“Stereotypical Elements (that) appear… in Athletic Contests”

( – promoted by navajo)

However, nowhere does the insensitive misuse of American Indian images, icons, and stereotypical elements appear more brashly than in athletic contests at the public high school level in Oklahoma.

Savage Country: American Indian Sports Mascots Part One

The tomahawk chop motion, we see that all the time…they get thousands of people to get going through the motion for the spirit of the game or whatever…not knowing that it’s degrading…it implies something bad that our ancestors were, people that did this. Therefore their team is going to be just like that, chop them up, do battle, or whatever…

Tomahawk.

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Chop.

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Who are the sports fans engaging in that racist behavior imitating? They surely do not think that they are imitating the American Indians who resisted nonviolently, they obviously think they are imitating the American Indians who resisted forced relocation and genocide self defensively; except, for the element of genocide denial that they exhibit in their racial exhibitions. Racism being based on ignorance, among other things, can and should be combated with education and historical facts. The sports fans engaging in the racist behavior of “tomahawk chopping” seem to be imitating, while being wholly ignorant of them, Warrior Societies which had a key beginning and a key ending in 1825 and 1878 in accordance with the “stereotypical elements (that) appear… in athletic contests” that they racially exhibit.

These facts in my opinion: that the U.S. traded weapons to the American Indians which naturally increased violence, and that the U.S. did not keep its treaties and created desperate conditions wherein American Indians would either have to starve or fight; may possibly provide a foundation for historically understanding and doing away with “stereotypical elements (that) appear… in athletic contests.”

The U.S. traded weapons to the American Indians which naturally increased violence.

Source

And the Chiefs and Warriors, as aforesaid, promise and engage that their tribe will never, by sale, exchange, or as presents, supply any nation or tribe of Indians, not in amity with the United States, with guns, ammunition, or other implements of war.

And trade in general increased violence, as well as how “Europeans and Americans manipulated traditional hostilities.”

Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians

Edited by David J. Wishart. p. 103

Destructive war in the plains intensified after contact because of migration of eastern tribes (the Cheyennes and the Lakotas, for example) into the Plains as settlement moved west, because Europeans and Americans manipulated traditional hostilities, and because tribes competed for access to European and American trade, especially in fur – rich areas of the Northern Plains and Prairie Provinces.  

The increased violence caused by weapons trade and “Europeans and Americans manipulated traditional hostilities” affected not only Indian Nation to Indian Nation, but it also spread from Indian Nation to white settlers. This certainly wasn’t the last conflict, but the last Indian Raid was in Kansas in 1878. Within those raids and the brutality therein lie much racial resentment in my personal conversations and readings, and quite understandably so. There were deaths on both sides and it matters not to the surviving family members why their ancestor died, only that they were murdered and how. I don’t pretend to have the answer for that; I just know that this racism we are speaking of is not the solution. Let us continue.

The U.S. did not keep its treaties and created desperate conditions wherein American Indians would starve as part of the extermination policy against them, and that meant making a choice to fight in order to survive or to starve to death.

Custer’s Indian Hostages: (One White Woman & 2 White Children, Part 1)

Moxtaveto lost even more respect for signing the Little Arkansas Treaty of 1865 after the Sand Creek Massacre. It gave some land to Black Kettle and others, promised food and other survival necessities, promised that conflicts would be handled by taking Indians into custody rather than being murdered, “and that no white person, except officers, agents, and employees of the Government, shall go upon or settle within the country embraced within said limits, unless formerly admitted and incorporated into some one of the tribes lawfully residing there, according to its laws and usages.”

Custer “Stayed The Course” & The Kansas Raids

Confining and binding those Native Nations to land where they could not survive by hunting or agriculture, breaking promises to provide those survival means, and propaganda revolving around the Kansas Raids reset Custer “on the course,” as if they were without severe provocation in the first place.

Furthermore, the Sand Creek Massacre descendants were

Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians

Edited by David J. Wishart. p. 49

…promised indemnities under the Treaty of Little Arkansas Treaty in 1865, which had not yet been paid as of 2001, although the Cheyenne Sand Creek Descendants Association continues to make legal efforts to collect the funds.

And at that Massacre at Sand Creek

“Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” by Dee Brown. p. 92.

Chivington and his soldiers destroyed the lives or the power of every Cheyenne and Arapaho chief who had held out for peace with the white men.

So: trade in general increased violence, how “Europeans and Americans manipulated traditional hostilities” increased violence, the U.S. not keeping its treaties helped create violence, and the Massacre that started the so called “Indian Wars” that involved “destroy(ing) the lives or the power of every Cheyenne and Arapaho chief who had held out for peace with the white men -“ created much, much, more violence.

Those sports fans who condone the tomahawk chop might start to see how offensive it is, if they had been taught at least the following about the Sand Creek Massacre, but of course this wasn’t taught to them via Colonial Education.

143rd Anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre of Nov. 29th, 1864

Kurt Kaltreider, PH.D. “American Indian Prophecies.” pp. 58-59:

– The report of witnesses at Sand Creek:

“I saw some Indians that had been scalped, and the ears cut off the body of White Antelope,” said Captain L. Wilson of the first Colorado Cavalry. “One Indian who had been scalped had also his skull smashed in, and I heard that the privates of White Antelope had been cut off to make a tobacco bag of. I heard some of the men say that the privates of one of the squaws had been cut out and put on a stick…”

John S. Smith…

All manner of depredations were inflicted on their persons; they were scalped, their brains knocked out; the men used their knives, ripped open women, clubbed little children, knocked them in the heads with their guns, beat their brains out, mutilated their bodies in every sense of the word…worse mutilation that I ever saw before, the women all cut to pieces…children two or three months old; all ages lying there.

(Emphasis mine)

The process of colonization involves one nation or territory taking control of another nation or territory either through the use of force or by acquisition. As a by-product of colonization, the colonizing nation implements its own form of schooling within their colonies.

Nor do they probably ever consider the full implications of their actions. Who and what are they imitating?

Christopher Columbus & His Crimes Against Humanity?

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It would be easy, he asserted, to “subject everyone and make them do what you wished (3).”

The very dishonorable Cotton Mather?

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http://www.notablebiographies….

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“In a little more than one hour, five or six hundred of these barbarians

were dismissed from a world that was burdened with them.”

Or, are they imitating Chivington with their “chops”?

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http://www.forttours.com/image…

Source

“the Cheyennes will have to be roundly whipped — or completely wiped out — before they will be quiet. I say that if any of them are caught in your vicinity, the only thing to do is kill them.” A month later, while addressing a gathering of church deacons, he dismissed the possibility of making a treaty with the Cheyenne: “It simply is not possible for Indians to obey or even understand any treaty. I am fully satisfied, gentlemen, that to kill them is the only way we will ever have peace and quiet in Colorado.”

(It is worth noting also that the Fuhrer from time to time expressed admiration for the “efficiency” of the American genocide campaign against the Indians, viewing it as a forerunner for his own plans and programs.)

In conclusion, the sports fans are obviously imitating each other in the phenomenon of mob mentality in the moment, so what is to be said to the adults who think that behavior doesn’t hurt anybody? Well, the past isn’t quite the past now.

Ecuador investigates massacre reports

Ecuadorean authorities combed swaths of the Amazon jungle on Thursday looking for victims of a reported massacre of Indians by loggers, part of a long-running fight over land.

Local media and indigenous leaders said the loggers gunned down 15 Indians from the Taromenani tribe, which in the 1950s cut ties with rest of the country to protect their hunting and gathering customs.

And, as I said in Pledge: Become A Modern Day Warrior For Indigenous Rights (Updated & Edited):

A web of land theft in a “a new kind of Indian war” is taking place. Non Indians’ racism and genocide denial, who engage in attempting to steal tribal sovereignty through the court system, ignore an obvious question. Where would they meet to practice their religion, a white Caucasian word, if their churches were stolen, condemned, and being used to drill for oil and uranium? The “spirit” seems to be this: “What one group calls genocide, another group may call progress.” Let’s try to get an overview of the “progress” in the web of land theft in the “New kind of Indian war.”

There is “a new kind of Indian war” taking place in the courtrooms, and the ones that make the decisions are human beings who will either be motivated by more racism or less racism, depending on  whether or not things like the tomahawk chop and “the insensitive misuse of American Indian images, icons, and stereotypical elements” are more or less influential in their minds. In that way, it could cause harm in my view in the realm of political influence with a more racial social climate. Everyone accepts that racism played a decisive factor in the South in court cases, for example with the Jim Crow Laws. Why wouldn’t the

Tomahawk

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Chop

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and “the insensitive misuse of American Indian images, icons, and stereotypical elements” with Law in the Shadow of the Bible yield a comparable result in deciding court cases, resulting in more and more lost sovereignty for the American Indian Nations?

Crossposted at Progressive Historians

11 Comments

  1. You know, there’s a Sheridan street real close to my house I have to drive down sometimes, and sometimes I hate it more than others. Depends on how much of a hurry I’m in.

  2. I’ve been lurking for some time. All I can say is that I love you all, and that my heart is with and belongs to you.

    That’s it, for now.

  3.  
                                                                         MASS RACIAL TAUNTING; AMERICAS WEEKEND SPORT    
                                                                                                                         by Carter Camp, Ponca Nation

       For thousands of people in America, Friday nights in the fall are for going to the High School football game.  On Saturday, college towns across America swell to double or triple their normal size as fans pour into town to cheer the local college football team.  On Sunday, Sunday evening, and Monday night, millions of Americans gather in stadiums, in bars, and in front of their televisions to see a great communal American pastime, professional football.  But did you ever stop to think that a great percentage of these same all-American people also will spend some of their time hurling racial epithets at my people? Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (and Monday night) millions of Americans will scream and beg for my Indian people to be scalped, chopped, burned, tomahawked and murdered, by the Indians, Savages, Redskins, and Braves across the field.  In the winter it moves inside for basketball and in the spring back outside for baseball, but every weekend all year around, one of Americas’ favorite things to do is to spend some time ignorantly portraying a stereotypical Indian person or spending a few hours mock-hating and degrading Indian people.  And when we Indians dare mention it is offensive, they argue they should keep on doing it because ‘they have done it for a long time’, longer ago than when they kept slaves or would not let women vote, so long that now it is a tradition! You see, in America even screaming racial epithets can become a cherished tradition that some people are willing to fight a civil war over.*
      Not ‘racist’ epithets, the Americans who are screaming to kill, burn, and scalp us, don’t mean us really, they mean those people dressed as caricatures of our ancestors.  And they also do not mean to denigrate our religion because most of them do not even know we have religions and they all assume our culture is dead because they have been taught we were a “vanishing race”, so it must be ok to insult our Grandfathers dress, speech and hair.  They may not be ‘racist’ people but their ‘racial’ barbs are just as harmful to our children.
     One of the things Americans like to tell us is not to be so sensitive, it is all done in good fun.  And perhaps it would be funny to us if the very things they scream to be done to the Indian mascot had not actually been done to our Grandfathers by theirs. I am one generation removed from the atrocity of the genocidal “Ponca removal”, my Grandfather and Grandmother survived the Ponca,” trail of tears” forced march to Oklahoma Territory in the late 1800’s, but one third of my Tribe perished.  What is ancient history to most Americans is still fresh in the minds of we Indian people, as close as Hitler’s holocaust is to a Jew and much closer than slavery is to a Black person.  I think it is too soon to ask us not to be sensitive, I still mourn my Grandparents and my people are still not whole.
      When all else fails, mascotteers like to tell Indians they are really “honoring” us.  Even those who mean it sincerely must not have considered that there are two sides to every contest and one half of the people in the stadium are in no way seeking to “honor” the “redskins” they are about to “slaughter”.  There can be no way to honor Indian people by using their Tribe or race as team mascots because mascots become a part of the fray and to half of the people attending they are an enemy to be punished, mocked and defeated.  We would like it very much if Americans really did honor us as co-Americans who are worthy of the same respect you give all the other races.  Black, White and Yellow people are exempted from the great American weekend custom of mass racial taunting, is it too much to ask of our fellow citizens that we also receive such an exemption?

    * Statistics: There are approximately 3,000 schools using Indian people as mascots. Each has four grades with aprox. 6 teams for each grade. Each team plays aprox. 10 games per year. This makes 720,000 games, and if each game has 500 people (stadiums have many thousands while soccer fields have few, 500 is an arbitrary but real number used to make my point), there are 360,000,000 Americans taking part in a given year. If one-half of them are in the opposition, we have the amazing statistic of 180 MILLION! Americans per year taking part in the Great-American-Weekend-Sport of “Mass Racial Taunting”! (MRT) of Indian people.   The other 180 million Americans think it is not a big thing. Warning: These statistics do not take into account the hundreds of millions of Americans joining the “MRT” of my people, at home, in front of their kids. CC

  4. I hope that some of the history professors will se it and talk about your words in the classroom. I didn’t post it anywhere else because Meteor Blades is writing a piece on it that includes the Sand Creek Massacre  to the Wounded Knee Massacre to my best knowledge. He held off posting it at the anniversary so I’m doing mostly the same by just putting that at PH.

    Your essay is so eloquent and well said, would I have your permission to add a few lines from the Shadow Report and post the words you’ve written here after the break in the diary?

    If so, would you prefer I address your name like I did in the one I linked to, or to directly put your name at the top? I won’t do anything with it till I hear from you about it.

    Either way, thankyou for posting your essay; it says it all. I think a lot more people should read it.

  5. I wrote the essay several years ago when people in Tulsa were protesting the Union High redskins, so it’s been around awhile. You have my permission to use it as is or in part. It’s also ok to use my name.

  6. I saw the way you had the piece and it’s fine with me. Except I think you meant honoring an elder i btw, the gully I stood in that night would be just behind you when you took the picture. The crumbling chimmny you may have noticed was the old museum and became our security building and HQ.  

  7. I wondered what that was.

    I want to say more, but I’m on to job # 2 now. I’m glad the essay I did is alright with you, it’s an honor.

    Thankyou Carter.

  8. This essay is spot on.

    I will be linking to it as I pursue my quest to end the “redskin/squaw” labels.  Not sure how to do it but I’ll learn on the way.

  9. I stood on the bank of the shallow ravine where our people had been murdered by Custer’s’ 7th Cavalry. There I prayed for the defenseless ones, torn apart by Hotchkiss cannon and trampled under hooves of steel by drunken wasicu. I could feel the touch of their spirits as I eased quietly into the gully and stood silently… waiting for my future, touching my past.
    Finally, I bent over and picked a sprig of sage – whose ancestors in 1890 had been nourished by the blood of Red babies, ripped from their mothers dying grasp and bayonetted by the evil ones – As I washed myself with that sacred herb I became cold in my determination and cleansed of fear. I looked for Big Foot and YellowBird in the darkness and I said aloud —
    “We are back my relations, we are home”. Hoka-Hey
    Carter Camp- Ponca Nation AIM
    FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!! NOW!!!

    Free Leonard Peltier, INDEED!

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