Subject: American Indian Mascot Awareness Teach-in
and Protest
Date: Tue,
19 Mar 2002 16:56:42 -0600
From: Aaron
Bird Bear <abirdbear@facstaff.wisc.edu>
To: advisor-link@relay.doit.wisc.edu
Please share with students and interested parties:
4:00 PM Teach-In
5:30 Rally at Kohl Center
Please read the press release below for more information:
American Indians Protest Illinois Mascot at NCAA Midwest
Regionals
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Ned Blackhawk, (608.213.9037)
Aaron Bird Bear (608.217.3564)
American Indian students, faculty, and staff at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison and Madison Indian community members have organized
a protest and educational teach-in on the continued use of Indian mascots by
the University of Illinois whose men’s basketball team plays in the NCAA Sweet
Sixteen this weekend in Madison. The Madison Indian community has deep concerns
about the offensive caricatures of Native peoples in popular culture,
particularly within the nation’s educational system. This weekend’s teach-in at
4pm on Friday at the UW Multicultural Student Center in the Red Gym Armory and
protest at 5:30pm near the Kohl Center will focus on efforts to get the
University of Illinois to abandon its demeaning portraits of Indian peoples.
Protest and teach-in organized by the Midwest Treaty Network and Wunk Sheek,
UW-Madison Indian Student Group.
Contact: Ned Blackhawk (nedbhawk@hotmail.com) 608.213.9037
“Indians peoples are among the least understood minority
groups in the United States and should not have their histories and cultures
degraded to simplistic caricatures.” Ada Deer, Director UW-Madison American
Indian Studies Program, former Tribal Chair, Menominee Nation of Wisconsin
“Ignorance and stereotypes only hinder efforts to bridge
cultural and racial divides and should be challenged at every turn.” Gary Sandefur,
Professor of Sociology, UW-Madison, former Interim Provost, UW-Madison
“I find Indian mascots offensive to my culture and demeaning
to my family’s struggles to overcome dispossession, poverty, and racism.” Derek
Jennings, member of the Quapaw Nation, graduate of Dartmouth College’s American
Indian Studies Program
“Mascots are like a slap in the face,” Richard LoudBear,
member of the Menominee Nation
INFORMATION LINKS:
Anti-"Chief" Homepage
http://www.prairienet.org/prc/prcanti.html
"Say No to Chief Illiniwek" petition
http://www.prairienet.org/prc/prcanti.html
Hostile Environment at UI-Urbana/Champaign
http://www.csulb.edu/~wwinnesh/hostile.html
UW-Madison Policy on Native American Mascots
http://chronicle.com/colloquy/2001/logo/20.htm
http://nativenet.uthscsa.edu/archive/nl/9309/0109.html
Midwest Treaty Network--
Indians are People not Mascots
http://www.alphacdc.com/treaty/nomascot.html
WIEA "Indian" Mascot and Logo Taskforce
http://pages.prodigy.net/munson
The Mascot Issue