S
Joined: Mar 31, 2003
Posts: 1795
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S
The problem with naming teams or cars after Native Americans or Hawaiians isn’t some surface PC boohoo Natives issue. It’s not even that people are making fun of us, it’s that they are taking away our humanity. It’s a deep and insidious problem. MOST people, not ALL, most have no Hawaiian dentist or Mohawk neighboor next door. The images they have of Indigenous Americans are taken from the media who almost always show us in the PAST tense. Usually depicted as savages, stupid ( Que es stupid en Espanol? Tonto es stupid en Espanol.) or even as noble people of the forest but almost always in a past tense as if we no longer exist. Sports mascots are usually animals or Indians? Putting Indians into this category makes them less than human. Just as animal is less than man, Indian is therefore less than white man.
Please look up Kike, Nigger and Redskin in your dictionary, these are all derogatory terms. The only reason you can have the Washington Redskins and not the New york Niggers is that natives are less than 1% of US population and have little political or social clout.
The fighting Illini of Illinois have as their mascot a white kid who puts on red face and fake Indian regalia and does a fake Indian dance while making war whoops and swinging a tomahawk. The dance was listed as authentic in their brochure until a couple of years ago. When Indians asked the university to cease this shameful behavior they replied that they were honoring and continuing the natives culture.
Imagine taking your child to the New York Niggers game and a white boy in black face comes out with a bone in his wig, thrusting a spear and doing a fake african dance while wearing leopard print skivvies and grunting, this is what Indians have to endure while we are honored.
Perhaps the descendants of the nazis in Germany should have a kikes team with a mascot called the kike. Hopefully those PC jews won’t get upset.
All this cartoon characterization and past tense and logo bearer status add up to a huge cloud of unreality or nonexistence over native peoples. If your auto mechanic Tony is Apache and doesn’t wear skins you’ll think Tony isn’t a REAL Indian. All this is just fine with the government who wishes the broken treaties not yet righted and the murders of millions would just go away. If Indians don’t exist in national Consciousness than there is no national concern, no movement and no change.
If all this sounds like bull to you here’s one last thing.
My cousin Shawna who is ¾ American Indian attended a college with no Indian mascot or team names, however, during homecoming week the school played a rival with an Indian mascot. This is what she and other Indians had to endure.( You might want to key up Billy Holiday’s Strange Fruit now).
Walking down the main avenue of the campus past burnt effigies of Indians, lynched Indians, dismembered Indians etc.. HEE hee, that’s just good ol’ American fun isn’t it? You see it’s okay because IT was only mascots burnt and hung. IT was a human until you made IT a mascot and now it has lost IT’s humanity, IT is a thing, an animal, a cartoon, a logo, a new car, a helicopter, a sports team name.
When you name a car a Cherokee or Kahuna you dehumanize the real Cherokee or the real Kahuna, now he is a car, an item, an it.
Maybe the Kahuna doesn’t want to be the next JCPennney Fox . Maybe he wants Kahuna to represent a real and present human priest. Maybe we should listen.
P.S. No va is No go in Espanol.
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