Saying Native Mascots Honor Indigenous People Masks White Insecurity, Fear Of Competition

Cartographer Aaron Carapella with his educational map, one of a series you can buy to donate to a school,
from the website Tribal Nations Maps (photo credit: Hansi Lo Wang/NPR) 

When white Europeans first encountered indigenous people in what would come to be called the Americas, they were amazed. Clearly these were fellow humans, but they were so healthy and vigorous compared with the whites after a long sea voyage fleeing pestilence and famine in Eurasia.

"They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features." That is a translation from the memoirs of Christopher Columbus, who hacked off the hands of the handsome Arawak people when they did not bring him enough gold. (Source: Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States).

Aside from their physical appearance, Native people appeared to be highly skilled hunters and gatherers. Their tens (hundreds?) of thousands of years of experience in relationship with the ecosystems where they flourished gave them what appeared to be almost supernatural powers as seen by starving white people. Even sustainable agriculture, which had been shared via trade from its origins in Mesoamerica, was practiced skillfully; the "three sisters" of corn, beans and squash supported each other in cultivation and then produced complete protein when eaten together.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, convened to break a cycle of violence between various Native groups of the woodlands, was studied as a model in representative democracy. Too bad the founding fathers-only culture of the whites did not take note that a sachem or tribal leader was respected not only as an accomplished hunter, but as a generous man or woman who was skilled at listening. Also, that the elder women could and would remove a sachem who was not serving the people.

Typical of the patriarchal culture of the invaders, Native women were demeaned with an insulting nickname I won't repeat here while Native males were exalted with the mythic stereotype "braves."

Inauthentic portrayals of Native people began to ornament consumer products -- in much the same way that Australian white colonists created and used images of the indigenous people of their continent. 

"Aboriginalia" collected and repurposed by Tony Albert, Ybarra conceptual artist,
for his show "Visible" at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Australia, 2018

I've written before about the idea that fear of competition is what drives xenophobia in the U.S. today.

Colonizers are eternally insecure.

The very ground they stand on is contested. They often starve or go mad. They sometimes die out before their germs can infect the Natives, even if the colonizers distribute contaminated items from the biological warfare arsenal of attempted genocide. They are "terrified Inhabitants" battling an insurgency that seems to materialize from nowhere, a forest where "every Tree is become an Indian" (from Col. Henry Bouquet's letter to Gen. Jeffrey Amherst, 1763).

Can't beat 'em?

Create images of indigenous people that colonizers can consume like cannibals. Give them demeaning nicknames like Redskins, a reference to the blood running from their heads that were scalped by bounty hunters. 

Make up stuff about them. Keep telling yourself this makes you stronger; hope that's true.




"6 Misconceptions About Native American People" Teen Vogue on YouTube