The debate over Native American mascots

I decided to search "Native American sports mascots" on google and predictably, TONS of articles and websites came up. I know that these have been mentioned in class once or twice, and I think they definitely relate to the idea of "microaggressions" (although we haven't talked about that in class much), along with "Indian" halloween costumes, etc. The mascots are, for the most part, based on stereotypes of Native peoples dating back hundreds of years, to when they were thought of merely as savage and uncivilized. I posted a few links to articles/sites that I found which discuss the controversy. Most of the articles that I read brought up the issue of identity, and one article (the first link below) pointed out that seeing such offensive mascots and goings-on at a basketball game was an assault on the self-identity of the children of the person on whom the article focuses, Charlene Teters. Another article has this quote, which I like: "There is no reason to ignore those who are hurt by the mascot in any aspect. They are forced to accept that their cultural identity and ancestry are on the level of animals that represent other teams." (In the article at the second link). Overall, the articles indicate that, as I said, many of the mascots are based on stereotypes and serve to perpetuate a false idea of who Native Americans are and how they identify themselves. I think this idea sort of relates to another post (I think it's one of Brianna's) with a cartoon of two people, and one says "You don't look Native American..." (or something to that effect) and there is a thought-bubble with a bunch of stereotyped images inside of it (including the Cleveland Indians mascot). With these stereotypes being constantly perpetuated, it is hard to get past that, and it seems that Native Americans can lose a bit of their sense of identity, and others will continue to think that this is how Native Americans identify themselves. It seems that people don't fully realize how offensive the images are to many Native Americans, and there was even one article that included an "argument" (a pretty crap one) against getting rid of these mascots, which basically said that doing away with those would be an assault on American identity, because sports are such a big part of American culture. Uh, okay. If you're interested, try searching for this. Tons of stuff comes up, and some pretty good points are raised. (I hope this makes sense...I think it sounded a bit better in my head)

http://www.ur.umich.edu/0506/Feb06_06/13.shtml

http://blog.syracuse.com/voices/2009/01/indian_mascot_is_blatant_disre.html

http://www.tolerance.org/news/article_tol.jsp?id=169

http://www.thenativepress.com/sports/mascots.html

Courtney Russell