The Use of Native American Mascots

My topic is practically about how we as Americans portray the use of Indian nicknames as team mascot and the perception of Native Americans themselves. Throughout the United States, be it high school, college, or the professional level, the use of Native American mascot team names is quite common. Be it the Washington Redskins, the Atlanta Braves, the Florida State Seminoles, or less commonly known Native American names, the Utah Utes or Illinois Fighting Illini. Probably the most controversial team is the Florida State Seminoles. Several years ago, in about 2008, an NCAA committee sent out a mass verbal message to all of the teams in the NCAA who had a Native American nickname as it's mascot, stating that every single one was strongly advised to change it's name. Well, Florida Sate was about the only university that refused the advising. You see, Florida State had a much supported reason behind why they didn't want to remove its current team name; the Seminole tribe of Florida was a very heavy supporter of the team name. They even went as far as helping create the mascots in- game attire. The NCAA soon realized that Florida State was supported by the actual Seminole people and left that particular situation alone. The Washington Redskins are also another story on its own. See, the Redskins team name was not very well condoned by anybody for that matter. I believe that the term "Redskin" is similar to a team naming themselves the "Coons" or a name of old that blacks were referred as in the mid 1900's. Several years ago, the Redskins as an organization were sued by a Native American group because of their team name. In a Sports Illustrated article, a man was interviewing a Native American guy and kept referring to him as chief. The Native American kindly told the guy that calling him chief turned his stomach and that he thought it was similar to calling a black the "N" word.  I think that in today's world, many people don't think about the specific name of an Indian tribe as being racist which is sort of inconsiderate seeing that there are many Native Americans that live in the United States. I think that people don't put much thought into it because during the previous century, all of everyone's attention was focused on blacks vs. whites, slavery in the South, and everything that evolved around that back then catastrophic situation. I do agree with the people that do think that these names are somewhat racist though in the fact that if you research on where the names come from, I’m sure Native Americans wouldn’t want anyone using their honorable tribe name as fun nicknames.

Florida State Seminole mascot showing  pride

Joe Cypress; considers himself the first Seminole

A very elaborate Indian mascot outfit at  being shown at a game

Sources: 
1. http://www.opb.org/news/article/schools-debate-native-american-mascots-again/
2.http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/magazine/08/17/indian.wars030402/index.html
3.http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/sports/24mascot.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www&_r=0