Dancing at Halftime: Sports and the Controversy over American Indian Mascots

The Spoils of Victory

The Spoils of Victory I’m in Paris, France, for an entire school year, with my husband and two children . People ask me what I am writing about. It’s a book about mascots, I say. American Indian mascots. They regard me blankly. I begin with the football team of the university where I teach writing. (Classes in creative writing require an explanation themselves, but I leave that for another time.) So, football. My listeners are all nods. Yes, football. American football. Ah oui, futbol americain. D’accord. Well, at every game there’s a halftime. They’re still with me, but I have to somehow translate, transform really, the midpoint of a soccer match into the spectacle of Big Ten football at Memorial Stadium. I have never seen the equivalent in France. Lacking an analogy, I launch into a description. There is a band. They wear uniforms and they march and play at the same time. As they do this, they form and reform into words and shapes on the field. Girls wave flags to create designs in the air. This is halftime. They look confused. It’s an outdoor musical performance, I say. In the stadium. Anyway, I continue , now an Indian comes out and begins to dance. Oh, an Indian. They perk up momentarily and look at me with new interest . Maybe I am part Indian. The Disney movie Pocahontas has just opened in Paris. There are Pocahontas dolls and plastic raccoons for sale in the store windows . A children’s television program features Indian dancers and singers and 173 for the occasion the hostess dons a buckskin dress with thigh-high fringe and a very Parisian décolletage. He’s not a real Indian, I say. He’s a student dressed as an Indian. I glance at my audience, my French friends. Their eyes have glazed over. They’ve stopped listening. I begin to doubt myself. Why am I writing about an imaginary Indian who dances during the intermission of an athletic event? What does he matter? He is just an image. Here in Paris, where I pass the graves of Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, and Baudelaire on the way to meet my children at school, a college boy dressed as a fictional Indian dancing at halftime doesn’t seem like a subject worth writing a whole book about. It’s obvious that my French listeners agree. With one exception. This is our oldest friend in Paris, Claude, an anthropologist . Claude and I have spent many hours walking through his neighborhood or sitting over tea in his apartment. Now he walks more slowly and we are more likely to sit around his table for tea and cake than to pace the Jardin des Plantes as we talk. When I get to the end of my account and the Indian has danced, Claude’s eyes flash. “Of course,” he says. “People have always done this. When one people conquers another, religion is one of the spoils. So are whatever other elements of the culture appeal to the conquerors. Think of the Romans. When they conquered the Greeks, they took their gods, renamed them, and began to worship them. This is part of warfare. He’s a trophy, your Indian.” Paris is adamantly Parisian, and while I am there, I do everything possible to blend in. I do not become Parisian, but I modify the way I dress, walk, speak to people in public, and eat. I do not like to stand out so I leave my wildly patterned prints at home and wear every navy blue item I own. I whisper on public transportation and I try to master the art of leaning forward and brushing friends’ cheeks in a pretend kiss. I train myself not to smile at strangers on the street. THE SPOILS OF VICTORY 174 When I return home to Champaign-Urbana, I am struck immediately by its cultural variety. On the campus paths, in the coffee shop, there is, compared to what I felt in Paris, a great deal less pressure to conform. There isn’t just one right way to dress, to eat, to greet someone. There are myriad ways to be American, even in a prairie university town. Once I return home to the incessant arguments, I remember why it seemed important to write about Chief Illiniwek. After a long hiatus, I begin again, trying once more to understand...