Would you call your school team the Whiteskins or the Blackskins or the Yellowskins? Of course not. Perish the thought. So why is Redskins OK? The answer is, it’s not OK.
In Sanford, the school board will likely decide in May whether its team will continue to be called Redskins, or be changed to a nonracist name. Tradition might be one argument for keeping the name Redskins. But some traditions should be relegated to the trash heap of history.
Until the later 20th century, Maine Indians did not have full voting rights, even though they could — and did — die in service to their country. In the early 1900s, you could find signs that said “Indians need not apply.” Who among us did not hear phrases such as “the only good Indian is a dead Indian?”
A sports team adopting the image of a fierce Indian warrior is not as benign as it might seem. Using a fighting Indian as a mascot is stereotyping people that were more about peace and sustainable living than conflict. Maine tribes maintained a reverence for the land that we invaders seem reluctant to embrace.
Let’s be honest: We didn’t just “settle” Maine as so many town signs proclaim, proudly displaying a date. We pushed the native people off the land because we wanted it for ourselves.
French missionaries converted Maine Indians to Catholicism; English aristocrats claimed tribal lands in the name of their king.
As one tribal member put it to me, only half in jest, “The French stole our souls, the English stole our land.”
For many years, Wiscasset High School and its sports boosters stubbornly clung to the racially insensitive team name of Redskins. Finally, last year, the school relented and the name will be dropped. Hooray. A public school is no place for condoning prejudice.
We know where it came from. Years ago, it conjured up, for white folks, the stereotype of a fierce Indian warrior — someone who could beat the other team into submission. Or scalp you. Indians were not like us, so it was OK to caricature them. They were fair game in a culture that failed
to acknowledge we nearly exterminated Native peoples so we could take their land for our own. Even in Old Town, which includes the Penobscot Indian reservation, the high school waited until 2006 to change its name from “Indians,” with an Indian mascot.
When Caitlin Walsh was a student at Wiscasset High School in 2003, she wrote: “I was asked to be on a committee that was tasked to investigate the name Redskins and come up with options about what to do with our name. I firmly believe that the name is derogatory and outdated, and
that it needs to be changed.”
Here in Maine, thanks to a Passamaquoddy tribal representative to the Legislature, public places can no longer use the name Squaw. If squaw is offensive, and we know that it is, we shouldn’t use it. It’s not such a hardship to change a name. It’s understandable that people are sentimental about old names and old teams, but that is no reason to be stuck in the prejudices of the past.
Some critics gripe about “political correctness.” This isn’t political. This is about respect and equality. This is about values that we claim are the birthright of all Americans.
We have a lot to learn about Native people, and getting rid of stereotypes is a good start. I have a copy of a poster printed by a colonial governor and it offers rewards for the scalps of Penobscot Indians in Maine. Who was scalping whom?
We need to recognize Indians as our brothers and sisters, and to do that we must reject stereotypes and caricatures. As one Indian woman said to me a long time ago, “I am a human being first, an Indian second.”
After Sanford, maybe the national football team, the Washington Redskins, will wake up and follow Maine’s lead.
Dirigo.
Steve Cartwright of Waldoboro spent more than five years working with Native American tribes in Maine, writing and editing a newspaper called Wabanaki Alliance. He can be reached at writer@midcoast.com.
“Using a fighting Indian as a mascot is stereotyping people that were more about peace and sustainable living than conflict.”
What about Minutemen, Trojans, Pirates, Celtics, Yankees, Rangers, Mets, Phillies, Dodgers, Warriors, Canadiens, Canucks, Cowboys, Steelers, Packers, 49ers…
What about Black Bears, which are portrayed as ferocious beasts but are in fact timid and would flee rather than fight?
Should we get rid of all of these nicknames as well?
Ryan, i completely agree with you. I would think that if the Indian Nation wanted to fight for something, they might consider fighting for something more worthwhile, than the nickname of a sports team. I believe that they take offense because they cannot think of anything else to take offense to. I am 25% Cherokee Indian, and i have no problem with a sports team naming themselves the Fighting Sioux, Indians, Warriors, or Cherokee for that matter. This makes about as much sense as black people complaining about the slave labor of our ancestors. Times have changed, wrongs have been righted and there is no way for us to change the past. Let work together to move on in peace and stop bringing up the stupidy of the past.
You conveniently ignore the racial aspect of the name. It has nothing to do with
the “fighting” aspect. Any Native American would be proud of their
fore-fathers’ resistance to the European oppressors who dispossessed them of
their lands.
American Indians referred to themselves as “redskins.” The Washington Redskins were named in honor of their coach, William Dietz, in 1933, when the team was in Boston. Dietz had no problem with it, and it’s not any different from “Celtics” or “Fighting Irish.”
Hmmm…. I know several Native Americans and I have never heard them refer to themselves as “redskins”.
The term “redskin” is a relic of our racist past. The term itself most likely comes from the bounty that at one time existed on Native Americans. The bounty was so much for an adult male, less for an adult female and less for a child. The prefered way of proving the age and sex of the indian was not from bringing in a scalp (doesn’t prove age or sex) or the whole body (too bulky) but instead the folded up skin, or “redskin”, was brought in for reimbursement.
The other possible cause of the term may have been the ochre paint some adult males may have used as war paint but the most common color for war paint was white, black or blue and varied by tribe. If that was the case you would have heard of “Blueskins” ,”Blackskins” and “Whiteskins” as well as “Redskins”.
As for saying the name is ok because ‘American Indians referred to themselves as “redskins.”‘ I don’t know of any other racial nickname that exists for sports teams.
Your example of “Celtics” refers to a range of people who’s language has a common beginning and for the most part refers to the celtic tongues of native Welsh, Irish and Scotish speakers and is not considered a slang name for a race of peoples.
….I am a firm believer that the biggest single factor keeping racism going is making a big deal out of any potentially offensive word, especially words that have become so commonplace as to lose any racial overtones may have once been associated with that word. I have seen similar stories about classic books (such as Tom Sawyer) being removed from school because they contain “racially sensitive” words that were perfectly acceptable (and not in a negative connotation) at the time the book was written….If whites decide they don’t want to be called Caucasian anymore because it has “Cauc” in it, does that mean that is instantly a word to be shunned, even though it was an accepted word for decades? It’s only a big deal if you make it a big deal.
THAT was funny! From now on, I will be OFFENDED if someone calls me a “Cauc”asian. LMAO!!!!
But Caucasian refers to the region that the oldest examples were found. This region is the Caucasus Mountains in Southern Europe and Asia.
As for having the word “Cauc” in it shows your juvenile sense of humor.
The Indians will be next. Because, Columbus thought he was India and thats how the native Americans got that name. That would be racist to Indians(India) and native Americans. So, we are left to name our respective sports teams after animals(Rams), adjectives describing a full nation(Patriots), clothing(Red Sox), murderers(Pirates), and thieves(Raiders). What shall we do now? Change the name of our cities because they are named after cities that are offended by the comparison. Good-bye China and Mexico. There don’t seem to be any Chinese or Mexicans in your towns. My point is that you start something with whatever intention and you end up with the same thing you began with. A fear of offending.
Souls I don’t know about, but humanity has been in North America for at least 12,000 years and if the inhabitants when the Europeans arrived hadn’t stolen the land they were on from earlier inhabitants, North American history must have been very different from the rest of the world’s.
It’s a myth that native African/Asian/American inhabitants were “people that were more about peace and sustainable living than conflict” is about as credible as AWG. They may have lacked the technology of the African/Asian/European visitors but they were constantly warring among themselves and they were every bit as violent and brutal as the French who stole their souls and the English who stole their land. Why doesn’t Mr. Cartwright go and spend five years among the people of Brittany and write about their marginalization by the Romans?
I agree..Most think that Native Americans never fought over land and it was Europeans who taught them war…That couldn’t be father from the truth…The “they lived in peace and harmony with each other and nature” myth is just that , a myth..Though the pictures portraying that are pretty…LOL…
Native American’s were not as warlike and violent as the Euopeans that came over to the New World. Yes, there was conflict but is was limited, for the most part to small scale raiding and counter-raiding. Whole groups of peoples were not a killed for their land, most native tribes had established ranges and most conficts only occurred on the edges of those ranges.
In fact one technique of Native American warfare was counting coup which did not end in teh death of one of the combatants.