American Teams with Native American Mascots

Since the beginning of sporting teams, Native American names and mascots have been used to show who a sports team was. The Redskins, Braves and Chiefs are a few teams who use Native American Tribe mascots to define their team. However, is it right to use these Indian mascots to define a team?

One of special note is the NFL football team, the Washington redskins. Not only do they use an Indian as their mascot, but also their team name is actually a racial slur towards Indians. Susan Hajaro is a Native American who has made it her mission to annihilate these mascots to “protect her people”(Native American mascots: Pride or Prejudice). Her main effort of course is towards the Washington Redskins. She says that the word redskins, is just as bad as the N-word. The Redskins is basically the main name of issue. If people get the Washington Redskins to change their mascot the others teams will quickly follow.

That being said, the controversy of having an Indian Mascot as a team name has been around for while. In the beginning there were nearly 3,000 teams that used Native American mascots, but now people are becoming more aware of the insult that some mascots cause to the Indian people and that number has been reduced to around 900. However, that is still 900 too many according to many Indians. One of these teams that noticeably changed its mascot is the Atlanta Braves. The Braves, previously, had a mascot consisting of a screaming Indian figurehead. They later changed it to the more recent “A” that we see on their caps today.

These team names also give the wrong impression of who the Native American people actually are, and what their history is. These days you have all these teams represented by Indians, along with books and movies about fictional characters. If you ask little kids to describe an Indian, they will more than likely go off of what they have seen in movies and sports. They fail to realize that the Native American people are still amongst us living as modern humans. They also fail to see that Indians do not in fact, have red skin as is promoted in many teams Indian mascots such as Chief Wahoo for the Cleveland Indians. The fact is that many people in the United States do not even know an Indian and therefore have a certain image about them that has been molded into them by the media and entertainment.

To sum up everything, most of these controversies are a matter of the mascots representing respect and pride versus indignity and humiliation. The Native Americans argue that having an Indian mascot is demeaning, and portrays the Native American culture in a very narrow minded light. The owners of the team, however, argue back saying that the mascots that they have chosen honor the Indian people and provide a constant reminder of who lived here before the English arrived. A great example are the Florida State Seminoles, who fired back at the NCAA calling the NCAA ban on Indian mascots for colleges “outrageous and insulting”('Change the Mascot' Campaign Hits Washington Redskins). They said that their Indian mascot is an honor to be associated with their University.