also spoke about other sports teams that used Native American imagery in their names and logos, including the Cleveland Indians, Chicago Blackhawks and Florida State Seminoles. He discredited many of the myths that were used to justify the name, involving the teams being named by a person of partly Native American descent (in the case of the Washington Redskins) or in tribute to a Native American player (as is the case of the Cleveland Indians).
“This is part of what goes on when dealing with Indians in the public discourse, is 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,” Gover said.
Each panelist had different focuses and perspectives on the stereotyping of Native Americans.
Jim E. Warne, a former ASU football player who also played briefly in the NFL and is now an activist for Native American issues, began by attacking how the American education system teaches Native American history, which he referred to as “ignorance by design.”
“I can guarantee you that some of our non-Indian kids that are in the room right now with us in two hours will probably get more Indian history than their whole curriculum will teach them in America,” Warne said.
He saw a link between the negative stereotypes promulgated by the American school system, such as that Native Americans were savages, and the racism and stereotypes prevalent today.
“They are products of the education system here in America, therefore how would they know the truth unless they went outside the curriculum to know that,” Warne said.
He also pointed out the racist history of the Washington Redskins, which was notably the last NFL team to have an African-American player.
Suzan Shown Harjo, a long-time Native American activist who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom just in November, talked about her work in pressuring teams to get rid of names and logos offensive to Native Americans, and the general fight against Native American stereotypes.
“Little Red, University of Oklahoma, fell in 1970, and since then we collectively have eliminated two-thirds of them from the American landscape,” Harjo said.
Harjo specifically focused on the fact that those who supported such initiatives were on the right side of history.
“Pretty soon, people will just sit back and say ‘That happened? There really were those kinds of things? People really were so foolish as to believe in these mascots and hold on to them as if they were holding on to a dear relative?'” Harjo said.
Amanda Blackhorse, a social-worker-turned-Native American activist propelled to fame by being the lead plaintiff in a suit against the Washington Redskins on account of their offensive name, talked about her experiences related to the case, including what made her decide to pursue it.
While protesting with a group of student activists at a 2005 Redskins-Chiefs game, several attendees hurled racist remarks at her related to her Native American heritage.
“I’d experienced racism in the border towns of the Navajo nation, and this was nothing like that,” Blackhorse said. “It was OK, socially acceptable, to demean and degrade Native American people.”
When asked about the Washington Redskins’s recent suit against her, she described Redskins majority owner Daniel Snyder as a “bully,” and noted the great difference in wealth between herself and the Redskins.
“They are actually profiting off, and making tons of money, off of stereotyping native people,” Blackhorse said.
Leo Killsback, assistant professor of American Indian Studies at ASU, focused largely on his work teaching Native American history courses at ASU.
“A lot of folks enter into these classes thinking rather shallow topics about Indians,” Killsback said.
He said while his experience teaching Native American history has been mostly positive, he has occasionally experienced offensive remarks related to his Native American ancestry.
“Some students are a little concerned I may be too biased, and they would rather hear American Indian history from a white person,” Killsback said.
All of the panelists seemed highly passionate about the offense of the Redskins name, and promised to work tirelessly to stop it and other Native American stereotypes in the media.
“Ninety percent of us were eliminated, but that last 10 percent were very strong people,” Warne said. “And now we’re descendants of those people.”
Contact the reporter at djmarino@asu.edu
