Racism & American Indians

Chapter 10 of Adams talks about 'the real problem with Indian mascots,' and how they are used all over, but many do not see the problem with this.  Coming from a school district who's mascot was the 'Braves,'  has got me thinking that I may have been a passive racist all of those years.  Reading the beginning of the chapter described my high school almost perfectly.

If you walked down our school halls on a regular day you could see our school colors and pictures of tomawak and Indian head dresses.  I remember our actuall mascot wore a large head dress with large feathers and beads.  I am not well educated on Native American history, but I'm pretty sure that the 'braves' or warriors, were not the ones wearing head dresses that a chief, or leader of the tribe would wear.  The name of our mascott was 'LaCoNaJo,'  the first two letters of the four towns that made up our school district.  I have no idea how someone thought of this name or why it stuck, but i guess someone suggested it and they 'thought it sounded like a native name.'  These two things alone show our ignorance of this culture.

On a Friday night the bleachers would be full of people showing their school spirit.  I was in the band and remember one song inparticular called 'On the Warpath.'  This was the song that would pump up the football players and everyone in the bleachers when we were down in the last couple minutes of the game.  The cheerleaders and  whole audience would be going with the beat of the music doing the 'tomahawk chop' with their arms.  As if that wasn't bad enough, this is even harder to admit.  We celebrated our school spirit all the time; even if it was during the National Anthem.  As you all know, the end line of the national anthem is, "and the home of the brave."  Well at every football game it was no surprise to hear the audiance, cheerleaders, and the football players shout out 'BRAVES!' rather than brave on the last word of the anthem. 

I don't mean to bash my school, and part of me still feels like this is just a mascot and a sense of belonging for a small community, but another part of me knows this is wrong and something should be done to change it.  But in a small town like that, who would be willing to change a tradition that is well over 50 years old?


On a side note, I want to share this article with y'all. 
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/02/14/20120214arizona-bill-takes-aim-airbrushed-women-ads.html   (Don't worry, it's just a short news article)
I heard about it on the radio and decided to look it up online.  This was one of the first google results so if you want more information on this you'll probably have to dig a little deeper.  I think this is an amazing thing that Katie Hobbs is doing and would like to know y'alls opinions, so comment about it. :) Enjoy the rest of the weekend!