Enduring Legacies: Ethnic Histories and Cultures of Colorado

17: Finding Courage: The Story of the Struggle to Retire the Adams State “Indian”

309 This is a story about the end of the “Indian” mascot at Adams State College (ASC) in Alamosa, Colorado, and what it reveals about race, materiality, and coalition politics. It is a story of struggle, pain, loss, and, finally, victory. It is a story about a small college that had an “Indian” as its mascot and how a coalition of students protested that “Indian.” The students who protested the “Indian” at Adams State encountered racism during their struggle. Some mascot supporters went so far as to physically threaten coalition members with violence and to vandalize their property. Some coalition members had difficulty getting their degrees, and others dropped out of ASC altogether. All coalition members lost friendships. Significantly, angry students frequently attacked young Native women and young Chicana women who were thought to be Native.1 Yet in the face of such adversity, coalition members put everything they had on the line to see the “Indian” retired. They organized sit-ins, protests, and educational forums and spoke with pride and power. Adams State is a small college located in the high, beautiful San Luis Valley of southern Colorado. The earliest recollection by a former student of the use of the “Indian” as the school’s mascot comes from 1927.2 Unlike the University of Illinois, Adams State did not have a specific origin story for Finding Courage: The Story of the Struggle to Retire the Adams State “Indian” 17 Matthew Jenkins 310 Finding Courage its mascot.3 It seems to have emerged in various forms during the six-year period 1925–1931.4 Adams State College officially retired the “Indian” in 1995 when President James Gilmore created a committee that moved quickly to do so.5 Since then, the Adams State Grizzlies have joined the list of universities and colleges that have recently retired their mascots, including the University of Southern Colorado, St. John’s University, the University of Miami (Ohio), Simpson College, and the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga.6 In his autobiographical memoir The Names, N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa) writes that “memory begins to qualify the imagination, to give it another formation, one that is peculiar to the self.”7 The memories of the coalition have become a centerpiece of my methodology. Although I have a substantial collection of primary documents from the coalition, ethnographic interviews also serve as an important tool to help remember those events, which shaped us in dramatic ways. Yet a gap exists between my primary documents and my ethnographic interviews. It is an interstitial space that I can only explain as a product of colonialism, oppression, and resistance. It is a postcolonial space where narrative becomes the methodology of the oppressed.8 Homi Bhabba writes that the “theorist releases offending memories from their captivity.”9 I hope this chapter helps release the offending memories of the “Indian” at Adams State. The Coalition for the Respect of Indigenous Peoples was formed in the fall of 1992 by a group of students from diverse backgrounds who met to share their concerns over ASC’s “Indian” mascot. The strongest presence in the coalition was that of Chicana/o and Native American students; however, a small group of Anglo students was active as well. The formation of the coalition came from our desire to see the “Indian” mascot retired. I hope to reveal the untold story of the experiences those students had as they embarked on a journey into new arenas of power, politics and protest, and self-determination. When discussing the use of “Indian” mascots, many people often ask, “what’s the big deal? It’s just a mascot.” In response, in 1992 the coalition emphasized that it is horrible massacres like Sand Creek that allow “Indian” mascots to be possible today. The Adams State “Indian,” like all “Indian” mascots, must be understood in historical and social contexts. Therefore, the coalition urged the ASC community to understand that the combination of U.S. colonial history and the underrepresentation of Native students, faculty , and staff at Adams State made the use and performance of the “Indian” racist and particularly offensive, harmful, and discriminatory to Native students. Matthew Jenkins 311 Materiality: Remembering the Material Culture of the Adams State “Indian” In this section I focus on the material forms of the Adams State “Indian” as they embodied a localized material culture at ASC. In so doing, I seek to stress the cultural process of the...