The Enduring Smear: Sport team names, mascots and Native Nations

Bulls, Bears, along with Cubs - animals. White Sox - inanimate objects.  These are the names of the city of Chicago’s well know professional sports teams.  This Memorial Day weekend Chicago’s National Hockey League team will begin play for the league championship for the first time since 1961.

For their fans it is a return to greatness (even if considered a Cinderella story.) But for those of Native blood, this year Stanley Cup playoffs are a painful reminder of ignorance, hostility, and cultural indifference. Why? Simply because of the teams name - Blackhawks.

Blackhawk (Macatas meshe kiak iak-“Black Sparrow Hawk” called “Blackhawk” by whites) the great warrior of the Sauk Nation (who sided with the British during the war of 1812, looking at them as the lesser of two evils, the other encroaching Americans who were taking Sauk lands) who as a Nation of people were forced to the place known as “Indian Territory”(now the state of Oklahoma) have seen their warrior desecrated in death and this continues now as the descendents have never been asked their opinion concerning the usage of their warrior’s name, nor the visual representation that is supposed to reflect his likeness in becoming a mascot for a hockey team! Even if they were from what is now the state of Illinois.

The usage of visual images (no matter how distasteful.) and sovereign names of this country’s (the U.S. that is) indigenous people for naming sports teams has gone on for generations has allowed people of other cultures and communities to look upon Native nationals on the level of animals, (even though we revere them.) or nonliving objects rather than living, breathing, thinking, and feeling human beings.

Yes we have all heard the owners and other representatives of these teams with names such as “Chiefs”, “Braves “ and yes “Indians” say they keep the names out of respect of Native people., However we must realize that it was/is the very lack of the same that caused this problem to begin with.

Even the U.S Army gets into the act by naming its helicopters after the names of Native Nations (i.e. the “Apache”, the Iroquois and the soon to come online “Comanche”.) they crushed with guns, bullets, disease, sabers and subterfuge making similar claims of “honoring” the “fighting” spirit of their former adversaries.  But have we become former adversaries?  Some how this writer does not believe so, even if the war zone is no longer a physical battlefield, instead it has become psychological mental conditioning.  The dominate cultures ideas of the bound and determined “war like” “fierce” “savage” stereotype rears it’s ugly head on the national stage yet again, but in oh so subtle ways, but that is the way racism works  in America today with inconspicuous “brain washing”.

No, the battlefield lies in the hearts and minds of the public who see and hear these names but do not see a proud people, just more or less a figment of their collective imaginations at best ,or an abhorration at worst.

Natives in America have for years complained loudly of how hurtful al of this is, but their complaints are ignored.  When the good people of Washington D.C.’s neighborhoods were suffering from gun violence went to the National Basketball Association and the owners of the city’s franchise then named the “Bullets”, the folks there forced them to change the name to the “Wizards”.  The pressure was exerted by the community because they saw the previous name as a negative reminder of the destruction around them.  But the underlying reason was strength in numbers with pocketbooks, pocketbooks that purchase tickets, caps, jerseys, t-shirts and such.  Unfortunately for the “Indians” there has not been a large enough “money base” to make the team owners rethink their position. Case in point: the continued use of the racist epithet “Redskins” for the same city’s NFL football team. The native community complains (during the 2009 season in fact) but the owners have turned a deaf ear.

The longer these names/images exist, the more engrained they become. The more engrained, the more accepted they become. The more accepted, the more permanent it becomes.

This is not new in America.  No less than a former president, founding father and principle author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson pretty much helped lay the  groundwork for how future white Americans would react to, feel about and treat people of color, Particularly Black and Native peoples.

In the Declaration there lies a short but damaging passage, it reads: He (the king of England) has excited domestic insurrection amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is a  undistinged destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

Years later after he was president of the United States of America, Jefferson sent a letter to Baron Alexander von Humboldt, in this letter he writes this way about native people.  He writes: “on the commencement of our present war, (the war of 1812) was pressed on then the observance of peace and neutrality, but the interested and unprincipled policy of England had defeated all out labors for the salvation of these unfortunate people.  They have seduced the greater part of the tribes within our neighborhood to take up the hatchet against us, and the cruel massacres they have committed on the women and children of our frontiers taken by surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination or drive them to new seats beyond our reach… The confirmed brutalization, if not the extermination of this race in our America, is therefore to form an additional chapter in the English history of the same colored man in Asia”

Well, there you have it; Natives (as well as other people of color) are incorrigible “savages”!  This “savage” stereotyping has been used against natives and blacks in America as long as there has been an America.  Branded this by no less then a founding fathers and president.  As for Native nationals being “unfortunate” is concerned, it would seen the unfortunate part of this was their coming in contact with the likes of someone such as Thomas Jefferson and others with similar views.  Things of this nature create a lasting image, and image matters.

Speaking of image, the subject leads me to wonder if Chicago should win the Stanley Cup will the current president Mr. Obama, who is from Chicago, give them congratulations?. Will U.S. President Barack Obama, a man of color, student of history, whose family (according to him) has Cherokee blood, have the team to the White House knowing how offensive the use of the name is and how native nationals feel?  One must remember he was made an honorary member of the Crow nation during his presidential campaign.  During this time he gave the impression he understood the concerns of native peoples.  One would “hope” he will not have forgotten this if Chicago is victorious. Hopefully he and others will remember that the show of respect of history, culture, and the human dignity of a proud people are more important than systematic racism and a championship season.

Let us hope that if Chicago wins that the benevolence of the American value of fairness is not just for those with wealth and power, but for all, especially those who have had to endure the pain of oppression and humiliation for so long.


* David E. Stannard, American Holocaust Columbus and the conquest of the New World, Oxford University Press 1992




Gwendolyn Wydermyre is a Black Indian/Native national of Chiricahua Apache descent. She is a filmmaker in New York City.