Suzan Shown Harjo: Some praise and some piling on too

Opinion

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Now that Washington is 7-7 after losing to Cincinnati, it’s clear to all but the most fanatical boosters that the Washington football team is not going to the Super Bowl. The team started strong, then fizzled, and another losing season is being blamed on the new coach, top players or (my personal fave) the owner.

So, suit up, boys and girls – it’s pile-on time.

I was going to skip piling on this year, but three things changed my mind. First and second, Oklahoma is tops this year in college football and Sam Bradford won the Heisman Trophy, and it occurs to me that I can do a praise pile-on, too.

Bradford, a 21-year-old sophomore, is a citizen of Cherokee Nation and was born in its capitol city, Tahlequah, OK. In accepting the Heisman, Bradford was both humble about himself and generous in his praise of his parents, teammates, coaches, friends and university officials. Cherokee and other tribal kids and adults throughout Indian country are bursting with pride over this Native son, and he deserves all congratulations and commendations.

The University of Oklahoma was the first school in the United States to drop its “Indian” sports reference, the mascot “Little Red” that Native students used to call the “dancing idiot.” The Native American movement to drop these “Native” names, mascots, symbols, logos and behaviors began in a concerted way on college campuses nationwide in the early 1960s.

After OU retired “Little Red” in 1970, Stanford, Dartmouth, Syracuse and other schools dropped their “Indian” references. At that time, there were more than 3,000 of these sports stereotypes nationwide. In the past 38 years, more than two-thirds of them have been eliminated. Today, only 900 remain. I can’t praise OU enough for leading the way by ending its race-based mascot.

On the other side of the karma scale, the third thing that changed my mind about joining the pile-on was a statement made by a young non-Native man at a recent holiday party: “I know ‘Redskins’ is racist and outrageous, but I can’t support you because I’m still rooting for them to win.”

It always surprises me to hear anyone, especially someone smart, make that particular dumb remark. My stock response is that most of us are capable of doing two things at once – for example, loving the team and hating the name. I loathe the team’s name and the heinous history it represents, but I don’t hate the players or the game. (I do admit to being sorely tested by the fans -- especially the ones who are paid by the team owners to dress in “Indian” drag and play the fool – and those pols and celebs who get the skybox seats from anti-Indian lobbyists.)

The team’s name is despised in most of Indian country. All the major Native American organizations have taken positions against it, some of them in court, where there are two lawsuits against the Washington football franchise (about which, more later).

The last time Washington went to a Super Bowl, in January of 1992, a television reporter asked Charles Mann what he thought of Native Americans calling for the team’s name to be changed. Mann, Washington’s storied defensive end, replied that he did not know all the details, but “if some Native Americans are offended, then the name should be changed.”

That was not only a courageous thing to say on the day of the Super Bowl, it was exactly the right answer. It was a respectful answer. And rare at that time. Washington’s team owners, before and since Mann’s public statement, say they’re honoring us. When we say it’s an insult, not an honor, they try to discount our experience and discredit us. They certainly don’t get that it’s not up to the offender to decide what’s offensive.

Whenever Native people address this topic in classroom or other settings where non-Indians outnumber us, we are asked predictable and unoriginal questions in the nature of rude challenges. They usually begin with the words, “Oh, yeah, what about the _______?” The blanks are filled in variously with Cowboys, Pirates, Padres, Vikings, Fighting Irish and the like.

“Cowboys, Pirates, Padres?” Those would be professions. Native peoples are nations and people, not professions.

“Vikings?” We are not the remnants of bygone tribal peoples. We are the same tribal peoples, with the same historical continuum, languages and ceremonies as our ancestors. (And, by the way, we aren’t the descendants of Vikings, although some Americans are claiming that we came from their old countries in Europe. They don’t seem to understand that this is our old country and we’re not interested in leaving.)

“Fighting Irish?’” Well, that would be up to the Irish, but Sioux people would like to know why the University of North Dakota still calls its team ‘Fighting Sioux’ over the objections of most Sioux tribes and people.

The University of Notre Dame’s “Leprechaun” is used by some as an argument for “Indian” mascots. That mascot is a symbol of a fairy or spirit in the shape of a man. Native people are actual human beings in the form of human beings and should not be caricatured or portrayed as mascots.

If these types of conversations last longer than 15 minutes, someone usually asks, “What’s next? ‘Bears,’ ‘Lions,’ ‘Tigers?’” Those would be animals and, once again, Native people are human beings.

As American sports teams originated, they did not have team names or mascots. They had colors. OU’s original colors were crimson and corn, which became today’s crimson and cream; along the way the team was called “Big Red,” which spawned “Little Red.” The Washington pro team’s colors are burgundy and gold. The skin of the “Indian” head logo on the helmets started out as burgundy, but has become brown-black, which may be an effort to visually support the franchise’s absurd position in court that the name of their team has nothing to do with actual Native people.

I am the Harjo of Harjo et al v. Pro Football, Inc., which we filed on Sept. 10, 1992, with the goal of forcing the team owners to retire the disparaging name. My co-plaintiffs are Attorney/Author Vine Deloria, Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux; 1933-2005); Artist Mateo Romero (Cochiti Pueblo); Educators Manley A. Begay, Jr. (Navajo), Norbert S. Hill, Jr. (Oneida), William A. Means, Jr. (Oglala Lakota); and Former Governor, Pueblo Ysleta del Sur, Raymond D. Apodaca.

Our case is in its 17th year of litigation. It’s gone on for so long that many folks think we lost or gave up long ago. But the lawsuit is very much alive and pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals, and a new one is before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, where we won a unanimous decision from three trademark judges in 1999.

At the same time that we won our case, the team was changing owners, from the hands of rich old white men and a legacy of bigotry to a young Jewish man we hoped would empathize with us and understand the power of negative imaging. Alas, the new owner appealed our victory to the federal District Court, which overturned the trademark judges’ decision in 2003. We appealed and are seeking to have the three trademark judges' decision reinstated by the Court of Appeals.

On Aug. 11, 2006, six young Native American people between ages 18 and 24 filed the second case, Blackhorse et al v. Pro Football, Inc. Their case is identical to ours and is in the same forum, the PTO. The Washington franchise tried to get the Blackhorse case thrown out, but the PTO is holding the young people’s suit in abeyance until there is a decision in our case.

The Washington owners also fought tooth and nail to keep out of the case any record of Native support for our position. It was not until the appellate level that national Indian organizations won the right to file a brief, and then the franchise objected to the brief itself, but that objection was overruled. The Native American Rights Fund prepared the brief for the National Congress of American Indians, National Indian Education Association, National Indian Youth Council and the Tulsa Indian Coalition Against Racism.

While the team owners tried to suppress our record of support, they have not provided evidence of any Native support for their side of the case. They say that those of us in the first case waited too long after coming of age to file our lawsuit, even Mateo Romero, who was in diapers when the franchise filed for trademark protections in the late 1960s.

We plaintiffs were acting in a culturally appropriate manner by doing what responsible adult Native people do: take responsibility and not leave problems to our children and grandchildren. The team owners are asking the appellate judges to rule against us on the grounds of laches, passage of time.

The young people do not have a laches problem. If the franchise escapes through the laches loophole in our case, they cannot do so in the second case. Sooner or later, in our case or theirs, the courts will have to consider the merits of the disparagement case, as did the three trademark judges who ruled in our favor.

That’s the thing about karma – it just keeps on going around. Washington has not been back to a Super Bowl since we filed our lawsuit. That’s not because of anything we’ve done; rather, it’s what the franchise has done and not done.

Washington has been trying to change its luck. Since 1992, it’s changed owners, coaches, players and playing fields (with a stadium in Maryland and offices in Virginia, you may well ask why its name is even Washington). It’s changed uniforms, helmets and logos.

There is only one thing the franchise has not changed: that despicable name.

My hope is that some family friend of the owner will suggest that a big honking name-change contest will provide a needed infusion of luck, spirit and sport into the franchise and set the team on the road to the Super Bowl. But, judging from this owner’s style and record, he’ll probably fire the friend.

In the meantime, watch the karma scale closely and you might just see the tipping point.

Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne & Hodulgee Muscogee, is a writer, curator and policy advocate, who is President of The Morning Star Institute in Washington, DC. A founding trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian, she also is former executive director of the National Congress of American Indians and past news director of the American Indian Press Association. She can be reached at suzan_harjo@yahoo.com.