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Post Opening Ceremony Anti-Racism Vigil |
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Post Opening Ceremony Anti-Racism Vigil |
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Back to the Opening Ceremony and Plenary I
After recessing to the rousing "One More Step" at the end of Thursday's Opening Ceremony, more than three-quarters of this year's GA attendees stayed behind to participate in an anti-racism vigil to protest the use of the Indian Chief Wahoo mascot by the Cleveland Indians baseball team.
UUA President John Buehrens invited our Native American visitors and friends from the United Church of Christ on stage to be honored. He then introduced Dr. Charlene Teters, a founding Board Member of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media (NCRSM), an artist, an activist and a lecturer.
Dr. Teters is of the Spokane people and is currently a Professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. Her uncle, Sherman Alexie, is the author of the book, Smoke Signals. She herself was featured in the award-winning documentary, "In Whose Honor?", by Jay Rosenstein. Her work in protesting and challenging the inappropriate use of American Indian images, culture and spiritual life ways by schools, scholars, museums, corporations, and media has led to progress in the United States, Canada and South America.
At the turn of the last century, more than a hundred years ago, her great-grandparents had their Indian names taken away and were given western names pulled out of a hat. Her great-grandmother was named Ellen Moses and her great-grandfather was named Joseph Moses. The enforced loss of one's name was the beginning of a whole series of steps in the subordination of a whole culture by the dominant culture. The practice of the Native American religion and rituals became illegal. Children were gathered up and taken to boarding schools to be taught the language and the ways of the dominant culture. Many of them died. Some ancestors went underground to keep alive the songs and the stories of their tribes in order to preserve their culture and their heritage. Such violent subordinations went on for generations.
Dr. Teters comes from a family of six children and is the only one amongst her siblings who received a college education. When she went to college at the University of Illinois with two other Native American students, she looked for connection with other Native Americans. There were no Native American Student Organization, no Native American Faculty member and no Native American groups in or out of campus. The lack of a protest of any sort towards the use of Chief Illiniwek, the University of Illinois' team mascot, has created the proliferation of its use. The true humanity of a group becomes lost when they are represented as caricatures.
Dr. Teters shared the feeling of humiliation when she saw a neon sign showing the figure of a drunken Native American falling down over and over again as an advertisement.
About the protest against the use of the Chief Wahoo mascot by the Cleveland Indians, Dr. Teters said, "This is not about baseball. It's about our children!" Native American children are affected in negative ways by the misappropriation of their cultural heritage. "Mom, what is so bad about being an Indian?" they ask.
It's also about a people's right to define themselves, to be able to pass on their religion and cultural heritage to their children.
2001 UUA General Assembly Vigil
Protesting the Misappropriation of Native American Terms and Images by the Cleveland Baseball Team
Wetness Witness at the Cleveland Indians Stadium
Planning the Vigil: An Interview with John Millspaugh, Assistant for Public Witness to UUA President John BuehrensReported for the Web by Kok Heong McNaughton
General Assembly 2001 · Program Grid
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