MASCOTS & RACISM www.TheCitizensWhoCare.org We'll Say it Up Front It is time to stop the racism It is time to stop the bigotry It is time to learn the meaning of HONOR It is time to teach the true history of the treatment of Native American people and their religions with out the sugar coating It is time to stop mocking Native American religious symbols. It is time to teach school children of the legacy of hatred, death and oppression put upon Native Americans that is kept alive by making a living people into mascots. Mascots and Racism Genocide, the White Man's Trade "You will do well to inoculate the Indians (with smallpox) by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this exorable race. I should be very glad your scheme for hunting them down by dogs could take effect." - General Amherst to Colonel Henry Bouquet, July 1763 Unable to secure dogs to do the work General Amherst distributed blankets among the Shawnee, Mingo and Delaware. These infected blankets were purchased from Jews, Levy Andrew (Levy) in association with David Franks and family of Philadelphia who were the leading Jewish supply men in North America. (source, Sharfman, Harold. Jews on the Frontier. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1977., also The Nation of Islam, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews. Vol. 1.) To exterminate a people, their cultural and spiritual beliefs must be trivialized and accepted without question as subhuman, less than equal to any other and beneath the protection of the law. Public School superintendents in the USA find honor in making Indian people who died for their religious beliefs into mascots. Do the Administrators, teachers and students in these Oregon Schools who want to make Native Americans into their Mascots know the Real Beliefs and Practices of Native Americans? Do they know The eagle feather and headdress is a religious symbol! The medicine wheel is a religious symbol! Native American spiritual teachings about the symbols that they as non practitioners they use for their fun time, but never teach the true religious symbolism of. Symbols such as, buckskin clothing, song and singing, the drum, family and childbirth? Native Americans do not separate their lives into separate secular and religious sections as the US Government wants to. Everything the Native American does is part of the Great Spirit and every aspect of life is represented by a symbol that is part of the Circle of Life. These are the same symbols that are abused by public schools who falsely claim they do not use religious symbols Religious symbols of a living people Federal law (16 USC 66a) provides for Indian religious use of Eagle Feathers and other Animal Parts under a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permit system. They are religious symbols. A History Lesson "Redskin-it is the color of our skin. We grew up with this. We are proud to be a part of this school and we are proud to be redskins." -Wichita North High School salaried mental health counselor, 1996 Does this counselor tell her students of the true history of the ones called Redskins? In 1877, white settlers drove the Indians out of the valley, which is wedged in the northeastern corner of Oregon, and was once the home of the Joseph band of the Nez Perce tribe. The dead at Wounded Knee South Dakota died because of their religious beliefs Over 300 Indians were killed that day, 200 of them children and women A man's frozen body was turned on top of the others and the rifle was laid across him by the photographers who sold postcards. A crowd of whites came out to watch the shootings. They were called redskins and beaten or killed for practicing the faith of their own parents. 90 tribes, in addition to the Cherokee, were removed from their homes to Indian Territory, now Kansas and Oklahoma. They suffered atrocities, attacks on their children, race, culture and religions. To be called a redskin was a sentence of death. They had been promised by treaties to be left unmolested in peace on the land to which they were removed. Oklahoma Indian Territory was dissolved with the forced allotments of lands made by the application of the Dawes Act virtually complete in 1926 concurrent with the creation of the of the American Indian Mascot. Many Indian children were removed from their families and communities and put in Christian boarding schools exclusively for Indian children. Their religion was outlawed. This cruelty by Christian Mission schools continued through the 1970's in the United States of America because it remained against the law to practice Indian religion. In late July, 1997, the United States Department of State at the direction of the Congress released a report on the persecution of Christians outside the country. Pointing a finger at crimes in China and Saudi Arabia, four more fingers in the US Government's fist pointed back in silence, calling for HYPOCRITES to examine the history of genocide, religious hatred and death forced upon Native Americans in the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave" "Symbols are only religious if someone recognizes they are" -statement by Superintendent of Little River Kansas, a "redskin" Indian mascot school, 1996 How does a superintendent of schools responsible for the care and guidance of children justify this bigotry? The statement shows how long the extermination of Native Americans by any means whatsoever has been a goal. Ignorance Breeds Racism, Hatred and Bigotry Native American religious symbols in public schools are a constant source of bickering, fighting, argument and debate on the appropriate use, honor or respect. This is an out growth of Christian bickering and arguing over the proper meaning and use of Christian religious symbols which has led to multiple Christian denominations and the historical legacy of death and destruction in the name of Jesus Christ. Never the less Native American religious symbols DO represent the beliefs of a people and their ancestors. Schools put eagle feathers on signs. While it is the Sundancer who prays with the eagle feather, he suffers so the people may live. Only in America are people encouraged to mock another race and religion after they have tried to erase them from the face of the earth. Do the students of these schools understand: The 95-98% death rate of Native Americans at the hands of invading Europeans constitute the most horrible genocide known to recorded history. The making of Native Americans into mascots is only one aspect of the European introduced practice of forcing Native Americans and non-whites into a racial subclass. Columbus introduced the practice of exploiting anything and everything from Indigenous Americans and that the "Indian" mascot is another part of this practice? the suffering Native Americans paid for their beliefs, throughout history? the suffering and the racial hatred that their name sakes of the Red Creeds went through simply because of the color of their skin and their religious beliefs? A primary characteristic of racial supremacists is mocking other religions by non practitioners who make up false meanings to the religion? Do you know that if you do not practice Native American religion that you do not know what it means and you will not protect its significance Sell out "Indians" were sought out and bribed by the first Europeans to arrive in the Americas and have been used ever since as false deal makers and spokespersons for real Native Americans. An example is the pseudo-Indian counselor at North High School in Wichita, KS who teaches Native American Students they should be mascots for the school district. She is paid by the district to buy and sell Native American religion in public school just as the "hang around the fort" Indian sold out his people. Spanish in the Americas The land called Turtle Island now known as the Americas was claimed under the Christian Cross and that the death and destruction and genocide to Native People was done in the name of Jesus Christ? A religion whose membership made their fortunes and power by killing Native Americans in their homes. These same Christian Churches still refuse to acknowledge or respect Native Religions, if they did they would step forward in every town in the United States and demand equality and respect for the Native American people. Columbus and the Spanish when meeting Native Americans read the "Requirement" to them. The "Requirement" states, Now you must become a Christian and adopt the ways of the Church. We warn you now that if you do not we will take your children and you will be subjected to anything we desire to do you including enslavement and death. Do you know you have adopted this requirement when you tell Native Americans today that you will do what you want with their religious symbols. Columbus was directed by the Holy Roman Church to seize children as this was the way to control the adults who would resist except to protect their beloved families. Columbus' most lasting influence brought to the Americas is promoted to this day by public schools. 1. The introduction of the concept of a racial sub class. (He introduced slavery of Native Americans with a lifetime count of 5,000 taken from the continent, more than any other single individual) 2. The practice of exploitation of Indigenous People for building personal wealth. (He built the plantation system in the Americas while searching for gold) Balboa, Cortez and others, "The Spaniards cut off the arm of one, the leg or hip of another, and from some their heads at one stroke, like butchers cutting up beef and mutton for market. Six hundred, including the cacique, were thus slain like brute beasts... Vasco ordered forty of them to be torn to pieces by dogs." This was repeated over and over by the Spanish. Spanish conquistadors and their accompanying Padres bragged in writing about the pleasure they found in testing the sharpness of the yard-long rapier blades on the bodies of Indian children, so also their dogs found the soft bodies of infants especially tasty. Their journals are filled with detailed descriptions of young Indian children routinely taken from their parents and fed to the hungry animals. When searching for gold in the Americas the Spanish killed Native Americans for dog food. English in the Americas Gave small pox infected blankets to the cold and hungry Great Lakes tribes The English Puritan Colony at Roxbury, Massachusetts, openly conducted a campaign to exterminate Native People and like Hitler finance it with the slavery of massacre survivors. The English Christian immigrants, Puritans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and others conducted a vigorous trade in Indian slaves, with Charleston SC being the main port of trade Massacre at Wounded Knee That Sioux at Wounded Knee were gathered into a valley and massacred for their religious beliefs, the color of their skin. There was no war or conflict between the Ghost Dancers and the US military yet they were killed under a clearly displayed white flag of peace raised while under the supervision and protection of the US Government after being ordered to assemble as a group in a ravine. Mass grave of 146 killed at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, USA December 29, 1890. They died for the color of their skin and their religion. Five days after being killed any bodies too large to be drug off by coyotes are thrown into a pit dug on January 3, 1890 General Nelson A. Miles, division chief officer, during the Wounded Knee Massacre had this to say: "Wholesale massacre occurred and I have never heard of a more brutal, cold-blooded massacre than that at Wounded Knee. About two hundred women and children were killed and wounded; women with little children on their backs, and small children powder burned by the men who killed them being so near as to burn the flesh and clothing with the powder of their guns, and nursing babes with five bullet holes through them." - Nelson A. Miles to George W. Baird, November 20, 1891, Baird Collection, WA-S901, M596, Western Americana Collection, The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. 20 National Medals of Honor were given for this slaughter of over 200 children and women along with over 100 unarmed men.20 pieces of silver were given for the slaughter of children The intention and pleasure found by the US Government in murdering families of Native Americans was so widely practiced that photographers, reporters, Church priests and fashionably dressed white couples made outings of following troops. They assembled in buggies and wagons around the campground in order to watch the shooting take place just as they would watch horses or dogs run. Soldiers ran back and forth among the bodies of children and women for seven hours shooting any one who move Bodies of the victims lay four days in the frozen land while wolves fed on them at night. US troops and souvenir hunters took scalps, moccasins, dresses, pants, pipes, and clothes from the bodies which were shipped home to their children and wives. 10 Catholic Boarding school boys were murdered in a group, still wearing their gray school uniforms. Even though they had adopted the ways of the Christian Church and lived as white people they were in the eyes of whites only animals fit for slaughter. How many more Native American children died at the Washita Massacre, the Sand Creek Massacre, the Trail of Murder (Tears), and other actions of genocide? For this the school administrators in Oregon make them mascots. Don't these public school administrators know their American history? Or, do they find honor in religious oppression of Native Americans like the Nazi's found honor in religious oppression of Jews? The great grandchildren of these dead Sioux are told by the great grandchildren of these armed men that it is an honor to be their mascot. No other race who continues to struggle against genocide has been made to put their living children on the mascot block. Andrew Jackson's Trail of Murder and the Cherokee Nation Half the Cherokee Nation were murdered in the two decades that spanned Andrew Jackson's Trail of Murder. This forced death march of Cherokee to Indian Territory, was conducted against them because of their religious beliefs and the color of their skin. It was preceded by a reign of terror in which Cherokee were lynched and displayed in public to terrorize families. Cherokee homes were raided by roving white vigilantes. No Cherokee was allowed justice as it was against the law for any Native American to appear in a court of law for any purpose. The theft of Cherokee land and property and the campaign of terror was conducted by intruders into the Sovereign Cherokee Nation as treaties negotiated specified that squatters were to be expelled by the Federal and State Governments. The only expulsions conducted despite repeated submissions of thousands of names to the government were of those who supported the Cherokee. The treaty of removal was never approved by the Cherokee Nation, as well as being declared by the Supreme Court of the US to be illegal, thus leaving the majority of the Southeastern United States still in the ownership of the Cherokee Nation. The large number of Christian Cherokee who were murdered in the events leading up to Andrew Jackson's Trail of Murder and in the aftermath of removal make this act of terrorism the largest single act of hatred directed against Christians on this continent. Yet Christian Churches have ignored the persecution of their own kind. These churches still have failed to educate, protect or uphold the Christian Native Americans of today in their efforts to establish respect for their beliefs. Churches have been saying, in essence, that Christian or not Native Americans are simply the wrong color and are not worthy of the same dignity of any other Christian. The appearance of the Indian mascot was simultaneous with the taking away of Native People's tribal -spiritual world by allotment. While Indian life was being destroyed they were being replaced in schools with false identities while being made into mascots. Christian Churches took Children from Their Families Indian children who remained with in their family's tribe and neighborhood of their family were taken away from their parents and sent to boarding schools where they were beaten, shaved called dirty redskins told they are savages, told that Christians were there to save their souls then beaten repeatedly in attempts to prove it. The Christian Church owned and operated Indian boarding schools which were segregated from the white society as none of the White world wanted to associate with them. Meanwhile in the White schools Indians were celebrated as entertainment objects and animal sports mascots whose religious symbols were falsely tied to violence serving the white man's sport and pleasure. While Indian children were being taken away from their families and made to grow up without fathers or mothers, sisters or brothers at their sides, the Boy Scouts of America played "Indians" with their religious symbols told they were honoring Indians then went home to their parents sleeping in their own homes and their own beds. The Indian children went back from jobs and school work to sleep lined up in dormitories with out a parent's love to guide and protect them. Turn About's Fair Play If it's okay for non-Native American schools to use make mascots out of Native Americans and their religious symbols, if you are one of the following, is it likewise okay to: Christian - say Jesus would make as good a school mascot as the man wearing sacred eagle feathers, and that he encourages non-Christians to use the image of Jesus for their entertainment at ball games and school assemblies. Common practice will include a young girl leading the band dressed in a choir robe short enough to see her underpants when she jumps in the air. Religious Jew - knowing of the genocide against European Jews conducted by a dominating Christian nation of Germans, will you state that it is your desire to have your race and religion made into mascots by Christians and non-Jews in the United States and that you encourages any non-Jew to adopt the popular stereotypes about his people as the imagery for those nicknames, logos and mascots just as has been done to Native Americans. African American - that Black history has no meaning in the present and the history of slavery forced on blacks, the death of 60 million Africans while on slave ships crossing to this continent, the 500 year breaking up of Black American families for breeding purposes and the denial of civil rights to Black Americans is a thing of the past and should not be mentioned in the discussion of a black mascot or logo. That it's okay to have their race made into mascots just as the Native American has been. These factors as they apply to other races and religions are all part of the making of Native Americans and their religious symbols into racial and religious mascots in public schools. It is the supremacist who does to another race and religion what they would never stand for against themselves. By keeping the oppressive images and practices begun in a time of openly declared hatred for Native Americans you continue racism and religious bigotry. By doing this you continue the hatred, and take on the shame and responsibility for past wrongs. Wrongs that should only remain the burden of those who have passed away instead of your shame in the present. If you actually respected and admired Native Americans and their religions you would know the true history of how Native Americans have been treated, you would teach the effects of this in present and you would insure that the religious symbols of Native Americans are respected and protected, you would insure that they are treated equally to any other. Schools respond to Native American mascot ban A state panel heard strongly negative reviews Tuesday from local school officials about a proposal to ban Indian high school mascots from 15 Oregon schools. Some Indian leaders consider the use of Indian mascots, logos and team nicknames as offensive. So state school officials are considering a recommendation to force schools to get rid of them by September 2011. During several hours of testimony, however, officials from those schools argued that there's no evidence that use of such mascots or symbols creates any problem and that it would be costly for districts to remove them. "We have no data to show that this causes harm," said Lee Paterson, superintendent for the Roseburg School District, where high school teams are called "the Indians." In fact, Paterson and other officials said the Indian students at those schools take a sense of pride in having their schools known by such symbols and that the community as a whole supports them as well. The question was raised in Oregon last December, when then-high school senior Che Butler, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz, urged the Oregon State Board of Education to strike down the mascots as racist. After Tuesday's hearing, Butler said that despite the school officials' assertions that the use of Indian mascots hasn't caused problems, he and other Indians feel demeaned and insulted by their use. Source: www.katu.com/news/local/10745616.html Note: Asking students who have generally been taught lies about Native American cultural history from a white man's point-of-view, without going into the culture history of murder, is not adequate. Butler said the Indian images, logos and nicknames only perpetuate stereotypes of Indians. "The racism is still there, and it will always be there as long as there are mascots," he said in an interview after the public hearing. The proposal to do away the Indian mascots and nicknames came after months of closed hearings by an advisory panel to state School Superintendent Susan Castillo, who hasn't indicated when she will rule on the controversy. The draft suggests that the 15 schools with Native American logos agree on new names by September 2009, and have the new logos phased-in by 2011. Two additional recommendations emphasize culturally appropriate instruction and avoidance of stereotypes. Some school superintendents who testified Tuesday said they could see merit in the two additional recommendations. But Forrest Bell, superintendent of the Reedsport School District, said officials in that district asked the Indian students how they would feel about dropping "the Braves" as the team's nickname and logo. The students' response, he said, was that they would feel as though their Indian heritage was being slighted. "They are very proud of it. They like our logo," Bell said. Amity School Superintendent Reg McShane said Indian students in that community agreed that they like the school's "warrior" name. "A warrior is a cultural symbol of strength, honor and pride," McShane said. The teams with Indian names include the Amity Warriors; Banks Braves; Lebanon Warriors; Mohawk Indians; Molalla Indians; North Douglas Warriors; Oakridge Warriors; Philomath Warriors; Reedsport Braves; Rogue River Chieftains; Roseburg Indians; Scappoose Indians; Siletz Valley Warriors; The Dalles Wahtonka Eagle Indians; and the Warrenton Warriors. Editor's note: Evidence that Public School superintendents in Oregon and the USA find honor in making Native American people who died for their religious beliefs into mascots and others mock their religious symbols (feathers and headdresses) by making characterchures of them. Enterprise school votes to scrap controversial mascot For most of a century, a caricature of an American Indian has represented the Enterprise High School Savages in this town in Oregon's remote northeast corner. No more. The school board has voted to approve the student body's request to have the nickname and mascot changed to the Outlaws, ending eight years of wrangling. A design for the new mascot is to be picked by the student body this month, student body President Craig Swart said. Superintendent Brad Royse said he was pleased with the students' decision. "I'm very proud of our kids, and proud to be their superintendent," Royse said. "It's amazing that sometimes kids have the fortitude to go ahead and tread" where adults won't. Eight years ago a citizen asked that the Savages mascot be dropped. He said some people might be too close to the 80-year tradition to realize that it offended some people. The board voted to drop the mascot. Contention followed, and at a school assembly Nez Perce elder Horace Axtell addressed students. He was asked which he found more offensive, the name or the picture, and he pointed to a painting in the gymnasium. So, the student body was allowed to keep the nickname but asked to choose a new caricature. Students took up the issue again this year. Swart said he's excited about the change. "I've always been a fan of changing the mascot. I learned a lot from this situation, and learned to respect people who have to make hard decisions on a daily basis," he said. "I'm excited that the students of the future will be involved in starting new traditions." Tradition runs deep in this town in the Wallowa Mountains. For generations the area was home to the Nez Perce Indians, most famously to Chief Joseph, or Young Joseph, who claimed the valley as the tribe's ancestral home. When he was seen as a threat, troops pushed his people out in the 1870s and pursued them to Montana. There, he surrendered and made his famous pledge that "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." There is little Nez Perce presence in the valley now but the heritage remains in the form of Chief Joseph Days. Source: www.kgw.com/education/localeducation/stories/kgw_050505_edu_savage_mascot.244c5d17d.html *    *    * Here the melting pot stands open - if you're willing to get bleached first. - Buffy Sainte-Marie   ©2007-2011, www.TheCitizensWhoCare.org/brookings/mascotsandracism.html