Looking Back to a Future End: Reflections on the Symposium on Racist Stereotypes in American Sport at the National Museum of the American Indian

While Native American mascots appear to be fairly easy to decipher, they in fact present a number of unappreciated and unexplored complexities. This was especially true at the recent Symposium on Racist Stereotypes in American Sport at the National Museum of the American Indian. Organized by Suzan Shown Harjo, former executive director of the National Congress of American Indians and president of the Morning Star Institute, the first- of- its- kind event brought together scholars, activists, indigenous leaders, and community members to consider the history and significance of the use of American Indian imagery in sport.¹ Several hundred people attended on site, and countless others watched a livestream of the three panels and accompanying discussion, with Twitter providing a dynamic, interactive space that brought the two into dialogue with one another. The prominence of the pro football team in the nation’s capital as well as the problematic nature of its name, logo, and history routinely returned general conclusions and national debates to the local context, a context marked by pronounced segregation historically, black-white racial tensions (to put it politely), a rising Latino population, and economic and demographic shifts that have fostered a whitening of the urban core while pushing the poor and people of color to the margins.

Immediately after the event, individuals concerned with the issue and with the need to change the R*dskins were inspired, even energized. And, although perhaps unconnected, positive change continued to manifest itself, continuing a historic trend that has reduced the number of such mascots from nearly three thousand to less than nine hundred. Notably, the Cooperstown (ny) School District opted to change the mascot of the local high school, and the Oneida Nation offered to pay for new uniforms associated with the change.² Meanwhile, the state of Michigan Department of Civil Rights called for a ban of such mascots, while the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe reaffirmed its endorsement of the use of Indianness at Central Michigan University.³ And Navajo golfer Notah Begay described the Washington dc football franchise as a form of “institutionalized degradation.”⁴ The long-range impacts of the conference remain unclear, but its lessons about racial politics and antiracist struggle merit some reflection.

In what follows I reflect on the event and its implications. I write from the position of a longtime scholar and opponent of Native American mascots. My comments draw on two decades of work in the area. I write moreover as a participant in the symposium. Finally, my reflections make more sense, I believe, if read after or alongside the livestream of the event.

The symposium showcased many of the key scholarly findings on the use of Indianness in sport, rightly reiterating core arguments against such names, symbols, and rituals.⁵ At the same time, the event offered an important context for testimony about the personal experiences and individual impacts of mascots, often described more sterilely as persecution, harassment, and discrimination. The psychic and symbolic violence associated with playing Indian (in sport) has fostered an awareness of the connections between its pervasiveness and low self-esteem and high suicide rates, correlations confirmed in the work of scholars like Stephanie Fryberg.⁶ Case studies underscored the centrality of misrepresentation and misrecognition to the creation and defense of such mascots, a pattern of fraud and distortion that seeks to legitimate the moniker of the Washington dc professional football franchise, as Linda Waggoner demonstrated, by claiming to honor American Indians generally and Lone Star Dietz specifically, a white man who falsely claimed to be Indian. Falsehood built upon falsehood, self-serving lies that tell us much more about whites and whiteness than American Indians.

Ellen Staurowsky made a similar point about Louis Sockalexis. Although the Cleveland professional baseball team has long suggested that the team takes its name to memorialize and celebrate Sockalexis, in fact, he, like many indigenous athletes at the time, endured overt racism, open derision, and regular dehumanization. Then, as now, Indianness fostered anti-Indianism, and only the short-sighted and...