sports essay

10.1177/0193732503261477 ARTICLE JOURNAL OF SPORT & SOCIAL ISSUES / February 2004 NATIVE AMERICAN IDENTITY AND MASCOT DEBATES “I’M INDIAN TOO!” Claiming Native American Identity, Crafting Authority in Mascot Debates Charles Fruehling Springwood The author examines the ways in which people who are not “ethnically Indian” have, nevertheless, strategically claimed Indianness to argue in favor of Native American mascots. The selective (mis)use and inflation of American Indian identity is hardly a new practice, but in this context, it occurs to very specific political ends. This debate has important consequences for all Native Americans. Indeed, it is argued here that a number of White people are now rhetorically fabricating Indianness in debates, not to realign themselves psychically or sympathetically with Native Americans but rather to obscure, if not dissolve, Native voices.

Keywords:American Indians; athletic mascots; discourse; ethnic identity; racism A s local and national debates over Native American athletic mascots have raged from coast to coast over the past several years (King 2002; King & Springwood, 2001), one preoccupation among non- Indian people that has emerged centers on trying to learn precisely what American Indians think about the issue (see King, Staurowsky, Baca, Davis, & Pewewardy, 2002). Indeed, some argue that Native voices embody a genu- ine authenticity that renders them more authoritative. In this article, I examine the ways in which people who are not “ethnically Indian” have, nev- ertheless, strategically claimed Indianness to argue in favor of Native Amer- ican mascots. The selective (mis)use and inflation of American Indian iden- tity is hardly a new practice, but in this case, it occurs to very specific political ends, in a debate that has important consequences for all Native Americans. In contrast to the practices discussed by Brenda Farnell (Farnell, 2004 [in this issue]), wherein Euro-American people directly modu- late, attack and deny the antimascot voices of American Indian people by telling Native Americans, essentially, that they “have it all wrong,” hereI identify Euro-Americans who simply trespass on the space of Indian iden- tity. Indeed, I argue below that a number of White people are now rhetori- cally fabricating Indianness in debates, not to realign themselves psychi- cally or sympathetically with Native Americans but rather to obscure, if not dissolve, Native voices. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, Volume 28, No. 1, February 2004, pp. 56-70 DOI: 10.1177/0193732503261477 © 2004 Sage Publications As a researcher and activist, I have been at the center of the Native American mascots controversy over the last 10 years, most notably in Champaign-Urbana, where the University of Illinois’s Chief Illiniwek has reigned as the contested object of protest and support (King, 1998; King & Springwood, 2000, 2001; Prochaska, 2001; Spindel, 2000). As a result of my interest in the debates and my numerous conversations and interviews with both supporters and opponents of mascots, I have gradually become aware of the practice of “instant Indianness” as a way of fabricating discursive capital in these contests. Often, I have observed, when Native Americans speak out against mascots, they are confronted by mascot defenders who conspicu - ously claim Indian ancestry. Further, as detailed later in this essay, I have been impressed by the obsession of some mascot supporters to locate, quote, and, in some cases, even fabricate a “real” Native American who actually does support Indian mascots. In fact, the original inspiration for this essay was my reaction to a very brief statement in a lengthy report about Chief Illiniwek published in 2000 by the University of Illinois Trustees 1titled “Dialogue on Chief Illiniwek.” The report summarized a public hearing (of sorts) about the University of Illinois mascot, a hearing which lasted several months and included public “intake sessions” and invited members of the public to send written opinions via post or e-mail.

Although surveys have suggested a majority of Native Americans are opposed to Indian mascots (“American Indian Opinion Leaders,” 2001; King et al., 2002), it was revealed and nearly every prominent American Indian organization has condemned them, in a published addendum to the report that of those self-identified Native American respondents who voiced an opinion, 75% voted to support such icons. The moderator of the dialogue and the author of its report, retired Judge Louis B. Garippo, wrote, In setting up the database, I thought it would be informative to provide a cate- gory for Native American response. I instructed the staff to set up a category of all persons identifying themselves as American Indian. Some writers with American Indian heritage quantified their bloodlines by percentage for exam- ple: full bloodied [sic], one half, one eighth, etc. I told the staff to adopt the single drop rule: ie., if the writer claimed any percentage of Indian blood, that writer would be included as a Native American. When we were well into the process, we were finding that 75% of the people in that Native America category favored retention of the Chief. Because of my arbitrary definition of who is a Native American and the general unreliability of the numbers, that category was not included in the report thereby preventing a debate as to who should be consid- ered Native American and which Indian voices are to be heard. (Garippo, 2000) Certainly, I have encountered Native Americans who are not offended by Chief Illiniwek, nor even by such monikers as the Redskins. As a cultural analyst, I hardly expect unanimous opinion from any single cultural com- munity. Nevertheless, this number did not seem to reflect the balance of opinion among those many Native Americans I had interviewed or whom I encountered in conversation. In part, then, I attempt to investigate the data from which this figure was obtained, and the data which structure my argu- NATIVE AMERICAN IDENTITY AND MASCOT DEBATES 57 58 JOURNAL OF SPORT & SOCIAL ISSUES / February 2004 ments include several of the statements sent in by people wishing to voice an opinion about Chief Illiniwek. In addition, I draw from interviews with Native Americans who have participated in public debate about mascots. 2 CAVEATS AND AMBIVALENCE With my arguments in this article, I am traversing substantially dan - gerous territory. And such danger ensues not merely because I am resolutely a non-Indian scholar, although that fact does frame some of my trepidation.

Danger commonly accompanies any effort to critically assess or to even put into interpretive relief anyone else’s claims to an ethnic identity. Indeed, those who study culture are usually trained to consider the spontaneous claims of their cultural subjects seriously, even empathetically. Who amI, then—a White scholar—to be qualifying and even doubting someone else’s proclamation of Indianness? Long before the present, certainly, the issueof authentic American Indian identity has been highly contested, within, with - out, and across Native American communities. For well over a century, at least, narrations of ancestry, culture, mixed blood, and even half-breedhave animated these discourses (Hagan, 1985; Weaver, 2001). The experiences of mixed-blood individuals and families remind us of the difficulties in analyz- ing Indian identities and contested claims of Indianness. Indeed, in contem- plating her relationship to her sister, ethnic studies professor PatriciaPenn Hilden (1995) clarifies these dimensions in her reflective book of essays, When Nickels Were Indians. That there were confusing ironies in my “whiteness” and her “redness” how- ever, quickly became apparent. Because I was “mainstream” according to the physical markers of race in that place and time my Indian blood, however aggressively claimed, was easily contained as “heritage,” as a movie of mycolor- ful past. I was, in effect, a vanished Indian, and safe. There was no chance that the civilized, blue-eyed “I”theysaw, even sitting alone on horseback on a ridge silhouetted against a distant sky, would suddenly be joined by thousands of screaming, murderous sister warriors, riding down the mountain to slaughter terrified “settlers.” At the same time, for my grandfather, whose flight from his Indian boarding school had not entirely protected him from the processes of “forced assimilation,” I was the perfect granddaughter, wide of blue eye and utterly devoted to the dark-skinned 6’4” giant who filled our world and thatof many of our envious, movie-addicted friends. He chose both of us sisters: I, like my mother “whiter than white,” she with more equivocal racial identity—to hear stores, to learn the traditions, to know who he was, who his people were.So there we were, the “whitest” child with the “reddest,” becoming warriors— defined in the Onandoga language as “those who bear the burden of the bones of the ancestors.” (Hilden, 1995, pp. 16-18) Even in her own family, the unmarked physical nature of her Indianness was central, and later, it would determine the shape of her relationships with the American Indian community.

I will not, however, be examining issues of mixed Indian racial identi- ties of the sort implied by Hilden’s personal remarks in the balance of this essay. Rather, I wish to highlight the efforts of some non-Indian people to assert, imagine, inflate, or even completely invent a claim to Indian identity for tactical purposes to enhance their own personal voices with the cultural- racial capital of Indianness. The practice of White people constructing their own cultural or individual identities in terms of appropriated and misappro - priated Native American symbols and traditions began with the very first contact between Europeans and Indian people. For many decades now, both Native and non-Indian scholars have written critically about these highly charged uses of Indianness. Among the most nuanced of these studies is probably Philip Deloria’s bookPlaying Indian(1998; see also Green, 1988; Root, 1996). As other scholars have done, he describes what many have termed ‘Wannabees,’ White folks who attach themselves (often in an awk - ward or conspicuous fashion) to Indian signs, symbols, practices, and even Native American people to borrow or experience some sort of imagined dimension of Indianness. However, the connection of some non-Indian peo - ple to their imagined Indianness does not involve so much visual spectacles as much as opportunistic annunciations of a Native American genealogy, whether factual or otherwise.

Once again, I confess that these so-called Indian Wannabees are not, strictly speaking, at the center of my interests in this article. Nor is my con- cern necessarily the litany of casual claims to genealogical Indianness so frequently, even innocently, intoned by otherwise non-Indian people (Green, 1988; Strong & van Winkle, 1996).

No. In this article, instead, I seek to highlight the possibility that a number of non-Indian people have been claiming to be Indian, or partly Indian, only to gain a tactical advantage in the assertion of their voices in the ubiquitous debate about Native American athletic mascots. An example would be instructive here. In the spring of 2001, I was invited to speak at an all-day protest rally at the University of Illinois in which the protesterswere voicing their opposition to the school’s infamous Chief Illiniwek. Whilehelp- ing to pass out information leaflets, I witnessed an interaction that was emblematic. A young man walked up and stated, “I’m Native American, and I really don’t have a problem with the mascot.” In terms of my own biases and preconceptions, the student did not seem to embody any conspicuous markers of Indianness, such as marked dress, physical features, or accent.

But, surely as a cultural anthropologist, I knew better than to reduce any- one’s identity to such signs and symbols. Indeed, one of the broad criticisms of Indian mascot opponents is that such stereotypes do not allow non-Indian people to recognize multiple, even unmarked, forms of Indianness among Native Americans whom they meet.

Nevertheless, every nonintellectual fiber in my body insisted to me that this young man was claiming Indian identity only to lend more provoca- tive support to his defense of the mascot. Of course, I know that some Native Americans are not offended by these mascots. I personally know some of these folks. This man may, indeed, have been an enrolled member of a widely recognized tribe or even a native speaker of a native language. But, in one of my more outrageous moments of social analysis, I nonetheless concluded NATIVE AMERICAN IDENTITY AND MASCOT DEBATES 59 that he may have been inflating, if not inventing, his Native claim. Another non-Indian protester must have formulated similar conclusions because he brazenly intoned, “What’s your tribal affiliation?” As a White person, I would have been totally uncomfortable making such an implied challenge to someone’s identity. But, privately, I was glad the other student was not so delicate, because, on hearing the question, the student began to blush, and stammering, said he just knew that he had Indian blood, that it was part of his own heritage. Serious anthropological inquiry should not commonly turn on nondescript intuition, blushing, and confronting one’s claim to acul - tural or ethnic identity. To be certain, investigating the practice of local confabulations of Indianness is an extremely difficult ethnographic project.

In researching this article, I have proceeded by interviewing both Native American and non-Indian antimascot activists, asking them to broadly describe for me their interactions with supporters of Chief Illiniwek and other mascots. I have urged Native Americans, in particular, to articu - late for me their own paradigms and templates for assessing and embracing claims to Indianness. Not one of the Native Americans with whom I spoke has failed to encounter somebody whose claim(s) to Indianness they doubted or which made them feel uncomfortable. “They say it so casually, so easily that it pains me,” remarked a Native University of Illinois student. A Native American activist who has been fighting the Erwin case, Two Eagles, stated, “They think they’re identifying with [me and other Native Americans], but what they’re really doing is identifying themselves as prejudiced . . . likepeo- ple who are quick to say things like, ‘Some of my best friends are Black [or] gay’ [when they meet] African Americans or gays.” Another way of thinking about these claims is conveyed prosaically through a West Indian au pair, the central character in Jamaica Kincaid’s novelLucy(1991). She is reacting to her North American employer, who has just announced to Lucy that she, too, has her own modicum of “Indian blood”: This really surprised me. What way should I take this?…To look at her, there was nothing remotely like an Indian about her. Why claim a thing like that? . . . [She] says, “I have Indian blood in me,” and underneath everythingI could swear she says it as if she were announcing her possession of a trophy.

Howdoyougettobethesortofvictorwhocanclaimtobethevanquishedalso?

(pp. 39-41) In the research for this article, however, a similar, but slightly different, question asserted itself. How do you get to be the sort of victor who can fabri- cate the identity of the vanquished, in fact speak in their name, to attenuate their own political voices?

For example, another Indian activist whom I interviewed reasoned, “In the past, White folks would make these genealogically obscure claims of Indian ancestry—like they were related to a Cherokee princess—as a way I think of trying to align themselves with me.” But then she adds, reflectingon the more recent invocations of Indian identity in her battles with mascots, 60 JOURNAL OF SPORT & SOCIAL ISSUES / February 2004 “Something different is happening now. White people, and sometimes even Black people, are claiming the right to speak as a Native, in order to de- legitimize my struggles to clarify the pain these mascots have caused me, as an Indian” (field interview, October 9, 2001).

Another Native opponent of mascots, who completed a doctorate at the University of Illinois, commonly responds to such innuendo by asking for, point blank, an individual’s tribal affiliation. Once, a father and his daugh - ters answered this activist’s challenge by explaining, with genuine serious - ness, that their “tribe” was the Y-Indian Guide Princesses, an organization of which they had been a part for some many years. One of the “pro–Chief Illiniwek” respondents to the University of Illinois–sponsored “Dialogue,” Jessa Ovitt, unwittingly set these kinds of remarks into important context when she wrote the following to the moderator: Ask anybody and they will tell you they are “part” Indian. Why would we say this if we are racist? There are many things in this nation named after Indians; should we change everything from street names to parks to school names?

Seems ridiculous to me. (Jessa Ovitt in Garippo, 2000) Another dialogue respondent, David Weingartner, wrote, “I attended Illinois from 1961-1965 ‘The Butkus Years.’ The sight of Chief Illiniwek weaving thru the band before kick-off was awesome and made the student body proud. Enough said!” Then, the alumnus offers the following caveat in the brief postscript: “In my past life I might have been an Indian” (David Weingartner in Garippo, 2000).

Voluntarily highlighting if not inflating one’s claim to a particular eth- nicity is a common feature of the contemporary White American experience, according to Mary C. Waters (1990), author ofEthnic Options. She charac- terizes the ways in which White Americans will commonly attach them- selves to a real or imagined aspect of their heritage as “symbolic ethnicity, ” and she argues that such identifications can be fleeting and strategic and, significantly, that they do not involve the “costs” (and benefits, I wouldadd) that are typically associated with participating in and belonging to a non- White community. Waters explains how the overriding dimension of sym- bolic ethnicity—of the sort discussed here—is a political one, resultingfrom “disparity between the idea and the reality of ethnicity for white ethnics.

The reality is that white ethnics have a lot more choice and room for maneu- ver than they themselves think they do” (p. 157). Importantly, she adds, “The situation is very different for members of racial minorities, whose livesare strongly influenced by their race or national origin regardless of how much they may choose not to identify themselves in ethnic or racial terms” (p. 157).

The problem is that the White ethnics in Waters study did not seem able to distinguish between their own experience of a voluntary, personalized ethnicity and that of a member of a racial or ethnic minority (p. 158).

Waters’s notion of symbolic ethnicity is instructive, but the particular contours of ethnic Indian inflation identified in this article are significant in NATIVE AMERICAN IDENTITY AND MASCOT DEBATES 61 respects that surpass the mere appropriation of imagined dimensions of an Other’s community. The mascot protesters who claim Indianness are stag - ing what is perhaps a novel form of anti-Indianism because their claims are designed to silence what may be a common, if not majority opinion, among Native Americans about the uses and abuses of Indian imagery in contem - porary American movement. Indeed, that might just be the point. Native Americans who emerge with activist political voices oppositional to main - stream popular culture perhaps represent the antithesis of the idyllic ver - sion of the American Indian, which is otherwise so attractive to non-Indian people. To illustrate, while on a Bloomington, Illinois, radio call-in show in 2001—the topic of Indian sports mascots was being discussed—an anony - mous caller phoned in to admonish my criticism of such mascots. He com - plained bitterly about the Native Americans who opposed them, and, indeed, he referred several times to Indian people by “them” and “they,” seeming to lump them together as a singular community. Suddenly, then, just before hanging up, he implied that he was an “Indian” and that genuine Native Americans would not go around “spouting off ” such protest rhetoric because, he explained, “silence” was the traditional value of Indian people. TO FIND AN INDIAN . . . To appreciate more generally what is at stake, we must understand why “marking” one’s position on the controversial mascot issue as an Indian voice would be tactically desirable in the first instance. Looking back, acolo- nial tradition clearly emerged and continues to flourish in which White institutions would locate a person whose Indianness was otherwise con- tested, marginal, or even fabricated to ratify asymmetrical treaties or to counter “undesirable” Native testimony. Within the highly contested space of Indian mascot debates, those non-Indian institutions and individualswho stridently support such colonial icons have frequently sought allianceswith Native peoples on this issue. A prevailing question arising in such debatesis, Well, do Indian people really care about these mascots? or similarly, What about my friend who is Winnebago? He loves the Cleveland Indians!

In 1995, as the local debate over the University of Illinois’s Chief Illiniwek intensified, the university and supporters of Illiniwek introduced a new set of tactics to defend their favorite mascot. It appears that they lob- bied members of the Peoria nation in Oklahoma to make a public statement in support of Chief Illiniwek. Since the mascot was invented in 1926, the uni- versity had not endeavored to reach out to the Peoria nation, who would be the putative living descendants of the confederation once known as the Illini, but once the beloved icon became so hotly contested, they seemingly rushed to embrace these people as the living descendents of Illinois. These efforts are ironic, especially in the context of earlier scholarship that claimed the Illini and, indeed, the Peoria, were extinct. Illinois student Truman Michelson (1916) actually concluded in 1916 that “There probably [are] no absolutely pure blooded Peoria Indians left.” 62 JOURNAL OF SPORT & SOCIAL ISSUES / February 2004 But in the spring of 1995, then, efforts were made to resurrect the voices of these Indians, anticipating that the public would embrace them as holders of the only historically authentic opinion regarding Chief Illiniwek.

This unfolded, meanwhile, as a number of tribally affiliated Native students as well as some faculty continued to criticize the Indian mascot. Initially, t h e elected leader of the Peoria, Don Giles, indicated that the tribe preferredto be left out of the controversy. The owner of a local pro-Chief television sta - tion (WICD) was a long-time friend of several University of Illinois adminis - trators; the station owner sent a correspondent and film crew to Miami, Oklahoma, to do a news series on the Peoria opinion about the mascot issue.

According to Native American informants who were in contact with the tribe, as the network affiliate prepared to do this story in late March, the university again contacted the tribe—this time to extend to them an offer of scholarship money.

The first of 3 installments aired on May 1, 1995. News anchor Gwen Ellis interviewed Giles and two other tribal representatives, Ron Froman and Ron Stand. Froman told Ellis on camera, “I think anybody who protests the Chief Illiniwek would have to be a Peoria to begin with. I don’t see where another tribe has any basis to make a protest.” He added that they had no problem with the mascot, “because I don’t think they’re trying to be histori- cal or accurate.” In the newsroom banter following the airing of the segment, anchorperson Ellis remarked, “In fact, they say they’re actually happy to have somebody come and talk to them about it, and let the public know how they really feel about this mascot.” Her news colleagues then responded, “Wow, that’s an important voice we haven’t heard from before.” Prior to the drop-in visit by the reporter and camera crew, none of the Peoria leaders had ever seen Chief Illiniwek, on television or in person. The TV crew, in fact, played selected clips of him as well as particular images of the protesters.

Local supporters began almost immediately to use this newly created “authentic” voice to bolster their own opinions. After then conversing with several Native Americans in Champaign-Urbana who naturally felt under- cut by these remarks, the Peoria withdrew their statements of informal support of the mascot, and in the late ’90s, they even formally voiced oppo- sition to it. But the point of examining this incident is that many support- ersofIndianmascots,inthewakeofNativeandevennon-Indianprotest, mobilized to “find” an Indian voice who would stand up for the icon in question. Highly public examples also unfolded at Stanford, Eastern Michi- gan, Marquette, and Miami University of Ohio to name just a few.

An American Indian who will publicly support the existence of a Native mascot has proven to be an extremely valuable commodity, and peo- plehavemadegreateffortstoidentify,nurture,andevenbribesuchpersons (King, 2002). Of course, some Native Americans do independently support mascots, and naturally, their voices are mightily hailed and even com- modified by mascot supporters. When Eastern Michigan University (EMU) sought in 1991 to cease its identification as the “Hurons,” many alumni reacted angrily and organized themselves into the EMU Restoration, Inc. NATIVE AMERICAN IDENTITY AND MASCOT DEBATES 63 (Springwood, 2001). This group sponsored rallies, issued press releases,and generally fought to restore the Huron name to the university and its athletic teams. This case was noteworthy because some Native Americans became involved in this protest. Pro-Huron EMU alumnus David Kasper contacted Bob Bennett, an elected spokesperson for the local Wyandotte Council. The EMU restoration group also invited the participation of Chief Leaford Bear- skin of Oklahoma’s Wyandotte Tribe. Both expressed disappointment that EMU dropped its Huron affiliation, and subsequently, the restoration group began to situate these men front and center in their movement, eventually bringing them to the campus for a press conference. Previously, I commented on the contradictions underlying this “alliance”—that is, the efforts of the restoration group to essentially enlist the support of some Huron representatives seems ironic given the prior social relations between the restoration group and Native American peoples more generally. For exam- ple, no apparent efforts had been made by students or alumni to engage Native American people, let alone Hurons, before the logo was retired. (Springwood, 2001) During the height of the EMU controversy, Dave Donar, a cartoonist for the student paperEastern Echo, seemed to accurately foreground the ironies behind these promascot quests for the authentic Indian voice (see Figure 1). ONE-EIGHTH CHEROKEE A precedent of non-Indian people fabricating Native American identi- ties for the purposes of political or material gain—beyond the more common- 64 JOURNAL OF SPORT & SOCIAL ISSUES / February 2004 Figure 1: Editorial Cartoon fromEastern Echo, September 4, 1991. place psychic motivation of “sympathetic” affiliation with the indigenous Other—was established long ago. To illustrate, in the latter part of the 19th century, after the Civil War, a significant number of White Americans invented Native identities to obtain access to the land and wealth of various Indian nations, including those of the “Five Civilized Tribes,” comprisedof the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. Historian William Hagan (1985) explained, Some of these whites married Indian women, fathered mixed-blood children, andappliedfortribalmembership....Manyothermen,withoutashadowofa legal claim, attempted to secure a place on tribal rolls in order to enjoy theeco - nomic benefits—principally access to land—of being a member of one of the Five Civilized Tribes.” (p. 311) The central concern here, however, is the casual, albeit tactical, invo - cation of Indianness by largely non-Indian defenders of the Chief Wahoos, Chief Osceolas, and Chief Noc-A-Homas of this land. These individuals com - monly frame their opinion—voiced sometimes at rallies but much more often in less immediately intimate spaces, such as letters or e-mails—by stating rather nondescriptly and randomly that they are Indian or part Indian. As a student of public culture, I have been impressed and surprised by the deep and even painful emotional investment of folks in these mascots.

If, indeed, people are inflating or even fabricating their claims to Indianness in a desperate effort to cling to this kitsch, imperial totems, a highly signifi- cant, very problematic exercise in the practice of colonial hegemony has been actualized.

Judge Louis Garippo probably made a wise decision when he opted not to offer a formal tally, as it were, of those respondents to the Illiniwek Dia- logue counted as Native Americans. But given his claims elsewhere that the “Dialogue” was never intended as a poll, one wonders why he began to for- mulate such a category anyway. Moreover, why did he publicly cite, then, that 75% of Indians in the survey favored retaining the Chief? This statistic has indeed emerged as an item that newly punctuates the discourse of pro- Chief activists. Examining the written communiqués of these dialogue respondents reveals a diverse set of devices. Some pro-Chief letters suggest nothing that might qualify a writer’s claim to Indianness. For example, Nicholas Antonio Negro (in Garippo, 2000) wrote, “My name is Nick “BraveWolf ” Negro. My family is 100% Native American. I feel no anger towards the university over Chief Illiniweck’s [sic] depiction. I am proud of his portrayal as a proud and brave warrior.” His claim is neither provable nor falsifiable, and, at face value, it can be taken as nothing more than a par- ticular statement by a writer who felt it important to punctuate his com- ments by a statement of his Native identity. Although he does not identify a tribal affiliation, whether genuine or not, his claim to Indianness is unam- biguous. This type of claim was not uncommon among the pro-Chief Native American letters. More common, however, were statements with more NATIVE AMERICAN IDENTITY AND MASCOT DEBATES 65 oblique references to Native identity, such as, “As a person with Cherokee heritage, I have always held the Chief ’s representation in highest regard” (Leland B. Miller in Garippo, 2000), or “Being 1 8American Indian myself, I find the chief to be honorable” (Rachel Weber in Garippo, 2000). Still, other writers claimed a very specific Native American ancestry—such as Al Alfaro (in Garippo, 2000), who wrote, “First, I would like to state that I am a full- blooded Apache from the San Carlos reservation in Arizona,”—but then indicated that they were not raised as ethnically Indian because, for exam - ple, they were adopted by White parents.

The motivation(s) any individuals might have in identifying them - selves as Native American cannot be known for certain, although an aware - ness of the general importance given to the opinions of “real” American Indi - ans, I would argue, is widespread in this debate. On the other hand, it is likely that some Native American respondents, both pro-Chief and anti- Chief, did not at all identify their ethnicity or heritage, for whatever reason.

Ironically, as Garippo began to categorize Native American responses, based on self-identification of the writer, some key Native American opponentsof mascots may not have been counted as such. Vernon Bellecourt, well known as one of the founders of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and pres- ently a member of the AIM Grand Governing Council, sent a relatively long response in which he discusses some of the social consequences and legal ramifications of Indian mascots (in Garippo, 2000). Yet, he does not specifically identify himself as Native American. In addition, I read other responses sent by local individuals whom I know to be Native American and who did not, specifically, represent their identities as such (see for instance, Jean Mendoza in Garippo, 2000).

“Obsession” seems an apt characterization of Indian mascot propo- nents’ interests in locating and, if possible, quantifying Native American indifference to or support of such athletic totems. As discussed elsewherein this issue, the most public and widely circulated of such efforts emerged in March 2002 in the pages of the popular periodicalSports Illustrated(SI).

The poll, sponsored bySIand conducted by the Peter Harris Research Group, Inc., suggested that 83% of Indians were not opposed to Indian nick- names and mascots (Price, 2002). The poll, based on “interviews” with 351 Native American people, has been controversial among opponents of Indian mascots, and attempts to gain specific knowledge of the Peter Harris polling procedures and techniques have been refused (King et al., 2002). As such, important questions remain unanswered, such as, How were respondents located and contacted? or How were potential respondents who refused con- tact considered, in terms of the final results? As a result, without transpar- ent access to these details, the poll cannot be deemed scientific in any generic sense, especially consideringSI’s corporate relationship with the Turner Broadcasting Company, which also owns the Atlanta Braves base- ball team. But even if the poll were relatively accurate, the motivations behind it are conspicuous. It is another attempt to excuse or even endorse 66 JOURNAL OF SPORT & SOCIAL ISSUES / February 2004 mascots by claiming, in essence, “Some, maybe many, Native Americans do not care, so why should we?” The seeming need for White America to doubt Native American opin - ion by skeptically demanding unanimity, a demand ultimately backed up by potential head counts, is unlike White America’s response to other move - ments and public stances by communities of color. I know of no similar efforts to quantify (to, subsequently,qualify) African American sentiment about the omnipresence of the Confederate flag in various regions of the United States. I suggest that this particular obsession to doubt—or worse,to demand—Native American unanimity results directly from the discursive impact of Indian mascots and other ways of “playing Indian” on the public, White American understandings of Indianness. Such understandings serve to freeze Native American people, flattening their cultures and simplifying their histories. Consequently, the long presence of these stereotypes has interfered with the ability of non-Indian people to commonly engage Native American people as genuinely complex, opinionated, and politically vibrant.

The image of the Indian displaces, even replaces, the human, interactional reality of Native communities. To accept Native American critiques of Indian mascots, to even appreciate the complexity of diverse, even contra- dictory, Native opinion on the issue, would require transcendence of these prevailing, flattening depictions of Indian people. CONCLUSIONS The confabulation and inflation of American Indian identity by other- wise non-Indian people is a cultural practice whose contours can be read to reveal its larger meanings and consequences. That is, How are these claims to be understood in their historical context(s) and the social fields they inscribe? To fully appreciate them, especially in connection to the Indian mascot debates, one must consider the overlapping American dimensions of colonialism, Whiteness, racial privilege, and oppression. Commandeering the role and the voice of the Native American is an act of (neo)colonial power in which those who have enjoyed the contours of White privilege are able to construct a particular relationship with those who have suffered, histori- cally and into the present, from various forms of White, male hegemony.

Indeed, Euro-Americans “transform” into that colonized Other, in a perfor- mance of mimicry that at once functions to incorporate, to dominate, and, especially in the context of the mascot debates, to virtually attenuate Native American political and cultural viability.

Cultural studies author Homi Bhabha has offered a mature conceptu- alization of the social-political-psychological framework that tends todefine the relations between the community of the colonizer and the presence of the colonized. Specifically, he looks to the ubiquitous practice of mimesis to explain more broadly that “colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, rec- ognizable Other,as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (emphasis original; Bhabha, 1994, p. 86). Bhabha accurately reasons NATIVE AMERICAN IDENTITY AND MASCOT DEBATES 67 that the practice of colonial mimicry—and, indeed, of colonialism—turnson ambivalence, pleasure, and disgust. He explains the colonialism narrative, An apparatus that turns on the recognition and avowal of racial/cultural/his - torical differences. Its predominant strategic function is the creationof a space for a “subject” peoples through the production of knowledges in terms of which surveillance is exercised and a complex form of pleasure in incited. (Bhabha, 1990, p. 75) This definition reminds us not to lose sight of what the mascot debates are about in the first instance. Indian mascots are, of course, implicatedwith a much broader tradition of playing Indian, and this practice has sustained itself since at least the time of the Boston Tea Party because of the fantasies and pleasures it has allowed White people to experience. An act that is pas - sionately animated by fear, reverence, and loathing, in which Indians are viewed at once as courageous, subhuman, glorious, evil, gorgeous, wild, mag - ical, and dangerous, playing Indian stages an ambivalence that has always structured colonial relations with native people.

However, in the instances I have outlined here, a departure in which Indianness is borrowed to defend the most publicly staged form of playing Indian—that is, the use of these mascots—against the criticisms of Native Americans, a new irony is accomplished. In response to a significant chal- lenge to the time-honored tradition of staging at halftime highly domesti- cated versions of imagined Indianness, which accomplish those functionsof colonial discourse outlined above by Bhabha, some mascot proponents, it seems, have resorted to the mimetic invention of a Native voice that exoner- ates them for investing so deeply in their feathered cheerleaders and other Indian icons.

In closing, Strong and van Winkle (1996) nicely clarify the precarious, highly charged contours of my arguments: Dismantling the intricate edifice of racism embodied in “Indian blood” isnot simply a matter of exposing its essentialism and discarding its associatedpoli- cies, but a more delicate and complicated task: that is, acknowledging “Indian blood” as a discourse of conquest with manifold and contradictory effects,but without invalidating rights and resistances that have been couched in terms of that very discourse. (p. 565) Their statement instructs scholars and others to proceed with extreme caution. As a non-Indian anthropologist, I need to repeatedly con- front my own investment in essentialist markers of Indian identity, and I must contemplate any voice claiming any identity very seriously. But then,I must critically situate such claims in a larger context, one always definedby power, performance, and position. 68 JOURNAL OF SPORT & SOCIAL ISSUES / February 2004 NOTES 1. Louis Garippo moderated the “dialogue” and, subsequently, issued a report on it titledDialogue on Chief Illiniwek: Mail, Reports, and Supporting Material[on 2 CD- ROM set]. Future references to this document will be in the text.

2. Between October 2001 and May 2002, I interviewed, in person or via telephone, 26 Native American opponents of mascots and some 15 non-Indian mascot opponents.

I also spoke with 10 mascot proponents who claimed Indian ancestry but whose Indianness seemed awkward or ancestral rather than cultural in nature. These lat - ter were not planned interviews but rather serendipitous conversations. AUTHOR Charles Fruehling Springwoodis an associate professor of anthro - pology at Illinois Wesleyan University. His publications includeTe a m S p i r - its: The Native American Mascots ControversyandBeyond the Cheers:

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