Imagine you are at a high school football game. The mascot, a Catholic priest, runs out onto the field to great applause. When he sprinkles holy water on the field, spectators in the bleachers chant and make the sign of the cross.
Sound offensive? Of course it does. But to many Native Americans, having an Indian mascot for a school is equally insensitive.
According to a website that keeps track of such affronts (www.aics.org/mascot/california.html), there are 184 schools in California with Native American mascots. Just a handful of them actually have a significant population of Native American students. According to the site, the breakdown is Apache, 2; Redskins, 6; Chiefs, 11; Braves, 26; Indians, 55; and Warriors, 85.
Recently Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed, for the third time, a bill by Assembly Member Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles) to ban the use of Redskins as a school mascot. His reason was that it should be a matter of local control. If local control were a factor in civil rights issues, points out Curtis Notsinneh, legislative aide to Assembly Member Goldberg, "we would still have Jim Crow laws in the South."
"I'm totally appalled by these mascots," says Joseph Giovannetti, an associate professor of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University. "It shows a complete ignorance of the struggles that Indian people have endured, such as genocide." Giovannetti is working on a book tentatively titled Warriors of the Diamond, about Native Americans who have played major league baseball, some of them on teams with mascots like the Atlanta Braves or Cleveland Indians.
At least one school district, Los Angeles Unified, has banned the use of American Indian mascots at its schools.
In Humboldt County, the Del Norte High School Warriors have replaced their Plains Indian headdress with a flaming W. "We went through a whole year of tugging and pulling because people wanted the mascot removed," says Don Steinruck, a Del Norte Teachers Association member. "It really tore the community apart.
"There were staunch Warriors people who believed in the icon, and some Native American people who went to school here who were really proud of it. The rest of us said it was time for a change because it was inappropriate and racist. At times you would see kids out on the field doing a war dance. It was very degrading."
