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It's been a prickly topic for years, even decades. It spans not just every professional sport, but collegiate sports as well. Depending on who you talk to, it's a stain on the organizations it affects or a way of honoring those who came before us.

Native Americans were exploited almost from the moment Europeans arrived on this continent, pushed and shoved off their land for centuries until they were confined to the reservations that are now common across the south and midwestern parts of the United States.

When sports teams and, more importantly, sports team's nicknames and mascots, came into being in the middle and late 1800s, Native American tribal names and symbols were commonly used to represent them.

Over the years, this pattern has given us the Kansas City Chiefs, Chicago Blackhawks, Cleveland Indians, Florida State Seminoles, Atlanta Braves and Washington Redskins (to name a few).

It might be that last one that generates the most controversy.

"Redskins" is, outside of sports, a racial moniker reserved for those of Native American descent. While the term has thankfully fallen out of common use, the connotation remains.

But is it meant to be offensive?

Originally the Boston Braves (another Native American reference) and the Washington Redskins were owned by George Preston Marshall, a noted racist. The name Redskins arrived during their second season, 1933.

It is unclear whether Marshall, who would famously refuse to integrate his football team in the 1950s, and his racist leanings had anything to do with the choice of nickname.

Regardless of this, several people have found the name insensitive enough to file lawsuits, the aim of which would be to force the Redskins to change their famous name.

A 2002 poll conducted by Sports Illustrated found that 75 percent of Native Americans polled had no problem with the team's nickname. Regardless, the lawsuits and appeals continue.

Florida State University provides an interesting counterpoint.

The Seminoles have official permission from the two remaining Seminole Indian groups (the Seminole Tribe of Florida and Seminole Nation in Oklahoma) to use the name for their sports teams. It is the only official exemption for any sports team.

Florida State remains the only NCAA school exempt from a ban on Native American mascots.

Several colleges, both large and small, have switched from Native American names to more innocuous ones. For example, Division II's Indiana University of Pennsylvania changed from the IUP Indians to the IUP Crimson Hawks. Other schools have followed this example.

But the question remains. Is this disparaging to Native Americans or not? The Seminole tribe and nation seem to think it is nothing to be concerned with, a mark of pride for their groups to be honored by a large school.

It is certainly hard to find names like Braves or Chiefs offensive. Neither is an outwardly or historically negative term. Instead, they are more reminiscent of pride and leadership and courage.

The debate rages on. What do you think?

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Native American Mascots: Honorable or Ignorant?

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It's been a prickly topic for years, even decades. It spans not just every professional sport, but collegiate sports as well. Depending on who you talk to, it's a stain on the organizations it affects or a way of honoring those who came before us...

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When Samuel Henry was a kid growing up in D.C. in the late 1950s, he and his friends were devoted Washington Redskins fans - they had the jerseys and knew the lore. And as the lore had it, the "reddish-brown tint" of paint on the team's downtown D.C. headquarters came from the blood of Native Americans. "When I was a kid, me and my friends, we really thought that they had captured and killed Native Americans and pasted them all over the building," Henry said. "We were just kids, we didn't know any better. But we really, honestly believed that."

Now, almost 60 years later, the Redskins are enmeshed in a debate about whether their name is a racist epithet and should be changed. Advocates for keeping the name reference its origins: In 1937, owner George Preston Marshall changed the team name from the Braves to the Redskins. Marshall said the change was in honor of the head coach at the time, William Henry Dietz, who claimed to be part Sioux (although that claim is suspect). Critics including Henry say its origins are irrelevant and that the name is racist and demeaning. "I'd love to see a boycott of all things Redskins," he said.

Dan Snyder, the current owner, purchased the team in 1999, when it was fighting its first legal battle over the name. The lawsuits have continued, and earlier this year, the Trademark Trials and Appeal Board canceled the franchise trademark because "a substantial composite of Native Americans found the term Redskins to be disparaging." Snyder has faced mounting pressure to change the name, even from President Obama and George Preston Marshall's granddaughter. But Snyder plans to appeal the trademark decision and says he will "NEVER" change the name. Polling suggests Snyder has the backing to ignore the calls; most NFL fans (and Redskins fans in particular) oppose a name change.

What's considered an outrage in the NFL is embraced or at least tolerated all over the country. While we've been consumed by the debate about the Washington Redskins, we've overlooked thousands of team names and mascots depicting Native Americans, often stereotypically. These teams are not feeling the kind of pressure that Snyder is. To understand the Washington Redskins, we have to understand the Estelline Redmen, the Natick Redmen, and the Molalla Indians, too.

Terry Borning, the proprietor of MascotDB, has kept a database of the nation's mascots since 2006. He gathers his data from a variety of sources, including state high school athletic associations, websites and local newspapers. Borning's database doesn't have every high school, college and pro team in the country, but it does have 42,624 of them. Looking at MascotDB is as close as we can get to understanding how prevalent Native American team names and mascots are across the country.

"There were a lot of interesting mascots where I lived growing up," Borning said. "But those have mostly fallen by the wayside. Some of those things of the past were definitely offensive, but also more interesting than the generic mascots we have now."

I searched the database and found 2,129 sports teams that reference Braves, Chiefs, Indians, Orangemen, Raiders, Redmen, Reds, Redskins, Savages, Squaws, Tribe and Warriors, as well as tribe names such as Apaches, Arapahoe, Aztecs, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Chinooks, Chippewas, Choctaws, Comanches, Eskimos, Mohawks, Mohicans, Seminoles, Sioux and Utes. (Not all teams with the names "Raiders" and "Warriors" are referencing Native Americans, but we spot-checked 20 schools with each name and a majority of each did.)

Some 92 percent of those 2,129 team names belong to high schools (the rest were college, semi-pro, pro and amateur league teams). Of all the active high schools in the database, 8.2 percent have Native American team names.

I reached out to about a dozen of those high schools, and most didn't want to comment on a controversy that hadn't yet arrived. But the conversations I did have suggested that the way communities regard their teams' Native American names and mascots depends on the makeup of the communities themselves.

Estelline High, home of the Redmen, is located in a small town in South Dakota, 24 miles west of the Minnesota border. South Dakota has the third-largest Native American population share in the country, but Estelline hasn't seen the kinds of protests directed at the Washington Redskins. The town has experienced little, if any, controversy over the Redmen name.

The mascot dates back to sometime between 1915 and 1920, when a local newspaper referred to the Estelline athletic team by the color of its uniforms - "the men in red." The name wasn't officially adopted, but the team soon became known by its unofficial moniker, the Redmen. According to Estelline superintendent and high school principal Patrick Kraning, the association with Native Americans didn't come until around 1930. Estelline followed with its own depiction of a "Redman" as a stereotype of a Native American chief wearing a headdress. Events such as the annual naming of a "Moon Princess" and "Big Chief" at homecoming became part of the tradition.

"There's been very little controversy over the team name," Kraning said. "In the '90s there was some discussion about changing the name for a series of schools [throughout southeastern South Dakota] that still referred to themselves as 'Redmen.' But in the end, a lot of us - Estelline included - decided to keep the name and just keep away from any Native American imagery associated with it."

Since then, the only symbol associated with the Estelline Redmen is a logo of an E with two feathers attached. Kraning believes that this change, combined with the fact that Estelline doesn't have a significant Native American population, is why there hasn't been much local debate on the topic.

"There's a community feeling that since the origin of the nickname was not a Native American reference, there's not a desire for change," he said. "If there were a discussion, most people would probably view it as going against 80 or 90 years of tradition."

Natick, Massachusetts, did go against tradition. In 2007, the school board dropped its high school mascot - also the "Redmen" - after an alumna of Native American descent came to the board and said she was offended by the activities surrounding the team she had experienced at Natick High School. The historian for the local Nipmuc tribe told me that the logo and mascot used by the school depicted a "stereotypical northern Native with a headdress," but that depiction bore no resemblance to the actual indigenous people who lived in the Natick area. Nevertheless, protest groups soon sprouted up, claiming that the Natick Redmen honored Native Americans and were an important tradition.

Soon after the change, school board meetings and a town-wide referendum turned the issue into a much broader discussion. The main critique came from the Redmen Forever Committee, a self-described grassroots effort that sought to influence the non-binding referendum. "We added a question to the referendum asking if townspeople wanted the Redmen name restored," said Erich Thalheimer, co-founder of the Redmen Forever Committee. "It won overwhelmingly, but the school committee didn't abide by the town's wishes."

"If it were decided by popular vote, we would have the name," said Anne Blanchard, a member of the Natick School Board. "But we had to take into account our nondiscrimination policy, as well as minority and majority interests."

The Redmen Forever Committee says it won't give up the fight. "We chose the name of our committee very intentionally, very purposefully," Thalheimer said. "This is our town. We're going to live here until we die. We will forever try to re-establish the Redmen name."

While the controversy in Natick stemmed from a decision that affected one school, several states have taken a grievance from a single school and used it to forbid Native American mascots. One of the more sweeping bans so far was implemented with the help of Samuel Henry, the man who grew up earnestly believing that the Washington Redskins had painted their downtown D.C. headquarters with the blood of Native Americans. Henry is currently the chair of Oregon's Board of Education, which instituted a statewide ban on Native American mascots and team names in 2012.

The story goes back to 2006, when Che Butler, a member of the Siletz tribe and a student at Taft High School, raised the issue before the board. Butler said he was offended by the stereotypical and inauthentic manner in which the mascot of a rival school, the Molalla Indians, portrayed Native Americans. He and fellow Taft student Luhui Whitebear, a member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Tribe, made a presentation at a board meeting asking for a statewide ban on mascots that "misrepresent" Native people, who instead "should be represented with true honor and respect."

According to Henry, the board agreed that "having Native American mascots did not seem like a good idea," but decided to defer the decision.

The grievance was taken up again six years later, when the director of public instruction decided to put it back on the board's agenda. This time around, after some member turnover, the board agreed to ask its chief attorney to draft a proposal for a ban on the use of Native American mascots in public schools. The only dissenting vote came from a woman who claimed that it was too selective, and that devils and saints should be banned as well.

As in Natick, one of the major arguments against the ban came from people who said that the mascots didn't disparage Native Americans, but honored them. Many of these opponents knew little of Native American culture, Henry said. "I asked one of the students who made that argument what the name of the local Native American tribe was, and she didn't know," he said. "To me, that indicated that her reliance on saying that they were honoring Native Americans - that the support for that argument was pretty thin at best."

For high schools, a statewide ban is about as sweeping as it gets. Graduate to the next level, though, and schools have broader authorities to answer to. In 2005, the NCAA implemented its own de facto ban on Native American mascots for all NCAA colleges. The ban focused on a specific list of schools whose mascots were deemed "hostile or abusive," and precluded them from participating in postseason play if those nicknames or mascots appeared on any team uniforms or clothing.

The NCAA had already taken a stand on a similar issue: the use of Confederate flags. In 2001, the organization banned arenas in South Carolina and Mississippi from hosting postseason championships because the Confederate flag flew proudly on their statehouse grounds. After that decision, the president of St. Cloud State University in Minnesota asked the NCAA to impose a ban on Native American mascots.

The NCAA called on 18 schools (out of 1,046 total member schools at the time, or 1.7 percent) to drop their mascots.

Not all of the targeted schools felt that their nicknames or mascots were "hostile or abusive," and the ban was followed by a surge of criticism.

"I must have gotten 2,000 emails from people just complaining about it," the NCAA's executive committee chairperson at the time, Walter Harrison, said. Even almost 10 years later, he still remembers one persistent caller. "He, or she, I don't know if it was a man or a woman, would call my office phone at four in the morning and just play their school's chant until the answering machine cut off," he said.

But the more serious backlash came in the form of appeals. One came from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and its Fighting Illini. The Fighting Illini were portrayed at halftime performances by a student dressed in full Lakota regalia, including face paint and a headdress. He went by the name "Chief Illiniwek," and became the focus of the university's fight against the ban.

Controversy surrounding Chief Illiniwek predated the NCAA's ruling by decades. The university's board of trustees had been quietly in the process of considering a potential mascot change since 2001, and the publicity surrounding the nationwide ban reignited already-existing tension among students and alumni. Lawrence Eppley, who was the chair of the university's board of trustees at the time, said he received hundreds of comments from foundations and alumni organizations threatening to withhold donations. He and the rest of the board figured the only option was to strike a compromise to keep both sides - passionate students and alumni and the NCAA - happy.

Through its appeal, the school was allowed to keep its team name, but not its mascot. Chief Illiniwek portrayers, who had been a part of an official student organization called the Council of Chiefs, could continue the tradition as long as the group no longer had any official affiliation with the university. "One of the things that made it tough to retire it was making sure the fans knew that, if you loved the chief, that was nothing to feel guilty about," Eppley said. "It's just that times change, and there's not much we can do about that."

Ivan Dozier, who currently portrays Chief Illiniwek, said that officially retiring the mascot was the wrong way for the university to respond. He believes that Native American mascots are a way to reach and educate an audience that wouldn't normally be knowledgeable about Native American culture or history. "What concerns me is if you eliminate all references to Native American culture, people aren't asking questions anymore," he said. "Sports fans here are the vocal majority. They're the ones who need this information the most, and now they have no way to go about getting it."

Eight of the schools on the NCAA's list secured vocal support from local Native American tribes to successfully appeal and retain their team names and mascots. Eight others have changed their names and one dropped the use of a mascot entirely. Carthage College changed its team name from the Redmen to the Red Men and dropped all Native American imagery, which satisfied the NCAA's requirements.

Turning the Washington Redskins into the Red Skins is unlikely to appease the team's critics, though. Given that the name is racist by definition and no tribe has come out in support of Snyder, it probably wouldn't pass the NCAA's grounds for appeal, and it certainly doesn't pass in the court of Native American opinion.

But even if the Redskins became the Red Skins or the Red Flyers or the Red Snyders, there would still be thousands of other teams that reference Native American imagery. Whatever happens with the Redskins, there will still be the Estelline Redmen, Chief Illiniwek, and the West Texas Comanches, each upholding the questionable legacy of Native American sports names.

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The 2,128 Native American Mascots People Aren't Talking About

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When Samuel Henry was a kid growing up in D.C. in the late 1950s, he and his friends were devoted Washington Redskins fans - they had the jerseys and knew the lore. And as the lore had it, the "reddish-brown tint" of paint on the team's downtown D.C.

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Two Oregon tribes say they're disappointed with the State Board of Education's decision last week to ban Native American-themed mascots in schools.

The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, which issued a statement Tuesday, said the decision was made by "people who have no knowledge of Indian communities" and does nothing to address "the real issues of racism." Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde said its council is "very disappointed that they've trampled our sovereignty and have ignored something that our tribes in Oregon have been calling for years, which is a curriculum that accurately describes" Oregon's Native history.

Both tribes had previously opposed a blanket ban, asking the board to endorse an alternate rule that would have allowed local tribes to work with schools on their portrayal of Native culture. The Siletz had hoped their public charter school could keep its Indian chief mascot and that other schools that wished to keep their mascots could do so if they provided cultural studies to combat stereotypes.

Brenda Frank, the chairwoman of the Oregon Board of Education -- and a member of the Klamath Tribes -- said she understood the tribe's concerns but ultimately disagreed.

"Mascots are a divisive issue to all members," Frank said. "We're not immune to being on different sides of the line.

"With all due respect... their responsibility is only to their membership and not to the community as a whole. The Oregon State Board of Education speaks for all students in the state of Oregon."

The board passed the new rule, which may be the toughest in the nation, last week. Under the state's new policy names such as "Indians," "Chiefs" and "Braves" are banned while "Warriors" may stay as long as the logo does not reference tribal customs or traditions. At least 15 schools have to change their mascots before 2017 or risk losing state funding.

The rule was nearly six years in the making. Back in 2006, Che Butler, a member of the Siletz Tribe and a former Taft High School student, brought the issue before the state board. Butler told The Oregonian at the time that he decided to go to the board after his school played the Molalla High Indians. During the game he saw a student dressed in buckskin and fake feathers performing stereotypical Native American dance moves.

The debate leading up to the rule was heated. The board received some 750 comments on the new policy, about 400 of which were in favor of the ban. A public hearing on the subject lasted four and a half hours.

Of the state's nine recognized tribes, Frank said just three weighed in the proposed rule. The Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians wrote to the board in support of the rule.

"I think in general the idea that Native American names are being singled out as mascots is not a good thing," said tribal chairman Bob Garcia. "I know that I have listened to impassioned reports by individual Native Americans that were offended at the way they were being portrayed."

The Siletz and Grande Ronde tribes pushed instead for an amendment that would allow schools to keep their mascots if they collaborated with a representative tribe on positive portrayals or integrated cultural studies to combat stereotypes.

Siobhan Taylor, the Grande Ronde spokeswoman, said tribes should be able "to address these issues within their territories" and that the board should focus on better educating students about Oregon tribal history. Instead, "they moved ahead with a policy that really is a mandate without any funding," she said, adding that she believed at least six tribes had voiced concern about the policy, not just two.

The board considered an amendment to allow for exceptions, Frank said, but ultimately decided against it. Research showed that even with positive representations, the mascots could be detrimental to Native students and encourage a certain amount of racism, she said. There was also the issue of equity.

"Are we then accepting a certain level of discrimination? Are we accepting certain levels of dehumanizing somebody - a full race?" she said. "We need to be consistent.

The Siletz Tribe, which declined further comment, is in a unique position given that the tribe's public charter school will have to change its Indian chief mascot to align with the new rule.

Their statement questions whether the rule truly addresses issues of racism. Frank said it was simply a step. "Let's just make our path smoother," she said. "Are we going to remove racism? In my lifetime, I don't think so."

The Oregon Indian Education Association, one of the main proponents of the new rule, declined to comment on the Siletz statement. Se-ah-dom Edmo, the group's representative on this issue, has previously noted that the National Congress of American Indians, which bills itself as the oldest, largest and most representative organization in the U.S., has passed a resolution against the practice of using Native-themed mascots. The National Indian Education Association released its own statement Tuesday lauding the board's actions.

The issue of Native-themed mascots extends well past Oregon. Nationally discussion about the issue has been happening for decades. The National Congress of American Indians estimates that there are fewer than 1,000 such mascots left nationwide.

Still, the issue remains contentious. In North Dakota, for example, voters will decide next month whether the University of North Dakota should keep its Fighting Sioux nickname.

The NCAA has said the nickname is offensive and will penalize the school as long as it is kept.

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Two tribes call state's Native American mascot ban disappointing

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Two Oregon tribes say they're disappointed with the State Board of Education's decision last week to ban Native American-themed mascots in schools. The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, which issued a statement Tuesday, said the decision was made by "people who have no knowledge of Indian communities" and does nothing to address "the real issues of racism."

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Audio: Jeff Rasp, Ben Ridgley and Lindsey Nichols speak with Ryan Warner

(Left: Eugene Ridgley. Right: Jeff Rasp/Strasburg High School)

For years students at Strasburg High east of Denver have called themselves the "Indians" on the football field and the volleyball court. But recently names like that have drawn criticism nationwide and some in the school community wanted to know if the nickname is offensive to Indians who used to live in Colorado. Now the school has formed a partnership with the Northern Arapaho, who have blessed the use of the name "Indians," helped the school reimagine its logo and will send tribal leaders to visit Strasburg Friday.

Strasburg Principal Jeff Rasp also helped Gov. John Hickenlooper's office figure out how to deal with other Indian-themed mascots at schools around the state by serving on a commission that presents its findings to the governor today. Rasp, Strasburg student body president Lindsey Nichols and Ben Ridgley of the Northern Arapaho tribe spoke with Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner.

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Colorado Schools, Indian Tribe Come Together Over Controversial Mascots

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For years students at Strasburg High east of Denver have called themselves the "Indians" on the football field and the volleyball court. But recently names like that have drawn criticism nationwide and some in the school community wanted to know if the nickname is offensive to Indians who used to live in Colorado.

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The adults continue to argue over the Washington Redskins football team's name. Native Americans and others say the name is a racial slur, and should be changed. The NFL and many fans say that in sports, tradition is important too.

But a recent report commissioned by the Oneida Indian Nation, which has advocated for a name change, suggests that the debate should consider the children. The report suggests that the mascot, and others like it, may actually be harming Native American children and teens. It was written by clinical psychologist Michael Friedman and presented to the NFL at a recent meeting.

Tell Me More host Michel Martin speaks with Friedman and NPR science correspondent Shankar Vedantam about the research. Also joining the conversation is Wilson Pipestem, a dad of four and member of the Otoe-Missouria tribe.

Interview Highlights
"Your view of Native Americans gets worse"
Friedman: A series of studies show that if Native Americans are shown images of stereotypical Native American mascots ... self-esteem goes down, belief in community goes down, belief in achievement goes down, and mood goes down. And these effects are primarily among Native American adolescents. Similarly, if someone who is non-Native American sees a stereotypical image of a Native American mascot, their association with the Native American community also gets worse. So whoever you are, if you see these images your view of Native Americans gets worse.
"Are they making fun of us, Dad?"
Pipestem: One day at the dinner table, my oldest son, Truman, said kids at school are wearing these Washington football jerseys and other wear. ... It was before a game, and my second son said, "Are they making fun of us, Dad?" I said we need to sit down and talk about this.

Our children are very involved in the traditional and ceremonial life of our tribes, and we've taught them that our creator has given us eagle feathers as a way to pray ... and that ceremonial uses of paint have meaning, and these are all good things, and it's good to be an Indian person. When they see things that are different, they were troubled by it. My wife and I tried to teach them that this sort of ignorance is not meant to be personal to you; it's just [that] there are these things in our society that are part of the institution that are just not right and someday they'll change.
On unconscious effects of the mascot
Vedantam: [The data help] us get past what's been a constant refrain in the debate over these mascots. One side says, "Look, we're offended." The other side says, "Look, we don't mean to give any offense." And you end up with a he-said, she-said battle of opinions. ... The data seem to show at a pretty general level that there is a disconnect between how people think about these issues consciously and unconsciously. So you can have very positive views about a team mascot like the Redskins, and genuinely and sincerely say you are supportive of the team and think about the mascot in a positive way. While, at an unconscious level, the mascot could be having negative effects on you and the people who are hearing you talk about those terms.

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Can A Mascot Really Cause Psychological Harm?

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The Oneida Nation says the Washington Redskins' name isn't just offensive, but also psychologically harmful to Native Americans. Host Michel Martin sorts through the research with psychologist Michael Friedman, NPR science correspondent Shankar Vedantam and Native American dad Wilson Pipestem.

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The Washington NFL team should get to keep its canceled federal trademark registrations for the name "Redskins" on free speech grounds, according to a friend-of-the-court brief signed by 17 constitutional law professors who argue the disparagement clause of the Lanham Act is unconstitutional.

The brief, to be filed Thursday with the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals, compares the clause to the emperor who has no clothes - "a naked exercise in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination."

An appeals board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office relied on the Lanham Act when it canceled the team's trademarks last year. U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Bruce Lee ruled this summer that the board correctly found the team's trademarks "consisted of matter that 'may disparage' a substantial composite of Native Americans" when granted from 1967 to 1990. The team is appealing that decision in the 4th Circuit.

The Lanham Act's disparagement clause - linchpin of the case brought by Amanda Blackhorse and four other Native American petitioners - denies federal registrations for trademarks that consist of immoral, deceptive or scandalous matter or which may disparage persons or bring them into contempt or disrepute.

The professors' brief calls this "a brazen exercise in viewpoint discrimination" and asserts that bedrock First Amendment principles "apply to laws that burden speech just as they apply to laws that fully censor it."

Floyd Abrams, the famed First Amendment attorney who is a visiting lecturer at the Yale Law School, and Rodney Smolla, dean and professor at Widener University Delaware Law School, wrote the brief and are among its signatories.

"I don't like anything about the Washington Redskins," Smolla tells USA TODAY Sports. "I don't like their name and I don't like their logo. But as a free-speech lawyer, you're often in the position of defending speech that you personally find distasteful."

The brief points out that most Americans find flag burning, cross burning and homophobic protests at military funerals deeply offensive. "Yet the First Amendment takes out of the hands of government the authority to channel those majority sensibilities into law and exercise viewpoint discrimination over such expression," the brief says.

Lee ruled that the federal trademark registration program constitutes "government speech" and is therefore immune to free-speech challenges. The professors' brief argues that turns First Amendment principle on its head.

"Trademark registration is not an exercise of the government 'speaking' as an incident to its act of governing," the brief says, "for the government possesses no general governing power to police offensive or disparaging speech."

Smolla, by way of example, points to the familiar copyright symbol: "We don't think of that as a statement of government approval or disapproval of a book. But that's what Judge Lee's opinion implies, that the government would somehow be seen as approving or disapproving of the Redskins' mark when they register it."

The Lanham Act was passed by Congress in 1946. Smolla says it has been unconstitutional all the while.

"We have to remember when it was passed almost none of the First Amendment law that we think of today had yet developed," he says. "So I can't blame Congress for putting those words in the statute at the time it wrote it, but the Constitution has passed the Lanham Act by."

The disparagement clause denies trademark registration to immoral or scandalous matter or matter that may disparage persons, institutions, beliefs or national symbols - all things that are "normally what free speech is all about," the brief says. Given that language, Smolla says, "Everything you see on Saturday Night Live would be illegal if they tried to get trademark registration."

Smolla concedes Lee was likely right when he ruled the team's name disparaged a substantial composite of Native Americans at the time the marks were granted. "But the whole point of the First Amendment," he says, "is that it doesn't matter."

Nor does it matter, he says, that the team is free to use its name and market it even without the benefit of federal registration because the government is not free to attach unconstitutional conditions to the receipt of government benefits.

"If I were the owner of the Redskins franchise, or I were the NFL, I might very well, out of sensitivity to Native Americans, look for a new name, as so many colleges have over the years," says Smolla, who counts himself a Chicago Bears fan. "But the core point we make (in the brief) is that it is not the business of government to force that or to place pressure on that decision."

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Washington Redskins should keep name, law professors say in court filing

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The Washington NFL team should get to keep its canceled federal trademark registrations for the name "Redskins" on free speech grounds, according to a friend-of-the-court brief signed by 17 constitutional law professors who argue the disparagement clause of the Lanham Act is unconstitutional. The brief, to be filed Thursday with the 4th U.S.

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Redskins Should Keep Their Name - NY POST

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"It's kind of a funny thing, though. A redskin playing for the Redskins."

That was Carolina Panthers cornerback Josh Norman talking to ESPN about the $75 million deal he just signed to join the Washington Redskins this fall. Norman, whose parents are both part Native American, doesn't seem too concerned about the mascot of his new team.

"Redskins is not offensive to me," he told ESPN's Kevin Van Valkenburg.

A year ago, Mike Wise, senior writer at ESPN, declared that a name change for the Redskins was inevitable. First it was journalists like those at Slate who refused to even publish the name. Then there were petitions to Twitter, Google and Facebook to remove the accounts belonging to the Redskins. There were protests in front of the stadium. California enacted legislation barring schools from using the Redskins name for their mascots. Madison, Wis., banned children from wearing any kind of clothing with a Native-themed mascot. And, of course, the Obama administration decided to strip the team of its trademark protections.

As Wise wrote: "This is no longer merely a civil rights/social justice issue affecting our most marginalized ethnicity. Many people now have made the obvious leap that this issue impacts people of color."

Well, maybe. The Washington Post conducted a poll that found more than 9 in 10 Native Americans weren't offended by the name at all.

Indeed, the impacts on people of color are a little hard to quantify. The claim - trotted out by organizations like the National Conference of American Indians - that team names lead to lower self-esteem for Native Americans rests on a single 10-page conference paper by an assistant professor of psychology. And that paper seems to rest on an experiment performed on a group of 172 American Indian students at one university in the Midwest.

Perhaps Josh Norman will finally put an end to this ridiculous conversation we are having about American Indian mascots. But maybe he and team owner Dan Snyder could do more to focus on the real problems being faced by this community. The most impoverished racial group in country, American Indians (particularly those on reservations) face sky-high unemployment and gang-activity rates higher than those among blacks or Hispanics. From alcohol-use disorders to sexual assault to child abuse, American Indians are statistically worse off than just about any ethnic group in the country.

In 2014, Snyder launched the Original Americans Foundation to alleviate his public-relations crisis. The mission was "to provide meaningful and measurable resources that provide genuine opportunities for tribal communities."

Snyder has tried to fund skate parks and give coats and computers to poor kids on reservations.

In this sense, Snyder's efforts will be about as effective as those by the federal government, which gives American Indians money but not the freedom they need to improve their situations.

American Indians live in poverty because they have no property rights. Their land is held in trust by the federal government. They can't buy or sell it or develop it without the permission of bureaucrats in Washington. They can't get a mortgage or a loan to start a business. They are being overregulated to death. And their dependence on the federal government for billions of dollars each year is only making things worse. Saying this to Redskins fans may not win Snyder points with Washington elites, but he lost them a long time ago.

If Snyder really wanted to make a difference in the lives of Indians and stick it to his critics, he could also focus on the deplorable state of Indian education. Only 50 percent of American Indians graduate from high school. The Bureau of Indian Education spends over $20,000 per pupil and can't even keep its buildings from falling down. As John Kline, a Republican congressman from Minnesota, explained at a hearing in May 2015, "You've got collapsing roofs, leaking roofs, buckling floors, exposed wires, popping circuit breakers, gas leaks."

Snyder might consider giving a large donation to a school like Red Cloud on the Pine Ridge reservation or St. Labre, which serves the Northern Cheyenne and Crow tribes in Montana. These Catholic schools actually graduate the vast majority of students and send most on to college as well. They charge next to nothing for tuition and are entirely dependent on outside donations.

Or Snyder might consider giving some of his largesse to Teach for America, which sends elite college graduates to work in some of the poorest Indian communities in the country. Or he might fund more charter schools near reservations to provide these kids with an alternative to the deplorable education they are getting now. For those states like South Dakota and Montana that have large Indian populations but no charter laws, Snyder might consider a serious lobbying effort to change that.

Critics of the Redskins name are mostly folks who know nothing about American Indians but think their problems can be solved by more money and greater cultural sensitivity. Neither is true and Dan Snyder can prove it.
Naomi Schaefer Riley is the author of "The New Trail of Tears: How Washington is Destroying American Indians," out now.

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Redskins need to ignore PC culture and keep their name

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"It's kind of a funny thing, though. A redskin playing for the Redskins." That was Carolina Panthers cornerback Josh Norman talking to ESPN about the $75 million deal he just signed to join the Washington Redskins this fall. Norman, whose parents are both part Native American, doesn't seem too concerned about the mascot of his new team.

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Missing the Point

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The Nation regards the depiction of natives as mascots defamatory to our people. In brief, here are a few of the reasons why:

Non-native peoples tend to view animals as beneath humans. Since most mascots are animals, people equivocate between teams and their mascots. Their mascot is just as good as the next. Or our mascot is better than your mascot and therefore you have the belief that the Bears are superior to the Indians.

Mascots tend to suspend natives in time. When our white brothers first entered the land, they saw the young Onondaga men as fierce, bold, tough, and dressed in animal skins. Today, young Onondaga men and women have intricate and beautiful regalia worn for the Creator and also modern clothing worn to suit going to high school, college and earning a living.

Mascots are stereotypical. In trying to understand a different culture of people of various languages, government, and clothing, native people were lumped into one generic figure that could be identified as "Indian." Therefore mascots are usually not representative of the Haudenosaunee people.

Fighting and skin color is not our only positive trait. Although it is true that Onondaga and its Haudenosaunee allies have proven themselves in battle, there are other gifts that we are thankful for. Onondagas honor and foster many other traits such as diplomacy, artisans, educators, agriculturists, hunters, musicians, architects, and philosophers to name a few. The Creator gives us all a special gift and it is the combination of all these gifts that make us the complex diverse nation of people we are today.

Natives are the only race depicted as mascots. Society has recognized the inappropriateness of cultures being made into caricatures, put on helmets, t-shirts and bumper stickers. The fact that schools and organizations have "always" been the Braves, Chiefs, Red Men, Redskins, Warriors, or Indians, does not give the community the right to defame a culture.

The Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs has long held the belief that mascots are offensive. In 1970, the chiefs met with Syracuse University about the Saltine Warrior mascot. The chiefs recognized the responsibility of the University to be culturally respectful. The depiction of an Indian running around in leather and a Sioux war bonnet was not only incorrect, but offensive. The chiefs explained that there was no dignity within the native community when the Saltine Warrior meets and jousts with wildcats, hogs, bulldogs in front of thousands of people. After a year of negations, the Chancellor agreed with the Onondaga leaders that the Saltine Warrior mascot was offensive and was removed.

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The Nation regards the depiction of natives as mascots defamatory to our people. In brief, here are a few of the reasons why: Non-native peoples tend to view animals as beneath humans. Since most mascots are animals, people equivocate between teams and their mascots. Their mascot is just as good as the next.

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European Sports and Mascots

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Buffalo Ben, the official team mascot for the Belgian soccer team K.A.A. Gent. His sidekick is a female version named Buffalo Mel. Credit Credit Jimmy Bolcina/Photonews, via Getty Images

GHENT, Belgium - Benjamin Bundervoet was wearing his normal workday outfit - a blue-and-white feathered headdress, a fringed tunic and chaps, bright paint streaked across his cheeks - as he stepped onto the grass.

For the next few hours, Bundervoet would be Buffalo Ben, the official team mascot for K.A.A. Gent, a top Belgian soccer team. As the players warmed up before kickoff at a recent home match, Bundervoet smiled and waved a flag bearing the team's logo, the profile of a Native American, which is also plastered around the Ghelamco Arena.

Scenes like this play out every weekend across Europe, where teams big and small and across a variety of sports employ Native American names, symbols and concepts of wildly variable authenticity in their branding. There's the hockey team in the Czech Republic that performs a yearly sage-burning ritual on the ice, the rugby team in England whose fans wear headdresses and face paint, the German football team called the Redskins and many more.

For years, these teams were insulated from the vigorous discussion about the use of this type of imagery by sports teams in the United States, where critics long ago deemed the practice offensive and anachronistic. This year, the Cleveland Indians announced that they would stop using their Chief Wahoo logo on their uniforms beginning in 2019, continuing a decades-long trend in which thousands of such references have disappeared from the American sports landscape.

During that same period, though, new examples were appearing in Europe, where teams and fans have long viewed the mascots and logos through kaleidoscopes of local culture and, detached from the charged history that the imagery carries in the North America, formed their own ideas about what is socially acceptable.

But these ideas are slowly being challenged, and increasingly these teams are finding themselves being asked to confront the same questions of representation, appropriation and stereotyping. K.A.A. Gent, for example, devotes a lengthy page on its website to the history of its logo and nickname, but notes only that the club is "aware of the public debate in American society around the use of stereotypical images and caricatures."

K.A.A. Gent declined to make any officials available to discuss the topic, and when it learned a New York Times reporter had arranged an interview with Bundervoet, the club intervened and canceled it.

"Americans, Canadians, they're working on this issue, talking about it, debating," said Stephanie Pratt, a cultural ambassador for the Crow Creek South Dakota Sioux and longtime resident of Exeter, England. "Europeans are late to the table. They're just beginning to debate it - or maybe not at all."

Pratt has found herself in the middle of one such debate involving the Exeter Chiefs, the defending champions of England's rugby union league.

Exeter, which rebranded itself as the Chiefs in 1999, calls its team store the Trading Post and its online fan group the Tribe. Fans chat on a message board named Pow-Wow. Among the 15 bars at the team's home stadium are Wigwam, Cheyenne, Apache, Mohawk, Tomahawk, Buffalo and Bison. Just inside the main entrance to the arena stands the team's Five Nations Totem Pole, memorializing the five countries visiting Exeter for the 2015 Rugby World Cup (not, as some might guess, the five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.)

Image

Exeter Rugby Club, a top English rugby union team, rebranded itself as the Exeter Chiefs in 1999. Its mascot, Big Chief, appears at matches waving a toy tomahawk. Credit Stu Forster/Getty Images

Two years ago, Rachel Herrmann, a historian of early American history at Cardiff University, wrote a blog post criticizing the team after noticing "a bunch of people dressed up as Indians" on a train platform one afternoon and learning that they were fans of the club. Herrmann's essay " Playing Indian: Exeter Rugby in a Postcolonial Age " was eventually picked up by a local reporter, Ed Oldfield of Devon Live, who reached out to Pratt for her rare perspective as a person who could speak as a member of both the Native American and Exeter communities.

The articles sparked a robust local conversation that soon received coverage in the national news media. Herrmann, who began receiving hate mail around that time, said she was disappointed that the conversation devolved into an argument "about whether Exeter fans were racist" rather than "the more interesting question of how a country with such a clearly imperial history has incorporated these mascots."

The Chiefs for the past two years have made no public statements about the discussion and declined several requests for comment from The New York Times. "We have 'no comment' to make and do not want to engage in any article on this subject," a team spokesman wrote in an email message last week.

Pratt has been to one Chiefs game. She saw the mascot (a costumed character named Big Chief), heard the fans' war chants and watched them do the "tomahawk chop" and decided never to return. She said such behavior reduced almost 600 distinct tribes into a single clumsy caricature based on 19th-century stereotypes.

"There's a learning curve for people in Europe, but it needs to be done," Pratt said.

In other cases, American Indian references reflect a deep fascination with the culture in some parts of the continent.

HC Plzen, a hockey team in Pilsen, Czech Republic, rebranded with an American Indian logo and mascot in 2009. The Czech Republic is one of the many countries in Europe where the novels of the 19th-century German writer Karl May, who wrote adventure stories about the American West that depicted Indians as noble savages, were wildly popular and hugely influential in shaping the European public consciousness of Native Americans. (May, whose books have sold more than 100 million copies, never set foot in North America.)

Lucie Muzikova, a spokeswoman for HC Plzen, said the club's logo - the profile of a Red Indian wearing a white headdress - was designed in part as a nod to the insignia of the United States Army's Second Infantry Division, which liberated Pilsen near the end of World War II.

As part of its in-game presentation, HC Plzen employs the help of West Park, a nearby museum with a 19th-century American West theme. At the start of each season, performers from West Park, who are not of American Indian descent, conduct a public sage-burning ceremony, traditionally seen as a cleansing ritual, inside the team's arena. Before every game, the performers play drums and carry out a purifying ritual as the players skate onto the ice amid a swirl of smoke, lights and music.

"We perform everything the way the Natives are doing it and with deep respect," Petra Michlova, a marketing manager and show team member at West Park, said.

Acknowledging that some teams might have only good intentions, Paul Chaat Smith, a Comanche writer and a curator at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, nevertheless said that he felt "dressing up as Indians is pretty much always a mistake."

"Pretty much everybody agrees you're just not going to name a team after an entire ethnic group," Smith added. "Nobody would do that anymore, so the question is, why is it O.K. to keep it? Those general ideas about what's appropriate would apply to European teams, too."

But many clubs in Europe have only recently been forced to ponder that question.

Buffalo Ben, the mascot for K.A.A. Gent, was introduced in 2001 and existed seemingly free of criticism until 2016. That year, De Standaard, a daily newspaper, published a wide-ranging interview with Suzan Harjo, a member of the Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee Indian nations and longtime advocate for Indian rights in the United States. At one point, the interviewer informed Harjo about K.A.A. Gent and Buffalo Ben, noting the mascot was a white man wearing stereotypical Indian regalia.

Pointing to studies about the potential harm such mascots can inflict on the self-esteem of American Indian youth, and noting that sports today exist on an international stage, Harjo encouraged the team to alter its branding.

The exchange gained broader notice in the Belgian news media, inspiring a quick flurry of columns and leading the team to create the page on its website explaining the history of its nickname and logo, which it said dates to a visit to Ghent more than a century ago by Buffalo Bill's Wild West, a touring circus-style cowboy show. An Indian chief first appeared on a K.A.A. Gent flag in 1924.

Small adjustments were made. The name of Buffalo Ben's occasional female companion, Squaw Mel, was changed to Buffalo Mel, and the team added a new page on its site explaining the " gigantic social challenges " facing Indians in the United States. But nothing else changed. In the team's view, the context of its use of the logo and mascot was entirely different from the situation in the United States.

In declining several requests to discuss the use of Native American imagery, K.A.A. Gent expressed a desire to avoid another debate about its branding. It referred a reporter to the information on its website.

But in a brief phone call in response to follow-up questions posed to the club, Wim Beelaert, coordinator of the K.A.A. Gent Foundation, explained the organization's point of view that while such logos may indeed be offensive in the United States, they are not so in Belgium.

"We don't have a historic debt toward the Native American community," he said. "We don't have a natural debt toward the Native American community. And I think these two things are different in the United States. That's what we mean when we say we are working in a different historical and cultural context."

In an interview in April, Harjo, who spent five years of her youth living in Naples, Italy, brushed aside the idea that context mattered. "I'm not speaking as an American or as a European," she said. "I'm commenting on American behavior and European behavior, both of which objectify native peoples. This is consistent for more than 500 years now."

Harjo said there was no right way to use an Indian as a sports mascot because it puts her people "right there with the animals and the nonhuman beings."

At least one team in Europe has acknowledged the movement and made changes: Two years ago, the Streatham Redskins, England's oldest ice hockey club, announced that they would look for a new nickname after determining that theirs, which was introduced in 1974, did not reflect the organization's values. Fans of the club eventually voted to adopt the RedHawks.

But most other clubs have no interest, at least for now, in doing the same.

The Frolunda Indians, a professional hockey team from Gothenburg, Sweden, was known as Vastra Frolunda IF until 1995, around the time that the Swedish Hockey League began encouraging its clubs to adopt American-style nicknames. Inspired by the Chicago Blackhawks and the fact that the team in the 1960s was said to play in a "vilda vastern," or Wild West, style, it chose the Indians.

The club developed a cartoon logo depicting an Indian chief with a headdress fanned around his stern face, and for a time the team's costumed mascot was a Native American hockey player with a missing tooth and feathers poking through his helmet. (These days, the team's in-stadium mascot is an anthropomorphic bison.)

In 2015, a man in Sweden filed two separate official reports to the Equality Ombudsman, a government agency that addresses discrimination, accusing the team of spreading a stereotypical image of Native Americans. "I want Sweden to show that you do not tolerate insulting the culture of others," he wrote, according to the copy of the complaint provided to The Times by the agency.

The club dismissed his concerns, and the Equality Ombudsman ultimately rejected the claim.

"We, from a distance, follow the discussions about the Washington Redskins, the Cleveland Indians," said Peter Pettersson Kymmer, a Frolunda team spokesman. "But we sincerely think that our Indian, in our point of view, is in no way offensive to the Native Americans. On the contrary, it's a tribute, and we're proud to wear it."

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Tomahawk Chops and Native American Mascots: In Europe, Teams Don't See a Problem

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GHENT, Belgium - Benjamin Bundervoet was wearing his normal workday outfit - a blue-and-white feathered headdress, a fringed tunic and chaps, bright paint streaked across his cheeks - as he stepped onto the grass. For the next few hours, Bundervoet would be Buffalo Ben, the official team mascot for K.A.A.

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Feb 20, 2013

Close

Sports journalism's foremost uniform reporter

ESPN.com columnist since 2004

Also blogs at uni-watch.com

Last week I wrote about the recent symposium about Native American imagery in sports that took place at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington. Everyone quoted in the article was opposed to the use of such imagery, which led many readers to ask why I hadn't given equal time to the other side.

The answer to that is simple: I was there to cover the symposium, and every single speaker at the event -- about three times as many people as I ended up quoting in my column -- was opposed to the use of Native American mascots, logos and team names. (The Washington Redskins were invited to have a representative at the event, but they declined.)

But it's true that there are some Native Americans who are fine with the use of Native imagery in sports. In central Michigan, for example, the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe recently announced that it had no problem with a local high school whose teams are called the Warriors.

I was curious to learn more, so I contacted the Saginaw Chippewas and spoke with their public relations director, Frank Cloutier. Here's how our conversation went:
Uni Watch: First, for people who aren't familiar with the Saginaw Chippewas, please tell me a bit about your tribe.
Frank Cloutier: Our tribe was formed with the ratification of our constitution in 1936. We have 3,292 members, and we live in the territories called the Isabella Federal Indian Reserve in Mount Pleasant, Mich., just north of Lansing. We have the fifth- or sixth-largest Indian-owned casino in the Midwest, so we're rather successful when it comes to our economic growth and development.

But it's not just about gaming for us -- it's about our culture. We have a very rich, diverse culture, which is showcased in a world-class, award-winning cultural museum on our reservation. So the situation regarding mascots and team names piques our interest.
Many of the people taking part in this debate see it as a black-and-white issue. Either they're completely opposed to all uses of Native American imagery, or they have no problem with any of it. What's your position, or your tribe's position, on that?
It's very, very clear for us, because we've worked with so many institutions in our area. Our position is that if it's not derogatory and it's being used appropriately, with an opportunity to share or cross-share our culture, then it's fine. There's nothing derogatory about "Warriors" or "Braves." There's nothing derogatory about "Indian." But terms like "Redskin" or "Half-Breed," those are derogatory terms to us.
So when the Michigan Department of Civil Rights recently filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, claiming that Native American mascots and nicknames are inherently harmful to Native children, you don't agree with that?
In the study they used, they said these Native children who go to these schools with these mascots are "marginalized." But if you look at generational trauma and the way Native peoples were treated 300 years ago, it wasn't until 1924 that we were formally recognized as human beings, and we didn't get the chance to vote until after women did. That's what makes these kids feel marginalized -- the way their culture and their people were treated. I don't believe that a menacing-looking brave on the backboard of a basketball hoop is going to marginalize that child as much as that generational trauma.

That said, however, I believe that these schools using these images have an obligation to talk about the truth of Native American history. One of the largest genocides in world history happened right here on American soil, and it happened to Native Americans. So it's important to talk about the true history about the settling of the United States, and to talk about those things that happened to Native Americans that are often not talked about.

If Native children are struggling, hopefully this kind of education and outreach and help identify why, instead of having us blame it on a mascot.
So when you say it's fine to use non-derogatory imagery as long as it's being used appropriately, you're saying that part of that "appropriate use" is educational content about Native Americans?
Yes. For example, in 2003 we entered into an articulation agreement with Central Michigan University, because they were the Chippewas. As part of that agreement, the tribe and the university each has an obligation. Every year I go in and address every freshman athletic student about our culture and what it means to be a Chippewa, and about the proud, competitive nature of our people. We explain that it's not about war paint and fake feathers. It's about honoring the triumph of these resilient, competitive people.

They also have areas on campus that are dedicated to the presence of the Chippewa Nation. So it's a good cross-cultural exchange. And when they go out there and compete, they're Chippewas, they're fighting like a Chippewa, fighting to win. We've made that university our school of choice for Native Americans, because our tribal community is close by, so we can help support those Native students.
What if a high school or university wasn't interested in doing these types of cultural exchanges and educational efforts? What would your feelings be about their use of Native imagery?
It would be completely different. If they're not willing to celebrate and show the culture, they shouldn't have the privilege of depicting it.
What about states that have already banned all Native imagery from their high schools, like Wisconsin and Oregon?
I think that's a missed opportunity for the type of cultural exchange and education that I just described.
How do you feel about the NCAA's regulations restricting the use of Native American imagery but allowing it when permission is granted by a local tribe, as in the case of Florida State University and the Seminole Tribe?
I think that's absolutely fine. That's basically what we do with CMU.
Many teams say that their use of Native American imagery is meant to be an honor, especially when they use team names like "Warriors," which is meant to symbolize American Indians' fighting spirit. But there are others who say this plays into stereotypes of Indians as savages who aren't good at anything except making war. How do you feel about that?
Once again, it goes back to the responsibility of the school. If they're using a menacing-looking Indian and trying to intimidate the other team because they might get scalped, that's inappropriate. But if they're using an image that evokes spirit and competition, and they've celebrated the culture, then they've done their job and they've earned the right to proudly display that logo.
Everything we've discussed so far is about schools, which can offer the type of educational programs you've mentioned. But what about professional teams that use this imagery, like the Cleveland Indians and the Atlanta Braves. They're not in the education business. What's your feeling about them?
If they're not going to educate and they feel no obligation [to do so], then they have no right to use this imagery. They shouldn't have that privilege if they're not going to celebrate where it comes from.
As I'm sure you're aware, there's an increasing movement to have the Washington Redskins football team change its name. Any thoughts on that?
I think that would be most appropriate.
One of the most contentious issues that comes up in these discussions is whether white people's opinions -- or any non-Natives' opinions -- should even matter. Should non-Natives have a voice in this debate? Should we simply have a vote among Native Americans and let them decide?
I have to chuckle when I hear that. We all live in this wonderful globe together. If there's a negative impact on any one group, that impacts all of us as a whole. I think everyone, collectively, can have a voice in this. We have many brothers and sisters in various minority groups who know what it means to be marginalized, so of course we welcome their voices.
And that would also apply to white Americans?
Absolutely. If we're going to have this debate and bring it to a positive conclusion, we'd be doing ourselves a disservice by limiting it.
Last question: Have you had discussions with people in your tribe, or from other tribes, who see this as more of a black-and-white issue?
That's the wonderful thing about having our own free will and personal opinion. There are members of my tribe who are very steadfast and who say, "Enough's enough -- it's time to put a stop to this." And there are those who see, as I do, the opportunities for outreach and healthy dialogue. I celebrate that diversity of opinion, because I think it makes us more well-rounded.
Paul Lukas promises that his next column will not be about Native American imagery. Probably. If you liked this column, you'll probably like his daily Uni Watch web site, plus you can follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Want to learn about his Uni Watch Membership Program, be added to his mailing list so you'll always know when a new column has been posted, or just ask him a question? Contact him here.

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Feb 20, 2013 Close Sports journalism's foremost uniform reporter ESPN.com columnist since 2004 Also blogs at uni-watch.com Last week I wrote about the recent symposium about Native American imagery in sports that took place at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington.

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Changing the way we see Native Americans | Matika Wilbur | TEDxTeachersCollege

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Sportswear company Adidas has announced that it will offer free design resources to US high schools that agree to drop Native American mascots.

The company has also offered to help pay for the costs of the changes.

The pledge comes on the same day President Barack Obama is hosting leaders from the 567 federally recognised native tribes in Washington.

The use of Native American mascots and symbolism in sports is at the centre of a national debate in the US.

Critics say such imagery is racially offensive and it exploits native people through stereotypes.

According to advocacy groups, there are approximately 2,000 schools in the US that have Native American mascots.

Over the past two years around 12 have dropped the mascots and about 20 are considering a change.

The Washington Redskins debate

More and more journalists are refusing to use the name

Word was first used by Native Americans, to distinguish themselves from Europeans

It became a derogatory term much later, in the 19th Century

Fans today are divided on the subject
Should the R-word be banned?
The sports company, which will have executives in attendance at the White House Tribal Nations Conference, has also said it will be among the founding members of a coalition that seeks to change Native American mascots in sports.

The initiative would give schools wanting to change their mascot access to the brand's design team, who would provide logo and uniform design services.

"This remarkable stand against racism by Adidas illustrates that the issue of ending the use of the R-word is not going away, but is instead gaining momentum as people understand the damaging impacts of this racial slur," said Jackie Pata and Ray Halbritter, leaders with advocacy group Change the Mascot, in a written statement.

The Washington Redskins, the professional American football team located in Washington, has resisted changing its name and logo despite increased criticism in recent years.

"We'll never change the name. It's that simple. NEVER - you can use caps," said the team's owner Dan Snyder, in an interview in May 2013.

Supporters of the mascots point to long traditions and say that they highlight the contribution of native people to American society.

In 2005, the governing body of university-level basketball warned teams that they would be subject to penalties if they did not change Native American mascots.

In response, some of the teams, including the Florida State Seminoles, were granted permission to use the names and imagery by tribes.

Life as a young Native American

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Sportswear company Adidas has announced that it will offer free design resources to US high schools that agree to drop Native American mascots. The company has also offered to help pay for the costs of the changes. The pledge comes on the same day President Barack Obama is hosting leaders from the 567 federally recognised native tribes in Washington.

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They have names like the Durfee School Warriors, the Washington Elementary Little Aztecs, the Ripon High Indians and the Cherrylee School Chiefs.

Native American leaders say such mascots perpetuate ethnic stereotyping that goes back centuries.

"My big issue is, if you dehumanize us, then you're never going to make policies for us," said Joely Proudfit, who leads the Cal State center. "You're never going to give us a seat at the table. You're never going to see us as human beings."

Dr. Proudfit said she hoped the survey, published as a map showing the mascots peppered across California, would draw attention to how widespread the practice remains.

School leaders who have refused to budge on the mascot issue talk about deeply felt pride, sporting legacies that date back decades, and support from individual Native Americans who see them as a tribute. Racism, they say, plays no part in it.

At Chowchilla High School, outside Merced, one of four schools across the state affected by the Redskins ban, officials said their intentions in using the mascot were misunderstood.

"Here, the Chowchilla Redskins emboldens the spirit of strength, honor and respect," said Marty Piepenbrok, a community relations spokesman. "There is nothing disparaging about it whatsoever."

At the high school's graduation ceremony in June, the biggest cheer rose up at the mention of "Redskins," The Fresno Bee reported.

The school has until January to drop the mascot.

Even without a broader ban, however, many schools have responded voluntarily to the concerns of Indian tribes by swapping out their Native American mascots. Others have tried to sidestep the issue by dropping just the imagery associated with the names.

For Winters High School, home of the Warriors, that has meant a low-key phasing out of the school symbol depicting an Indian man in headdress.

The name will stay, said Todd Cutler, the superintendent of the district outside Sacramento. But when it comes time to replace the gym floor and the sign in front of the school, the Indian imagery that adorns them will become, simply, "W."

"It's really a delicate, careful road we are moving down," Dr. Cutler said.

Weather

California Online

* A battle has broken out in Los Angeles over the fundamental nature of the distinctively low-lying and spread-out city, writes Los Angeles bureau chief Adam Nagourney. [ The New York Times]

* A 38-year-old firefighter was killed while heading to a blaze near Vandenberg Air Force Base. [ Ventura County Star]

* An illegal shelter in Lunada Bay built by the so-called Bay Boys, a group of surfers, will be demolished. [ Los Angeles Times]

* A stretch of winding highway in Orange County has killed six motorcyclists in seven weeks. [ Orange County Register]

* Victor Scheinman, a pioneer in robotics, died in Petrolia. He was 73. [ The New York Times]

* An was discovered in San Pablo Bay after a mystery odor sent dozens of people to the hospital. [ East Bay Times]

* The release of police footage in the fatal shooting of a homeless man set off protests in North Sacramento. [ Sacramento Bee]

* California farmer: "We have to raise the price of goods and people have to be O.K. with it." [ The Guardian]

* Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan pledged $3 billion to fighting disease. The effort will involve a "biohub" in San Francisco. [ The New York Times]

* Google will be opening a technology lab in Oakland to mentor black and Latino computer scientists. [ USA Today]

* Apple is said to have discussed a partnership with McLaren, the racecar builder. [ The New York Times]

* Check out this aerial view of the recent Dragon Boat festival in Oakland. [ YouTube/Sky High Oakland]

The Death Penalty Propositions

Capital punishment has long been one of the most contentious issues in California.

In November, voters will decide between two competing ballot measures: Proposition 62, which would end the death penalty, and Proposition 66, which would speed up the executions. Jennifer Medina, a national correspondent for The New York Times in Los Angeles, takes a close look at both propositions.

And Finally ...

A group devoted to creating play areas has awarded $1 million to spur 50 new projects that create opportunities for urban children to play at places like bus stops, barber shops and Laundromats.

The winning projects were announced this week by Ka B oom, a Washington-based nonprofit group that has built 2,700 playgrounds across the country since it was founded in 1996.

Four of the winners hail from California.

McFarland, north of Bakersfield, proposed adding a play space to a bus stop. In Kerman, outside Fresno, city officials said they would enliven sidewalks and crosswalks with interactive designs like hot lava and hopscotch squares. Richmond proposed a "play street" in a park-deficient neighborhood.

And Family Friendly Oakland said it would make the city's drab, cement trash cans into canvases for colorful murals.

"By adding art and whimsy we'll provide surprising moments of wonder where children and adults least expect," wrote Tiffany Eng, the group's founder.

You can see more of the winning designs.
- Gail Cornwall and Mike McPhate California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a third-generation Californian - born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U.C. Berkeley.

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California Today: The Debate Over Indian Mascots and Imagery

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They have names like the Durfee School Warriors, the Washington Elementary Little Aztecs, the Ripon High Indians and the Cherrylee School Chiefs. Native American leaders say such mascots perpetuate ethnic stereotyping that goes back centuries. "My big issue is, if you dehumanize us, then you're never going to make policies for us," said Joely Proudfit, who leads the Cal State center.

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Gov. John Hickenlooper signed an executive order Tuesday creating a commission to discuss American Indian high school mascots.

The group would include tribes, local community members and state agencies to find common ground, said Ernest House Jr., executive director of the Colorado Office of Indian Affairs.

In the last legislative session, a bill carried by state Reps. Joe Salazar, D-Thornton, and Jovan Melton, D-Aurora, that would have required tribal approval for public schools to continue using American Indian mascots passed in the Democrat-led state House but was killed by a Republican-led Senate committee.

"When Rep. Melton and I addressed this issue last legislative session, we met with members of the American Indian community who were concerned that their heritage was being disrespected," Salazar said Tuesday. "With the governor's apology for the Sand Creek Massacre last year, and this important step today, we have made small but significant steps as a state in directly addressing these symbols of prejudice."
DOCUMENT: Hickenlooper's executive order on creating a commission on American Indian school mascots
House Bill 1165 would have created a subcommittee in the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs to review the use of potentially offensive mascots.

The subcommittee or a tribe would have had the power to approve native American mascots, or the schools would be given two years to stop the use of the mascot or risk a $25,000-a-month fine.
WATCH: Colorado Reps. Joe Salazar, Tim Dore explain Native American mascot bill
Hickenlooper's order doesn't include penalties, House said.

"This is a different approach to having that discussion, he said.

Once a month in communities that have the mascots, the task force will hold public meetings. Ideally, tribes and schools can work together, the way Arapahoe High School in Centennial worked with its namesake tribe in 1993 and 1994 to preserve the Warrior mascot and make sure its representation is dignified and historically accurate.

Colorado is home to such mascots as the Lamar High School Savages, the Eaton Reds, the Frederick Warriors and several schools called the Indians, including Arickaree, Yuma, Montrose, Kiowa and Loveland.
STORY: Lamar, home of the Savages, defends mascot as culture wars rage
"This is an effort to bring people and communities together through dialogue about the issue of American Indian mascots," said. Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia in a statement. "Open, honest dialogue, free from the threat of penalties, can result in new paths forward and avoid future deadlock."
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174, jbunch@denverpost.com or @joeybunch

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Colorado governor creates task force on American Indian mascots

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Gov. John Hickenlooper signed an executive order Tuesday creating a commission to discuss American Indian high school mascots. The group would include tribes, local community members and state agencies to find common ground, said Ernest House Jr., executive director of the Colorado Office of Indian Affairs.

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California became the first state in the nation to pass a law prohibiting public schools from using the term "Redskins" as a team name or mascot.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday approved the measure barring the use of the term that many Native Americans find offensive but vetoed a separate measure that would have barred public properties from being named after individuals associated with the Confederacy.

As of Jan. 1, 2017, all public schools will be barred from using the term "Redskin," which many Native Americans consider a racial slur. The measure by Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville) will allow schools that use materials that contain the term, such as uniforms, to phase out their use to alleviate cost concerns. The new law will affect four California high schools in Merced, Calaveras, Tulare and Madera counties.
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Oneida Indian Nation Representative Ray Halbritter and National Congress of American Indians Executive Director Jackie Pata, leaders of the advocacy group Change the Mascot, used the new California law to exert pressure on the Washington Redskins, the professional football team that has faced sharp criticism over its name.

"This landmark legislation eliminating the R-word in California schools clearly demonstrates that this issue is not going away, and that opposition to the Washington team on this issue is only intensifying. The NFL should act immediately to press the team to change the name," Halbritter and Pata said in a statement.

Brown was less receptive to a bill by state Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Orinda) that sought to prohibit public buildings and parks from carrying the name of Confederate figures.

Glazer introduced the bill after a mass shooting in Charleston, S.C., catalyzed a movement to remove the Confederate flag from public buildings.

Brown, in his veto message, said such an action was "long overdue." But he said the naming of public buildings was different and an issue "quintessentially for local decision makers."

"Local governments are laboratories of democracy, which, under most circumstances, are quite capable of deciding for themselves which of their buildings and parks should be named, and after whom," Brown wrote.

Glazer, a former Brown adviser, rebuked the governor's veto on Twitter.

"Locals have had decades to remove confederate leaders from places of honor in Ca. Veto is hollow defense of unacceptable status quo," Glazer wrote.

Also on Sunday, in a final sweep of bill actions for the year, Brown approved laws that will:

* Ban professional baseball players from using chewing tobacco on the playing field of major league stadiums.

* Authorize state employees to use ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft and short-term rentals such as Airbnb while traveling on state business.

* Legalize the use of electronic skateboards.

Brown also vetoed a measure that would have expanded unpaid family leave to allow workers to take up to 12 weeks off to care for an ailing sibling, grandparent, grandchild, parent-in-law or domestic partner.

The governor, in his veto message, said the bill by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) created a disparity between state and federal law that could require employers in some cases to grant up to 24 weeks of leave.

"I am open to legislation to allow workers to take leave for additional family members that does not create this anomaly," Brown wrote.
Follow ALSO: California to restrict antibiotics use in farm animals 'Right-to-try' bill to help terminally ill access experimental drugs falls flat In wake of school shootings, Gov. Jerry Brown bans concealed guns on California campuses @melmason for more on California government and politics.

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California schools barred from using 'Redskins' as team name or mascot

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California became the first state in the nation to pass a law prohibiting public schools from using the term "Redskins" as a team name or mascot. Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday approved the measure barring the use of the term that many Native Americans find offensive but vetoed a separate measure that...

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Adidas on Thursday announced a new initiative to help high schools change "potentially harmful" Native American mascots.

The sports apparel company, which has North American headquarters in Portland, Oregon, will allow schools to volunteer for the program and will provide financial assistance for mascot and nickname changes "to ensure the transition is not cost prohibitive," it said in a release. Schools that want help changing mascots can email Adidas to enroll in the program.

The initiative's launch is timed to coincide with the White House Tribal Nations Conference, which starts Thursday in Washington, D.C., and will include representatives from as many as 567 federally recognized tribes.

"High school social identities are central to the lives of young athletes, so it's important to create a climate that feels open to everyone who wants to compete," Mark King, the president of Adidas North America, said in a statement.

"But the issue is much bigger," the statement continued. "These social identities affect the whole student body and, really, entire communities. In many cities across our nation, the high school and its sports teams take center stage in the community and the mascot and team names become an everyday rallying cry."

As many as 2,000 high schools use Native American mascots and imagery, which tribes and activists have long argued are harmful to communities and students because they perpetuate negative stereotypes. The American Psychological Association and American Sociological Association have both recommended changing such mascots because of the effects they can have on native and non-native students.

Universities and high schools have spent decades weighing the appropriateness of Native American mascots, with many deciding to change them.

That movement has reignited in recent years as activists renewed their fight for Washington's NFL team to change its name and mascot.

At least eight high schools across the country have dropped "Redskins" names in the last four years. In 2012, Oregon passed a law to force schools to change Native American mascots without tribal approval, and in October, California enacted a law that bans high schools there from using "Redskins." Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) recently formed a task force to review the use of such mascots in his state.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Education released the findings of a year-long tribal listening tour, during which Native American students told federal officials that states and school districts should consider changing the mascots because of the harm they can cause.

Ray Halbritter, the representative of the Oneida Indian Nation of New York who helped launch the Change The Mascot campaign to target Washington's NFL team, praised Adidas' announcement in an email to The Huffington Post.

"This is a tremendous display of corporate leadership," Halbritter said, adding that he hopes companies that sponsor Washington's team will take notice and follow suit.

"Adidas clearly understands that this issue is about picking which side you are on," he said. "They are choosing to be on the side of inclusivity and mutual respect and have set the bar for other businesses to now follow."

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Adidas To Help High Schools Change Native American Mascots

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Adidas on Thursday announced a new initiative to help high schools change "potentially harmful" Native American mascots. The sports apparel company, which has North American headquarters in Portland, Oregon, will allow schools to volunteer for the program and will provide financial assistance for mascot and nickname changes "to ensure the transition is not cost prohibitive," it said in a release.

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By Moni Basu, CNN

(CNN) - Suzan Shown Harjo remembers when she walked into a store with her grandfather in El Reno, Oklahoma. She wanted to get something cool to drink on a summer day. It was the early 1950s and the storekeepers told the 6-year-old she had to leave.

"No black redskins in here," they said.

At that moment, Harjo felt small, unsafe, afraid. Because she was a dark-skinned Native American - Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee - she was being identified by just her coloring. She wasn't even a whole human being. Not even her grandpa, whom she saw as all-powerful, could do anything to protect her.

Later in her life, that incident made her angry. Angry enough for Harjo to launch a lifelong mission to protect her people.

Part of her work took aim at sporting teams that use Native Americans as mascots. With the start of the baseball season this week, some of those teams have been front and center. The Cleveland Indians, for instance, feature a smiling Indian dubbed Chief Wahoo, criticized by Native Americans as a racist caricature.

The most offensive example of a mascot, says Harjo, is the one used by Washington's football team. She has been fighting for years to get the Redskins to change their name.

The R-word - she can't even bring herself to say it - is the same as the N-word, says Harjo, president of Morning Star Institute, a national Native American rights organization.

She finds it unbelievable that more than half a century after she was told to get out of that El Reno store, after decades of civil rights struggles and progress on race relations, Americans have no problem with rooting for a team called the Redskins.

Fans say the name is an honorific. But the Merriam-Webster dictionary says this: "The word redskin is very offensive and should be avoided." And to many Native Americans, nothing could be more derogatory than the use of that word.

"The Washington team - it's the king of the mountain," Harjo says. "When this one goes, others will."

The controversy over Native American names in sports is longstanding and surfaces in headlines now and then, as it did in December when the Atlanta Braves baseball team was reportedly considering bringing back a dated "screaming Indian" logo for batting practice caps.

Or when Amanda Blackhorse, a 31-year-old Navajo social worker, went to Washington last month to attend a hearing of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. She has petitioned to cancel the Redskins trademark on grounds that the name is racist. Harjo filed a similar petition in 1992 and won, but she later lost in the appeals process.

Harjo was defeated in the courts, but public opinion has been shifting steadily on the matter.

In March, several lawmakers introduced a bill in Congress that would amend the Trademark Act of 1946 to ban the term "redskin" in a mark because it is disparaging of native people. Among the sponsors of the bill is civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia.

Harjo says she hopes the legislation will accomplish what litigation has failed to do so far.

If passed, the bill would force the Washington football team to discard its trademarked name and ban the use of any offensive term in any future trademarks.

Proponents believe that Native American mascots pay homage to the people and help promote a better understanding of those who dominated America before Europeans landed.

But opponents say the mascots perpetuate stereotypes that are void of context and history. They argue that even if the mascots themselves are not racially insensitive, they portray native people as one-dimensional.

"A good many Americans don't know any Indians," says Kevin Gover, who heads the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian.

"The Indian you see most often in Washington, D.C., is at a football game - at the expense of real Indians, real history, real culture. The petty stereotype has become expected."

In February, the Smithsonian museum hosted a symposium on racist stereotypes and cultural appropriation in American sports. The idea was to make people think about how these stereotypes can be damaging to Indians.

"Kids grow up and think it's OK," Gover says. "It's not OK."

There used to be more than 3,000 teams with Native American names and mascots. That's down to about 900 now - but that's still 900 too many for Gover.

He grew up, also in Oklahoma, and recalled how the University of Oklahoma became the first collegiate team to drop its unofficial mascot, Little Red, a student who dressed as an Indian chief and danced on the sidelines during football games.

Protests on campus forced the demise of Little Red. In 2005, Oklahoma adopted two costumed horses, Boomer and Sooner, as mascots who represented the real horses that pulled the Sooner Schooner. But many students didn't take to them.

One of them was Royce Young, who wrote about the university's "mascot crisis" in an online forum in 2007:

"But why can't OU bring back Little Red? Oklahoma prides itself on being 'Native America.' American Indian heritage is something that is more prevalent in this state than any other in the nation. Would it be so wrong to have Native American imagery representing 'Native America?' "

Young, 27, and a writer for CBS Sports, said he now believes he would have written a more educated post after having discussed the mascot issue with Native Americans.

"I wouldn't say I regret writing it," he said. "But I'd be much more sensitive of understanding why Little Red was insensitive to some instead of saying, 'What's the big deal?' "

Royce said he saw nothing wrong with Oklahoma honoring its native people, but not with a tasteless mascot.

Several college teams followed Oklahoma's footsteps and dropped Native American mascots - Stanford and Syracuse among them.

The movement to do away with Indian mascots gained momentum after the American Psychological Association in 2005 called for the immediate retirement of the mascots based on studies that showed the harmful effects of inaccurate racial portrayals.

The following year, the NCAA, the governing body of collegiate sports, adopted a policy banning teams with "hostile or abusive racial/ethnic/national origin mascots, nicknames or imagery" from competition. The ban affected high-powered football schools such as Florida State University with Chief Osceola and the University of Illinois, whose official symbol was Chief Illiniwek.

Some states have put the morality of the Indian mascots up for a vote.

Last year, voters dumped the University of North Dakota's Fighting Sioux mascot. And Oregon prohibited public schools from the use of Native American names, symbols or images. The names on the banned list include: Redskins, Savages, Indians, Indianettes, Chiefs and Braves.

At Florida State University, a white man dresses up as Chief Osceola, smears war paint on his face and rides an appaloosa called Renegade to the middle of Doak Campbell Stadium. He plants a burning spear on the field before every home game. The marching band plays Indian-themed music, and the crowd goes wild doing the "tomahawk chop," a move picked up by the Atlanta Braves.

FSU student Lincoln Golike, who played Osceola in 2002, told the Florida State Times back then that it was tremendous honor to have so many admiring fans.

The Seminole tribe in Florida made an agreement with FSU to allow the use of its name that allows the university to continue competing in the NCAA. The university says its relationship with the Seminole tribe is one of mutual respect.

However, the Seminole nation in Oklahoma, comprised of the descendants of a majority of the Seminoles forced from their lands by the Indian Removal Act, has voiced its opposition to FSU's mascot.

The real Chief Osceola fought U.S. soldiers in the Seminole Wars. He was captured in 1837 under a flag of truce and died in prison. Before his burial, the soldiers chopped off the head of the Indian warrior to keep as a trophy. That Osceola serves as a mascot at FSU doesn't sit well with the Seminoles in Oklahoma and many other Native Americans.

"Native Americans feel offended, they feel hurt. They feel their identity is being trivialized," says Carol Spindel, who wrote "Dancing at Halftime," a book that explored native mascots.

"This is such an ingrained part of American culture that it's very hard to get people to question it," says Spindel, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where the official symbol used to be Chief Illiniwek. He was the subject of debate for decades and made his last appearance in 2007 under the threat of NCAA sanctions.

But five years later, there are still some who want Illiniwek back. A nonbinding student referendum held just weeks ago strongly favored making him the official mascot again.

Spindel concluded in her book that mascots such as Chief Illiniwek were a reflection not of native people but of those who invented them.

"If we do a census of the population in our collective imagination, imaginary Indians are one of the largest demographic groups," Spindel writes in her book.

"They dance, they drum, they go on the warpath; they are always young men who wear trailing feather bonnets. Symbolic servants, they serve as mascots and metaphors. We rely on these images to anchor us to the land and verify our account of our own past. But as these Indians exist only in our own imaginations, they provide a solipsistic connection and leave us, ultimately, untethered and rootless."

At 67, Harjo believes she has made strides in her struggle to do away with racial stereotypes but says Native Americans have a long way to go.

"Because we as Indians, we don't have the numbers," she says, referring to the dwindling population. The latest census listed 2.9 million people as American Indian and Alaska Native.

"So we don't pose a threat," she says. "If we organized a march, the numbers would be so small. We've done it school by school. State by state."

Harjo knows if the powerful Washington football team is forced to discard its name, then everyone else will follow. But for now, she takes pride in small victories.

Just a few weeks ago, a high school in Cooperstown, New York, decided to retire its R-word mascot.

C.J. Hebert, superintendent for the Cooperstown Central School District, said students approached him regarding their discomfort with the mascot that had been around for decades.

"I do think that times change and perspectives change, and certainly it's historically a time for us to reconsider what the name is," Hebert said.

That's a statement that makes Harjo feel her campaign has been worthwhile.
Tell us what you think about Native American names and mascots below.

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Native American mascots: Pride or prejudice?

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By Moni Basu, CNN (CNN) -- Suzan Shown Harjo remembers when she walked into a store with her grandfather in El Reno, Oklahoma. She wanted to get something cool to drink on a summer day. It was the early 1950s and the storekeepers told the 6-year-old she had to leave.

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What is wrong with "Indian" Mascots and Team Names? The answer to this question is both complex and simple. The simple answer is that they are disrespectful and hurtful to First Nations people. ...

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Latest News

Key NCAI Resources

NCAI's Longstanding Opposition to Harmful "Indian" Sports Mascots

As the nation's oldest, largest, and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native advocacy organization, NCAI has long held a clear position against derogatory and harmful stereotypes of Native people - including sports mascots - in media and popular culture. Since NCAI launched its campaign to address stereotypes of Native people in popular culture, media, and sports in 1968, significant progress has been made in pursuit of ending the era of "Indian"

NCAI's position is clear, longstanding, and deeply rooted in our 78 years as a leading voice for Indian Country - we advocate for and protect the civil rights, social justice, and racial equity of all Native people in all parts of American society.

NCAI's Work to End "Indian" Mascots

NCAI is the oldest, largest, and most representative national organization that shares the unified voice of hundreds of Tribal Nations representing millions of Native people, and that voice has been consistent and clear for decades: sports mascots are symbols of disrespect that degrade, mock, and harm Native people, particularly Native youth. NCAI's work to end "Indian" or Native "themed" mascots, used interchangeably here, is guided by our numerous resolutions pertaining to cultural appropriation and the harmful effects of these mascots. For decades, NCAI largely focused its efforts on ending "Indian" mascots at the professional level, directing specific attention to the former mascot of the NFL's Washington "Commanders". In 2020, NCAI formally expanded the initiative to include work at the K-12 level, which included the development of the National School Mascot Tracking Database . In 2021, NCAI further expanded the initiative to include work at the state level, developing a State Activity Tracker and engaging directly with state legislatures pursuing mascot bans through legislation .

NCAI's Ending "Indian" Mascots initiative currently focuses on three primary levels: the K-12 school level, the state level, and the professional sports level.

To request NCAI's help at the K-12 or state levels, please email mascots@ncai.org .

Archive of NCAI News and Updates

November 2021
Ending "Indian" Mascots Update: More School Districts Retire their Native "Themed" Mascots, NCAI Shares Statement on Atlanta "Braves" Mascot and Fan Rituals (11.04.21) NCAI Reiterates Longstanding Opposition to Atlanta Braves' Mascot and "Tomahawk Chop" Fan Ritual as Team Plays in World Series (10.27.21)

August 2021
Ending "Indian" Mascots Update: NCAI Launches State Activity Tracker (08.03.21)
July 2021
NCAI Commends Announcement by Major League Baseball's Cleveland Franchise of Its New Name "Guardians" (07.23.21)
Ending "Indian" Mascots Update: NCAI Presents Overview of National School Mascot Tracking Database; More Native "Themed" Mascots are Retired, Replaced (07.12.21)

NCAI Statement on the Washington Football Team's Retirement of Racist Mascot (07.13.20) June 2021
Ending "Indian" Mascots Update: Colorado and Nevada Pass Bills Banning Native "Themed" Mascots, Logos, and Team Names (06.08.21)

April 2021
Ending "Indian" Mascots Update: The State of Washington Bans Native "Themed" Mascots, Logos, and Team Names (04.28.21)

Ending "Indian" Mascots Update: NCAI President Commemorates Anniversary of Retirement of Washington Football Team's Mascot; More Schools Retire Their Native "Themed" Mascots July 2020

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Ending the Era of Harmful "Indian" Mascots

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As the nation's oldest, largest, and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native advocacy organization, NCAI has long held a clear position against derogatory and harmful stereotypes of Native people - including sports mascots - in media and popular culture.

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Resolution to retire native mascots

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In 2005, the APA called for the immediate retirement of all American Indian mascots, symbols, images and personalities by schools, colleges, universities, athletic teams and organizations. APA's position is based on a growing body of social science literature that shows the harmful effects of racial stereotyping and inaccurate racial portrayals, including the particularly harmful effects of American Indian sports mascots on the social identity development and self-esteem of American Indian young people.

Research has shown that the continued use of American Indian mascots, symbols, images and personalities has a negative effect on not only American Indian students but all students by:

Undermining the educational experiences of members of all communities-especially those who have had little or no contact with indigenous peoples. The symbols, images and mascots teach non-Indian children that it's acceptable to participate in culturally abusive behavior and perpetuate inaccurate misconceptions about American Indian culture.

Establishes an unwelcome and often times hostile learning environment for American Indian students that affirms negative images/stereotypes that are promoted in mainstream society.

According to Stephanie Fryberg, PhD, University of Arizona, this appears to have a negative impact on the self-esteem of American Indian children, "American Indian mascots are harmful not only because they are often negative, but because they remind American Indians of the limited ways in which others see them. This in turn restricts the number of ways American Indians can see themselves."

Undermines the ability of American Indian Nations to portray accurate and respectful images of their culture, spirituality and traditions. Many American Indians report that they find today's typical portrayal of American Indian culture disrespectful and offensive to their spiritual beliefs.

Presents stereotypical images of American Indians. Such mascots are a contemporary example of prejudice by the dominant culture against racial and ethnic minority groups.

Is a form of discrimination against American Indian Nations that can lead to negative relations between groups.

"We know from the literature that oppression, covert and overt racism, and perceived racism can have serious negative consequences for the mental health of American Indian and Alaska native people. The discontinued use of American Indian mascots is a gesture to show that this kind of racism toward and the disrespect of, all people in our country and in the larger global context, will not be tolerated," said Lisa Thomas, PhD, APA Committee on Ethnic and Minority Affairs.

To eradicate the hurtful presence of stereotypical imaging of American Indians, the APA encourages continued research on the psychological effects that these mascots, symbols, images and personalities have on American Indian communities and others.

The APA is calling upon all psychologists to speak out against racism, and take proactive steps to prevent the occurrence of intolerant or racist acts and recommends the immediate retirement of American Indian mascots, symbols, images and personalities by schools, colleges, universities, athletic teams and organizations.

This document is based on the APA American Indian Mascot Resolution adopted by the APA's Council of Representatives in September 2005.

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apa resolution recommending retirement of american indian mascots

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In 2005, the APA called for the immediate retirement of all American Indian mascots, symbols, images and personalities by schools, colleges, universities, athletic teams and organizations. APA's position is based on a growing body of social science literature that shows the harmful effects of racial stereotyping and inaccurate racial portrayals, including the particularly harmful effects of American Indian sports mascots on the social identity development and self-esteem of American Indian young people.

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Should ALL Native American Mascots be BANNED? | Decoded | MTV News

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opinion: native americans: we're not your mascots - cnn

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Opinion: Native Americans: We're not your mascots - CNN

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Simon Moya-Smith explains why most people can recognize what's anti-black, anti-gay, or anti-Latino -- but don't recognize racism against Native Americans.

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No Place for Native American MAscots

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Imagine the outrage if a sports team, college or professional, decided to have a mascot that lampooned African Americans or Latinos. Or Catholics or Jews. Or the disabled.

It just wouldn't happen. Some things aren't funny or clever in any form, violating the bounds of respect and decency by their very nature.

Yet when the Cleveland Indians take the field for the ALCS on Friday night, they'll do so with Chief Wahoo on their sleeves and, most likely, their hats. With his red face, toothy grin and feather, the logo reduces the entire Native American race to a caricature, something less than human.

"It's denigrating, whether they intend it or not. It's objectifying us," Aaron Payment, chairman of the Sault Ste Marie tribe of Chippewa Indians and an executive officer of the National Congress of American Indians, said Thursday.

"We're the only race that is subjected to this."

And it's time - long past time, actually - that it stops. Chief Wahoo, the racist nickname of Washington's NFL team, the ignorant cheer by Atlanta Braves fans - they're all offensive, relics of our past that should be sources of embarrassment rather than pride.

Those who defend these stereotypical nicknames, mascots and logos, often vehemently, insist they're honoring Native Americans, that no one is being hurt by them.

But that's not our determination to make.

Jerald Beckman holds up a sign in protest of the use of Chief Wahoo by the Cleveland Indians baseball club. (Photo: Tony Dejak, AP)

Native Americans have said repeatedly that they find logos like Chief Wahoo or nicknames like the Redskins offensive and demeaning. They've even gone to court to stop their use. For fans to then say, "Oh, they're not that bad," or "Our fans have a deep attachment to the (fill in the blank)" is the height of arrogance.

Yes, there are some Native Americans who have said they don't have a problem with the logos or the nicknames. But as long as there are even a few who do, who find them hurtful and demeaning, the topic should not be up for discussion.

"It makes being Native that much more difficult," said Jacqueline Keeler, a founding member of an activist group called Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry.

"Most Americans are not aware tribes are not just social clubs, they're actual sovereign states," said Keeler, whose parents moved to Cleveland as part of the "Termination Policy," the federal government's efforts in the 1950s to shut down reservations.

"Most Americans are completely clueless (about Native American history), and mascots don't help."

In fact, they can be quite damaging. The American Psychological Association called for an end to Indian mascots back in 2005, saying they damaged the self-esteem of Native American children and taught non-Indian children that it was OK to participate in and perpetuate culturally abusive behavior.

Meagen Kresge protests the use of Chief Wahoo by the Cleveland Indians baseball club. (Photo: Tony Dejak, AP)

And it goes beyond that. A social psychologist at the University at Buffalo found last year that Native American mascots were damaging to all ethnic groups.

"Studies with mostly white samples have found that people exposed to American Indian mascots are more likely to negatively stereotype other ethnic groups as well," said Wendy Quinton, the Buffalo researcher.

Translation: If something is hurtful to one group, it's hurtful to all. So why are we still so hellbent on defending things that do that?

The Indians at least acknowledge Chief Wahoo can be considered offensive, officially bumping it down to "secondary logo" status this season after reducing its use the last few years. But the team said in a statement it has "no plans of making a change" at this time, and the logo is still featured prominently on its uniform and, of course, its merchandise.

Of the 70-plus items for sale on the Indians website, almost half feature the Wahoo logo. (They at least had the good sense not to put it on the "Respect" T-shirts.)

"As long as the Cleveland Indians can continue to make money off that Wahoo, they're going to continue," said Zack Reed, a Cleveland councilman who has lobbied against the logo. "Until they start getting hit - hard - in that wallet, they're not going to abolish it completely.

"They're phasing it out," Reed added. "But that's like telling me you're phasing out slavery. If it's bad, it's bad."

Teams and fans can try and justify the use of Native American logos and nicknames all they want. But there's never an excuse to denigrate or demean a group of people, and doing it for profit or entertainment only makes it worse.

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Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.

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No place for Native American nicknames or mascots

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Imagine the outrage if a sports team, college or professional, decided to have a mascot that lampooned African Americans or Latinos. Or Catholics or Jews. Or the disabled. It just wouldn't happen. Some things aren't funny or clever in any form, violating the bounds of respect and decency by their very nature.

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School Keeps Mascot

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Courtesy SAD 54 | BDN

No one would deny that our education system is responsible for protecting environments that promote learning and development for all students. Yet this noble goal is diminished for all students by the perpetuation of cultural symbols that demean the Native American identity.

The school board for School Administrative District 54, which includes Skowhegan Area High School, and the Maine State Board of Education are failing to create safe, welcoming and equal educational environments for their students by maintaining the Skowhegan Indians mascot.

Against formal opposition from tribal leaders and citizens from across the state, the SAD 54 board voted 11 to 9 to maintain the mascot last year. Similarly, the Maine State Board of Education ignored tribal and citizen appeals by refusing to consider a statewide ban on such mascots. As a result, Maine's chapter of Not Your Mascot, a grass-roots group addressing the misappropriation of indigenous identity and culture, presented a 1,000-signature petition to the Skowhegan-area school board asking again that the mascot be changed.

Native American mascots are fundamentally racist and create hostile and less successful learning environments for Native people. Even if the boards are relatively unconcerned with the mascot's offensiveness, they must be concerned with the educational and personal consequences on their students and communities. In fact, the Maine State Board of Education's guiding principles explain that "all students learn best in a well-constructed, safe environment in which they feel respected."

Native American mascots have personal and academic consequences for Native students. Systematic research demonstrates that Native American mascots harm Native American students' self-esteem, their feelings of value in their communities and their belief in their professional potential - the opposite of what school boards should be working to promote. These consequences are consistent with decades of research concluding that stereotypes hurt their targets academically, personally and professionally - even if those stereotypes are " positive."

Native mascots perpetuate the stereotypically " historically frozen" perception of Native people, leaving Native students and community members feeling out of place and time - unheard and unrepresented. This perception of irrelevance is amplified by the SAD 54 board's claims that the mascot is intending to "honor" Native people, as if they, rather than Native Americans themselves, are best able to determine what honors and what dishonors.

Although these immediate consequences are important, Maine's success as a state depends upon open cooperation between state institutions and tribes. If local or state boards of education support the requested removal of Native mascots, it will promote a culture of respect and improve communication on other critical issues with Maine's tribal communities.

Perhaps most importantly, successful education is critical to the growth of Maine's economy. If local or state boards reject Native mascots, they can produce better prepared workers and promote job growth by removing a barrier to success for some of the most at-risk students in Maine.

Citizens across Maine should contact local and state education board officials to ask that they promote a safe, supportive and equal environment in Maine schools by removing the Indians mascot. They can write or call the SAD 54 board and the State Board of Education to ask that they support successful education that is equal and welcoming for all students.

When the boards choose to support the tribes and their students in this way, it ultimately will help create a more stable and positive relationship between Maine's tribes and its citizens, as well as foster a positive educational environment for all of Maine's students.
Andrew Tomer is a graduate student in psychology at the University of Maine. Jordan LaBouff is an assistant professor of psychology and honors at the University of Maine.

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Skowhegan schools keep 'Indians' mascot and stand for what they should oppose

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OpEd: Citizens across Maine should contact local and state education board officials to ask that they promote a safe, supportive and equal environment in Maine schools by removing the Indians mascot.. Maine news, sports, politics, election results, and obituaries from the Bangor Daily News.

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has revoked the trademark of the NFL's Washington Redskins, after ruling in a case brought by five Native Americans who say the name disparages them. While the decision could have wide repercussions, it does not require the team to change its name. It is also subject to appeal, which the team has confirmed it will pursue.

In a statement about the decision, the patent office said the petitioners proved that "the term 'Redskins' was disparaging of Native Americans, when used in relation to professional football services, at the times the various registrations involved in the cancellation proceeding were issued."

As a result, the agency said, "the federal registrations for the 'Redskins' trademarks involved in this proceeding must be cancelled."
Update at 12:30 p.m. ET: Redskins Say They'll Appeal
"We've seen this story before. And just like last time, today's ruling will have no effect at all on the team's ownership of and right to use the Redskins name and logo," says Bob Raskopf, the team's trademark attorney.

Raskopf added, "This case is no different than an earlier case, where the Board cancelled the Redskins' trademark registrations, and where a federal district court disagreed and reversed the Board."

We've updated the top of this post with news of the appeal, which had been expected.
Our original post continues:
Explaining the decision's immediate effects, the agency said its review board "determines only whether a mark can be registered with the federal government (and thus gain the additional legal benefits thereof), not whether it can be used."

The Associated Press adds:

"If it stands, it would mean the team can continue to use the name, but it would lose a significant portion of its ability to protect the financial interests connected to it. If others printed the name on sweatshirts or other apparel without permission, it would become more cumbersome to go after such groups."

The trademarks in question date back to the 1960s and '70s. The Washington, D.C., team lost a similar trademark case in the late 1990s, only to have its registration reinstated by a U.S. District Court in 2003. It is almost certain the team will appeal the agency's latest decision.

From The Washington Post:

"Federal trademark law does not permit registration of trademarks that 'may disparage' individuals or groups or 'bring them into contempt or disrepute.' The ruling pertains to six different trademarks associated with the team, each containing the word 'Redskin.' "

The decision comes from the patent office's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, which said the trademark registrations will remain "on the federal register of marks" and wouldn't be officially listed as canceled until "after any judicial review is completed."

The football team has been under increasing pressure to change its name. You can follow our coverage here.

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has revoked the trademark of the NFL's Washington Redskins, after ruling in a case brought by five Native Americans who say the name disparages them. While the decision could have wide repercussions, it does not require the team to change its name.