Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 34

STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTION STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTION Series Editor: Norman K. Denzin Recent Volumes: Volum...

Author: Norman K. Denzin

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STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTION

STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTION Series Editor: Norman K. Denzin Recent Volumes: Volume 1–33:

Studies in Symbolic Interaction

STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTION VOLUME 34

STUDIES IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTION EDITED BY

NORMAN K. DENZIN Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA EDITOR OF DECOLONIAL OPENINGS

C. RICHARD KING Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA MANAGING EDITOR

DONG HAN Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2010 Copyright r 2010 Emerald Group Publishing Limited Reprints and permission service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the text, illustrations or advertisements. The opinions expressed in these chapters are not necessarily those of the Editor or the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-84950-960-2 ISSN: 0163-2396 (Series)

Awarded in recognition of Emerald’s production department’s adherence to quality systems and processes when preparing scholarly journals for print

CONTENTS LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

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PART I: DECOLONIAL OPENINGS: FASHIONING NARRATIVES AND IDENTITIES AGAINST/AFTER CHIEF ILLINIWEK THINKING AGAINST/AFTER CHIEF ILLINIWEK C. Richard King

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EXPLAINING THE NCAA DECISION, AUGUST 9, 2005 Carol Spindel

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MOURNING THE MASCOT’S DEMISE: ON PREHISTORIC ORIGINS AND MODERN AFTERMATH Synthia Sydnor

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‘‘LEUTWILER’S INDIAN’’: CREATING THE ‘‘CHIEF’’ TRADITION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS Jennifer Guiliano

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WHY THE NCAA WAS RIGHT Stephen J. Kaufman

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INVENTING TRADITION: THE GARIPPO REPORT AND THE PARAPHERNALIA OF JURISPRUDENCE Ray Gamache

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DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF CHIEF ILLINIWEK (1926–2007) David Prochaska

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CONTENTS

STAGING AN INTERVENTION IN A VIRTUAL DYSTOPIA: THE ONLINE FALLOUT OF THE RACE, POWER AND PRIVILEGE FORUM AND THE REMOVAL OF ‘‘CHIEF ILLINIWEK’’ Cassidy C Browning

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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHIEF ILLINIWEK? CONSUMING ‘‘INDIANNESS’’ IN THE SHADOWS OF MEMORIAL STADIUM Michael D. Giardina

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(NOT) WRITING ABOUT THE CHIEF David Roediger

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ON DEAF EARS: AN ACTIVIST’S COMMENTS TO THE UNIVERSITY’S TRUSTEES Stephen J. Kaufman

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PART II: NEW INTERPRETATIVE WORKS ‘‘BORN TO BE WILD’’ OR A ‘‘TALE OF TWO THEORIES’’: A PERFORMANCE OF BLACK WOMANHOOD IN THE UNITED STATES Amira Millicent Davis

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ROMANCE, NOSTALGIA, AND DANGER: DISPOSING OF THE WHITE MALE GUIDE Richard J. Doherty

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‘‘AND HER DEATH FILLED HER WITH GREAT PLENTITUDE’’: WHITENESS, ERASURE, AND RACIALIZED SCHOOLING Myra Margolin

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STEPPING OUT, SPEAKING UP: RESISTING SEXUAL VIOLENCE THROUGH NARRATIVES Koeli Moitra Goel

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Contents

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THE CHARGELING Cory Holding

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PLAYING WITH OIL: PUTTING PERFORMATIVITY AT THE CENTER OF OIL CIVILIZATION Daniel Lord

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LIFELONG EDUCATION AND DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP John M. Johnson

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Cassidy C Browning

Department of Theatre & Dance, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

Amira Millicent Davis

Independent Scholar

Richard J. Doherty

Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

Ray Gamache

Department of Communication, Theatre and Art, The College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, MN, USA

Michael D. Giardina

Department of Advertising, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

Koeli Moitra Goel

Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

Jennifer Guiliano

Department of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

Cory Holding

Department of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

John M. Johnson

School of Social Transformation, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

Stephen J. Kaufman

Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA ix

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

C. Richard King

Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

Daniel Lord

Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

Myra Margolin

Independent Scholar

David Prochaska


David Roediger


Carol Spindel

Department of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

Synthia Sydnor

Department of Kinesiology & Community Health, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

PART I DECOLONIAL OPENINGS: FASHIONING NARRATIVES AND IDENTITIES AGAINST/AFTER CHIEF ILLINIWEK

THINKING AGAINST/AFTER CHIEF ILLINIWEK C. Richard King Since its inception in 1926, the tradition of playing Indian at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana (UIUC) has fostered powerful devotion and deep affection, creating powerful spaces of identification and narration for thousands of (largely EuroAmerican) students, fans, and community members. Embodied by Chief Illiniwek, this tradition had proven popular and pleasurable for more than 60 years when a small, but persistent, collection of students and faculty began challenging the prevailing uses and understandings of Indianness at UIUC. At first, these interventions appeared awkward and idiosyncratic as they worked to unsettle established interpretations and preferred practices. Over time, a vital and creative counter-hegemonic movement crystallized, fostering protest, internal efforts at reform, and critical scholarship. In conjunction with a broader, national movement (see King, 2010), these local initiatives culminated in a policy change by the National Collegiate Athletic Association that would eventually prompt UIUC, after initial resistance, to retire Chief Illiniwek. Nevertheless, alumni, fans, and several media outlets not only continued to defend the schools mascot, but went so far as to celebrate it as well. Indeed, almost immediately after Chief Illiniwek performed for the last time, the local paper in Champaign-Urbana released a volume commemorating the mascot and its import (Foreman, 2007). As much of the media and public has mourned for their ‘‘Indian’’ and longed for their lost traditions, they have silenced and

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 34, 3–7 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2010)0000034003

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marginalized local and national network of resistance intent to re/claim dignity, humanity, and community. This thematic section seeks to alter this prevailing pattern through the creation of an archive intent to document local resistance and to craft a polyphonic, counter-narrative unsettling dominant accounts of Chief Illiniwek. At once a corrective to the historical record and a catalyst for future change, it brings together academics and activists, faculty, scholars, and students to offer a rounded assessment of efforts to retire the Chief, the broader historical and cultural context and the lasting significance of the acts in local and national theaters. Chief Illiniwek has fostered deep emotional attachments, intense public interest, urgent institutional action, and powerful opposition. As a consequence, the history and significance of the mascot have anchored a diverse body of critical scholarship. To date, this scholarship has been fairly scattered, either in the form of articles and book chapters (see, for instance, Denzin, 2008; Farnell, 2004; King 1998, 2004, 2008; King & Springwood, 2000, Prochaska, 2001, Rosenstein, 2001), a compelling documentary (Rosenstein) or as a part of larger discussions of Native American mascots (King, 2010; King & Springwood, 2001a, 2001b; Spindel, 2000). Thus, although much is known about Chief Illiniwek, it is fragmented, somewhat dated, and focused on the mascot as a symbol and source of controversy. Here, contributors update, integrate, and broaden understandings of the icon and opposition to it. The chapters brought together in this thematic section took a rather circuitous path to publication. Norman Denzin prompted the project, suggesting he and I pool our resources to produce a counter-memory of Chief Illiniwek. Initially, we submitted a proposal to the University of Illinois Press, seemingly a natural home for a book about the state’s flagship university. Unfortunately, the project was dismissed rather summarily, invoking a familiar refrain that has become quite common in academic publishing: we cannot publish anthologies in the number we once did, if at all. Our efforts made a similar fate with more general publishers, who replied it was too specialized. Finally, we reached out to a publisher with emphases in sport studies and Native American studies. The editors were quite high on the project, and after receiving reviews all but assured us of an advance contract, until following a meeting of the editorial Board, they deferred it and insisted we add two chapters to the project: an objective overview of the movement against the Chief, including its successes and failures, and a dispassionate account of the university’s actions in addressing the mascot and the controversy surround it. At first, we set aside the concerns raised by the requested additions, believing we could manage them. Then, we began to grasp what we were

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giving up: control over the project and our commitment to a particular point of view in opposition. We undertook this project to create a multivocal countertext, which by its very nature was political and as such something other than objective. These concerns left us at a crossroads. One strategy, Norman suggested, was to publish it as a volume in Studies in Symbolic Interaction. Our effort to document thinking against/after Chief Illiniwek moves from general to specific. It moves from theoretical to historical and culminates with memoirs and auto-ethnographies. The initial set of essays takes up mascots generally, offering a context in which to better understand Chief Illiniwek. Carol Spindel provides a brief and penetrating assessment of why Native American mascots matter so much now. In turn, Synthia Sydnor argues for an alternate understanding of the sport mascot that probes the roots and nature of sport, emphasizing deep play and affective exchanges, which at once allows for a novel account of Chief Illiniwek and troubles conjunctural cultural studies of sport circles. C. Richard King underscores the import of the Chief by looking at other contested American-Indian mascots and reactionary movements intent to preserve them. On this foundation, the following essays offer historical accounts. Examining the origins and history of playing Indian at the University of Illinois, Jennifer Guiliano works to complicate and resituate Chief Illiniwek, arguing the tradition only makes sense in the context of nation, empire, and race. A more recent reading of the invented tradition is offered by Ray Gamache, who unpacks the so-called Dialogue, staged at the order of Board of Trustees and moderated by retired Judge Louis B. Garippo, reading it as a strategic maneuvers used to portray pro-Chief supporters as positive and reasonable and anti-Chief supporters as divisive and disruptive. David Prochaska rounds out this set of essays with a multivocal essay that brings together a range of perspectives and teases out the centrality of identity to the ongoing conflict over Chief Illiniwek and its significance. The final essays provide more personal accounts. Drawing on her own experience, Cassidy Browning discusses activism against Chief Illiniwek, dwelling on the place of race and gender to challenge the mascot and more importantly to police opposition to it. Next, Michael Giardina offers a narrative collage rooted in on his experience as student and now faculty at UIUC to offer a series of impressionistic reflections on academe, race and racism, sport, the media, and the meaning of Chief Illiniwek. Then, David Roediger probes the connections between writing, identity, and struggle, exploring his inability to write about the Chief, even as worked with others to oppose it and conducted scholarship on the meaning of whiteness in U.S. history. Finally, the letters of Stephen J. Kaufman, one of the most

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dedicated and persistent opponents of Chief Illiniwek, document key arguments animating the anti-Chief movement, creative strategies of intervention, and a relentless spirit in pursuit of social justice. Although the work of students and faculty at UIUC, as well as the efforts of scholars and indigenous leaders across the country, rightfully inspires those committed to social justice and cultural healing, it offers a hopeful reminder of the import of resistance, if not marking a triumphal turn. That said, witnessing local happening in Urbana-Champaign from afar, the following pronouncement seems most fitting: ‘‘The Chief is dead, long live Chief.’’ More a lament than a celebration, fully aware of the ironies of sovereignty, and signification, it captures the emergent (racial) state of affairs after the so-called Last Dance of Chief Illiniwek in February 2007. Indeed, despite his official disappearance, by all appearance, the Chief will not die. To this day, in this campus, each fall new groups of students buy and wear T-Shirts with the chief logo; this past spring, Native American art work in front of the Native American House was vandalized by anti-chief activists. This mix of progressive hope, audacious resistance, and grounded realism is captured in the words, deeds, and spirits of three indigenous alumni of UIUC, who each in their way were instrumental to the official retirement (quoted in Denzin, 2008, p. 172): Professor Joseph Gone (member Gros Ventre Tribe of Montana, 24 February 2007): Its about time y It’s a relief to learn that at the dawn of the 21st Century damaging racial stereotypes of the sort Chief Illiniwek embodied no longer have a place in public university sporting events. Charlene Teters (Spokane, 27 February 2007): The effort to remove the Chief was never about the mascot, it was and remains to be about racism. Cyd Crue, White Racism/Redface Minstrels What’s At Stake in the Chief Debate? The American Indian of the past is more real, than the Indian of the present; The Euroamerican perspective determines who and what is an authentic Native American representation; This perspective is neo-colonial, masked behind a cultural altruism, that treats all criticism as an instance of political correctness. The neo-colonial perspectives speaks for the greater good, the majority, what is true and correct. The Native American has become more symbolic than real, symbolic of whiteness in relation to the redskin, noble savage. The practice of redface that structures the Chief’s performances perpetuates 19th century racist ideologies.

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REFERENCES Denzin, N. K. (2008). Searching for yellowstone: Race, gender, family, and memory in the postmodern west. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Farnell, B. (2004). The fancy dance of racializing discourse. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 28(1), 30–55. Foreman, J. R. (2007). Chief Illiniwek: A tribute to an Illinois tradition and the chief: The last dance? (Rev. ed.). Champaign, IL: The News-Gazette. King, C. R. (1998). Spectacles, sports, and stereotypes: Dis/playing Chief Illiniwek. In: Colonial discourse, collective memories, and the exhibition of Native American cultures and histories in the contemporary United States (pp. 41–58). New York: Garland Press. King, C. R. (2004). This is not an Indian: Situating claims about Indianness in sporting worlds. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 28(1), 3–10. King, C. R. (2008). Teaching intolerance: Anti-Indian imagery, racial politics, and (anti)racist pedagogy. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 30(5), 420–436. King, C. R. (2010). The Native American mascot controversy: A sourcebook. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. King, C. R., & Springwood, C. F. (2000). Choreographing colonialism: Athletic mascots, (dis)embodied Indians, and EuroAmerican subjectivities. Cultural Studies: A Research Annual, 5, 191–221. King, C. R., & Springwood, C. F. (2001a). Beyond the cheers: Race as spectacle in college sports. Albany: State University of New York Press. King, C. R., & Springwood, C. F. (Eds). (2001b). Team spirits: Essays on the history and significance of native American mascots. Lincoln: University of Nebraska. Prochaska, D. (2001). At home in Illinois: Presence of chief Illiniwek, absence of native Americans. In: C. R. King & C. F. Springwood (Eds), Team spirits: Essays on the history and significance of native American mascots (pp. 157–188). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Rosenstein, J. (2001). ‘‘In whose honor?’’ Mascots, and the media. In: C. R. King & C. F. Springwood (Eds), Team spirits: Essays on the history and significance of native American mascots (pp. 241–256). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Spindel, C. (2000). Dancing at halftime: Sports and the controversy over American Indian mascots. New York: New York University Press.

EXPLAINING THE NCAA DECISION, AUGUST 9, 2005$ Carol Spindel1 Eighteen schools are now on the NCAA’s mascot pariah list. Three are Braves. Six are Indians. Four identify as specific tribes – Seminoles, Utes, Chippewas, and Choctaws. Carthage College calls itself the Redmen. Illinois has created its own tribe, the Fighting Illini. The last school on the list – Southeastern Oklahoma State – does not beat around the bush or go for modifiers. They are the Savages. American Indian leaders and activists have objected to their tribes’ use as sports mascots since the 1970s, but the public has shrugged its shoulders and gone on cheering for its favorite Indians and Redskins, a term one linguist compared to Darkies. It is hard to have a serious public discussion about sports mascots for several reasons. For one, most of us do not know enough history to put the debate into historical context. Native Americans know this history. These are their family stories. American Indian sports mascots exist under a double bubble of mythological padding. One layer is the mythology that surrounds, in this case, college sports and the ‘‘student athlete.’’ The other consists of the deeply planted myths we have absorbed about American Indians. Under all this mythological wrapping, our thinking tends to get fuzzy. Fake Indians do not seem problematic because they are so very normal, just part of our

$

This piece originally appeared online at Inside Higher Ed on August 9, 2005 at http:// www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/08/09/spindel.


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‘‘cultural wallpaper,’’ in the words of Jay Rosenstein, who made the documentary film ‘‘In Whose Honor?’’ The mascot debate is actually the latest in a long series of battles over who controls American Indian culture. Since most of us never learned the history of white/Native relations in our country, the issue seems to have sprung out of nowhere. Until I wrote a book about sports mascots, I never knew the history of forced assimilation. But culture was as much a battleground as land. The U.S. government conducted a strenuous campaign to wipe out American Indian cultures, religions, and languages. American Indian children were forcibly taken from their families to boarding schools where they were physically punished if they spoke their tribal languages or tried to maintain their religious observances. In a country that prides itself on religious freedom, the First Americans had none until 1934. Before this, Native people faced sanctions even when trying to conduct ceremonies and dances on their own reservations. One of the few historical incidents many of us do know about, the tragic massacre at Wounded Knee, took place because American Indians were gathering to dance at a religious ceremony that the government was determined to suppress. The leaders that survived were paroled into Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and sent off to Europe to be entertainers. At the same time that we were trying to destroy American Indian cultures, non-Native Americans loved to dress up and play Indian. What could be more American? We have been doing it since the Boston Tea Party. Mascot performances like Chief Illiniwek, a fictional chief who dances at Illinois on the fifty-yard line at halftime or Osceola, who gallops in carrying a burning lance, trace their origins to the Wild West show, traveling big-tent performances that were part of the American circus tradition. This is why mascot performers and Indian profile logos almost always feature feathered headdresses, no matter what tribe they represent. The feathered headdresses are typical of Wild West performers, who were recruited from the Sioux Nation. Buffalo Bill, the best-known Wild West ringmaster, claimed, just like modern universities, that his show was both historically accurate and morally uplifting. Buffalo Bill’s signature acts – the Indian attack on the settler cabin, on the circled wagons, and on the stagecoach – survived after the circus era as film and television cliche´s. Wild West shows were filmed and evolved into westerns. When Americans flocked to Wild West shows, they believed they were seeing the last vestiges of a dying culture. It was true that Native populations were declining. But this idea, that American Indians would disappear like dinosaurs, became so embedded in American

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mythology that even today many non-Native Americans are startled to encounter a flesh and blood Native person. Thrilled by the Wild West performances, college boys and Boy Scouts emulated the showbiz Indians when they created Indian sports mascots, many of which date from the 1920s. The college boys, despite their good intentions, were working under an enormous misperception. They thought they were saving something that would otherwise be lost. But Native American people survived. Their populations rebounded. Having paid dearly to save what is left of their cultures, religions, and languages, they want to control how they are used and passed on. Understandably, they resent how lightly schools appropriate their cultures for entertainment at sports events, and it is particularly hurtful that this happens in higher education. The United States Commission on Civil Rights pointed this out in April 2001 when it urged non-Native schools to retire American Indian imagery and names in sports. Public symbols that use other minority groups have mostly disappeared. They make us all uncomfortable. Can you imagine the Washington Darkies or the Florida State Chicanos? At Sonoma State University, when Jewish groups objected to the Cossacks nickname, teams became the Seawolves within two years. If student theatrical groups were to stage minstrel shows, as they did in the 1930s, the students would be justifiably criticized. But when America discusses race, the terms are usually black and white. Native Americans say they feel invisible. The strong attachment students feel for their mascots or nicknames are not instinctual; they are promoted. Students are indoctrinated into a campus cult of racial stereotyping. Critical thinking on the subject of the mascot must be discouraged and the school has to promote an anti-educational, anti-intellectual reaction. This is even more disturbing because it takes place in a setting of talk about ‘‘honoring’’ Indians. But Indian mascots are fantasy figures, firmly stuck in the past. One parallel symbol is Aunt Jemima, the slave cook who loved the plantation so much she did not want to leave when she was freed. She is a white fantasy that denies and betrays the real history of slavery, just like the mascot Osceola. The real Osceola fought against American expansion into Seminole land and was betrayed when he came in good faith to a peace council with American soldiers. But his mascot reincarnation is happy to welcome Florida State fans. Knowing this history, Native people find it hard to explain to us why mascots are so offensive. We cannot hold up our end of the argument. It is like the modern teenager who looks at the Aunt Jemima syrup bottle, sees a

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positive depiction of a smiling African-American grandmother, and says, ‘‘What’s the problem? It’s so positive.’’ The problem is not this particular logo, but the long pattern of denying the history of slavery that the original Aunt Jemima, with the ads depicting her life history, represents. In addition to slavery, there is another reality we have swept under our historical carpet: how we acquired this land we love so much. When you sweep something that large under the rug, it makes bumps. Mascots are bumps in our historical carpet, something we are trying to rearrange and deny to make it more appealing. In our version of the story, American Indians just disappeared and our mascots commemorate them with respect and honor. But American Indians are not gone and they don’t want to be commemorated with a halftime Wild West show by fans that know nothing of their culture. This proprietary insistence – this is ours and we will keep it no matter what you say – is offensive. When the two sides clash on campuses, the racial hostility gets ugly. Native people want to be in American institutions of higher education, not as mascots and sports souvenirs, but as equals and contemporaries as students, faculty, and staff. They want their history taught truthfully in the classroom, not presented in a false pageant of white longing. The mascot/ nickname/logo issue is about how the majority depicts the minority, so if you go to a reservation and interview people randomly, they may say it is not a concern for them. But listening to Native people who have spent time on the campus at Illinois or at the University of North Dakota, I usually hear strong feelings of frustration and bitterness. In those places, everything Native exists in relation to the mascot or nickname. And because American Indians nearly always oppose the mascot, the hardline students who support the mascot become anti-Indian. Although the mascots are not intended to be hostile or abusive, the campus climate around them certainly can be, especially for Native students. Native leaders and educators, including the American Congress of American Indians, lists mascots and anti-defamation as one of the important issues facing Native people. It is not easy to retire a nickname or mascot. The attachment of fans, their identity as Seminoles or Indians, runs deep. Generations of alumni come out of the woodwork, write letters, threaten to withhold money, bring lawsuits. Education is usually a popular enterprise and educators are not used to dealing with this kind of controversy. The NCAA has given these schools a perfect opportunity to say, ‘‘had to do it, couldn’t hobble the sports program.’’ These changes can go very smoothly when the campus leadership is united and when they hold to their resolve that a new sports identity is

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best for the institution. The NCAA policy will have a ripple effect on high schools, another positive result. Southeast Missouri State (SEMO) avoided the pariah list by changing its nickname this year. In October 2005, I spoke at the ceremony when the Southeast Missouri State Indians were retired to the sounds of Mohican musician Bill Miller’s haunting flute music. Everyone in attendance was positive about the future. Everyone was ready to cheer on the SEMO Redhawks. There is a lot of talk in college sports about respect. I felt it that day.

NOTE 1. She is the author of Dancing at Halftime: Sports and the Controversy over American Indian Mascots (NYU Press).

MOURNING THE MASCOT’S DEMISE: ON PREHISTORIC ORIGINS AND MODERN AFTERMATH Synthia Sydnor In 1993, inspired by Sansone’s (1998) book on the origin of sport, I speculated about sport mascots and cultural performance in an article published in the Journal of Sport & Social Issues (Sydnor-Slowikowski, 1993). It was a tentative piece that combined some of Sansone’s ethological thesis with performativity/performance studies to contemplate contemporary collective/ social authenticity, imperialist nostalgia and to critique racist ideologies linked to sport mascots, such as that of Chief Illiniwek, the University of Illinois’ stereotyped mascot of a mythical Native American. While working on the 1993 mascot project, inspired by reading Sansone, I was secretly fascinated by the idea that present-day mascots may be part of a continuity of human consciousness from prehistoric/Paleolithic times (10,000 or more years ago); I cautiously explored that briefly in the 1993 article, but never pursued it further. I knew that the study of totems and ethology, and the works of those such as Konrad Lorenz, Levi Strauss, and Emile Durkheim on sociobiology, cognitive structure, and function were legitimate, but yet, in the circles within which I academically ran, studying continuities between human prehistoric and postmodern rituals or suggesting


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a kind of biological determinism or psychic humanhood seemed to be taboo. But as the years went by and I came every year to teach Sansone’s idea as part of a graduate seminar on ‘‘The Natures and Origins of Play & Sport,’’ I became convinced that Sansone’s idea about sport had significance with applicability for cultural studies and for cross-cultural study of sport manifestations. Then when the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign finally made their administrative decision to retire Chief Illiniwek and I and the contributors of this anthology witnessed once again the absurd public outcry by the ‘‘Chief’s’’ supporters over this, I decided to use Sansone’s thesis to explore ‘‘what exactly is at stake with this mascot that is so hard to give up?’’. In the past, the magnificent Marching Illini band would end its halftime performance playing the school’s marching songs interspersed with the Chief’s war hymn. The band would form ILLINI in block letters and march down the field. Hidden until then by the ranks of the marching band members, the Chief would suddenly appear and – cheered on by 70,000 – would begin the stylized dance that had started in 1926. y And now the band was going through that time-honored routine, the same music and the same marching routine – without the Chief! From the capacity crowd and especially the student sections, came shouts of ‘‘Chief! Chief!’’ It was an eerie spectacle. Illiniwek without the Chief was a little like Hamlet without the prince. A chill went through my body, and tears came to my eyes. y Yet the sadness was overridden by a joyous affirmation that students and alumni alike were cheering the memory of what had been taken from them. As I watched the Marching Illini’s hollow presentation, I fantasized that this shell of a ritual would be retained y Or will memory fail first, and even what little is left of the ritual disappear? (Novak, 2007)

This above quotation, by noted journalist Robert Novak, is just one example of hundreds of commentaries, blogs, articles, and editorials from a myriad of sources from early 2007 in which writers outwardly reveal their personal sadness, tears, utter hopelessness at the Chief’s forced demise. In addition to such writings, blogs, and radio-talk shows, specific artifacts of the aftermath1 of the Chief performance continue to circulate in UrbanaChampaign and surrounding communities. These souvenirs include thousands of orange t-shirts emblazoned CHIEF; huge Chief-in-headdress magnets enveloping doors of pick-up trucks and vans (replacing the yellowribbon ‘‘pray for our troops’’ magnet fad of a few years back), books about the history of the Chief, calls for and legal actions to reinstate the Chief, and $1,200 marble bench memorials for sale at a local garden store, engraved with chiseled words ‘‘CHIEF FOREVER.’’ Over the past 20 years that I have lived in Illinois, these aftermath performances echo what has amazed and perplexed me (like the other authors within this volume): the emotion and connectedness that the Chief

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mascot evokes in its fans. Precisely what is it that people cling to when they mourn the demise of ‘‘The Chief?’’ As a recent blog posts, ‘‘It’s a mascot. It’s a guy in a costume y; so what’s the big deal about getting a different costume?’’2 Scholars working in cultural studies have given two kinds of answers to this ‘‘what’s the big deal?’’ question about the grip of cultural performances like Illiniwek. First, the dominant reading of sport mascots hinges on the critique of white supremacy in endless variations in ubiquitous cultural spaces. Of those who have exposed and critiqued racial spectacles in this paradigm, I count among my favorite, works by King (2004), Charles Springwood (King & Springwood, 2001), Spindel (2002), Ganguly (2006), Robidoux (2006), Kusz (2007), Farnell (2004), and Rosenstein (1997). Spindel (2002) Dancing at Halftime: Sports and the Controversy Over American Indian Mascots especially set out to answer the ‘‘why the Chief?’’ question too: For many graduates y the halftime moment when Chief Illiniwek poses and they, along with thousands of other people stand and sing, is a serious, even quasi-religious ritual y The appreciation for the beautifully crafted clothing, the dance and the music is genuine. With so much good feeling, can this be racism? (Spindel, 2002, p. 12)

In their quests to understand these racially stereotyping rituals, Spindel and others untangle historical roots of mascots in both modernism and earlier times, including discussion of totemism (e.g., King & Springwood, 2001, p. 55; Ganguly, 2006). So then, for me, totemism, mimesis, alterity, and performative theory count among the second interrelated type of understanding of sport mascots in critical theory; Michael Taussig’s rich provocative Benjaminian works stand foremost. His stories and narratives help us ‘‘get at’’ the mascot on several levels – the power of mimicry, transgression’s role3 in ‘‘icons’’ such as the Chief, and in his more recent work about the role of the archaic in modernity: Nature does not so much disappear as exist in layers of such histories, with each layer written across the one before so that the earlier layers continue to be visible in a smudged-out and sometimes surprising way y testimony to the force of the archaic in modernity, a coming into fullness of a ‘‘second nature’’ in which objects and landscapes, along with indigenous people, acquire radically intensified meaning as the physical melts into virtual reality.4

This essay is in part about the layers of histories, the aftermath of Chief Illiniwek. My work stands on foundations of mascot criticism (much of it previously published by the current authors within this volume) that reads the Chief as a Foucaultian discursive formation (Farnell, 2004,

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pp. 30–55) of playing Indian (Deloria, 1986), that racializes through mimesis, imperialist nostalgia (Rosaldo, 1989),5 and institutionalizes and manufactures consent of dominant White power (King, Leonard, & Kusz, 2007; King, 2007). It goes without saying that we need to continually expose and through our social practices fight to erase such images, identities, practices, and performances. Yet, I deem that we can peel away these criticisms to get to another understanding of the sport mascot that has to do with the roots and nature of sport, for although sport, or at least some version of organized play, seems to be a universal institution of human community, (not unlike other universal human elements such as law, religion, and art), we have done little as cultural-studies-of-sport scholars to reckon with this grand universality of play and sport. In the past 20 to 30 years, we have made great accomplishments exoticizing and critiquing the particular cultural and temporal practices associated with sport; these interpretations most always undergirded by unwritten assumptions that sport originates in one or all of the Enlightenment, the Western industrial revolution, or in Others’ folk traditions; nevertheless these endeavors should not always define the field of study. So here, although it is in a sense taboo for me to forward this in cultural studies of sport circles, something missing from our projects of late has been exploration of the idea that sport and all of its polyphonic, myriad peripherals6 have a deeper, historically distant social function in an ‘‘organicist sense.’’7 I note ‘‘of late’’ for thinkers such as C. L. R. James saw sports not only as metaphors for society and politics but also with a transhistorical function/value.8 James argued for the importance of sport in social history, using the ancient Greeks as beginning point, recognizing the holistic role that sport played within communities: We respond to physical action or vivid representation of it, dead or alive, because we are made that way. For unknown centuries, survival for us, like all other animals, depended upon competent and effective physical activity y the presupposition y by which we recognize significant form in elemental physical action is native to us, a part of the process by which we have become and remain human y they remain part of our human endowment. y [Cricket] cannot express the emotions of an age on the nature of the last judgment or the wiping out of a population by bombing. It must repeat. But what it repeats is the original stuff out of which everything visually or otherwise artistic is quarried. (James, 1963)

The 2007 monograph from film work by Barthes (2007), What is Sport, based on the 1961 film Le Sport et les hommes, includes the correspondence that Hubert Aquin, the director–producer of the film had


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with Barthes: Aquin: ‘‘What concerns us y is sport as a psychosocial phenomenon.’’

Barthes answers in the film and as published in the little monograph: What is sport?. y sport is a great modern spectacle cast in the ancestral forms of spectacle. y At certain periods, in certain societies, the theater has had a major social function: It collected the entire city within a shared experience: the knowledge of its own passions. Today it is sport that in its way performs this function. (Barthes, 2007, pp. 3, 45–47, 57, 59)

All of this is to say that there is a body of thought that can be re-membered that poses a challenge to those today who wonder about sport – about how sport may be an exceptional universal activity with original meaning that perseveres in human society. To continue a bit more with my evidence to substantiate this line of reasoning, we can begin again with Raymond Williams, one of the classic founders of cultural studies. In The Long Revolution, Williams (1961) contends that The evolution of the human brain, and then the particular interpretations carried by particular cultures, give us certain ‘‘‘rules’’ or ‘‘models’’, without which no human being can ‘‘see’’ in the ordinary sense y In each individual, the learning of these rules, through inheritance and culture, is a kind of creation, in that y the ordinary ‘‘reality’’ that his culture defines, forms only as the rules are learned.

And here again, Williams (1977, italics mine) in his landmark words about hegemony and the residual: We have certainly still to speak of the ‘‘dominant’’ and the ‘‘effective,’’ and in these senses of the hegemonic. But. we have also to speak. . .of the ‘‘residual’’ y By ‘‘residual’’ I mean something different than the ‘‘archaic’’ though in practice these are often very difficult to distinguish y I would call ‘‘archaic’’ that which is wholly recognized as an element of the past y What I mean by ‘‘residual’’ is very different. The residual by definition has been effectively formed in the past, but it is still active in the cultural process, not only and often not at all as an element of the past, but as an effective element of the present. Thus certain experiences, meaning and values which cannot be expressed or substantially verified y are nevertheless lived and practised on the basis of the residue – cultural as well as social—of some previous social and cultural institution or formation.

Williams goes on to label ‘‘organized religion’’ and the ‘‘idea of rural community’’ as residual cultural elements. A logic of my present essay is that sport is a residual cultural element, a residue of something that humans forgot, an ‘‘aftermath’’ as used in the sense of Richard Schechner, part of a previous social cultural formation that humans can no longer see in the ordinary sense. Granted, I understand that Williams was referring to images

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and practices that we take for granted as given and matter of fact when in actuality they help further powerful regimes, beliefs, ideals, and norms. But I reason that we can radically theorize Williams’ ideas about the residual in combination with Schechner’s idea of aftermath, to get at deeper, longer lived human residues. Cultural studies is compatible with grand essentializing of origins of huge/ubiquitous/enduring/universal cultural forms such as sport; certainly, ruminations on such vibrate through beautiful works about culture that understand sociobiological ritualization, transitional stages of human culture, and how these might influence modern communicative rituals (like mascot ceremonies) that take place in sports. Hear Schechner (2002): Events that can be designated ‘‘performance’’ occur among all the world’s peoples and date back as far as archaeologists, anthropologists and historians can go y people were performing in caves at least 30,000 years ago y No one knows if these Paleolithic performers were acting out stories, representing past events, experiences, memories, dreams or fantasies. I would like to think they were.

Bateson (1972, p. 130): I am concerned with what important psychic information is in the art object quite apart from what it may ‘‘represent’’. y It is the very rules of transformation that are of interest to me—not the message, but the code.

and David Sansone: There is no essential difference between modern sport and the sport of other and earlier societies. y The ethologist’s definition of ritual is of great value in the understanding of sport. Specifically it enables us, as no other approach can, to account for the persistence of specific sports in contexts in which they appear to be inappropriate.9

My first graduate studies mentor, Alan Ingham, used to regularly proclaim, ‘‘What is this thing we call sport?!’’ urging us to try to figure out the mystery of what made sport so special, of why it seemed unique as a cultural form. Undeniably, more than 30 years ago, in pioneering graduate sociocultural kinesiology courses at the University of Washington, Ingham, along with his colleagues, Stephan Hardy and Jack Berryman, presented the answer to this question in terms of the grand definitional efforts about the origin of play and sport undertaken by Huizinga (1955), Caillois (2001), Suits (1978), Loy (1968), and Guttmann (1978).10 In these readings, reflective of the era’s obsession with finding the core definition and social function of cultural elements like sport, Ingham and the ‘‘University of Washington School’’ worked on Marxist critiques of the ‘‘prison of sport,’’ (Ingham & Loy, 1971; Brohm, 1989) introducing us too to ideas from


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Raymond Williams that helped us to eventually read sport’s performative, hegemonically socially constructed aspects associated with gender, race, nation, and so on. But that these two lines of inquiry into sport – origins and politico-social critique – were rarely melded in sports studies literature has haunted me over the course of my career.11 Thus in this chapter, I want to take the mascot aftermath case study as a way to satiate my curiosity not necessarily about the roots of mascots but about the roots of this larger phenomenon sport, about links that take us from Illinois’ Memorial Stadium to Paleolithic sacrificial ritual. This is risky language in cultural studies, so some important, brief rejoinders from the start. First, the whole strand of my idea – that sport and its peripherals have some foundational, originary, or essential quality – does not in any way preclude the idea that sport also has fluid temporal and cultural contexts: sport spectacles (such as Chief Illiniwek) in modernity do serve the interests of the maintenance and ongoing consent of particular dominant visions of race, state, media, nation, and so on; our theorizing of popular sporting foundations can tell us much about specific conjunctural moments (e.g., King, 2006). Selected thought from Benjamin (1999), Turner (1967), Bateson (1972), Taussig (1993), Schechner (1993), Geertz (1972), Edward Bruner (Turner & Bruner, 1986), Virilio (1997), Girard (1979), Buck-Morss (1993), and Handelman (1998), to name some, show that we can have it ‘‘both’’ ways. Sport may have an originating nature that is at the core of sports’ historical universalism, longevity, and popularity; however, this is not to say that wherever and whenever sport surfaces that there is not an endless variety of culturally and temporally contextual manifestations that are relative to specific conjunctural matters (e.g., Springwood, 1995). A second, crucial rejoinder: when I point to an organicist, foundational, originary, or essential category of sport, here and throughout, I do not imply that sport or racist mascots are actually noble/ignoble-savage primordial images ingrained in humans’ cognitive, sociobiological structures; I am not blind to the colonial/postcolonial mimicry that conjoins sport mascots. Instead, I contend, primarily using Sansone, that the mascots’ roots in humankind have to do with the early communities’ hunting rituals. When I discuss Sansone’s idea or have students read his book, at a cursory glance, Sansone’s thesis is often mistaken for an argument that sport as we know it is a replacement for early hunting, that the origin and nature of sport comes from Paleolithic hunting that gets symbolically replaced when such activity is no longer necessary for survival (Carroll, 2001). Another observation by Sansone’s critics is that the individual today has

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reasons for participating in sport other than as Sansone explains. These are not part of Sansone’s thesis. He specifically states that ‘‘it may well be that an individual participates in sport for reasons that have little or nothing to do with the essence of sport’’ (Sansone, 1988, p. 9). A ‘‘characteristic of ritual’’ is that an action that originated for one purpose may continue ‘‘to be performed for an apparently different purpose’’(Sansone, 1988, p. 27) for which the performer or participant observer are not aware. Sansone (1988, pp. 1–8) begins his book by asking if sport or any universal phenomenon have a single essence. Is there a single explanation for the origin and persistence of sport? What is the nature and essence of sport? According to Sansone, theories of sport must account for three things: the origin of sport, the persistence of individual sports, and the great diversity of activities that comprise sport (mountain climbing, golf, bowling, soccer, sky-surfing, chess, ballet, reading newspaper articles about sport, engaging in Internet fantasy leagues, collecting baseball cards, creating poetry about sports, individual memories of sporting moments, academic careers related to sport, and so on [my examples]). Sansone stands in contrast to sport origin theorists such as Allen Guttmann (who understand sport as we know it today as a novel product of modernity), asserting that there is no difference between modern sport and the sport of other and earlier societies. As he is trained in classics, and because there is an abundance of evidence from antiquity of the West, Sansone uses the evidence of the ancient Greeks and then contemporary ethnographic evidence to substantiate his thesis. In terms of Sansone’s evidence, the ancient Greeks are no different from modern/postmoderns; Sansone, like Nietzsche, Foucault, and Alvin Gouldner, holds the ‘‘Greeks [to be] in a unique mediatory position: they were capable of experiencing what is at the root of human feeling and consciousness and they communicated it to us in terms that are familiar to us’’ (Sansone, 1988, pp. 5–6, 10–19). Especially using Karl Meuli and Walter Burkert, and similar to the path of studies of sacrifice such as by Pierre Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter, 1998,12 Sansone (1988, p. 37) uniquely comprehends sport to be ‘‘the ritual sacrifice of physical energy.’’ What kind of symbolic energy is being ritually sacrificed in sport? Sansone’s thesis is that humans have hunted for over 95 percent of their history and that this symbolic surplus energy was13 used by the whole community toward hunting (preparing the hunter’s body to hunt, caring for the tools of the hunt, preparing, cooking and eating the slain animal, appeasing the victim/the slain, observing hunters’ depart for the hunt, etc.;


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all community members were ritually/symbolically involved in some aspect of the hunt, however distant that involvement from the actual slaying of the hunted): The patterns of behavior that developed over a period of more than one hundred thousand years have tended to persist precisely because those were the patterns of behavior that enabled man to develop successfully. Those patterns could not be eradicated in the relatively brief span of time since man has ceased depending upon hunting. Or, rather, there is no need for them to be abandoned, for they could be turned to a different purpose. (Sansone, 1988, p. 47)

Sansone distinguishes ritual from religion and relies on the science of ethology, ‘‘the biology of behavior’’ for definitions of these. From Julian Huxley and Konrad Lorenz, Sansone borrows the concept of ‘‘cultural ritualization’’: A behavior pattern by means of which a species [or] a cultured society y deals with certain environmental conditions, acquires an entirely new function, that of communication. The primary function may still be performed, but it often recedes more and more into the background and may disappear completely so that a typical change of function is achieved. (Lorenze, 1966)14

Cultural ritualization, which functions as a means of communication or display, encourages group cohesion, and ‘‘tends toward exaggeration, stylization and repetition’’ enables us, ‘‘as no other approach can, to account for the persistence of specific sports in contexts in which they appear to be inappropriate’’ (Sansone, 1988, pp. 31–35). For Sansone, through a process of cultural ritualization, by the time of the ancient Greeks (10,000 to BC onward), sport is a kind of exaggerated, communicative, symbolic activity that has replaced the symbols and motifs of Paleolithic hunters. Sansone offers evidence from ancient Greek burials, artifacts and literature, ancient Rome, Native American and Aboriginal ethnography, and our Western modern society to show that the motifs of early human hunting prominently surround sport and sport peripherals in all times and places. For me, this evidence is the most fascinating aspect of Sansone’s theory. For example, Sansone elaborates on the importance of successful hunting and the place of camouflage in this. The hunter had to disguise his body scent and his body and did this by eating special meals or fasting, by standing in front of burning wood before leaving for the hunt, and by covering his body with leaves and branches or other foreign scents to approach the prey. Sansone says that these customs, for which much energy was invested in

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prehistoric communities, become culturally ritualized into sport when hunting is no longer necessary to human livelihood. These camouflage symbols live on that both ancient and modern in the victory vegetation and the Ribbons athletes are handed or adorned with after winning a sports event, and in my observations, an amazing taken-for-granted variety of decorations/motifs on popular culture items (such as the laurel wreaths that decorate Frisbees, award medals, cartoons, athletic t-shits, sports tickets, athletic trophies, and awards). The ‘‘true origin of the crown of vegetation y is nothing other than an element of the primitive hunter’s camouflage’’ (Sansone, 1988, p. 85). Fire purification rituals to mask the hunter’s scent live on in sport bonfire-beforethe-game rituals and ubiquitously in torch-lighting ceremonies before, during, and after athletic events of every ilk and genre. Likewise with abstinence rituals that persevere universally in sport. Although physiologically there is no purpose to saving one’s semen or saliva, Sansone (1988, p. 68) goes to great length to present the evidence that prehistoric, Aboriginal people believed in the mythical strength properties of body fluid and thus sought to preserve their fluid before the hunt. This tradition is culturally ritualized, symbolically performed when athletes are banned (or ban themselves) from having sexual intercourse the day before a game. Sansone (1988, p. 69) also describes the various spitting rituals that live on in sport today – athletes spit on their hands, shoes, and rub oils or water on their bodies before and during competition, habits of the prehistoric hunter who used body fluid rituals for speed and strength that persevere today. Tattooing and ritual scarification as ways to insert into the body properties of strength or speed are also dealt with in Sansone’s theory on the genesis of sport. Cauldrons, tripods, kraters, and lebe¯s used by the ancient Greeks as athletic contest victory trophies, along with trophies and cups awarded to athletes today, are residuals of the cooking vessels used by early hunters. Communities worked to ensure their survival; so, cooking vessels became importantly imbued with insuring successful hunts by careful preparation, cooking, and presentation of the victim: It is tempting to believe that these vessels were the originals of the symbolic prizes frequently awarded even today in athletic competitions. As far as I am aware, no one has troubled himself over the question of why plates, cups and other apparatus of the dining table should be given out as tokens of supremacy in sport (Indeed I am not aware of the existence of any serious study of the history of prizes in sport y (Sansone, 1988, p. 91)


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And the mascot. Based on modern ethnographic evidence, Sansone surmises that the Paleolithic hunter felt a kinship mixed with guilt and emotion for the beasts he/she hunted. Because of these emotions, the hunger tried to kill quickly and painlessly. Ritualized habits developed: hunters apologized with various ceremonies involving the slain; sometimes, the instrument that killed the animal was put on trial; the hide of the slain animal was often stuffed, and in some ceremonies, the animal’s hide was puppeted to move as though still alive to pacify the killed. Sansone believes that the ceremonies involving animal hides were of such symbolic value that when the original action of hunting was no longer the occupation of stratified agrarian societies, the animal hide revivification ceremonies were redirected to embellish things associated with sport. Thus, contemporary sport teams are often named after animals, and athletes (and those engrossed in contemporary sport including also onlookers or readers of sport) wear stylized representations of these animals on their uniforms, helmets, jewelry, and so on.15 Captivatingly, Sansone points out that perhaps revivification practices have undergone ‘‘further ritualization’’ into dance forms such as ballet: Swan Lake and The Firebird are among the most conspicuous modern descendents y if our definition of sport as the ritual sacrifice of physical energy is correct, we may be justified as in regarding ballet as a form of sport; after all, various forms of dancing are now represented at the Olympic Games and are engaged in as competitive sports. (Sansone, 1988, p. 48)

Sansone never mentions modern mascots as descendants of Paleolithic reanimation ceremonies, but it is obvious that the practice of donning the hide of the slained animal and moving with it fits Sansone’s thesis. Sansone also presents evidence from anthropology of societies who wear parts of animals to evoke speed or success in sport (Dakota Indians of Minnesota when playing lacrosse wear the tail of a deer or antelope, one type of Roman gladiator wore a fish symbol on his helmet, and an American football team is represented by dolphins; again, Sansone (1988, pp. 49–51) declares that these practices are striking examples of the symbolic communicative ritualization of prehistoric hunting rituals into sport). In my 1993 paper, I paired Sansone’s idea to abstract the cultural context of the Native American image as sport mascot in the United States, discussing how through mascots, Native Americans were semiotically/performatively depicted as trophies, the hunted, and as noble/ignoble savages.16 The Native American was feared/ appeased/controlled/hunted/honored all at once through mascot signage, both a ritualization, as Sansone understands it, and an example of imperialist nostalgia.

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What then is so at stake with Chief Illiniwek that its supporters weep as ‘‘he’’ dances for the last time? The mascot was long ago (10,000 years) stripped of its original significance, but its nature persisted, ingrained in what it is to be part of human community; sport and its peripherals infinitely manifest in culture because it is a cultural residual imperative inherent in humankind.17 In classical cultural studies of sport, discussion such as I have undertaken about sports’ origins and the nature of sport-related performances/rituals seem in my experience to be taboo. There are several reasons for this – logically, if ‘‘radical contextualism,’’ conjuncturalism, and an unearthing of the social, economic, political, technological matrices of cultural forms such as mascots are key to the epistemology and ontology of cultural studies, then supposedly sport cannot be engaged in as ‘‘a foundational, originary or essential category’’ (Andrews, 2002). This is what David Andrews argues in a landmark 2002 essay about cultural studies and sport. He makes a call for ‘‘boundary maintenance,’’ ‘‘a more rigid and exclusive understanding’’ in sport cultural studies circles, arguing for an approach ‘‘that more closely engages the primary tenets and practices of the broader cultural studies project, while furthering the understanding of contemporary sport culture’’ (Andrews, 2002, pp. 110, 111). Why do I point out Andrews’ 2002 call for a more rigid and exclusive understanding of cultural studies of sport and what does this have to do with Chief Illiniwek? In short, some of our critiques of the Chief are classic cultural studies, as Andrews desires. But what of other critiques of the Chief, such as the one I have forwarded (that can also be labeled ‘‘cultural studies’’), but that Andrews might dismiss as ‘‘cultural humanism’’? (Andrews, 2002, p. 112). That is, if we follow Andrews’ vision, in ‘‘real’’ cultural studies, sport is not allowed as a ‘‘foundational, essential or originary category’’ (Andrews, 2002, p. 116) for this would not be following in the footsteps of cultural studies defined by postwar British intellectuals and would strip sport of its fluid meanings in different temporal and cultural contexts; the uniqueness of the historical moment always matters in the cultural studies that Andrews desires. Yet, what if, indeed, sport and all of its peripherals18 have deeper original meaning? I believe that within our conferences and journals, there has been a bit of policing of the theories of cultural studies of sport – surprisingly, even Norman Denzin agrees with Andrews (2002) call, legitimating ‘‘policing’’ in his 2006 ‘‘conversation’’ with Rich King in the (Denzin) tribute issue of the Journal of Sport & Social Issues: To be sure the task of delineating cultural studies is a daunting one. Cultural studies has never been dominated by a single theoretical or methodological position, rather its


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growth can be described as perpetual ‘‘unity-in-difference’’ (Hall, 1992) characterized by multiple theoretical influences, research methods and sites of analysis. However, its celebrated multiplicity should not preclude definitional efforts. (Andrews, 2002, p. 111, italics mine)19

In the abovementioned excerpt, Denzin applauds us, the University of Illinois sports studies tradition, for our ground-breaking reading of sport as ‘‘a major site for the articulation of issues of agency and capital, race and gender, the media and celebrity.’’20 He outlines four paired themes in which social texts can be analyzed: (a) the ‘‘real’’ and its representation in the text, (b) the text and the author, (c) lived experience and its textual representations, and (d) the subject and his or her intentional meanings. (Denzin, 1997, p. 4)21

I simply add an additional paired theme – ‘‘the text’s universal nature or origin’’ – to his list of the possibilities of how social texts can be analyzed. Within I have outlined theories, ideas, and evidence about the nature of sport that can be used to interpret what is at stake when people cry so at the demise of the Chief. Using Sansone, I forward that the mascot is inherent to human communities because it is one of the images of the expenditure of symbolic energy to which the collective emote of much earlier trappings/ rituals/ceremonies/practices of prehistoric human community devoted/ invested itself. According to Sansone, other specific practices linked to the prehistoric community through which humans continue to ritually symbolically expend human energy in rituals today surrounding and including sport include abstinence-before-a-game (infibulations, chastity, and fasting) rituals/myths, sport trophies, pre-game bonfires, and victory vegetation. Again, I reiterate that I do not see the mascot as a primordial practice re-membered in modernity, as a symbol that replaces things having to do with primitive hunting, nor does Sansone’s idea have the presumption that ‘‘racial phenomena y are natural occurrences’’(Bonilla-Silva, 2003).22 With Sansone, I grasp the contemporary mascot as one of the symbolic ritualizations of much earlier activities in which communities were engaged for purposes of survival; the performativity of the Illiniwek mascot is not exclusively ‘‘a sign without a historical referent, a free-floating signifier in a prairie land wiped clean, erased of Native Americans’’ (Prochaska, 2001). Because early human societies members’ rituals were so engraved in the nature of what it is to be human, those early symbols and rituals had an imperative to continue, to be ritualized long after the original need or meaning to which they responded disappeared. James, Williams, Schechner,

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and Barthes ideas of the elemental, of shared experience, the psycho-social, and the residual can be part of our sociological imagination. By way of responding in this essay to certain recent critiques of sport studies, I have tried to make a case that because sport is a special cultural entity, we need to pay attention to, and refine earlier arguments about the nature and essences of sport, including early ritualization’s special ties to the contemporary human condition and sport forms. At the same time, as I showcased classicist David Sansone’s ‘‘grand’’ theory about the origin of sport and introduced my take on how Sansone’s idea figures in understanding historical continuity, universal components of human existence, and the cultural aftermath of the Chief Illiniwek performance, I also tried to contribute a brief historiography of how the academic community have dealt with mascot studies.

NOTES 1. ‘‘Aftermath’’ from Schechner (2002, pp. 246–249): ‘‘the continuing life of a performance is its aftermath. This phase of the performance process may extend for years or even centuries – in fact the duration of the aftermath is indefinite.’’ 2. Popefelix on February 16, 2007 at 11:21 PM; comments on Garenes (2007). 3. Michael Taussig, Walter Benjamin’s Grave, p. 169: The point to dwell upon with embodied insidedness/outsidedness is not y the triumph of catharsis with eventual bringing to life of hiddenness but rather the performance of hiddenness itself in an eternal and unstable movement with a continuously discharging circuit of taboo and transgression, concealment and revelation.

4. Michael Taussig, Walter Benjamin’s Grave, p. 108. Note that Taussig’s full quotation is about the sea; I deleted ‘‘sea’’ references in my paraphrasing. 5. Also, from Stewart (1993), the mascot as a sort of souvenir is a metonymic substitution of the part for the whole – one ‘‘part’’ of the longed for past stands in for the whole past. 6. By peripherals I mean anything, anyone, and everything connected to sport in any way: mascots, trading cards, fans, coaches, manufacturers, sport history books, spectators’ memories, museum artifacts, hot dog venders, pod-casts, souvenirs, tickets, playground rhymes, etc. See Rinehart (1998). 7. On ‘‘organicist’’ see Scanlon (2002, pp. 336, 366, 409). 8. James’ perspective has been referred to as ‘‘a gesture towards universalism that many argue is James’ weak point’’ See Graves (2005). 9. Sansone, Greek Athletics and the Genesis of Sport, pp. 6, 31. See also reviews of Sansone: (Griffin, 1988, pp. 3–5; Segal, 1988, p. 455; Gold, 1990; Guttmann, 1988, pp. 361–362). 10. I paraphrase some of this narrative from Sydnor (2005, pp. 536–544). 11. Perhaps because I took my Ph.D. in an interdisiplinary program in the humanities, studying ancient Greek sport rituals, then immediately jumped into teaching contemporary sociology of sport courses at Illinois at the start of my career.

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12. Vidal-Naquet (1998); See also (Vernant, 1984; Burkert, 1980; Burkert, 1983). 13. Sansone (1988, pp. 64–66): Sport is primarily a symbolic sacrifice not a competition, the competitive aspects of sport and of other forms of sacrifice are secondary and are not essential to the message that is communicated, which is, in effect, ‘‘I am in possession of a surplus and I am aware that by giving up part or all of my surplus I will ensure the possession of a surplus in the future y Sport becomes competitive as readily as other forms of sacrifice, but competition is epiphenomenal. y If sport is the ritual sacrifice of physical energy, it makes little difference whether I choose to engage personally in the ritual by demonstrating my superiority over a colleague on the tennis course or observe as a deputation of semi-professional athletes displays on my behalf the amount of energy that my country is willing and able to squander at the Olympic Games.

14. As quoted by Sansone (1988, p. 31). 15. Paraphrased from Sydnor-Slowikowski (1993, pp. 25–27). 16. Sydnor-Slowikowski (1993, pp. 24–26). 17. Paraphrased from Sydnor (2005, p. 539). 18. By peripherals I mean anything, anyone, and everything connected to sport in any way: trading cards, fans, coaches, manufacturers, sport history books, spectators’ memories, museum artifacts having to do with sport, hot dog venders, pod-casts, souvenirs, tickets, playground games, and so on. See Rinehart (1998). 19. As quoted in King (2006, p. 391). 20. King (2006, p. 386). 21. As quoted in King (2006, p. 385). 22. As quoted in King et al. (2007, p. 7).

REFERENCES Andrews, D. L. (2002). Coming to terms with cultural studies. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 26(1), pp. 111, 114. Barthes, R. (2007). What is sport? R. Howard, (Trans.). New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of the mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Benjamin, W. (1999). The arcades project. H. Eiland and K. McLaughlin (Trans.). Cambridge and London: Belknap Press. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2003). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States (p. 28). New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Brohm, J.-M. (1989). Sport: A prison of measured time (I. Fraser, Trans.). London: Pluto Press. Buck-Morss, S. (1993). The dialectics of seeing: Walter Benjamin and the arcades project. Cambridge: MIT Press. Burkert, W. (1980). Structure and history in Greek mythology and ritual. Berkeley: University of California Press. Burkert, W. (1983). Homo necans: The anthropology of ancient Greek sacrificial ritual and myth. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Caillois, R. (2001). Man, play and games (Originally published as Les jeux et les hommes, 1958 by Librairie Gallimard, Paris. English translation 1961 by The Free Press of Glencoe, Inc). M. Barash, (Trans.). Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Carroll, D. M. (2001). An interdisciplinary study of sport as a symbolic hunt: A theory of the origin and nature of sport based on Paleolithic hunting. Lewistown, NY: Edwin Mellon Press. Deloria, P. J. (1986). Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press. Denzin, N. K. (1997). Interpretive ethnography: Ethnographic practices for the 21st century (p. 4). London: Sage. Farnell, B. (2004). The fancy dance of racializing discourse. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 28(1), 30–55. Ganguly, K. (2006). Of totems and taboos: An Indian’s guide to Indian chiefs and other objects of fan fascination. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 105(2), p. 373. Available at http://saq.dukejournals.org.proxy2.library.uiuc.edu/cgi/reprint/105/2/373. Accessed on 29 December 2007. Garenes, C. D. (2007). Chief Illiniwek’s last dance set for February 21 The News-Gazette.com. Available at http://www.news-gazette.com/news/miscellaneous/2007-02-16/chief-illiniweks-last-dance-set-feb-21.html. Accessed on 29 December 2007. Geertz, C. (1972). Deep play: Notes on the Balinese cockfight. Daedalus, 101(1), 1–37. Girard, R. (1979). Violence and the sacred. P. Gregory, (Trans.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gold, B. K. (1990). Greek athletics and the genesis of sport (book review). Classical World, 83, 542. Graves, B. (2005). Beyond a boundary: The aesthetics of resistance. Political discourse— Theories of colonialism and postcolonialism. Available at http://www.postcolonialweb. org/poldiscourse/james/james2.html. Accessed on 20 April 2005. Griffin, J. (1988). Playing to win. New York Review of Books, September 29, pp. 3–5. Guttmann, A. (1978). From ritual to record: The nature of modern sports. New York: Columbia University Press. Guttmann, A. (1988). Greek athletics and the genesis of sport (essay review). Journal of Sport History, 5, 361–362. Handelman, D. (1998). Models and mirrors: Toward an anthropology of public events. Oxford and New York: Berghan Books. Huizinga, J. (1955). Homo ludens: A study of the play element in culture. New York: Beacon Press. Ingham, A. G., & Loy, J. W., Jr. (1971). The structure of Ludic action. Paper presented to the Third International Symposium on the Sociology of Sport, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada, 22–28 August (published in International Review of Sport Sociology, Volume 1, No. 9, 1974, pp. 23–62). James, C. L. R. (1963). Beyond a boundary (pp. 203–204). New York: Pantheon Books. King, C. R. (2004). This is not an Indian: Situating claims about Indianness in sporting worlds. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 28(1), 3–10. King, C. R. (2006). Stealing cultural studies: Dialogues with Norman K. Denzin. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 30(4), 391. King, C. R. (2007). Staging the winter white Olympics: Or, why sport matters to white power. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 31(1), 89–94. King, C., Leonard, D. J., & Kusz, K. W. (2007). White power and sport: An introduction. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 31(1), 3–10. King, C., & Springwood, C. F. (2001). Beyond the cheers: Race as spectacle in college sport. Albany: State University of New York Press.


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Kusz, K. (2007). Revolt of the White athlete: Race, media and the emergence of extreme athlete in America. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Lorenze, K. (1966). On aggression (p. 75). New York: Harcourt Brace. Loy, J. (1968). The nature of sport: A definitional effort. Quest, 10(May), 1–10. Novak, R. D. (2007). Oskiwawa! Chief Illiniwek is gone, But not forgotten. The Weekly Standard, October 15, Volume 013, Issue 05. Available at http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/ Public/Articles/000/000/014/203ebmco.asp?pg ¼ 2. Accessed on 29 December. Prochaska, D. (2001). At home in Illinois: Presence of Chief Illiniwek, absence of Native Americans. In: C. R. King & C. F. Springwood (Eds), Team spirits: The Native American mascot controversy (p. 43). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Rinehart, R. (1998). Players all: Performances in contemporary sport. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Robidoux, M. (2006). The nonsense of native American sport imagery: Reclaiming a past that never was. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 41(2), 201–219. Rosaldo, R. (1989). Imperialist nostalgia. Representations, 26(Spring), 107–122. Rosenstein, J. (1997). In whose honor?: American Indian mascots in sport. New Day Films. Sansone, D. (1988). Greek athletics and the genesis of sport. Berkeley: University of California Press. Scanlon, T. F. (2002). Eros and Greek athletics (pp. 336, 366, 409). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schechner, R. (1993). The future of ritual: Writings on culture and performance. London: Routledge. Schechner, R. (2002). Performance studies (p. 221). New York: Routledge. Segal, E. (1988). The sweat offering. Times Literary Supplement, 4, 455. Spindel, C. (2002). Dancing at halftime: Sports and the controversy over American Indian mascots. New York: New York University Press. Springwood, C. F. (1995). From Cooperstown to Dyersville: A geography of baseball nostalgia (p. 173). Boulder: Westview Press. Stewart, S. (1993). On longing: Narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, the collection. Chapel Hill: Duke University Press. Suits, B. (1978). The grasshopper: Games, life and utopia. New York: David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc. Sydnor, S. (2005). Man, play and games: A review essay. Sport in history, 25(3), 536–544. Sydnor-Slowikowski, S. (1993). Cultural performance and sport mascots. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 17(1), 23–33. Taussig, M. (1993). Mimesis and alterity: A particular history of the senses. New York: Routledge. Turner, V. (1967). The forest of symbols: Aspects of Ndembu ritual (pp. 106, 93–111). Ithaca. Turner, V., & Bruner, E. (1986). The anthropology of experience. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Vernant, J-P. (1984). Origins of Greek thought. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Vidal-Naquet, P. (1998). The black hunter: Forms of thought and forms of society in the Greek world. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Virilio, P. (1997). Open sky. London: Verso. Williams, R. (1961). The long revolution: An analysis of the democratic, industrial, and cultural changes transforming our society (p. 18). New York: Columbia University Press. Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature (pp. 121–123). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

‘‘LEUTWILER’S INDIAN’’: CREATING THE ‘‘CHIEF’’ TRADITION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS Jennifer Guiliano On a crisp cerulean Saturday afternoon in October 1926, Lester Leutwiler introduced a new performance to the football field at the University of Illinois: that of ‘‘Chief Illiniwek.’’ Presented at halftime of the University of Pennsylvania–University of Illinois1 football game, Leutwiler’s buckskin clad appearance delighted fans as ‘‘the chief ran from a hiding place north of the Illinois stands and led the band down the field with his frenzied war dance. The band stopped in the center and played ‘Hail Pennsylvania’ while the Indian Chief saluted the Penn fans.’’2 At the completion of both band’s performances, he and George Adams, another Illinois student dressed as ‘‘Benjamin Franklin’’ in a costume provided by UPenn, shared a catlinite pipe and left the field arm and arm (Spindel, 2000, p. 81). These conjoined cultural performances – the performance of an ‘‘Indian’’ leading the band and the use of the pipe exchange – signaled a contemporary articulation of the colonial with the neo-colonial in the form of cultural borrowing: the catlinite pipe certainly served as a signifier of the calumet ceremony that frequently occurred in political negotiations among differing Indian nations and between Indians and European Americans during colonial encounters. As historian Richard White has shown, the calumet


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ceremony ‘‘formed a part of a conscious framework for peace, alliance, exchange and free movement among peoples in the region [of the Great Lakes]. By arresting warriors, the calumet produced a truce during which negotiations took place; when negotiations were successful, the full calumet ceremony ratified the peace and created a fictive kinship relation between the person offering the pipe and the person specifically honored by the calumet. These people became responsible for maintaining that peace’’ (White, 1991, p. 22).3 One seventeenth-century French priest, Louis Hennepin, remarked that the calumet was a ‘‘pass and safe conduct among the allies of the nation who has given it.’’4 Leutwiler as the ‘‘Indian,’’ and ‘‘Penn,’’ who had been enemies in the first half of the football game ceased their conflict, affected kinship ties, and negotiated bonds of responsibility that suggested equal socio-political standing and the safe passage of white Americans.5 The ‘‘Indian’’ and the UPenn mascot then left the stadium together, leaving behind an audience who effectively inherited and represented the success of the colonial encounter. The interplay between Leutwiler and the UPenn mascot can be read as a reenactment of American colonialism that elided actual consequences, namely violence, disorder, and disruption, in favor of a more neutral narrative of equitable relations and white succession. Reading against the calumet ceremony, the entire performance is underlain by different renderings of Indian–white relations. Tropes of Indians as warring peoples, spectacles of entertainment, and vanishing into the colonial frontier are all present in Leutwiler’s performance. His dance was not just a demonstration of his understanding of Indian dance, dress, and political ceremonies; instead, it can be seen as a manifestation of a broader circuit of knowledge about Indians within the context of colonial encounters that was shared between the band, its members, and these competing institutions. In this manifestation, there was no place for the ‘‘Indian’’ and ‘‘William Penn’’ to remain in the stadium. They appeared only to contextualize white inheritance of the field, the stadium, the university, and much more broadly, America. I argue that Leutwiler’s ‘‘Indian’’ performance was not originated within the confines of the sporting arena as previously argued; that the cultural performance, when transferred to the sporting field, relied upon common tropes of racialized performance learned through mascotry, progressive social organizations like the Boy Scouts of America, and popular literature; and finally, that in reintroducing the script of ‘‘Benjamin Franklin’’/ ‘‘William Penn’’ to considerations of the origins of ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ the spectacle is revealed as being part of a fashioning of historical memory that elides colonial conquest and violence to affirm the right of white society to

‘‘Leutwiler’s Indian’’

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prohibit the inclusion of Indians into everyday life. To this end, I examine the first performance of Lester Leutwiler on the sporting field, the ways in which many men learned cultural pedagogies of race and mascotry and finally suggest a rationale why the University of Illinois community has consistently chosen to affirm the memory of ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ as a singular performance divorced from that of the UPenn and ‘‘Leutwiler’s Indian.’’

MAKING ROOM FOR MASCOTS Although Leutwiler’s initiative in taking to the field has been welldocumented by scholars and the University of Illinois alike, the role of the UPenn figure, ‘‘Benjamin Franklin’’ or alternately in Illinois narratives ‘‘William Penn,’’ has received little attention (Spindel, 2001; King & Springwood, 2001). Leutwiler’s adoption of the ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ persona, which will be discussed in-depth later, was not a response to inquiries by the UPenn band who hoped to utilize their articulated personae of ‘‘Benjamin Franklin’’ during a halftime skit as other scholars have suggested. Leutwiler adopted the untitled personae that became the basis for the ‘‘Chief ’’ two years earlier during experiences as a Boy Scout and for performances at his alma mater, Urbana High School.6 Although the University of Pennsylvania solicited the Illinois band and assistant director Raymond Dvorak in particular, to create its own figure to interact with ‘‘Benjamin Franklin’’ in a show of ‘‘good sportsmanship,’’ Lester Leutwiler was already performing as an ‘‘Indian’’ before the supposed 1926 inception.7 In fact, his performance was so well known to his classmates at Urbana High School that the yearbook contained multiple references to Leutwiler’s penchant for dressing as his Indian persona at school events (Urbana High School, 1925). Importantly, then the UPenn invitation can be read as the opening of a new arena for performances of Indianness – the sports field – not as an inciting event in the creation of ‘‘Chief Illiniwek.’’ Focusing on ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ as a sports mascot has eroded the larger cultural context of performances of Indianness that was being undertaken in local and national venues including Urbana High School. To fully recognize the nuances of colonial discourse operating in this inquiry and subsequent performance, it is important to consider the simultaneous revisionism of the UPenn mascot: ‘‘Benjamin Franklin’’ was immediately replaced in Illinois narratives both contemporarily by Leutwiler and in the student paper in favor of the mascot ‘‘William Penn.’’8 Scholars have continued this misidentification and, in doing so, have missed the

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suggestive nature of the replacement of ‘‘Benjamin Franklin’’ with ‘‘William Penn.’’ Why was ‘‘William Penn’’ memorialized and not ‘‘Benjamin Franklin’’ in Illinois narratives? The answer lies in the competing narratives of historical memory of William Penn’s relationship with Indians and the performatively embodied and discursively enacted ‘‘Benjamin Franklin’’ of the nineteenth century. By 1900, William Penn was being used on university memorabilia and in campus promotional literatures at the University of Pennsylvania, yet at the same moment, ‘‘Benjamin Franklin’’ was appearing at sporting matches at the university mascot.9 The conjoined representations of William Penn, as the colonial founder, and Benjamin Franklin, as the University of Pennsylvania founder, suggest an elaborately constructed convergence where UPenn legitimated its existence through historical genealogies of founding of the state (Penn) and educational innovation (Franklin). At the core of Illinois’ alteration of the discursively embodied mascot is the vibrant nature of the historical memory of Pennsylvania’s formation articulated following William Penn’s death. Historian James Merrell has charted English and colonialists’ historical amnesia: ‘‘Beginning shortly after the Founder’s death in 1718, medals struck in England depicted Penn shaking hands with some Indian or, seated beneath a tree on a sunny day, passing the native a peace pipe across a cheerful firey’’ (Merrell, 1999, p. 29). Benjamin West’s 1771 painting William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians visually articulated similar historical amnesia associated with Indian-white relations. ‘‘On an autumn day in 1682, the legend goes, William Penn met leaders of the Lenapes to settle a unique treaty of peace and amity. According to the story told and retold during the subsequent centuries, the Native people quickly lost their initial fear when they met Penn and his unarmed company in the diffuse morning light’’ (Spady, 2004, p. 19; Jennings, 1964). Benjamin West believed that the ‘‘savages [were] brought into harmony and peace by justice and benevolence’’ and ‘‘a conquest that was made over native peoples without sword or dagger’’ (Spady, 2004, p. 18). His painting of Lenape Indians suggested strong classical European influences that elided the actual appearance and exchange between Lenape and William Penn’s treaty party. Historian James O’Neil Spady writes, ‘‘the story of Pennsylvania’s benevolent origins is an allegory of colonialism propagated by Penn and later colonists that has obscured the significance of both the severe disruption of Lenape [Indian] life that Pennsylvania created and the resistance of some Lenapes to that disruption’’ (Spady, 2004, p. 19). In historical memory, the effects of colonialism virtually disappear under the weight of the myth of the founding


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of Pennsylvania as a site of religious freedom with Penn as the icon of the compassionate father. ‘‘These fundamental contradictions in American identity and history – the tension between the ideal of a free and democratic nation and the reality of racial hierarchies, the discrepancy between the myth of peaceful expansion and the history of bloody conquest – reemerge again and again in the cultural imagination. It is, perhaps, for this reason that European Americans have always been obsessed with stories of the nation’s origins, repeatedly retelling and reconfiguring their collective past in self-justifying ways’’ (Huhndorf, 2001, p. 11). It was these mythologized qualities of benevolence and goodwill for the purposes of self-justification that the University of Illinois undoubtedly was attempting to remember with its altered ‘‘Benjamin Franklin’’ mascot. The newly enacted ‘‘William Penn’’ passively greets the ‘‘Indian’’ after watching his war dance, accepts the ‘‘gesture of friendship,’’ and facilitates the exit of the Indian from the stadium.10 He does not suggest the complex, and often violent process of colonial encounters between the Lenape and Pennsylvanians. Nor does the narrative of encounter between colonists and Indians in the state of Illinois come to the fore. Instead, the scripted exchange suggests a benign interplay between Indians and colonists without nuance or elaboration. A secondary motivation to the renaming may underlie the revisionism enacted by the University of Illinois community: Franklin had chastised white Pennsylvanians who, in 1764, massacred Indians indiscriminately because of their race and contested the right of white Americans to forcibly remove Indians. Franklin argued that Pennsylvanians had violated Penn’s original peaceable intentions to form the settlement (Franklin, 1987). In contesting the right of whites to undertake any measures deemed necessary to secure their place in colonial Pennsylvania, Franklin positioned himself contrary to the interests of many Pennsylvanians and to whites who continued the colonial project by moving westward. As such, ‘‘William Penn’’ provided a more pristine representation of white conquest than Franklin for whites anxious about their place in a rapidly changing world. The extension of such historical mythologies to the discursively performed ‘‘William Penn’’ on the sports field is hardly surprising given contact between the University of Pennsylvania and its east coast rivals of Yale University and Harvard University. Although Yale University claims itself as the first college in the United States to have a mascot for its athletic teams with the purchase of a bulldog in 1889 named Handsome Dan, the use of mascots by athletic teams is much more complex.11 The University of Pennsylvania football team posed in 1895 with a live dog and other football

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teams quickly began to appropriate animals as mascots.12 Animals, who were often cherished members of the teams and communities, were primarily good luck charms. Athletes often rubbed their heads prior to games or paraded them alongside the athletic field. Often caricatured in local papers, these animal mascots became symbolic of team and university names and were pitted in cartoon battles with one another to advertise athletic contests (Guiliano, 2010). Individual performances at athletic contests also quickly rose to prominence in the final decades of the twentieth century. A local community figure began appearing as ‘‘John Orangeman’’ at Harvard University football games.13 ‘‘John Orangeman’’ was, in fact, John Lovett, an Irishman who immigrated from County Kerry, Ireland in 1855 and peddled fruit in Harvard Yard (Rodgers, Sullivan & The Cambridge Historical Commission, 1984, cited in http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/mhsdhtml/ harvardbldgs.html#hbft4). Bequeathed with a cart by students, Lovett marketed his wares at Harvard football and baseball games where ‘‘the students decorated him with crimson streamers’’ (New York Times, 1906). Lovett’s attendance, while generating enthusiasm and support for Harvard, was not a constructed spectacle of racialized performance per se. Instead, it would be more appropriate to consider Lovett a preferred fan-entrepreneur versus a mascot. Lovett’s association with mascotry was because of his proximity to the sporting field as well as the approximation of his racial identity to the whiteness of John Harvard, the Harvard founding father. Lovett’s whiteness was an entry to the stadium of an all-white sport and institution. The ‘‘Orangeman’’ who was integrated into the grand stand had to be white because to allow a non-white access to the enclave of the grand stand would be to denigrate the whiteness of Harvard University and its fans. Lovett’s lower-class status, in the eyes of Harvard students and fans, could possibly be mediated by his commercial acumen and work ethic that would likely have appealed to the largely Protestant population who saw value in the myth of ascendancy in America (Weber, 2002). The veneration of founding figures like William Penn and John Harvard rests in uneasy conversation with the use of African-America men as mascots of athletic teams between 1865 and 1920. Adrian Burgos delineates the links between racial discourse, racial segregation, and African-American mascots when discussing major and minor league baseball teams in turn of the nineteenth-century America (Burgos, 2007, p. 91).14 ‘‘Diminutive, oddlooking, and often bearing some physical deformity, black mascots were the physical embodiment of black men as backward, brutes, or dandies.’’15 Chicago’s White Sox baseball team employed Clarence Duval, a vaudeville


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performer, as mascot. ‘‘His grin is broad, his legs limbre and his face as black as the ace of spades,’’ wrote one Chicago newsman, ‘‘whenever anything goes wrong, it is only necessary to rub Clarence’s wooly head to save the situation, and one of his celebrated ‘double shuffles’ to dispel all traces of care, even on the gloomiest occasion (Levine, 1985, pp. 101–102).’’16 Described here as superstitious totem slash performer, Duval’s role is clearly different from that of Jim Lovett, who did not ‘‘perform’’ in the vaudevillian racialized sense. Lovetts’ decorations, while comical at moments, were not embedded with racialized overtones of subservience. Duval’s blackness was openly derided. During a stop in Cairo, Egypt, ‘‘several ballplayers forced [Duval] to wear a catcher’s mask and glove and then paraded [him] about the Cairo railway station, tethered by a rope, ‘as if he was some strange animal let loose from a menagerie’’’ (Levine, 1985, p. 104). The historical record is silent on Duval’s feelings about the performance, yet it would be hard to imagine a lack of a sense of racial exploitation on his part. Locating ‘‘William Penn’s’’ 1926 performance, ‘‘John Orangeman’s’’ 1888 appearance, Clarence Duval’s 1880s employment, and Handsome Dan’s 1885 purchase within a representational framework of sporting mascotry then reveals syllogisms of race where whiteness equates to privilege and acceptability and blackness equals denigration, derision, and animalism. Exploring the narrative of Louis Francis Sockalexis and his relationship to the Cleveland Indians name positions Indians within the hierarchy of racial understanding. Louis Francis Sockalexis was a Penobscot Indian widely recognized as being the first American Indian to integrate baseball. A player for Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Naps beginning in 1897, Sockalexis supposedly served as the inspiration for the moniker ‘‘Cleveland Indians’’ and its ‘‘Chief Wahoo’’ logo (Staurowsky, 1998).17 Stimulated by the transfer of Lajoie to Philadelphia in 1915, the Cleveland name was chosen not through a contest in a local newspaper as most [including sportswriters, the Cleveland club, fans, and contemporary scholars (Powers-Beck, 2001)] have alleged, but through the formation of the ‘‘nomenclature committee,’’ a group of professional writers brought together to select a new name by the Cleveland franchise president.18 In reporting the choice of the Indians’ name in the local paper, Sockalexis received no mention. The Cleveland baseball club and its fans decided later to suggest that Sockalexis was the inspiration to explain their use of the Indians name as well as to reenact a narrative of the past as racially inclusive. The reality of Sockalexis’ involvement with the Cleveland club demonstrates this revisionism. ‘‘Sockalexis was the object of intense racial fascination,’’ historian Jeffrey Powers-Beck writes, ‘‘which Cleveland management happily exploited in ticket sales, and also the object

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of intense racial bigotry.’’ Though he could run, hit, and throw like few who had ever played the game, he was seldom simply described in the press as ‘‘Sockalexis, the great player’’ but, usually, instead, as ‘‘Chief Sockalexis,’’ ‘‘Sockalexis, the Big Medicine Man,’’ ‘‘the Redskin,’’ ‘‘the Indian,’’ or the ‘‘genuine descendent of Sitting Bull’’ (Powers-Beck, 2001, p. 508). Cleveland fans between 1897 and 1899, when he formally left the club, remarked caustically on his supposed alcoholism, laziness, and irresponsible behavior (Staurowsky, 1998, p. 305). This trend continued through Sockalexis’ death in 1904. In Cleveland narratives, Sockalexis was not remembered for his baseball acumen; instead his personal flaws were the dominant popular conception. The revision of Sockalexis by Cleveland fans suggests parallel rehabilitations: (1) the personal redemption of Sockalexis where his alcoholism and athletic demise disappears and (2) the elision of the role of ‘‘professional’’ sportswriters from the naming process in favor of fans who were seemingly more egalitarian and were part of the growing commercial market of professional sports. Returning to the mascotry framework, Indians, while not outrightly subjected to physical abuse like Duval and other black mascots, were obviously positioned as ‘‘other.’’ They were neither white nor black and to understand where Indians fit in Jim Crow America most looked to popular press, literature, and social organizations to educate them about Indians.

CULTURAL PEDAGOGIES OF LEARNING: THE INDIAN ‘‘RACE’’ Jim Crow America was a place fascinated with race and the implications of race. For Natives, who had garnered citizenship in 1924, Jim Crow America continued to offer familiar challenges: housing, jobs, a continual quest support for oneself and one’s family, struggles for education, and political recognition. It is imperative to consider that the Illinois–UPenn spectacle did not occur in an historical vacuum separate from these struggles. In cities like Chicago, with its large Native American community, the struggle for economic freedom and personal satisfaction was shaped by everyday experiences of race and racism. The period was ripe with cultural artifacts and popular representations of Indians. Indians paraded daily through the pages of American newspapers, in dime novels, and as subjects of educational lectures and exhibits as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth. From reports of the conditions of Indians from Carlisle Boarding


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School in 1890 through the death of Lucy Boston Johnson, the last of the Nipmuck Indians in 1900, men and women learned of Indians in the pages of the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post (New York Times, 1890, 1900). They saw ‘‘actual’’ Indians at Chicago’s Columbian Exhibition, passed them (often without recognition) on the streets, and visited touring shows like Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show to relive the experience of American victory over Plains Indians.19 By the 1920s, the vast majority of adolescent men and women were also learning of Indians through social organizations founded by progressive reformers. Lester Leutwiler was educated about Indians from one such organization, the Boy Scouts of America: ‘‘I had learned the Sioux Indian war dance when I attended the 1924 Boy Scout Jamboree in Copenhagen, Denmark from our scoutmaster, Ralph HubbardyMy costume which was used at this first performance [of ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ in 1926] was made in 1925 when I attended Camp Ten-Sleep, operated by Ralph Hubbard, in Elbert, Colorado.’’20 By focusing on the ‘‘normal, morally wholesome, and socially respectable’’ young man like Leutwiler, the BSA established itself as the premier organization to educate young men of their role in the growing nation. They ‘‘embodied the diffuse idealism of the Progressive ErayThey relied upon recreational programs to nurture and discipline capacities which they summed up as character (MacLeod, 1983, pp. 3–4).’’ Indians were not external to organizations like the Boy Scouts of America, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and Seton’s Indians, which often shared both board members and youth members.21 In fact, many Indians participated actively in the success of these programs. Charles Eastman, the famous Santee Sioux product of Carlisle Indian School, Dartmouth, and Boston College, who was a founding member of the Society of American Indians, was himself a de-facto missionary for the YMCA among the Sioux (Lopenzina, 2003). He was noted for his own performance of Indian identity. Historian Drew Lopenzina considers the tension of Eastman’s articulation: ‘‘he might appear in old Dartmouth photographs as the gentleman scholar, hair slicked and combed, staring forcefully into that hallowed distance dignitaries often attempt to pierce with their visionary gazes. And yet he would just as happily parade about in full Sioux regalia for class reunions, in overly elaborate beads and headdresses, playing the role of Indian Chief that was apparently expected of him’’ (Lopenzina, 2003, pp. 728–729). Although speaking of an ‘‘Indian boy’s training,’’ we get a sense of Eastman’s feelings about the necessities of Native life: a ‘‘conception of his own future career becomes a vivid and irresistible force. Whatever there is for him to learn must be

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learned; whatever qualifications are necessary to a truly great man he must seek at any expense of danger and hardship.’’22 The involvement of progressive reformers, including Natives like Eastman, who were deeply invested in issues of race, citizenship, and nationhood, significantly shaped social organizations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Importantly, many of these programs featured a response to increasing urbanization and a nostalgic longing for a rural romantic past in the form of rural camping grounds and Indian programming. Incorporated into the new BSA organization were Seton’s Indians, founded by Ernest Thompson Seaton in 1900 and made widely available to the public in 1903s How to Play Injun, a collection of six articles by Seaton. ‘‘The promotion of interest in out-ofdoor life and woodcraft, the preservation of wildlife and landscape and the promotion of good fellowship among its members,’’ wrote Seaton in 1906s The Birch Bark Roll of Woodcraft Indians. ‘‘The plan aims to give the young people something to do, something to think about, something to enjoy in the woods, with the view always to character building, for manhood not scholarship is the aim of education. y My foundation thought was to discover, preserve, develop and diffuse the culture of the Redman’’ (Morris, 1970). Targeting middle-class heterosexual Protestant adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 by 1920, the Boy Scouts of America had become a vibrant part of young male middle-class American life. In 1925, as Lester Leutwiler was participating in Boy Scout events at home and abroad, sociologist E. S. Martin wrote, ‘‘scouts are volunteers, every one of them, from the slim boy proudly conscious of his khaki uniform to the alert scoutmaster at the head of his troop. And that troop itself could never exist unless some institution, some community, some group of citizens want it and agree to cooperate with the Boy Scout Movement in making the program available to their boys’’ (Martin, 1925). Leutwiler served as a volunteer in the ChampaignUrbana community and often presented his ‘‘Indian’’ dance at community events for the education of those around him. Leutwiler had earned the title of Eagle Scout just before his departure for the Second International Jamboree in Denmark. Ann Leutwiler-Brandenberg, Lester’s daughter wrote of his international travel, ‘‘the experience overseas had a powerful impact on the young man who had recently been elected president of his senior high class.’’23 Amid a sea of boys from 33 nations all camped in ‘‘true scouting fashion, cooking their own meals, and living out of doors’’ was Ralph Hubbard, who taught Indian dance at his Colorado camp and participated in a U.S.-based circuit of educators who taught Indian dance to Boy Scouts.


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Hubbard’s personal history provides an interesting nuance to the story of his involvement with Lester Leutwiler, the first ‘‘Chief Illiniwek.’’ Ralph Hubbard was the son of Elbert Green Hubbard of Bloomington, Illinois, who worked as a farmhand for local farmers in his adolescent years. After intensive schooling with his mother, Bertha, who held a bachelor’s of arts degree and was fluent in French, German, and Latin, Elbert Hubbard enrolled in Harvard University in 1894 just at the time sporting events and campus functions featured its mascot John Orangeman. Like any other Harvard student, Elbert Hubbard almost certainly was aware of Lovett and his role as a fan. His son Ralph, who became Leutwiler’s mentor, spent his formative years participating in his father’s ventures, including the family furniture business, Roycroft which was a center for intellectual life with visits by prominent intellectuals of the day.24 Simultaneously, Ralph surveyed contemporary Indian life while living in proximity to the Seneca Indian Reservation in upstate New York. Hubbard writes of his childhood experiences with the Seneca, ‘‘since we lived in close association with these people, and since Grandfather Hubbard, and Grandmother too, knew so much about them and their customs, even back to pioneer times, Sandy [his sister] and I absorbed all of this as we went along. We grew up with it, and it all seemed right and natural, a part of our livesy’’ (Yost, 1979, p. 35) (proximity – anthropological spectacle not personal contact). Yet it was Ralph’s grandfather, the Illinois farmer, who told him, ‘‘Ralph, if you really want to learn about Indians, go west until you can smell the sagebrush’’ (Yost, 1979, p. 65). After traveling west to experience life among the Crow and to educate himself at the University of Colorado, Hubbard was brought into the Boy Scout movement by Boulder locals who knew that he was experienced in Indian dance and lore. His old family friend Ernest Thompson Seton, a frequent visitor at Roycroft, was the Chief Boy Scout of America and welcomed Hubbard’s involvement. ‘‘I was only hip high to a dustpan when I learned the basic steps of Indian dancing,’’ Hubbard writes, ‘‘I loved to watch them dance, and then I’d go home and practice the steps until I had them memorized. Almost as far back as I can remember, I could watch a dance and then dance it. When I went West, I could watch any new kind of dance, performed by any of the different tribes I met out there, and then dance it myself. For all the basic steps are similar, but each dancer can use his own gestures, showing how he feels about it’’ (Yost, 1979, p. 35). Hubbard’s emotional affinity for Indian dance suggested a level of life-long dedication that was undoubtedly genuine.25 Yet, Hubbard failed to understand the nuance and contextualization associated with these dances. In altering the gestures, the meaning of the performance likely changed.

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Many dances are highly ritualized and to shift the sequence of the performance or the slightest gesture would suggest an entirely different series of meanings. Further, some dances were proscribed for certain community members. To participate without being authorized by the community would have violated cultural norms. Hubbard was appointed by the Boy Scouts to create a display of Indian dancing and crafts for the first World Jamboree (Yost, 1979, p. 106). He gathered teepees and other materials from his Colorado ranch as well as costumes for ninety boys and set off for London. Performing before an audience of 10,000 including the British Royal family, the American display featured a 325-foot long scene of a pass in the Rocky Mountains. ‘‘To the roll of the drums the youth of the world marched over the pass and down its slope to take their places on the great stage. First came the American Scout Orchestra from Denver, followed by a group of American Indians in magnificent war bonnets, and then Scouts from all the rest of the world’’ (Yost, 1979, p. 107). The first Jamboree was considered dramatic and highly successful. From England, Hubbard and his scouts traveled to the 1920 Olympic Games where they performed for sports fans. This moment of convergence between the Boy Scouts pageantry and the Olympic Games suggests an increasing level of spectacle associated with sport. Predating Leutwiler’s performance by a scant six years, it provided a model of appropriation available to each of these scouts. Hubbard wrote of the scouts chosen to attend the international Jamborees, ‘‘all of them had to be progressive, hardworking, ambitious lads’’ (Yost, 1979, p. 109). Leutwiler was just such a lad. In the years between the first Jamboree and the 1924 Denmark event attended by Lester Leutwiler, Hubbard returned to Colorado and his working ranch and overhauled its structure. In its final form, the property held a summer teaching resort and boys’ camp with teepees scattered over the property as well as working cattle ranch. By early 1924, Hubbard was traveling around the United States holding ‘‘City Jamborees.’’ Hubbard stopped in every major Northern and Western city including New York City, Chicago, St. Louis, Seattle, and Phoenix and brought the Indian department to urban and rural scouts alike. With courses lasting four weeks, Hubbard taught boys camp craft, canoeing, teepee, cooking, wilderness survival, and Indian lore and dancing (Yost, 1979, p. 114). In some cities, Boy Scouts could attend Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and receive behind the scenes tours of the Indians and the spectacle of American expansion (Yost, 1979, p. 119). The City Jamborees, while controlled exclusively by Hubbard, also featured invited guests. Artists, painters, musicians, members of the forestry service,


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and Indians themselves contributed to programs that would dominate many young white boys’ understanding of what being an Indian meant. Even as they contributed, the lives of men like Santa Clara Pueblo Indian Ben Naranjo and Navajo Richard Long have been largely relegated to the margins of history (Yost, 1979, pp. 116–117). Employed first on Hubbard’s Colorado ranch as an assistant, Naranjo became instrumental to the touring productions offered at the City Jamborees. A craftsman, singer, and drummer, Naranjo guided many young men in learning the Indian dancing and drumming while Long drove the Scout truck and participated in the Jamboree programs. Visits by famous Indian athletes including Jim Thorpe and Ben American Horse ‘‘helped us acquaint our boys with the ability and worth of Indians and their culture and greatly furthered our projects’’ (Yost, p. 119). Hubbard’s Jamboree also offered the opportunity for select young Indians to participate in the Boy Scout movement. Remembering their involvement, Hubbard writes, ‘‘scouting was mostly for white boys in those days, but for Indians, too, whenever we had the opportunity to include them. The reason for the government’s reluctance to let us have any Indians was that the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian educational departments refused to recognize that Scouting had no military connections’’ (Yost, 1979, p. 118). The actions and feelings of these Indian boys remain unexplored. Were they willing participants or merely curiosities? The Boy Scout Jamborees and Hubbard’s camp served as loci for the dissemination of ideas about Indians to far-flung areas. Each boy who journeyed to a Jamboree was able to return to his home troop and disseminate information to those who were unable to attend. ‘‘Schools across the nation were soon cooperating,’’ wrote Hubbard, ‘‘following the high standards set by the Scouts in recreation, reading, and other cultural aspects’’ (Yost, 1979, pp. 115–116). Lester Leutwiler likely attended one of the camps available to him in Chicago or St. Louis and, without a doubt, enacted an educational program for his classmates at Urbana High School. An entire verse of the 1925 Class Memorial Poem was devoted to Leutwiler’s Indian antics as a Boy Scout (Urbana High School, 1925). It was this highly nuanced theoretical production that Leutwiler was invested in during the formation of his ‘‘Indian’’ performance.

BECOMING CHIEF ILLINIWEK We must not forget that Leutwiler was not alone as he was dancing his ‘‘frenzied war dance’’ of toe heel movements, low ground kicks, half moon,

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and full moon steps down the Illinois football field expressing his understanding of Indian life and performance – he was accompanied by the sounds of the University of Illinois band.26 In fact, I argue that it was the University of Illinois band that fundamentally altered the relationship between athletics and halftime performance by creating a national model of fandom that included the spectacle of mascotry. This spectacle, moreover, constituted a transformative moment that broadened the dynamics between athletics and fans to encompass social rituals of belonging beyond the discrete boundaries of the game of football. Bands initially provided musical accompaniment to the moments before and after the game as well as during halftime. They were a background performance to the sport itself: there to give fans something to consider while they waited for the athletes to begin, resume, or adjourn from their competition. ‘‘At first, it was sufficient for a marching band to simply march down the field playing a standard march at a modest tempo, countermarch, and then march back again’’ (Righter, 1956 in Haynie, 1971).27 With an emphasis on straightness, precision, and the execution of turns, University bands mimicked regimental martial order. Albert Austin Harding, the band director at Illinois, and his colleagues within the University and Collegiate band network transformed the band from a secondary element of the game to the emotive voice of the action itself. The University of Illinois band provided audio signposts for fans to mark the progress of the game and, with the introduction of loyalty music, created a structure of community feeling that existed beyond the sporting field. Three compositions – ‘‘Illinois Loyalty,’’ ‘‘Oskee-Wow-Wow,’’ and ‘‘Hail to the Orange’’ – were part and parcel of the musical repertoire of Harding’s band by 1910 and were familiar to athletes and fans alike.28 The sounds of the Illinois band were becoming localized to the specific University of Illinois fan community. Thousands heard when singing Thatcher Howland Guild’s ‘‘Illinois Loyalty’’: We’re loyal to you, Illinois We’re Orange and Blue, Illinois We’ll back you to stand ‘Gainst the best in the land, For we know you have sand, Illinois, Rah, Rah. So crack out that ball, Illinois. We’re backing you all, Illinois.


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Our Team is our fame defender, On boys, for we expect a victory From you, Illinois, Che-he, Che-ha, Che-ha-ha-ha Che-he, Che-he, Che-ha-ha-ha Illinois, Illinois, Illinois Fling out that dear old flag of Orange and Blue, Lead on your sons and daughters, fighting for you. Like men of old, on giants, Placing reliance, Shouting defiance, Oskey wow-wow. Amid the broad green fields that nourish our land For honest Labor and for Learning we stand, And unto thee we pledge our heart and hand, Dear Alma Mater, Illinois.29

They recognized, along with student composers Harold Hill and Harold Green, the growing intercollegiate rivalry between colleges, in ‘‘Oskee-wow-wow’’: Old Princeton yells her Tiger, Wisconsin, her Varsity And they give the same old Rah, Rah, Rah, At each University, But the yell that always thrills me And fills my heart with joy, Is the good old Oskee-Wow-Wow, That they yell at Illinois. Os-kee-Wow-Wow, Illinois Our eyes are all on you. Oskee-Wow-Wow, Illinois, Wave your Orange and your Blue, Rah, Rah, When the team trots our before you, Every man stand up and yell, Back the team to victory, Os-kee-Wow-Wow. Illinois.30

The University of Illinois had been using pseudo-Indian words and language since the 1890s. It served to differentiate Illinois, and its

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Midwestern location, from the erudite east coast schools of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Illinois celebrated their unique ‘‘Alma Mater’’ with Hill and Green: Hail to the Orange, Hail to the Blue. Hail Alma Mater, Ever So True. We love no other, So let our motto be. Victory, Illinois Varsity.31

Leutwiler’s original Indian performance with the University of Illinois Band in 1926 was a singular event. Harding agreed to let Leutwiler perform on a case by case basis, yet the audience reaction was so overwhelming Harding could not avoid a repeat performance of ‘‘Leutwiler’s Indian.’’32 Moderate in tempo, he danced that October day to the music of ‘‘Illinois Loyalty,’’ ‘‘Oskee-Wow-Wow,’’ and ‘‘Hail to the Orange.’’ Leutwiler had not, in all likelihood, ever performed to this particular combination. Leutwiler’s performances at Urbana High School and with his Boy Scout Troop were more likely accompanied by schoolmates and troop members on the drum playing popular compositions. Who selected the music for Leutwiler’s first University of Illinois performance? Was it Raymond Dvorak, the assistant band director who taught Leutwiler at Urbana High School? Was it the band leader, Harding, who controlled the band’s musical repertoire? Or was it Leutwiler himself? Although the historical record remains silent, it is quite possible to conclude that each or all of the three could have been involved in the selection of the three pieces. No matter, the selections themselves tell us of the underlying motivation of the performance itself: all three were familiar to band members and fans alike and were designed as participatory songs. In playing them, Harding and Dvorak were establishing the halftime event as a site for University of Illinois fans to collectively gather to cheer on the University and its sporting teams in particular. In joining these compositions to the half-time performance of Leutwiler, the University Band established a broader more explicit meaning of ‘‘Illinois Loyalty,’’ ‘‘Oskee-Wow-Wow,’’ and ‘‘Hail to the Orange’’ to include a visual rendering of the University of Illinois’ supposed relationship to Indians. The performance of ‘‘Leutwiler’s Indian’’ was fluid before its transition to the sporting field. Leutwiler had no set script, music, or arena. It was not until ‘‘Leutwiler’s Indian’’ converged with the music of


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‘‘Illinois Loyalty,’’ ‘‘Hail to the Orange’’ and ‘‘Oskee-Wow-Wow’’ that the performance script of the ‘‘Chief ’’ became solidified. The conditions of emergence that authorized the halftime spectacle of music and dance remained generally consistent following the adoption of the moniker ‘‘Chief ’’ (Butler, 2005). ‘‘Leutwiler’s Indian’’ was quickly renamed ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ by football coach Robert C. Zuppke at a University pep rally in 1926.33 This renaming served as a clear demarcation by community members of the meaning of the Indian performance. It was no longer ‘‘Leutwiler’s Indian’’ but instead the more general ‘‘Chief Illiniwek,’’ a leader of the supposedly extinct Illinois Indians. The script was further written by Band Director Harding and University administrators who commissioned Karl L. King, the director of the Fort Dodge Municipal Band and owner of the K. L. King Music Publishing House, and Harry Alford, the ragtime composer and vaudevillian musician, to produce music for the ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ halftime performance.34 ‘‘They were asked to keep in mind the driving beat of the drums which were used at Native American pow wows,’’ Lester Leutwiler remembered. ‘‘They were also told that the music would have to live up to the power of the performance.’’35 The music itself, ‘‘Pride of the Illini’’ and ‘‘March of the Illini’’ written by King and Alford respectively, legitimated Leutwiler’s performance for the audience by presenting familiar themes and tones of pseudo-Indian life. By 1928, the standard Leutwiler performance no longer enacted the greeting and peace pipe ritual that was present at the initial performance. It relied entirely on the score adopted by the band to communicate an extended meaning of Leutwiler’s ritual. In effect, the band fulfilled the role that William Penn initially expressed: that of the civilizing mission.36 ‘‘Pride of the Illini’’ was the first overture in communicating the narrative of civilization and expansion. Band members in their martial uniforms took their place along the north end-zone lines and performed ‘‘Pride of the Illini.’’ The standardized march of the band suggests a call to attention and for collective action in favor of the University: ‘‘We are marching y Our lovey’’ etc. Giving way to the ‘‘March of the Illini’’ with its Indian sounding beat and dramatic visual rendering implicitly suggested that the ‘‘true Illini spirit’’ could be that of an Indian past that erased colonial violence, conquest, and the lingering anxiety of modern life.37 The music called forth the ‘‘Indian’’ and signaled a shift in the ritual performance by creating an aural demarcation of the space of ‘‘Chief Illiniwek.’’ ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ existed during a very specific moment within the space of the stadium as a solitary figure. Having the band accompaniment suggested a dominance and control over Leutwiler’s performance and Indians more

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generally. In effect, ‘‘March of the Illini’’ can be read as a duel between ‘‘civilization’’ in the guise of the band and the ‘‘primitive’’ in the form of ‘‘Chief Illiniwek.’’ As Leutwiler’s dance accelerated so too would the tempo of the music. Yet the tempo was ultimately controlled by Harding, the band leader. He signaled the rise and fall of ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ by beginning and drawing the song to a close. Leutwiler, in his Indian guise, could only enter the field to the signal offered by his ‘‘community’’ of band members and the sports audience and had to accede to progress by ceasing his performance when the music stopped. The final overture and metaphorical demise of ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ was to cease movement completely at mid-field and salute the crowd as ‘‘Hail to the Orange’’ was sung by band members and fans alike. ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ would then lead the Marching Band from the field leaving behind the fans as the inheritors of the metaphorical land, the football stadium.

THE INHERITORS CONCLUDE The University of Illinois was created for white men, by white men, for the benefit of white men to educate white men in the practice of being white men in America. The training of athletes in faux-military combat, band members in military drill and precision, and the fans in rituals of community all suggested that the role of white men was as controlled, contributing members of local society. By extension the rescripted halftime performance of ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ that marginalized Indian subjects was simply an extension of the mission of the University, stated or unstated: to train young men (and a growing number of women) how to be citizens invested in preserving the legacies of colonial conquest. ‘‘Leutwiler’s Indian’’ became ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ through an elaborated constructed halftime spectacle. For University of Illinois fans and community members, including Leutwiler, the production of Indianness at halftime allowed them to transform the lived textualities of their everyday performance of self into an authorized condition of community that allowed for a collective social lexicon and dialogue. The conditions of surveillance, in the form of the newly constructed Memorial Stadium and the activity of going to a game transcended perceived social, racial, gendered, and educational differences that were inherent to the growing community. The Champaign-Urbana community which enclosed the University of Illinois was not homogenous. It included, but was not limited to: international students, rural farmers, laborers and service workers, east coast intellectuals, and students from various racial and socio-economic backgrounds.

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As such, the practice of community had to be continually made and remade to shore up the perception of the University as a place for white elites (particularly men) that was constantly being contested by intellectual development, the inclusion of women, and the constantly shifting nature of the composition of the student body. The university was constantly in flux as a community and had to be preserved through acts of socialization and surveillance like the ritual of the football game and its halftime performance. Thus, as the community moved farther away from the historical interactions with Indians themselves and ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ performed again and again, the significance remained the same. It was not about the understanding of the particular condition of Illinois Indians and the pipe exchange enacted by ‘‘William Penn’’ and ‘‘Leutwiler’s Indian’’ but instead about the generic ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ and the relationship between community members who observed this spectacular ritual. ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ became a bridge between the University community and the surrounding Champaign-Urbana world. The ‘‘Chief’’ appeared at community functions, would perform for local youth and social organization, and generally served as an ambassador of the University to the growing community that may or may not have been actively enrolled in the University. ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ would come to serve not just as a University performance but as a cultural performance of community allegiance that would supersede many of the fissions associated with the expanding Champaign-Urbana world, be they economic, racial, or gendered. In rescripting the halftime spectacle, renaming the performer, and deemphasizing the role of ‘‘William Penn,’’ the University of Illinois was able to affirm an entire community of meaning: fans became ‘‘Illini,’’ the football field and stadium became the ‘‘war,’’ and no matter the outcome of the football game, no matter a loss or a victory, the University of Illinois and its community was always able to establish a sense of order to their world by participating in the halftime spectacle. By the 1930s, schools across the United States had adopted their own manifestations of the halftime spectacle and were actively engaged in affirming that they, individually, communally, and as institutions, were able to determine their own identity.

NOTES 1. I refer to the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Illinois as UPenn and Illinois, respectively. 2. Carol Spindel, personal papers, in possession of author (hereafter cited as Spindel Papers).

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3. The phrase ‘‘catlinite pipe’’ refers to the marble material the pipe was constructed from. These pipes took various shapes and were not necessarily associated with political or social rituals. The term ‘‘calumet’’ refers to the highly decorated stem that graced the pipe. For a thorough discussion of various pipes and the nuances of the calumet ceremony, see Brown (1989). 4. Thwaites (1974/1903, p. 125) quoted in White (1991, p. 21). 5. I adopt the convention of using quotation marks around a proper name when I am referring to the discursively produced figure utilized in mascotry. The lack of quotation marks signals that the individual or subject under discussion is not a fictive representation but a historical actor. 6. Lester Leutwiler, ‘‘Chief Illiniwek Tradition,’’ in Spindel Papers (hereafter cited as Leutwiler, ‘‘Chief Illiniwek Tradition’’). 7. Spindel Papers. 8. Nancy R. Miller, University of Pennsylvania Archivist, email message to author, May 4, 2007. Miller also noted this is conflation of ‘‘William Penn’’ and ‘‘Benjamin Franklin’’ became and remains commonplace when discussing the University of Pennsylvania mascot tradition. 9. Ivy League Calender, 1900, container 366, University Memorabilia Collection, 1787– 2006, University of Pennsylvania University Archives and Records Center, Philadelphia. 10. Leutwiler, ‘‘Chief Illiniwek Tradition.’’ 11. Yale University Bulldog Tradition, http://yalebulldogs.cstv.com/trads/ dani.html, April 1, 2007 (hereafter cited as Bulldog Tradition). 12. Football Team, 1895 Group Portrait, University of Pennsylvania University Archives and Records Center, Philadelphia. 13. Bulldog Tradition. Princeton University claims that ‘‘John Orangeman’’ was constructed as a representation of John Harvard, the founding father of Harvard University. It is unclear whether this declaration is true given the lack of evidence available. 14. Importantly, the division lines between collegiate sport and professional sport were extremely blurred during post–Civil War period. Many professional athletes participated simultaneously in collegiate sport and vice versa. Furthermore, the coaches, teams, and traveling sport circuits often converged. 15. The Sporting News, August 25, 1888 quoted in Burgos (2007, p. 92). 16. Duval was included on the tour despite protest by Anson. Malloy, ‘‘Out at Home,’’ p. 24. 17. Sociologist Ellen Staurowsky reveals the transition of the team name from the Cleveland Naps, after Napoleon Lajoie, an American of French-Canadian descent, to the Cleveland Indians and positions the name-change as squarely relating to Louis Frances Sockalexis. 18. Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 17, 1914. 19. It is important to note here that the dominance of the myth of Indians as ‘‘reservation’’ peoples with long-braided hair and feathered and beaded clothes has overshadowed the large number of urban Indian communities who crafted multi-tribal socio-cultural organizations that defied economic and racial restrictions of the Jim Crow era. 20. Leutwiler, ‘‘Chief Illiniwek Tradition.’’ John L. Strohm, Daily Illini, August 10, 1934. A contradictory narrative of the origins of the Leutwiler and William Penn


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costumes were posed by John L. Strohm, a Daily Illini reporter, upon Raymond Dvorak’s retirement from the University of Illinois in 1934. Strohm claimed that Dvorak had rented both an Indian costume for Leutwiler’s use and a ‘‘William Penn Quaker’’ costume for the initial exchange. Given that Leutwiler had been utilizing his own costume for community performances and Boy Scout events, it is more likely that Strohm mistakenly ascribed the costume to Dvorak because of Dvorak’s role in securing Leutwiler’s performance. 21. Chicago publisher William Bryce recruited Edgar Robinson, Senior Secretary of the YMCA Committee on Boys’ Work, Ernest Thompson Seaton, founder of the Woodcraft Indians, and Dan Beard, founder to the Sons of Daniel Boone, to oversee the formation of the first American chapter. BSA organizers occupied YMCA offices in New York City and sought out progressive men interested in child welfare. Prominent individuals including Luther Gulick, the noted expert on physical education who spent the first 15 years of his life in Hawaii as part of the American Board of Commissioners Foreign Missionaries and Jacob Riis, the master photographer of urban life in New York, as well as men affiliated with the Red Cross, Big Brothers, Outlook magazine, and public schools consulted for the organization. 22. Eastman (1971, p. 43) quoted in Lopenzina (2003, p. 735). 23. Ann Leutwiler-Brandenberg, communication with Carol Spindel, n.d., in Spindel Papers. 24. The list of luminaries who dined with the Hubbard family reads as a who’s who of American intellectual life: suffragist Susan B. Anthony, writer Carrie Jacobs Bond, Mrs. William Jennings Bryan, Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe, Joel Chandler Harris, the author of Uncle Remus stories, American Red Cross founder Clara Barton, George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, Ida Tarbell, Mark Twain, Eugene Debs, Margaret Sanger, Clarence Darrow, and Gutzon Borglum, the American sculptor who carved Mount Rushmore (Yost, 1979, pp. 59–60). 25. Hubbard spent the summer between his junior and senior years living among the Crow and visiting the site of Custer’s last stand at Little Big Horn. Trained by his Aunt Myrtilla, who held a doctorate and was the head of the museum at Cornell in 1905, Hubbard was a botanist and taxidermist. He parlayed these skills during his education at Oberlin University in Ohio, Cornell, and at the University of Colorado at Boulder (Yost, 1979, p. 71). 26. Leutwiler’s dark beaded shirt with bone and porcupine weave breast plate, spotted eagle feathered headdress with dual tails, feathered bustle and dark rope wig presented a dramatic counterpoint to the nattily attired men dressed in their formal band uniforms of white pants and military-styled jackets. 27. There are obvious links between the original marching style associated with collegiate bands and military training. The facilitation of orderly rows and choreographed movements was a necessity to military campaigns which often required concerted shifts in field position and troop’s use of weaponry. 28. ‘‘Oskee-Wow-Wow’’ in A. Austin Harding Collection, Box 98, folder 7. 29. ‘‘Illinois Loyalty’’ University of Illinois Archives, Illinois Songs and Music, 1903–1958, Box 2. Thatcher Howland Guild, We’re Loyal to You, Illinois, Melrose Music Corporation (New York, 1906) in Burford, p. 179. 30. ‘‘Oskee-Wow-Wow’’ University of Illinois Archives, Illinois Songs and Music, 1903–1958, Box 2. Burford, pp. 171, 181.

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31. ‘‘Hail to the Orange’’ University of Illinois Archives, Illinois Songs and Music, 1903–1958, Box 2. 32. Ann Leutwiler-Brandenberg, communication with Carol Spindel, n.d., in Spindel Papers. 33. Leutwiler-Brandenberg. 34. The historical record regarding the commission of the two performances is conflicted. Leutwiler believed that both King and Alford were commissioned, whereas the University of Illinois notes that only Alford was commissioned. Ann Leutwiler-Brandenberg, communication with Carol Spindel, n.d., in Spindel Papers. Louis A Garippo, A Report to the Board of Trustees: The Chief Illiniwek Dialogue Report, ‘‘History of the Chief,’’ Section IV. Available at http://www.uillinois.edu/ trustees/dialogue/report_files/IV.html 35. Leutwiler-Brandenberg, p. 5. 36. Jennifer Guiliano, ‘‘Leutwiler’s Indian: Creating ‘Indian’ Tradition,’’ Dissertation in progress. 37. Originally composed years earlier under the title ‘‘Battle of Tippecanoe,’’ the ‘‘March of the Illini’’ seamlessly merged ‘‘Indian’’ music with band arranging. The rapid tom-tom beat of the drum that King, in his role as composer for the Sells Floto – Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, and motion pictures had made popular was extended by Alford to include brass, wind, and percussion instruments. An ‘‘Indianflavored march melody,’’ the ‘‘March of the Illini’’ explicitly linked Indianness to the University band identity without using vocals. This continued the pattern of the silent Indian produced in motion pictures and confirmed the firmly established stereotypes of Indians as separate from social exchange. The music itself legitimated Leutwiler’s performance for the audience by presenting familiar themes and tones.

REFERENCES Brown, I. W. (1989). The calumet ceremony in the southeast and its archeological formations. American Antiquity, 54(2), 311–331. Burgos, A., Jr. (2007). Playing America’s game: Baseball, Latinos, and the color line. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Butler, J. (2005). Giving an account of oneself. New York: Fordham University Press. Eastman, C. A. (1971). Indian boyhood. New York: Dover Publications. Franklin, B. (1987). A narrative of the late Massacres. In: J. A. Leo LeMay (Ed.), Franklin: Writings (pp. 540–546). New York: Viking Press. Guiliano, J. (2010). An American spectacle: Collegiate mascots and the performance of tradition. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. Haynie, J. T. (1971). The changing role of the band in American colleges and universities, 1900–1968. Ph.D. dissertation, George Peabody College for Teachers. Huhndorf, S. M. (2001). Going native: Indians in the American cultural imagination. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Jennings, F. (1964). Thomas Penn’s oath. The American Journal of Legal History, 8(4), 303–313. King, C. R., & Springwood, C. F. (Eds). (2001). Beyond the cheers: Race as spectacle in college sport. New York: State University of New York Press.


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Levine, P. (1985). A. G. Spalding and the rise of baseball: The promise of American sport. New York: Oxford University Press. Lopenzina, D. (2003). Good Indian: Charles Eastman and the warrior as civil servant. American Indian Quarterly, 27(3/4 Summer/Fall), 727–757. MacLeod, D. I. (1983). Building character in the American boy. Madision: University of Wisconsin Press. Martin, E. S. (1925). A double-barrelled social agency: The boy scouts of America. Social Forces, 4(1), 94–97. Merrell, J. H. (1999). Into the American woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania frontier. New York: W.W. Norton. Morris, B. (1970). Ernest Thompson Seaton and the origins of the woodcraft movement. Journal of Contemporary History, 5(2), 187. New York Times. (1890). Indian students not dying. New York Times, January 5, p. 3. New York Times. (1906). John the orangeman dead. New York Times, August 13, p. 7. New York Times. (1900). Suicide was 105 years old. New York Times, January 8, p. 5. Powers-Beck, J. (2001). Chief. American Indian Quarterly, 25(4), 525. Righter, C. (1956). Something new in marching bands? The Instrumentalist, November, 24. Rodgers, PH., Sullivan, C., & The Cambridge Historical Commission. (1984). A photographic history of Cambridge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Spady, J. O. (2004). Colonialism and the discursive antecedents of Penn’s treaty with the Indians. In: W. A. Pencak & D. K. Richter (Eds), Friends and enemies in Penn’s woods: Indians, colonists, and the racial construction of Pennsylvania. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Spindel, C. (2001). Dancing at halftime. In: C. R. King & C. F. Springwood (Eds), Team spirits: The Native American mascots controversy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Spindel, C. (2000). Dancing at halftime: Sports and the controversy over American Indian mascots. New York: New York University Press. Staurowsky, E. (1998). An act of honor or exploitation? The Cleveland Indians’ use of the Louis Francis Sockalexis story. Sociology of Sport Journal, 15, 305. Thwaites, R. G. (Ed.) (1974/1903). Father Louis Hennepin’s a new discovery of a vast country in America. Toronto: Coles. Urbana High School. (1925). The 1925 Rosemary. Urbana, IL: Urbana High School. Weber, M. (2002). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New York: Penguin Books. White, R. (1991). The middle ground: Indians, empires and republics in the great lakes region, 1650–1815. New York: Cambridge University Press. Yost, N. S. (1979). A man as big as the West. Boulder, CO: Pruitt Publishing.

WHY THE NCAA WAS RIGHT Stephen J. Kaufman INTRODUCTION At the November 24, 1997 meeting of the student–faculty Senate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the pending NCAA certification review of the university’s athletic programs was discussed. At that meeting, it was recommended that the university’s Division of Intercollegiate Athletics include in the goals of its Self Study, To consider whether the caricature and impersonation of a Native American Indian as the UIUC athletic mascot serves the integrity of the UIUC athletic program, the campus, and the principles of the NCAA.

This proposal met with an overwhelming positive response from the members of the Senate and the recommendation was presented to the Urbana Chancellor, Michael Aiken. Mr. Aiken’s refusal to include this issue in the Self Study process led me to write to then NCAA president, Cedric Dempsey. In contrast with Mr. Aiken, the NCAA was receptive to considering this matter of racial stereotyping in intercollegiate athletics. Mr. Dempsey and his successor, Myles Brand, provided the leadership that was lacking at the University of Illinois and elsewhere. They undertook a thorough investigation of this matter over a period of more than seven years. At a meeting with Myles Brand and NCAA vice-presidents Ron Stratten and Bernard Franklin in the summer of 2004, it became evident that the NCAA had a keen awareness and appreciation of the significance of the negative impact of racial stereotyping on intercollegiate athletics as well as on Native Americans. I was afforded the opportunity to present information to the NCAA Executive Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 34, 57–61 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2010)0000034007

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Subcommittee on Gender and Diversity Issues on August 3, 2005. On August 5, 2005, the NCAA stated it would no longer permit 18 member institutions with Indian mascots and imagery to host postseason exhibitions. The following section is based on my remarks to the NCAA Executive Subcommittee on Gender and Diversity Issues. Myles Brand died September 16, 2009; he is remembered by his many accomplishments. Dr. Brand advanced education and humanity in his academic career and as president of the University of Oregon, Indiana University, and the NCAA. He was a principled leader with high integrity. I am especially grateful to him for his courage and willingness to lead the NCAA in its work for racial justice in intercollegiate athletics. He exhibited leadership and courage where others failed.

WHY THE NCAA WAS RIGHT On August 5, 2005, the NCAA stated that it would no longer permit 18 member institutions with Indian mascots and imagery to host postseason exhibitions. Moreover, they urged colleges and universities not to engage in intercollegiate competition with those institutions on their list of 18. Included on this list were the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of North Dakota. The decision by the NCAA to intervene in the mascot debate came after years of information gathering and opportunities given to member institutions to explain why their sports programs should be permitted to remain outside the NCAA’s non-discrimination policies. The ruling by the NCAA was based on the thoughtful review of information by 40 presidents and chancellors of member institutions on three separate NCAA committees. It was the right thing to do and it is arguably the most significant action to promote racial justice in sports since Jackie Robinson took the field in Brooklyn. The ‘‘whys’’ of this follow. The consequences of intercollegiate sports programs using Indian mascots are not confined to the college campuses that initiate them; they travel with the teams and are broadcast and published all over America. The chanting of racial epithets like ‘‘Sioux Suck’’ and ‘‘Kill the Seminoles,’’ and worse, are heard all around the country. Sports headlines that read, ‘‘Indians Massacred’’ and ‘‘Injuns Scalped,’’ and Indians hung in effigy represent far more than ‘‘good-natured’’ enthusiasm for sports. Caricatures of Native Americans and appropriation of Native ceremonies, religious symbols, and dress do nothing to ‘honor’ Native Americans. The overwhelming majority

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of Native Tribes have made this absolutely clear and they have made ending this form of invidious discrimination a high priority. This racial stereotyping is offensive, sacrilegious, and harmful to Native American culture and people, and 99% of the 550 recognized Native American Tribes have advocated ending this stereotyping and denigration. Native Americans have been supported in their goal to end this misappropriation of their culture by the leadership of the nations major churches, by just about every civil rights organization including the United States Commission on Civil Rights, the NAACP, NOW, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, and by educational leaders and hundreds of educational organizations including the National Association of Social Workers, the American Association of Anthropology, and the American Psychological Association. As Charles Whitcomb, former chair of the NCAA Minority Opportunity and Interest Committee, wrote in the NCAA News, September 28, 1998: Member institutions with Indian mascots that promote Indian caricatures and mimic ceremonial rites do not comply with the NCAA’s commitment to ethnic student welfare. The use of these symbols and mascots is not respectful to Native American culture and is considered by that culture to be sacrilegious. No other race of people in America is used for mascots or nicknames for sports teams.

The evidence is clear: The use of Native Americans as sports mascots creates a hostile environment and perpetuates racism. And I might add, it creates a hostile environment not only for Native Americans but for all groups that support them. On the University of Illinois Urbana campus, this includes all organizations that represent people of color as well as 80% of the UIUC faculty. The use of Native Americans as sports mascots impedes the education and development of Native American youth and their identification with their culture. Students come to campuses to learn, but Native students are immediately challenged to deal with mascot issues. Indian mascots denigrate Native American religion by trivializing and desecrating it in half-time shows. A dancing rabbi, priest, or Moslem cleric certainly would not be tolerated as half-time sports entertainment. The use of Native Americans as sports mascots compromises honoring all people, for all people are denigrated by dehumanizing one race as the object of sports entertainment. And lastly, Indian sports mascots undermine the goals of intercollegiate athletics and the mission of the NCAA.

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The arguments on the other side, and I have read and listened to hundreds of them, are basically sentimental at best and reflect arrogance and ignorance. At worst, they represent downright racism. They are the exact same arguments that were given to oppose to every social, political, and economic change in this country that sought to promote racial and gender equity and justice. When bumper stickers in Champaign-Urbana proclaim, ‘‘The Chief Today, Tomorrow, Forever,’’ a direct appropriation of the racist slogan ‘‘Segregation Today, Tomorrow, Forever,’’ the position of mascot supporters in clear. Since the 1998 statement from the NCAA Minority Opportunity and Interest Committee, the NCAA continued to make its position known and provided member institutions with a range of opportunities to express themselves and come into compliance with the NCAA’s non-discrimination principles. The responses of the University of Illinois and University of North Dakota to the Minority Opportunity and Interest Committee were complete whitewashes. Where some institutions complied, others such as Illinois and North Dakota remained intractable. When more enlightened institutions retired their mascots, it was always the result of leadership at the top and, parenthetically, in no case did gift-giving diminish. Unfortunately, at Illinois and elsewhere, the needed leadership was quashed by fear and intimidation and subverted by political and other interests of appointed trustees. When the University of Illinois Board of Trustees was finally prepared to retire its mascot, Illinois’ Governors intervened. Similar political pressure impeded progress on other campuses. With failed leadership at Illinois and elsewhere, the NCAA remained the sole solution to ending this form of invidious discrimination. The NCAA rules were clear on this and the NCAA Minority Opportunity and Interest Committee had been forthright. Some might argue that the NCAA banning the use of Indian mascots and symbols was an unreasonable interference on institutional issues. However, when institutional control becomes a device used by universities to preserve discriminatory practices in athletic programs, it was time for the NCAA to end such practices. When trustees negate faculty control of the institution’s athletic programs, When those entrusted with the education of our students disregard their faculty, deceive their students, promote racial divisiveness through their athletic program, and tell Native American students, ‘‘perhaps this is not a good place for you; perhaps you should leave,’’ it was time for the NCAA to remove the root of this.

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When trustees find themselves subservient to state and local politics to the detriment of the institutions they serve, all because of a sports mascot, it was time for the NCAA to intervene. When African American students at Illinois who support their Native American peers are told, ‘‘if you don’t like our Chief, go back to Africa,’’ When athletes and coaches are intimidated from speaking out, And when Native American students and faculty have to walk a gauntlet of signs and logos in stores and dormitory halls, on the shirts of students and townspeople, and plastered throughout their sports facilities that proclaim they are something more akin to panthers, bears, huskies, eagles, and wolves than they are to humans, it was time for the NCAA to intervene. Unless you have any thoughts other than, ‘‘Native Americans are People, Not Mascots,’’ it was high time for the NCAA to act on this issue. Enacting policy that discourages use of Native Americans as sports mascots and symbols was not a new precedent for the NCAA. The NCAA did not leave up to individual institutions whether to include women or minorities in sports, nor should it have done so on the mascot issue. The governing and non-discrimination statements of the NCAA are quite clear on this and there was every reason to include Native Americans in the advocacy and protection of the NCAA’s rules. For all the hurtful things in the world that cannot be readily changed, here is one that could. We should be grateful to the NCAA and to its president, Myles Brand, for the courage, integrity, and leadership they showed. It is certain to expand racial justice and advance intercollegiate sports.

INVENTING TRADITION: THE GARIPPO REPORT AND THE PARAPHERNALIA OF JURISPRUDENCE Ray Gamache INTRODUCTION This chapter argues that in 2000 the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne (UIUC), retained Judge Louis B. Garippo to moderate information gathering and to prepare a three-part report to legitimize findings that would deliberately result in no substantive action. The framework of a legal proceeding – whereby Garippo served as judge and the Board of Trustees as jury in absentia – provided the necessary ‘‘nonfictions and metaphors of traditional jurisprudence’’ (Cohen, 1935, p. 812) to construct vehicles of communication in which the dialogue and subsequent report on Chief Illiniwek would be seen as impartial and objective. That framework resulted in ‘‘The Chief Illiniwek Dialogue Report (CIDR),’’ authored by Judge Garippo and presented to the UIUC Board of Trustees on November 8, 2000. Drawing on Eric Hobsbawm’s (1983, p. 3) concept of ‘‘invented traditions,’’ this chapter explicates how UIUC used the ‘‘formal paraphernalia and ritualized practices’’ of one invented tradition, the legal system, to justify its use of another invented tradition, Chief Illiwinek, and, in the Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 34, 63–86 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2010)0000034008

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process, forestall criticism, allow UIUC to continue its own ‘‘institutional deafness’’ (Strong, 2004), and avoid accountability. Hobsbawm (1983, p. 1) used the term ‘‘invented tradition’’ in a broad, but not imprecise, sense, including both those that were actually invented and formally instituted (i.e., Chief Illiniwek in 1926) and those that emerged in a less easily traceable manner (i.e., legal system). Of particular interest for this chapter is Hobsbawm’s (1983, p. 1) point that the term invented tradition ‘‘is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.’’ The idea that Chief Illiniwek was the creation of an individual who sought to inculcate certain values and norms associated with the indigenous Illini has been clearly documented by scholars (Spindel, 2000; King, 1998). Significantly, as Hobsbawm (1983, p. 2) notes, ‘‘insofar as there is such reference to a historic past, the peculiarity of ‘invented’ traditions is that the continuity with it is largely factitious.’’ In short, Chief Illiniwek was Lester Leutwiler’s response to a novel situation – the invitation to participate with a symbolic William Penn mascot during halftime of the Pennsylvania–Illinois football game at UIUC’s Alumni Stadium – which referenced a historical people by creating and appropriating ‘‘music, dance and costume’’ (II, p. 1) that had not been a part of Illini culture but which established its own past through what Hobsbawm (1983, p. 2) called ‘‘quasi-obligatory repetition.’’ As Hobsbawm (1983, p. 2) explains, the goal or characteristic of tradition is invariance, offering a contrast between the constant change of the modern world and the attempt to structure ‘‘at least some parts of social life within it as unchanging and invariant.’’ This chapter also draws upon the work of Felix S. Cohen (1935, p. 812, 1953) to unpack the ways through which the appointment of ‘‘a senior legal professional’’ (I, p. 1) and other ‘‘vivid fictions and metaphors of traditional jurisprudence’’ were utilized to create the impression that Garippo’s report would lend rationality and objectivity to an issue ‘‘without any appreciation of the economic, social, and ethical issues which it involves’’ (Cohen, 1935, p. 812). Cohen (1953, p. 348), of course, remains a particularly relevant source for commenting on Indian affairs, having served ‘‘as general counsel to several Indian tribes and to the Association on American Indian Affairs, Inc., and in his earlier capacity as counsel to the Secretary of the Interior and as Associate Solicitor and chairman of the board of Appeals of the Interior Department.’’ In delineating the erosion of Indian rights in the early 1950s, Cohen noted several tendencies related to the bureaucratic approach to

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solving practical problems of American Indians: (1) ‘‘administrations which sought to restrict Indian freedom have generally made sure that Indian tribes were not permitted to employ attorneys who might be inclined to challenge such assaults’’ (Cohen, 1953, p. 352); (2) ‘‘the use of federal funds to ‘enlighten’ Indian voters on the ground that it has a trustee’s obligation to see that Indians have a proper understanding of the issues on which they vote’’ (Cohen, 1953, p. 354); and (3) ‘‘the tendency of any government bureau to expand its power is vastly intensified when the people subject to the bureau’s activities are without many of the normal avenues of protest, publicity, and legal redress’’ (Cohen, 1953, p. 379). Cohen explains that the Indian, like the miner’s canary, has always marked the shift from fresh air to poisonous gas in our political atmosphere and that treatment of Indians reflects the rise and fall of our democratic faith. Significantly, Cohen (1953, p. 390) notes that the undermining of that faith ‘‘begins with the glorification of ‘expert administrators’ whose power-drives are always accompanied by soft music about ‘the withering away of the state’ or the ultimate ‘liquidation’ of this or that bureau.’’ In this case, calls for retirement of the Chief served as the soft music that accompanied Garippo’s ministrations. The chapter explicates the Garippo report as a strategic, bureaucratic ploy couched in discourse that portrays pro-Chief supporters as positive and reasonable and anti-Chief supporters as divisive and disruptive.

CIDR SECTIONS I-II: FORMAL SYMBOLIC ASSENT One of the most important ways for the UIUC Board of Trustees to formalize its response, or lack thereof, to the Chief Illiniwek issue was in the creation of a process that utilized the paraphernalia of jurisprudence. In this regard, Garippo was retained to conduct a dialogue and issue a report on ‘‘the issue of the continuation of the Chief Illiniwek performances at its athletic events’’ (I, p. 1). Garippo’s appointment was the direct result of a resolution passed by the UIUC Board of Trustees on January 13, 2000. In that resolution, the Board of Trustees reviewed actions it had previously taken regarding the Chief, including adoption of a resolution in 1990 to retain the Chief as the symbol of UIUC’s athletic teams, correspondence with the U. S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights regarding the closing of its investigation of complaints filed against UIUC, and receipt of a faculty resolution from 1998 recommending the Chief’s retirement. Given the continued criticism regarding the Chief’s performances and the

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need for ‘‘open discussion on this and other issues’’ (Addendum A1, p. 2), the Board of Trustees issued a four-part resolution that, in part, reaffirmed (1) ‘‘its responsibility to establish the University’s symbols’’; (2) ‘‘its commitment to a civil process of debate’’; (3) its direction to the University’s administration to devise and maintain appropriate strategies’’ for an open and respectful discussion of the issue; and (4) ‘‘to ensure that processes are in place, which are designed to address the differences within the University community regarding the use of the chief as a symbol and its alleged negative impact’’ (Addendum A1, p. 2). Several things about the Board’s January 13, 2000, resolution stand out, most notably, the fact that ‘‘this memorandum was not mailed to members of the Board prior to the meeting’’ (Addendum A1, p. 1). Additionally, the resolution makes clear that the Board of Trustees, while acknowledging the ongoing controversy, reaffirmed ‘‘its responsibility to establish the University’s symbols’’ (Addendum A1, p. 2). As Staurowsky (2004) notes, despite more than 100 different resolutions and statements contesting the appropriateness of American Indian imagery, the UIUC Board of Trustees, like other non-American Indian individuals and organizations, claimed in its resolution the proprietary right to establish the University’s symbols. Despite the creation of elaborate processes to ensure a civil process of debate in which the views of all constituencies would be considered and respected, the Board of Trustees alone held the responsibility and power regarding Chief Illiniwek. Significantly, Hobsbawm (1983, p. 10) explained that because invented traditions reintroduced ‘‘status into a world of contract, superior and inferior into a world of legal equals,’’ those seeking to inculcate ‘‘the same values in every citizen’’ realized specific socializations could not be accomplished directly. Rather, they ‘‘could be smuggled in by formal symbolic assent to a social organization which was de facto unequal y More commonly they might foster the corporate sense of superiority of elites’’ (Hobsbawm (1983, pp. 9–10). By affirming a commitment to dialogue among the various constituencies, the Board of Trustees created a means to achieve ‘‘formal symbolic assent’’ while retaining the ultimate responsibility to take absolutely no action. On February 15, 2000, the Board of Trustees issued a press release that delineated its plan for dialogue on Chief Illiniwek. As described by William B. Engelbrecht, Chairman of the UIUC Board of Trustees, this ‘‘tangible expression’’ of the Board’s commitment to dialogue was couched in quasilegal language. The press release explained that the Board would retain ‘‘a senior legal professional’’ to gather opinion through a ‘‘Special Intake Session’’ as well as ‘‘opinion solicitation’’ and present it to the Board ‘‘in a


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form that would allow the Board to respond to particular points in an organized way’’ (I, p. 1). The ‘‘senior legal professional’’ would then prepare a three-part report consisting of (1) an executive summary of the various arguments made about this issue from all points of view, (2) a distillation of these arguments into particular points to which the Board will reply, and (3) an appendix consisting of two volumes – one composed of various reports submitted from several organizations advocating retirement of Chief Illiniwek and a transcript of the Special Intake Session moderated by Garippo on April 14, 2000, and a transcript of the narratives taped in Foellinger Balcony on that same day; the second volume contained selected submissions from the Dialogue Mailbox. When the Board issued a subsequent press release on March 30, 2000, announcing that Louis B. Garippo, a former circuit court judge in Cook County, had been retained to assist the Board in conducting the dialogue, the Board clearly wanted to create the impression that this ‘‘dialogue’’ would be conducted within the ‘‘paraphernalia of traditional jurisprudence.’’ Engelbrecht cited Garippo’s ‘‘extensive experience, sound judgment and unquestioned integrity’’ (I, p. 2) as great assets to govern the process, although the press release made clear that Garippo would ‘‘not make a recommendation on the status of Chief Illiniwek’’ (I, p. 2). In retaining a former circuit court judge from Cook County to preside over the dialogue with the impartiality, rationality and ‘‘due process,’’ the Board doubtlessly sought to lend an air of legitimacy to the proceedings. As Cohen (1935, p. 818) has aptly noted, Legal reasoning carries a peculiar freight of human hopes and human suffering in that realm where the phrase ‘‘due process of law’’ serves as a text for judicial review of social legislation. Here, at least, one might hope that a ‘‘decent respect to the opinions of mankind’’ would lead courts to formulate with some clarity their own conception of what it is that they are doing. Yet in no realm does logomachy offer more stubborn resistance to realistic analysis.

As Cohen explains, due process is a term that offers very little in terms of meaning. In fact, it ‘‘can no more be defined in social ethical terms than in terms of legal history or abnormal psychology’’ (Cohen, 1935, p. 819). In practice, due process is self-referential to a court’s previous adjudications. In this case, the Board’s previous resolutions about the Chief’s performance determined its next course of action, however in depth the CIDR purported to be. Having no voice on the ultimate status of the Chief, then, Garippo assumed the role of unbiased adjudicator of the ‘‘Dialogue’’ and author of an executive summary of the opinions presented at the Special Intake Session.

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Despite the claim made by the Board of Trustees that Garippo would serve as an impartial, neutral moderator, such a claim was undermined when it was revealed that the law firm with which he is employed, Cahil Christian & Kunkle, Ltd., would be billing the University approximately $150,000 for the report (Mabry, 2000, p. 1). The revelation that Garippo was being paid by UIUC for his services may not necessarily have compromised his report, but at the presentation of his report to the Board of Trustees on November 8, 2000, Garippo nonetheless felt compelled to deny allegations that he was part of some ‘‘deep dark conspiracy’’ (Mabry, 2000, p. 1). More telling than any denial of a conspiracy was a statement in the CIDR’s ‘‘Introduction,’’ in which Garippo admitted that to anyone familiar with the controversy ‘‘this report will present no significantly new arguments’’ (I, p. 2). This, in effect, was clearly Garippo’s task because no new arguments provided the basis for the Board to take no new action on Chief Illiniwek. Admitting that in his role as moderator the most difficult goal was to ‘‘carry out the designated duties in such a manner that attendees at the Dialogue and readers of this report would feel that all views had been considered and fairly reported, and at the same time, no bias would be ascribed to the actions or statements of the moderator’’ (I, p. 2), Garippo couched his role in the discourse of impartiality, fairness, and neutrality. Cohen (1935, p. 821) notes that as one of many legal concepts, a judge’s impartiality belongs to those ‘‘supernatural entities which do not have a verifiable existence except to the eyes of faith’’ and which remains, for the most part, unassailable. A judge’s argument or report, on the contrary, is necessarily a text laden with elements of subjectivity and bias. Those elements seep through even the simplest section of the CIDR, the short second section, titled ‘‘Symbol vs. Mascot.’’ In this section, Garippo addressed a key issue ‘‘that the speakers and writers have spent a great deal of time discussing and analyzing’’ (II, p. 1). Those two designations problematize the very issue at the center of the controversy – the contestation of whether Chief Illiniwek represents ‘‘a magical talisman of identification and imagination for students, alumni and fans’’ (King, 1998, p. 46) or ‘‘War-bonneted apparitions pasted to football helmets y [that] act as opaque, impermeable curtains, solid walls of white noise that for many citizens block or distort all vision of the nearly two million native Americans’’ (quoted in Spindel, 2000, p. 3). In avoiding either designation of Chief Illiniwek, Garippo denied the validity of the respective arguments and situated himself within a position of authority that could not be contested or refuted. Garippo’s argument was based on the idea that Chief Illiniwek was neither a ‘‘Symbol’’ of the UIUC – because the Chief only


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appeared at athletic events – nor a true ‘‘Mascot’’ – because he did not participate in the usual cheerleading activities of other mascots. Nonetheless, he did not hesitate from designating the Chief as a performance that ‘‘began as a diversion for halftime at a football game’’ and ‘‘evolved into a tradition of its own’’ (II, p. 1). By calling the Chief a ‘‘tradition,’’ Garippo legitimized his designation while dismissing all others that he deemed were ‘‘based on subjective individual reaction or perception’’ (II, p. 1). By legitimizing only his designation, which necessarily was based on his own reaction and perception, Garippo undermined his owned impartiality ‘‘by asserting something that sounds like a proposition but which can not be confirmed or refuted by positive evidence or by ethical argument’’ (Cohen, 1935, p. 814). Such is the stuff of transcendental nonsense.

CIDR SECTION III: IMPERIALIST NOSTALGIA In the next three sections of the CIDR, Garippo provides a cursory history of the Illini Tribe, a history of Chief Illiniwek, and a history of the controversy. Although he devotes almost six pages of text to the history of Chief Illiniwek and nine pages to a history of the controversy, Garippo encapsulates the history the Illini Tribe in three paragraphs, geographically situating what was ‘‘a loose association or confederation of several tribes all speaking the Algonquin language’’ (III, p. 1) in an area approximately ‘‘from the IllinoisWisconsin border on the north, east to the Wabash River basin, westward across the Mississippi into eastern Iowa, with the Ohio River to the south’’ (III, p. 1). In his presentation, Garippo offers no history of the Illini before ‘‘the time of European contact’’ (III, p. 1), avoiding its history before the time when agents of colonialism encountered the tribe. Rather than providing material and expressive aspects of the tribe’s culture, Garippo relates how they once lived – ‘‘hunting, fishing, gathering and farming’’ – how their ranks were depleted – ‘‘by intertribal warfare and disease’’ – and how conflicts with other tribes ‘‘caused the Illini to move down the Illinois River Valley’’ (III, p. 1). Garippo’s analysis strives for a position of impartiality, although his emphasis on ‘‘traditional’’ aspects of the tribe’s culture (i.e., living close to nature), and the savagery of the frontier (i.e., intertribal warfare), serves as a reference point for what Rosaldo (1989, p. 108) calls an ‘‘ideologically constructed world of ongoing progressive change’’ in which a civilized nation (i.e., the United States) forces static savage societies (i.e., Native Americans) to adapt to new conditions (i.e., relocation to Oklahoma)

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‘‘where they yet remain, united as a single tribe, the Peoria’’ (III, p. 1). Thus, by 1830, ‘‘there were few Illini survivors left in Illinois’’ and by treaty ‘‘most of the land occupied by the Illini was ceded to the government’’ (III, p. 1). To conclude, Garippo provides U. S. census figures in which 0.2 percent (20,970 people) of the population in the State of Illinois identified themselves as American Indian, which ‘‘[C]oincidentallyy is identical to the Indian enrollment at UIUC’’ (III, p. 1). Garippo’s history of the Illini Tribe employs characteristics of imperialist nostalgia (Rosaldo, 1989). By striving for a position of impartiality in recounting what happened to the Illini, Judge Garippo invokes a mood of nostalgia that ‘‘makes racial domination appear innocent and pure’’ (Rosaldo, 1989, p. 107). Such an innocent pose, Rosaldo (1989, p. 108) posits, is often employed to capture people’s imaginations and ‘‘to conceal its complicity with often brutal domination.’’ Thus, Garippo need offer no commentary on the deleterious effect of the U. S. Government’s policy of removal and its use of treaty as a means to take away Native American land, a process that continued well into the twentieth century even after the American Indian gained citizenship in 1924. In fact, Cohen (1953, p. 366) notes that when the Indian learned to handle property, ‘‘the Indian Bureau devised a system to roll back all power over Indian allotments into Bureau hands y What began as more or less voluntary arrangements is now being maintained by ruthless force.’’ Feelings of nostalgia are a particularly effective way for people to deal with the passing of what they themselves have transformed. Rosaldo (1989, p. 108) posits that ‘‘much of imperialist nostalgia’s force resides in its association with (indeed, its disguise as) more genuinely innocent, tender recollections of what is at once an earlier epoch and a previous phase of life.’’

CIDR SECTION IV: A RITUAL OF BECOMING Garippo’s history of Chief Illiniwek is composed of six parts: Origin, Costume, Music, Dance, Evolution, and Funding. The story of Chief Illiniwek’s origin, Garippo asserts, ‘‘is common knowledge to those familiar with the debate surrounding the Chief’s existence’’ (IV, p. 1). This first sentence distorts the parameters of the debate, shifting the focus from the University’s use of this ‘‘Symbol,’’ ‘‘Mascot,’’ or ‘‘performance’’ to ‘‘the Chief’s existence’’ (IV, p. 1). The debate was never merely about the Chief’s existence per se; rather, the debate revolved around the continued


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deployment of the Chief at UIUC athletic events (e.g., football and basketball games) despite protests about the Chief’s performance by members of various UIUC constituencies, as well as Native American tribes and numerous educational and civil rights organizations. Garippo concludes his introductory remarks by adding that ‘‘it is informative to analyze the origins of the entire performance’’ for those new to the ‘‘discussion’’ (IV, p. 1). It defies explanation as to how Garippo could provide such an analysis without invariably involving subjectivities and partisanship. Lastly, to characterize the controversy or debate as a ‘‘discussion’’ betrays his purported impartiality by diminishing the intensity of the divisiveness the Chief’s performance has engendered. That Garippo’s history of Chief Illiniwek would be unable to maintain any semblance of impartiality is evidenced in the first statement of ‘‘fact’’: ‘‘In 1926, Ray Dvorak, assistant director of bands, conceived the idea of having a Native American war dance performed at halftime at the IllinoisPennsylvania game’’ (IV, p. 1). In contrast to this version, Carol Spindel (2000, p. 80) offers a different version of the situation. ‘‘When the University of Pennsylvania was coming to play Illinois in 1926, its marching band offered to bring a William Penn costume for a halftime skit if Illinois would come up with a character to meet Penn.’’ That there exists two distinctly different versions as to which university hatched the idea for the halftime performance strongly suggests that the history of Chief Illiniwek is anything but ‘‘common knowledge’’ (IV, p. 1). Garippo then offers a version of the Chief’s origin that naturalizes the appropriation of Native American culture by the European-American culture, suggesting origin of the Chief follows other adoptions, as in ‘‘the prevalence of Indian names for states, rivers and other geographic landmarks’’ (IV, p. 1). He also points to Americans ‘‘carrying on Indian customs as reflected by the formation of the Boy Scouts y and other groups which placed heavy emphasis on the cultivation of Indian crafts and practices’’ (IV, p. 1). Given the proliferation of ‘‘countless pictorials of the American Indian’’ in the UIUC yearbook, titled Illio, beginning in 1901, Judge Garippo concludes, ‘‘An Indian was a likely selection for the performance’’ (IV, p. 1). The appropriation of Indian customs was inherently paradoxical, relying on generating identity and traditions from a culture it was bound to subjugate by wielding military, economic, and political power. In attempting to find a way out of its liminality, Americans appropriated customs by creating performances of imagined ancestors. Vincent J. Deloria in his seminal study Playing Indian argues non-native Americans have played out

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their own fantasies about Indians to experience national, modern, and personal identities. Deloria (1998, p. 25) explains, Indianness helped Mast Tree rioters define custom and imagine themselves a legitimate part of the continent’s ancient history. Indians and the land offered the only North American past capable of justifying a claim of traditional custom and a refiguring of the rhetoric of moral economy y White Indians laid claim, not to real Indian practices, of course, but to the idea of native custom—the specifics to be defined not by Indians, but by colonists.

Performances of Indianness occurred frequently in colonial times (e.g., the Boston Tea Party) and suggest the colonists’ desire to forge an identity through a ritual of becoming was largely shaped by rejecting everything British. This ritual was not quickly realized, however, because looming on the edge of an increasingly expanding national border was the presence of actual Native Americans. These people were conceived of as a primitive, savage Other, the white man’s burden. Deloria argues that Native Americans assured Americans of their own civilized nature while at the same time justifying the dispossession of real Americans. ‘‘There was, quite simply, no way to conceive an American identity without Indians. At the same time, there was no way to make a complete identity while they remained’’ (Deloria, 1998, pp. 36–37). To appease anxieties, Americans continued to play Indian through fraternal organizations such as the Tammany Society, the Society of Red Men, Ernest Thompson Seton’s Boy Scouts of America, and Campfire Girls, all of which purported to continue Indian customs. Garippo builds his analysis of Chief Illiniwek’s history by using sources that are decidedly pro-Chief. The section on the Chief’s costume, for example, relies almost exclusively on information, gleaned from the Chief Illiniwek Homepage, which recounts the efforts of A. Webber Borchers in designing the Chief’s costume and making sure UIUC would ‘‘have certain objects to continue this tradition’’ (IV, p. 2). Borchers chose regalia of the Sioux rather than the indigenous inhabitants of Illinois, who ‘‘did not wear the dramatic war bonnets of the plains Indians’’ (IV, p. 2). Significantly, Garippo offers no analysis of the decisions that went into the costuming of Chief Illiniwek. Rather than revering and materializing Illinois culture, Chief Illiniwek is a composite representation of Indianness derived from cinematic and literary images, not as they were understood by themselves and others but as imagined by European-Americans. C. Richard King (1998, p. 51) explains, Indeed, Chief Illiniwek is a stereotypical representation of Native American cultures and histories, informed by racist notions and romantic sentiments. It operates as a


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double-coded icon which simultaneously illustrates prevailing uses and understandings of the indigenous inhabitants of Illinois and the broader category of ‘‘Indianness.’’

Garippo comes closest to offering an unbiased presentation of the contestation over the Chief’s costume when he notes, ‘‘There are conflicting reports within the University’s website as to whether the [current] outfit was donated by Fools Crow or purchased by the University’’ (IV, p. 2). For the section on the Chief’s dance, Garippo relies exclusively on a description of the origin and nature of the dance as submitted by John Madigan, who was the 33rd person to play Chief Illiniwek. Garippo offers no analysis or commentary on this subject, other than one sentence in which he explains, ‘‘Most of his [Madigan’s] opinions are redacted in this section but his entire submission can be found at Trustees’ Appendix @ No. 3’’ (IV, p. 3). Madigan’s submission purports to legitimize the authenticity of the Chief’s ‘‘fancy dance,’’ an argument that has been thoroughly discredited by scholars. Nonetheless, Madigan asserts, ‘‘The performance of Chief Illiniwek can neither be classified as ‘non-authentic’ or ‘authentic,’ because it has changed and evolved just as fancy dancing has over the past century’’ (IV, p. 4). Ultimately, Madigan relates that the Chief’s performance has been made ‘‘somewhat consistent from year to year and from Chief to Chief’’ (IV, p. 4) because the Chief’s role is more important than the individual performing. Hobsbawm explanation of how invented traditions take root sheds light on how elements of Chief Illiniwek’s performance (i.e., costume, music, dance) came to play a ‘‘prominent role on campus and within the local community’’ (IV, p. 5). He notes, ‘‘The crucial element seems to have been the invention of emotionally and symbolically charged signs y [whose] significance lay precisely in their undefined universality’’ (Hobsbawm, 1983, p. 11). As such, these emotionally and symbolically charged signs ‘‘command instantaneous respect and loyalty’’ (Firth, 1973, p. 341). The Chief’s stylized dance, costume, and music have become routinized, resisting the flows of history while fixing ‘‘the contours of ‘Indianness’ as it has revivified stereotypes about Native America and Native Americans’’ (King, 1998, p. 50). Rather than contextualizing the Chief Illiniwek performance within the larger project of America’s racial ideology that fosters stereotypical understandings of Native American culture, Garippo’s ‘‘analysis’’ absolves the UIUC of complicity in sanctioning use of the mascot, noting that the University ‘‘disapproves’’ of Chief caricatures used to sell sundry products (e.g., toilet seats, toilet paper, boxer shorts, silk panties), that the Chief logo no longer appears on University stationery, that the athletic department funds maintenance of the Chief’s performance, that no scholarships or tuition

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waivers are awarded, and that ‘‘the costs of maintaining the regalia and providing time for student Chiefs to visit Indian reservations are minimal’’ (IV, p. 6). Garippo’s choice of the term ‘‘minimal’’ demonstrates the use of weasel words that characterizes much of the Dialogue Report.

CIDR SECTION V: PERSONAL DEVILS Garippo’s chronological review of the controversy begins with an excerpt from an article that appeared in the 1975 yearbook, Illio, titled ‘‘A Challenge to the Chief.’’ By focusing only on the protest within the UIUC community, Garippo isolates the controversy from the protests over the use of Native American imagery that began in 1968 when a freshman at Stanford University, Lois Risling, a 21-year-old student from the Hoopa reservation in northern California, viewed the mockery of native peoples during her first Stanford football game. Risling left the stadium, vowing to end the racism. Risling and other Native American students protested the way the name ‘‘Indians’’ and the mascot were used as symbols. After more than two years of debate that drew national attention and support from national organizations such as the American Indian Movement, the Stanford University Student Senate voted to drop the Indian mascot and symbol. Stanford adopted a new nickname, mascot, and logo in 1972, the Stanford Cardinal. Other colleges and universities such as Dartmouth and Marquette discontinued their use of Native American mascots and nicknames. Garippo then contends that from 1975 until 1989, ‘‘little attention appears to have been paid to the issue on the campus’’ (V, p. 2), although it is unclear how this assertion was arrived at other than the fact that nothing was brought to his attention. Controversy began, according to Garippo, in 1989 when Charlene Teters, a member of the Spokane Tribe, protested ‘‘the presence of the Chief at athletic events’’ (V, p. 2). Garippo’s characterization fails in several respects. It fails to distinguish between the Chief’s ‘‘presence’’ and the Chief’s ‘‘performance.’’ It also fails to acknowledge the impact that performance had on Teters’ children, which Teters has repeatedly stated was a contributing factor in her decision to protest. Singling out Teters as the cause for subsequent ‘‘anti-Chief protests’’ is tantamount to claiming Rosa Parks started the civil rights movement. Blaming an individual diminishes the depth and breadth of any protest movement and follows what Cohen (1953, p. 389) called ‘‘the traditional American penchant for blaming national ills on personal devils.’’ Thus began what Garippo deems the ‘‘concerted attempts to eliminate not only the Chief, but other school and


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professional team symbols, mascots, names, logos, etc. that in any way referenced Indians [sic] signs or people’’ (V, p. 2). In subsequent sections, Garippo seems intent on discrediting the protests. He notes that a 1989 Student Government Association (SGA) resolution that would have encouraged elimination of the Chief was overwhelmingly voted down by students in a ‘‘Dial a Vote’’ promotion, adding that a similar resolution was finally passed in 1991. This SGA resolution followed a 1990 Board of Trustees resolution that moved the Chief be retained. The motion made by Trustee Hahn noted that ‘‘those who view the Chief as a ‘mascot’ or a ‘caricature’ just don’t understand the Chief ’s true meaning’’ (V, p. 2). In presenting ‘‘The Position of the Peoria Tribe,’’ Garippo asserts that in 1995 the tribe approved the use of the Chief, calling them ‘‘the direct descendants of the remnants of the Illini Tribe’’ (V, p. 3). This section utilizes a quote attributed to Chief Giles of the Peoria expressing the tribe’s pride in having the University ‘‘drawing on that background of our having been there’’ (V, p. 3). Another quote from Peoria officer Ron Froman that appeared on the Chief Illiniwek Home Page asserts that the opinions of the Peoria tribe members should bear more weight because they were the only descendants of the Illini. As Charles Fruehling Springwood has noted, such efforts to embrace these people as the living descendents of Illinois occurred only after the Chief’s performance was contested. These efforts ‘‘were made to resurrect the voices of these Indians, anticipating that the public would embrace them as holders of the only historically authentic opinion regarding Chief Illiniwek’’ (Springwood, 2004, p. 63). Only at the end of the section does Garippo relate that the Peoria Tribe passed a resolution in April 2000 requesting that the University cease the use of Chief Illiniwek. Arguably, Garippo’s presentation of Jay Rosenstein’s documentary, ‘‘In Whose Honor?,’’ raises the most disquieting questions about his impartiality. Not only does he offer an opinion in the first sentence that ‘‘the film had a definite anti-Chief point of view’’ (V, p. 4), but he also states that the ‘‘focus of the film was anti-Chief activist Charlene Teters’’ (V, p. 4). Asserting that the film showed clips of Teters ‘‘during the various stages of her efforts to eliminate Chief Illiniwek’’ (V, p. 4), Garippo makes no mention of the death threats made to Teters and her family. He then presents 10 statements, taken out of context, that were made in the film, and he provides no indication as to how or why these particular statements were selected for inclusion in the CIDR. One can only wonder why he included the statement, ‘‘The University must listen to people who say ‘ouch’’’ (V, p. 5). Equally disturbing is the final paragraph of this section in which Garippo refers to the dissenting votes of Trustees Susan Gravenhorst and Thomas

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Lamont in opposition to the appointment of Rosenstein as an assistant professor of journalism. He notes, ‘‘Their objections were based on the ground that Rosenstein had been less than honest concerning his true intentions when he had approached them’’ (V, p. 5). That Garippo would include the uncorroborated condemnations of these two members of the Board of Trustees without providing Rosenstein the opportunity to respond to the accusations clearly calls into question his qualifications to serve in the role to which he was appointed. Adding that a third trustee, Judith Reese, also opposed Rosenstein’s appointment, Garippo fails to note that Rosenstein’s appointment was supported by the other board members. Garippo ends his history of the controversy by listing a number of the organizations that have opposed the Chief, qualifying the opposition by noting that the vote by the Student–Faculty Senate who favored the resolution to ban the Chief represented ‘‘only’’ 36 percent of the total number of faculty. Also, after the list of organizations in opposition, Garippo adds another qualification. Finally, he ends by explaining that the North Central Association (NCA) Report, which engendered the CIDR, would be ‘‘set forth verbatim’’ (V, p. 9). This section offered the most pointed criticisms of the University’s handling of the controversy, so there was no way for Garippo to offer his own summary without drawing undue attention to his presentation.

CIDR SECTION VI: VERBATIM Garippo begins his section on the NCA Report with this statement: ‘‘Rather than summarize the NCA Report, the pertinent references to Chief Illiniwek are set forth verbatim’’ (VI, p. 1). The first section of the NCA Report that deals with the Chief controversy explains the third-party contents received, including ‘‘over 100 letters, petitions, press releases, and newspaper articles’’ (VI, p. 1), as well as a copy of Rosenstein’s document, ‘‘In Whose Honor? American Indian Mascots in Sports.’’ Notably, the University omitted any discussion about the issue from its self-study because ‘‘the institution’s position is that use of The Chief is not an accreditation issue’’ (VI, p. 1). The NCA explained that even though ‘‘a school mascot per se is not an accreditation issue,’’ the University’s policy has educational consequences that are ‘‘within the purview of an accreditation review’’ (VI, p. 1). Having met with proponents and opponents of the Chief during the team’s site visit, the NCA Report then outlines in six points what it understands the facts to be. Garippo did not provide the first six paragraphs of the NCA’s summary


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regarding the Chief and the controversy, having provided his own highly subjective summary. In the final four points of the context for third-party comments, the NCA Report offers testimony from both the history and the anthropology departments that argues for the elimination of the Chief because it undermines the learning environment; statements from Trustees on the Rosenstein documentary and the 1990 resolution are also related. In its evaluation of the third-party comments, the NCA Report reiterates its position not to resolve the validity of individual comments but to ‘‘determine whether the comments raise substantive issues relevant to the institution’s ability to meet GIRs [General Institutional Requirements] and Criteria [Criteria for Accreditation]’’ (VI, p. 2). The NCA Report then explicates those substantive issues relative to communication and governance that the Chief controversy raised. First, it shows that the University’s position on the Chief runs counter to the1978 BOT resolution to ‘‘eradicate prohibited and invidious discrimination’’ and to foster programs that eliminate ‘‘the effects of historical discrimination’’ (VI, p. 2) and to the 1991 Statement on Access, Equity and Diversity that states the institution is expected to create and maintain ‘‘a teaching and learning environment that supports sensitivity to diverse individuals and groups’’ (VI, p. 2). The team noted that the ‘‘ill will, animosity and resentment’’ engendered by the Chief controversy puts it in violation of its own policy against invidious discrimination. Equally telling was the team’s statement that ‘‘there is no doubt in the team’s mind that the continued controversy is having a negative effect on the educational effectiveness of UIUC’’ (VI, p. 3). Furthermore, the NCA Report noted that UIUC had not shown that it had plans to deal with those negative effects, nor had it shown ‘‘why its policy on The Chief is in keeping’’ with its statement on diversity. The NCA Report outlined four conclusions: that use of the Chief is an educational issue; that the controversy was not going away; that the institution was not addressing the issue in a manner consistent with its own policies; and the institution was responsible for finding a resolution to the controversy that was consistent with the principles of the NCA and the goals of the UIUC. In the final section of its report, the team issued two stipulations to its recommendation to continue UIUC on a regular decennial review cycle, noting that it met or surpassed the General Institutional Requirements and the Criteria for Accreditation. The stipulations called for a progress report to be filed by January 1, 2001, that delineated the processes that would be used ‘‘to address the educational impact of the continued use of The Chief’’ and ‘‘to articulate the rationale for its policies’’ (VI, p. 4). Significantly, the instrument that the University chose as the process to address the

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controversy of the Chief was the CIDR; yet, in its initial press release, it made no mention of the NCA Report or its findings related to the Chief controversy. Additionally, the rationale that the UIUC used to justify its continued use of the Chief was the very same it had used since the controversy surfaced in 1975, namely, that the Chief’s performance honored the Illini (Peoria) Tribe and that the Chief ‘‘is not meant to be offensive and so therefore should not offend’’ (IV, p. 2). In the face of continued criticism, the UIUC employed the very same policy it had from the beginning.

CIDR SECTION VII: LOST IN AN APACHE DRESSING ROOM WITH MONTY In Section VII, ‘‘How Other Schools Have Dealt with Issue of Indian Designations,’’ Garippo provides what he deems ‘‘a long list of universities and colleges’’ (VII, p. 1) that changed their logos, mascots, or nicknames, as well as organizations that have spoken out in opposition to the use of American Indian imagery. Garippo offers no summary about the impact the changes had on the students, faculty, administration, or alumni at those institutions. Nor does he explain how any of these colleges and universities was able to end controversy by retiring the offensive mascots, logos, and nicknames. Certainly, any one of these institutions would have provided a useful case study of change and serve as a model of the process that was followed. Rather, the main thrust of this section delineates three other Division I universities ‘‘that have retained their Indian’’ (VII, p. 2) references: Florida State University (Seminoles), the University of North Dakota (UND) (Fighting Sioux), and the San Diego State (Aztecs). That these institutions were selected as representatives of universities that have retained their Indian references in the face of controversy indicates in which direction Garippo was guiding the dialogue. Garippo’s summary presents a justification of the university’s use. For example, he notes that the ‘‘Seminole Tribe designed the costume worn by Osceola’’ (VII, p. 2), legitimizing its usage. He describes how Osceola charges onto the football field on horseback at the beginning of home football games and ‘‘ends his charge by throwing a flaming lance at midfield’’ (VII, p. 2). Additionally, Garippo states that the Seminole Tribe ‘‘participates in many University functions’’ by providing concerts at the University, a Princess and Junior Princess from the tribe ‘‘crown the student Chief and Princess with


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headdresses designed and made by the Seminoles’’ and the tribe presented the University with a tribal chant that ‘‘has proven difficult for the crowds [at football games] to perform’’ (VII, p. 2). Significantly, the school even ‘‘provides a secure place for them [protestors from national Native American groups] to picket. Interestingly, there has been no vocal protest of the use of Osceola’’ (VII, p. 3). Not content with this highly subjective, one-sided summary of Florida State University’s use of Osceola, Garippo added an article by Dr. Dale W. Lick, former FSU president, which Garippo characterizes as ‘‘informative’’ (VII, p. 3). Garippo’s intention in using FSU handling of the issue becomes clear in the next section when he contrasts the ‘‘lack of any significant campus controversy at FSU’’ (VII, p. 4) with the controversy at North Dakota. Garippo’s characterization marginalizes and diminishes the many voices who have spoken in opposition to FSU’s use of Osceola and his pre-game spectacle. Those in opposition have pointed out the numerous inaccuracies of this spectacle, noting that the ‘‘Seminoles had neither appaloosa horses nor spears’’ (Remillard, 2005, p. 111). An American Indian Movement flier mocked the FSU mascot, noting that he is ‘‘a Lakota who got lost in an Apache dressing room riding a Nez Perce horse’’ (quoted in Andino, 2001, p. 1). Furthermore, the status of Seminoles as warriors belies their cultural tradition as a tribe that valued peace. Even more disconcerting is the appropriation of the disembodied head of Osceola painted at midfield and included on team uniforms, fan apparel, and Florida license plates. The historical Osceola’s head was removed after his death by Dr. Frederick Weedon and placed on display in the window of his St. Augustine drugstore (Remillard, 2005). As Remillard (2005, p. 111) argues, ‘‘the logo is a macabre trophy that stands as a reminder of a past that despicably turned one of its own into a public spectacle.’’ Garippo’s characterization of FSU as a university without significant campus controversy is clearly misleading. Garippo selected the UND as an illustration of a university that ‘‘is engaged currently in a process very similar to the U of I’s Dialogue’’ (VII, p. 4). Noting that the mood of the protests at UND ‘‘is far more heated’’ than at UIUC, Garippo attributes that mood to the presence of more Native American students at UND than at UIUC, although ‘‘most of the Native American students at UND are from tribes other than Sioux’’ (VII, p. 6). Because UND’s retention of the nickname and logo is considered an administrative issue, ‘‘the president has reserved the right to make the final decision himself ’’ (VII, p. 5). Garippo provided the UND Report on its controversy in the CIDR Appendix No. 8, which is composed of 11 separate packages of documents. Lastly, his characterization of the San Diego State

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University (SDSU) controversy is limited to three paragraphs. Although he notes that SDSU ‘‘finds itself similarly involved’’ in a mascot controversy as UND and UIUC, several factors undercut that assertion, not the least of which was the use of a ‘‘cheerleading mascot, Monty Montezuma’’ (VII, p. 5). In fact, the only similarity to the other institutions was that the ‘‘final determination will be made by University President Stephen Weber’’ (VII, p. 5), who indicated he would consider the opinions of the ‘‘30,000 students, 180,000 alumni and the San Diego residents at large’’ (VII, p. 5). Not surprisingly, in pointing out what other universities were doing and not doing to retain their controversial mascots, Garippo implicitly offered telling examples of how UIUC might proceed.

CIDR SECTION VIII: ARGUMENTS WITHOUT FORMAT Based on the Special Intake Session from April 14, 2000, in which over 120 people over the course of six hours voiced their opinions in person or on video, this section is composed of the arguments advanced in four areas of discussion: Tradition, Stereotype, Effect on Campus, and General Arguments. In his ‘‘Addendum to the Report to the Board of Trustees,’’ Garippo (2000a, 2000b, p. 5) noted that this ‘‘is the heart of the report.’’ Not surprisingly, Section VIII became the most controversial part of the report in large part because Garippo (2000a, 2000b, p. 6) omitted ‘‘an explanation of the format’’ that he used to present the arguments he heard on that April day. The reason Garippo (2000a, 2000b, p. 6) gives for this omission was that he hoped ‘‘the readers might dwell on the content of each argument and thereby give deeper consideration to the substance.’’ However, to ignore the most basic, practical question related to a presentation of the Dialogue Report’s most important part is to invite confusion; yet, Garippo (2000a, 2000b, p. 1) begins his Addendum by stating that ‘‘What was not expected was some confusion as to the format.’’ This is but one of the many inconsistencies that mark this section, as well as the entire Special Intake Session on which it is based. The marketing of the Special Intake Session began on February 16, 2000, when the Board of Trustees issued a press release announcing ‘‘a plan for renewed dialogue on Chief Illiniwek,’’ in which ‘‘interested people of all shades of opinion will be welcome’’ (Dialogue on Chief Illiniwek, 2000a, February 16, p. 1, 2000b, March 30). An ‘‘opinion solicitation’’ in which anyone could submit opinions in writing constituted the first step.


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However, as Brenda Farnell (2004, p. 40) notes, ‘‘In fact, such letters and appeals had been flowing to the board in ever-increasing numbers for more than a decade by this time.’’ Perhaps what made this a ‘‘renewed dialogue’’ was the board’s retention of a ‘‘senior legal professional’’ to moderate the session. A subsequent press release announced that Garippo (2000a, 2000b, p. 1) would ‘‘preside over the session’’ to ‘‘ensure that parliamentary procedure is followed’’ and that ‘‘the trustees will be present’’ (March 30). Potential participants had to register to be considered, and the speakers selected to present were notified two days before the Special Intake Session occurred, doubtlessly limiting presenters to those already in the area or able to arrange travel on short notice. The Special Intake Session could hardly be described as a dialogue. Farnell (2004, p. 40) explains, ‘‘Rather than an exchange of views—a conversation or discussion—participants were subjected to a series of carefully controlled, alternating monologues from preselected representatives on both sides of the issue, framed according to a courtroom model.’’ In his role as ‘‘presider,’’ Garippo sat alone on the stage of Foellinger Auditorium, as ‘‘witnesses’’ approached a microphone and read their statements within the allotted time – three minutes for individuals and five minutes for organizations. In direct contradiction of its own press release, not a single member of the Board of Trustees was present. Farnell (2004, p. 41) posits that this ‘‘endowed them with an overwhelming virtual symbolic presence at the event, iconic of the absolute higher power they held to decide this issue.’’ Other inconsistencies can be seen in Garippo’s distillation of the ‘‘many facets of the debate submitted by the Dialogue participants’’ (Garippo, 2000a, p. 6). In his ‘‘Addendum,’’ Garippo explains that during the Intake Session, he began making mental notes identifying the various arguments, but then corrects himself. ‘‘It was my opinion y that really there was only one argument on each side of the issue, and all other arguments flowed from these two positions’’ (Garippo, 2000a, 2000b, p. 6). Because he did not want to present ‘‘such a simplistic analysis’’ (Garippo, 2000a, 2000b, p. 6), based solely on the pro-Chief argument (i.e., Tradition) and the anti-Chief argument (i.e., Stereotype), the many facets were subsumed within these two areas of discussion. He continues this explanation of how the arguments were divided into the groups by stating that the report ‘‘treats those two arguments (i.e., Tradition and Stereotype) differently than the rest’’ (Garippo, 2000a, 2000b, p. 6). The difference can be found in what Garippo (2000a, 2000b, p. 6) added, namely, ‘‘a single narrative, a special digest of what the various writers have submitted in support of that view.’’ In other words, Garippo distilled the various presenters’ arguments into a single

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statement, which he set forth in bold type. Next, he included the narrative ‘‘attempting to capture the thoughts’’ of the presenters. Following that were sub-arguments from both points of view. That a former circuit judge whose ‘‘extensive experience, sound judgment and unquestioned integrity’’ failed to explain such a convoluted format and then express surprise that confusion abounded echoes Cohen’s (1935, p. 820) consternation about the nature of legal nonsense. In every field of law we should find peculiar concepts which are not defined either in terms of empirical fact or in terms of ethics but which are used to answer empirical and ethical questions alike, and thus bar the way to intelligent investigation of social fact and social policy.

After ranging far beyond his role of advising the board on procedural questions by creating narratives for each argument, Garippo had to assume the role of apologist. ‘‘This narrative is not to be interpreted as a view of the moderator although I believe some readers have interpreted it as such’’ (Garippo, 2000a, 2000b, p. 6). In denying that his narratives were composed from subjective perceptions, Garippo implicitly suggests that he and he alone was capable of remaining unencumbered with ‘‘the White privilege that goes with race prejudice against Native Americans fostered by a culture saturated with race prejudice’’ (Staurowsky, 2004, p. 24).

CIDR SECTIONS IX–X: NUMBERS AND COLLOQUY Although Garippo inadvertently undermined his impartiality by failing to provide a description of the format used to present the arguments advanced in the Dialogue Report, in the next section, he took a different path to achieve a similar result. After processing the mail box submissions for the Dialogue Report, Garippo provided a table reflecting ‘‘the statistical results of the survey’’ (IX, p. 2). The stated purpose of the mailbox submissions was to afford the public an opportunity to be heard. Garippo emphatically states, ‘‘Never was it intended that the responses be considered a poll or a contest’’ (IX, p. 1). Such an assertion loses credibility, however, when in the next sentence, Garippo adds that as time passed, ‘‘a great deal of interest has been expressed in a tally’’ (IX, p. 1). Unfortunately, Garippo does not explain who expressed interest in a tally or when it was expressed. Why include statistical results when he clearly states that such results ‘‘should not be taken as any kind of accurate measure of public opinion’’ (IX, p. 1)? Why leave himself open to, in the very least, charges of poor judgment and,


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in the worst, abdication of responsibility and collusion with the pro-Chief faction? Faced with inquiries concerning the statistical results, Garippo had to address yet another controversy in the Addendum. Rather than admitting to poor judgment, Garippo titles this section ‘‘The Dialogue Was Not A Poll’’ (Garippo, 2000a, 2000b, p. 4). Although he states, ‘‘the numerical results never were intended to be meaningful,’’ one can only speculate as to how he thought the numbers would be interpreted, especially after ‘‘sensing that the numbers would be misinterpreted and draw undue attention’’ (IX, p. 4). His rationale for including the statistical results strains credulity. First, because the report would come out in the midst of the presidential election campaign, ‘‘the news media and perhaps the public generally would be immersed in tracking poll results’’ (IX, p. 4). That there would be a corollary between presidential election polls and the Chief Illiniwek Dialogue requires considerable imagination. Second, knowing there would be ‘‘immediate interest in the numbers’’ (Garippo, 2000a, 2000b, p. 5), Garippo wanted to avoid questions ‘‘if they [the numbers] were not available’’ (Garippo, 2000a, 2000b, p. 5). But why would there even be ‘‘immediate interest’’ in the numbers if that was not the purpose of the submissions? Even if there were questions, would it not have been better to include the data in an Appendix rather than in the Dialogue Report? Why include them ‘‘reluctantly’’ (Garippo, 2000a, 2000b, p. 5) and then express disappointment ‘‘that so many people failed to understand that this was not a true poll’’ (Garippo, 2000a, 2000b, p. 4)? Blaming the public for his own poor judgment hardly inspires confidence in his impartiality. To these questions, Garippo (2000a, 2000b, p. 5) offers only the assertion that ‘‘I did not want to appear to be hiding anything.’’ By providing the statistical results that he knew to be meaningless, Garippo invited the news media and the public to utilize them to draw conclusions. When they used them to frame the news stories about the Dialogue Report, his fears were confirmed. To then state, ‘‘On reflection, the release of the statistics might have been delayed’’ (Garippo, 2000a, 2000b, p. 5) is to hide behind hindsight. As Cohen (1935, p. 820) notes, ‘‘And one may suspect that a court would not consistently hide behind a barrage of transcendental nonsense if the grounds of its decisions were such as could be presented without shame to the public.’’ In the report’s final section, Garippo searched in vain for a compromise solution. He presents an exchange with Michael Haney of the American Indian Arbitration Institute in which he asks Haney whether or not ‘‘the Chief could stay and it would be then through the educational process that over time you would feel that the Chief would die as a result of greater

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educational opportunities on campus’’ (X, p. 2). That Haney answered affirmatively was doubtlessly the basis for including this colloquy. Garippo indicates that immediately after this exchange, Haney was approached by ‘‘anti-Chief people’’ (X, p. 2), opposition apparently being an identifiable trait, and changed his position regarding compromise. He then adds, ‘‘The above [exchange] is not to attribute a lack of proposals for compromise solely on the anti-Chief forces’’ (X, p. 2). Incriminating one party for ‘‘a lack of proposals for compromise’’ and then qualifying it by suggesting the anti-Chief forces are not ‘‘solely’’ responsible is hardly even-handed.

AFTERMATH: HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT The CIDR was published on October 18, 2000. The report raised many questions regarding the format used to present the arguments. When the report was presented to the Board of Trustees on November 9, 2000, during a public hearing, Garippo attempted to answer some of the questions that had surfaced. In news reports of the hearing, Garippo defended his impartiality. ‘‘Nothing I did in there reflects my opinion or care. People are reading the report with suspicion, rather than seeing what’s there’’ (Dodge, 2000, p. 1). He subsequently provided ‘‘An Addendum to the Report to the Board of Trustees,’’ because his remarks at the public hearing ‘‘did not reach all those who had read the original report and because there were significant submissions to the moderator taking issue with some of the arguments reported’’ (Dodge, 2000, p. 1). In the ‘‘Addendum,’’ Garippo seeks to clarify what governed his decision-making processes, his omissions, and ‘‘the considerations’’ that went into the original report. A thorough examination of the CIDR and the Addendum reveals that Garippo’s claims of impartiality in presiding over this ‘‘dialogue’’ and in the presentation of his ‘‘Report’’ are disingenuous, a barrage of nonsense. As Cohen (1935, p. 821) explains, legal concepts such as impartiality ‘‘are supernatural entities which do not have a verifiable existence except to the eyes of faith.’’ Unfortunately, many people misplaced their belief that this ‘‘expert administrator,’’ hired by the UIUC Board of Trustees, would produce a substantive report, not a report intended to do absolutely nothing. Lastly, as educators, we must continue to offer a praxis that works toward social justice and the elimination of Native American imagery. Education, in the very least, must be employed as a tool of liberation. In this case, educators must continue to shut off what Ellen Staurowsky (2004, p. 17) calls the ‘‘escape routes’’ utilized by institutions to avoid accountability for


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the perpetuation of racist stereotypes engendered during colonial times, propagated during the westward expansion fueled by manifest destiny, and commodified in the Wild West shows and postmodern popular culture texts. As Dr. Cornel Pewewardy (2001, p. 1) writes, ‘‘the image of Indigenous Peoples has radically shifted from any reference of living people to a field of urban fantasy in which wish fulfillment replaces reality.’’. The CIDR, authored by Louis B. Garippo, stands as a consummate example of wish fulfillment that defies the reality of actual Native Americans.

REFERENCES Andino, A. T. (2001). Indian mascots still stir emotions, October 27. Jacksonville.com. Available at http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/102801/met_7670344.html. Accessed on May 2008. Cohen, F. S. (1935). Transcendental nonsense and the functional approach. Columbia Law Review, 35(6), 809–849. Cohen, F. S. (1953). The erosion of Indian rights, 1950–1953: A case study in bureaucracy. The Yale Law Journal, 62, 348–390. Deloria, P. J. (1998). Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press. Dialogue on Chief Illiniwek. (2000a). Office of public affairs press release, February 16. Available at http://www.uillinois.edu/trustees/dialogue/press_release2_16_00.html. Accessed on May 2008. Dialogue on Chief Illiniwek. (2000b). Office of public affairs press release, March 30. Available at http://www.uillinois.edu/trustees/dialogue/garippo_release3_30_00.html. Accessed on June 2008. Dodge, S. (2000). Profs rip board on report on chief. The Chicago Sun-Times, November 9. Available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20001109/ai_n13879814/ print. Accessed on December 2007. Farnell, B. (2004). The fancy dance of racializing discourse. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 28(1), 30–55. Firth, R. (1973). Symbols, public & private (London, n.p.). Garippo, L. B. (2000a). An addendum to the report to the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Available at http://uillinois.edu/trustees/dialogue/report_files/addendum.html Garippo, L. B. (2000b). The Chief Illiniwek dialogue report: Intent and tradition vs. reaction and history. Available at http://www.uiuc.edu/dialogue/report_files.html Hobsbawm, E. (1983). Introduction: Inventing traditions. In: E. Hobsbawm & T. Ranger (Eds), The invention of tradition (pp. 1–14). New York: Cambridge University Press. King, C. R. (1998). Colonial discourses, collective memories, and the exhibition of native American cultures and histories in the contemporary United States. New York: Garland. Mabry, B. (2000). Report on the Chief. Inside Illinois, 20(10). Available at http://news. illinois.edu/II/00/1116chief.html. Accessed on June 2008. Pewewardy, C. (2001). Educators and mascots: Challenging contradictions. In: C. R. King & C. F. Springwood (Eds), Team spirits: The native American mascots controversy (pp. 257–278). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

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Remillard, A. J. (2005). Holy war on the football field: Religion and the Florida state university Indian mascot controversy. In: J. Vlasich (Ed.), Horsehide, pigskin, oval tracks, and apple pie: Essays on sport and American culture (pp. 104–118). Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Rosaldo, R. (1989). Imperialist nostalgia. Representations, 26, 107–122. Spindel, C. (2000). Dancing at halftime: Sports and the controversy over American Indian mascots. New York: New York University Press. Springwood, C. F. (2004). I’m Indian too! Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 28(1), 56–70. Staurowsky, E. J. (2004). Privilege at play: On the legal and social fictions that sustain American Indian sport imagery. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 28(1), 11–29. Strong, P. T. (2004). The mascot slot: Cultural citizenship, political correctness, and pseudoIndian sports symbols. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 28(1), 79–87.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF CHIEF ILLINIWEK (1926–2007) David Prochaska This chapter is an exercise in speaking, letting individuals speak for themselves insofar as possible. As Marx famously put it, ‘‘they cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.’’ The ‘‘they’’ were peasants, potato farmers in 1840s France, and by extension peasants, workers, and other lower class groups, not to mention women and minorities who rarely made it into the historical record, and even more rarely in their own words. To give ‘‘voice to the voiceless,’’ as the now old new social historians of the 1960s and 1970s put it, I consciously include here numerous speakers, arranged in two sets of different voices: quotes in the text and endnotes to further document and amplify points. With this plethora of voices, the aim is not to complicate but to speak clearly, listen carefully, and engage respectfully. To multiply the speakers speaking is the single best way to make two primary points concerning what is most important about the Chief Illiniwek mascot controversy: that the sheer number of individuals speaking out is in itself significant, and that this community colloquy all comes down to identity – who we are, individual identity, communal identity. One more preliminary point: I am anti-Chief (duh). But the reason I use ‘‘mascot’’ and not ‘‘symbol’’ here is not out of disrespect for the proChiefers who constantly repeat ‘‘the Chief is a symbol not a mascot’’ mantra but to state the issue as clearly as possible. To repeat the ideologized terms of the debate is to reproduce the debate, give renewed life to it. Take for


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example, French colonialism in Algeria (1830–1962). When the French invaded and warred on the Algerians after 1830, they consistently termed it ‘‘pacification.’’ Where they said ‘‘French Algeria’’ (Alge´rie franc- aise), in contrast, therefore, I consistently say ‘‘colonial Algeria.’’ To change my, our mindset begins at the level of language. Thus, I present the pro-Chief argument here but do not say ‘‘symbol’’ when a sports mascot is being referred to.

Chief Illiniwek passed away at home on February 16, 2007, in ChampaignUrbana, announced the office of Larry Eppley, chairman of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. He was 81. He was born on October 26, 1926, at halftime during the Illinois–Penn football game. The Chief was a beloved member of the community, and especially of University students and alumni. He was best-known for his performances during halftime at home football and basketball games, when he dressed up in Oglala Sioux regalia to honor another, different group of natı¨ ve Americans, the Illini, whose modern-day descendants, the Peoria, live in Oklahoma to where they were forcibly removed in the 1830s.1 Although his demise was sudden and took friends and relatives by surprise, it was not unexpected. His health had been declining for some time due to a series of attacks, especially since April 2006. A first, minor attack occurred in 1989 as a result of blows sustained in a contretemps with native American protestor Charlene Teters. The same year he was treated for depression when his favorite cartoon character, Squanto, was banned from all Department of Agronomy publications. Following these bouts of illness, he underwent a series of operations, including cosmetic facial surgery performed in the 1990s to remove Block I face paint. To pay for protracted illness and rising care costs, local residents and supporters made financial contributions, including attorney John Gadau. Income was also generated from sales of Chief Illiniwek toilet paper, boxer shorts, toilet seats, silk panties (‘‘Illini Backfield in Motion,’’ ‘‘Illini Fanny’’), and other goods. To help maintain his health, the Chief ’s movements were progressively restricted, and he left his sick bed only to appear at home football and basketball games. In addition, his appearance at the homecoming parade and pep rally was banned from 1991, and his participation in postseason bowl games was eliminated beginning in 2005. These actions were not sufficient, however, to stem his deteriorating health. Renewed attacks occurred during 2006 by the National Collegiate

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Athletic Association (NCAA). Indian critics wanted items of personal clothing returned even before his physical demise. He was preceded in death by numerous older siblings including Lester Leutwiler and Webber Borchers. He is survived by several half brothers including Tom Livingston and Don Maloney.2 Funeral arrangements are being organized by students and local residents. There will be a rally held on campus, supporters announced, and a celebration of his life during the next home basketball game. In lieu of a memorial service, there will be community-wide mourning. Donations, condolences, and expressions of grief and outrage will be gladly accepted by Students for the Chief, Citizens for Chief Illiniwek, Students for Chief Illiniwek, Chief Illiniwek Educational Foundation, and Honor the Chief Society. Comments may be made in guest books found at http://studentsforchief. com/; http://chiefilliniwek.googlepages.com/; http://www.honorthechief.com/. Further information and details can be supplied by the Champaign Urbana News-Gazette. Contact editor John Foreman, sports writer Loren Tate, or any of the staff. Source: News-Gazette, February 16, 2007.

After living in Champaign-Urbana for years, after talking and writing about Chief Illiniwek, I thought I had seen and heard everything. But I was wrong (of course). When Chief Illiniwek was done away with, ‘‘retired,’’ as the University of Illinois sports mascot in early 2007, I was completely surprised, taken aback, and appalled at the city-wide mourning, and the outrage at ‘‘his’’ demise. I was surprised at the intensity of pro-Chief feeling, at the outpouring of grief and especially of anger, surprised at the large, hastily organized, evening rally on campus, stunned by the outpouring of emotion at the ‘‘last dance’’ performance and its commemoration (newspaper, film, alumni magazine cover), taken aback at the run on Chief merchandise at local stores.3 I always knew that as a revered ‘‘symbol’’ rather than a sports mascot, pro-Chief supporters in a sense considered ‘‘the Chief’’ real, a person. But ‘‘in a sense’’ is wrong: supporters literally considered ‘‘him’’ real. Only at the time of ‘‘his’’ passing, February 17, 2007, of his funereal ‘‘last dance’’ February 21, however, did it all become clear to me, appallingly clear. Instead of pro-Chiefers realizing that this was an extreme case of anthropomorphism versus a real person, loved one.

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Instead of realizing that at the heart of the heart of the Chief tradition, there was nothing, a void, an absence, for there never was a historical Chief Illiniwek versus the invented tradition of the Chief. Instead of realizing that white guys dressing up as Chief Illiniwek was another instance in a whole long history of white Americans playing Indian, a ‘‘revered’’ ‘‘symbol’’ ‘‘honoring’’ native Americans. Instead of realizing that Chief Illiniwek was another example of representing native Americans as noble savages, a ‘‘positive’’ stereotype displaying virtues of courage, bravery, and honor, but a stereotype nevertheless. Instead of University administrators and the Board of Trustees exercising leadership, their subsequent actions and inactions allowed and enabled the resurrection of the Chief, further fueling collective denial and deferral. And most important, instead of processing and working through the end of Chief Illiniwek, and moving on, there was widespread anger and resentment, betrayal and grief at the timing, manner and rationale of the ‘‘death’’ of the mascot, resulting in an indefinite deferral and refusal to come to terms with what had happened and why.

The Illinois mascot controversy had been coming to a head since 2005 with the situation definitely deteriorating in early 2007 – call it the onset of the Chief ’s terminal illness – when ‘‘his’’ cancerous disease metastasized. In April 2005 the NCAA prohibited Illinois from hosting postseason athletic events, Illinois appealed, and the following November the NCAA upheld its ban.4 From then on it was clear that it was only a question of time before the Chief was dumped. ‘‘It’s y fair to say once the NCAA announced their policy, that became a leading force – maybe not the lead force because the Board did say we would do something about it, but it did become a leading force.’’5 Then at the end of 2006 Illinois students put up a Facebook website, ‘‘If They Get Rid of the Chief I’m Becoming a Racist.’’ Over 100 students signed up, and at least two hate speech comments were posted. ‘‘What they [anti-Chiefers] don’t realize is that there was never a racist problem before y but now i [sic] hate redskins and hope all those drunk, casino owning bums die.’’ And referring to an American-Indian activist on campus, ‘‘I say we throw a tomahawk into her face.’’6 In response, a forum sponsored by Students Transforming Oppression and Privilege (STOP) drew an overflow audience.7 These local events made national news: stories and editorials appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Washington Post and elsewhere (Thacker, 2007; Wise, 2007; Lydersen, 2007).


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This was the backdrop to the Board of Trustees’ surprise announcement on February 16 to ‘‘retire’’ the mascot. It was a surprise, because it happened suddenly, even stealthily, and in a way that only fueled pro-Chief anger and resentment and their sense of betrayal. Instead of the Board discussing and formally voting at a regular meeting, apparently Board Chair Larry Eppley tried to line up support informally through conference calls but ran up against the Open Meetings Act ban on such discussions.8 Eppley proceeded with the support he had, and the University issued a press release announcing the ‘‘retirement.’’ Although I was unsurprised at the end of the mascot, I was surprised that the ‘‘retirement,’’ of Chief Illiniwek was felt by so many so strongly, as if it were exactly like the death of a loved one, a close relative, a dear friend. Now, there had been calls earlier for the mascot’s retirement. I had always thought that ‘‘retirement’’ was used metaphorically, figuratively, that they actually wanted to retire the Chief-as-abstraction in the sense of end, ban, get rid of it. After all, only people retire. But, again, I was wrong: people meant ‘‘retirement’’ literally. I had not realized this before the Chief ’s retirement in February 2007. So, I wondered: Did all those anti-Chiefers earlier calling for retirement mean it literally or metaphorically? Was it a sop tossed to pro-Chiefers, or a real confusion between a person and a thing? Was it not a case of sending a mixed, if not hopelessly scrambled, message? In 2001 I wrote, ‘‘In 1994 a faculty inclusivity committee recommended banning the Chief. In 1998 the faculty senate voted 97-29 to get rid of the Chief ’’ (Prochaska, 2001, p. 178). In 2001 I thought they meant ‘‘ban,’’ ‘‘get rid of,’’ but what they actually said was ‘‘retire.’’ So, I was wrong again. When the chancellor’s Task Force on Inclusivity recommended in October 1994 that Chief Illiniwek be eliminated in their document, ‘‘Building a More Inclusive Community,’’ they said ‘‘retire.’’9 When the UI Faculty Senate voted in 1998 in favor of its Committee on Equal Opportunity’s call to get rid of the mascot,10 the resolution said ‘‘retire’’: ‘‘Be it resolved that the University Administration and Board of Trustees retire Chief Illiniwek immediately.’’11 When then-new Board of Trustees member Frances Carroll in 2003 submitted a resolution to ban the mascot, her resolution said ‘‘honorably retire’’: ‘‘Resolved, That Chief Illiniwek be honorably retired at a time and in a manner to be determined.’’12 First of all, her wording clearly implied a specific retirement ceremony as if for a real person, a ritual to be held at a designated time and place and organized by faculty, students, staff, alumni, and others. Second, the final clause in her resolution called for the continued use of ‘‘Fighting Illini.’’

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DAVID PROCHASKA Resolved, that at the same time we, the Board of Trustees, declare our full support for the name Fighting Illini for the athletic teams at the Urbana-Champaign campus. This is a part of our heritage.13 We take pride in the association that the University has through this name with the people of Illinois.

To ban the mascot but retain ‘‘Fighting Illini’’ has blunted efforts to definitively put to rest the mascot controversy, as I discuss at the end of this essay. Even so, Carroll took enormous flak for her position. So, when Chief Illiniwek’s end came, it was most often couched as ‘‘retirement,’’ I assume because that was the most common term that had been used previously by both sides. But this was not a ‘‘live happily ever after with a gold watch’’ retirement, pensioning off a valuable employee with a golden parachute. This was decidedly retirement as getting rid of, ‘‘to remove from a position or office,’’ ‘‘to give up an occupation or career,’’ ‘‘to take out of circulation,’’ ‘‘to put out,’’ ‘‘to withdraw permanently something (a ship, a machine) from its previous service,’’ as the dictionary says. ‘‘Retirement’’ was in fact death by another name, and understood as such. Death of the Chief (Novak, 2007) On Friday, Board of Trustees Chairman Larry Eppley declared the end of Chief Illiniwek14 Chief Illiniwek: October 30, 1926-February 21, 200715 The bell tolled for Chief Illiniwek today. How utterly sad.16

One post referred to the decision to ‘‘assassinate’’ Chief Illiniwek.17 A person’s pro-Chief website features a black T-shirt with ‘‘R.I.P. Our Beloved Chief Illiniwek 1926–2007’’ in white lettering and the Chief logo.18 And at a prominent intersection in an Urbana residential neighborhood, a homeowner prominently displays a tombstone inscribed ‘‘Yo Chief Illiniwek 1926–2007.’’19 The announcement of the mascot’s retirement-as-death prompted an evening rally on campus, a quasi-memorial service. Students clad in Chief Illiniwek attire showed their support Monday night [February 19], rallying on the Quad with the hope of preventing the University symbol from being retired. The rally, first introduced last week as a Facebook event, drew about 200 students. y The rally closed with students singing the ‘‘Alma Mater’’ closely followed by chants of ‘‘save the Chief.’’20

Two days later, the mascot danced ‘‘The Last Dance.’’ Again, the evident emotion of those present (as well as the anger and sorrow of all those


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without tickets upset at not being able to say goodbye in person) comes through clearly in newspaper accounts and photos. The Chief ’s walk from mid-court to the [exit] tunnel – marked for years by respectful silence – in its final rendition, is filled with the loudest applause of the night, an applause filled with cries of cheer and desperation from the crowd y the Chief begins to exit between the folded arms of cheerleaders. But on this night he pauses, turns around, and strides back to center court y the Chief pays his respects to his adoring crowd by facing in each direction, raising his hands to thank his audience. y The crowd was never louder.

After the retirement announcement, at the rally and last mascot performance, in the press and on blogs, throughout the student body and the local community, there issued forth extensive, voluminous reactions, especially in the form of comments to articles and blogs. This was no ordinary private loss followed by a modest funeral, this was an immediate, instantaneous, palpable, emotional, widespread outpouring of collective grief at the loss of an outsized individual, someone people felt a connection to, someone whom they had been touched by. This is clear from the way the student paper and local newspaper covered the story: huge, world war-sized headlines (‘‘One Dance Left’’). Full color photos, column inches-large, fans in orange brimming with emotion, buck-skinned mascot with arms aloft, serious mien. In the issue of the student newspaper covering the last performance, a single photo takes up the entire width of the front page and extends way below the fold. Also telling were the over 645 responses posted to a dozen articles in the local press; one article alone elicited over 100 replies.21 Many of those posting (perhaps 50%) were repeaters, but the number of responses, far greater than for other articles, attests to the widespread engagement of people on the ground in Champaign-Urbana and beyond. First of all, sadness is frequently expressed. I am really sorry that the U of I bowed to pressure. y The Chief was not a mascot but a symbol of greatness, strength, courage, desire. I am so sad!22 Yesterday was a sad day for the Council of Chiefs [organization of past impersonators who conducted tryouts to choose new one each year]. To a person, we are quite proud of our association with the University and the Illiniwek tradition for these past 81 years. All should know that we consistently endeavored to portray Chief Illiniwek with Honor, Dignity and Respect.23 I love the Chief and the honor, loyalty, and tradition that he stands for. For me he was the University of Illinois and made me proud to be a part of that community. I am saddened beyond words at this decision.24 ‘‘The whole situation is a very sad ending to an honored tradition,’’ Tom Maloney [father of Dan Maloney, last Chief portrayer] said.25

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The suddenness of the announcement caught pro-Chiefers off-guard, and now they are resentful that they will not be able to see off their Chief-person appropriately, at a proper funeral they all can attend, not just ticketholders, and achieve closure, say goodbye properly. It feels for many like the loss of a family member, having not had the opportunity to say goodbye.26 Saddest day ever to be an Illini. I think many of us Chief supporters deep down thought that this day would eventually come, but to have it announced on a Friday [February 16], y that it’s all over next Wednesday [February 21], particularly when it appears Mr. [Board chair] Eppley and crew made the decision last spring, is a total crock.27

And on the other side elation. As a Native American, this is a PROUD day to be Indian!28

Grief was not the only thing people felt at getting rid of the Illinois mascot. Second, and primarily, they felt anger, rage: they were mad as hell, and resentful, too. A whiplash of a backlash of visceral anger. It is a SAD day for the U of I. What a shame a few idiots rule. It was a honor to watch the chief perform, I alway got chills. I grew up in CU, a lot of locals from Urbana were the Chiefs, it was as HONOR to be chosen. I WILL NEVER ATTEND ANOTHER BASKETBALL OR FOOTBALL GAME AGAIN, NOR WILL I DONATE ANOTHER DOLLAR.29

They railed against ‘‘a few idiots’’ (above) to ‘‘this Nazi-like anti-Native American movement’’ (below). My colleagues and I have decided to withdraw all financial support for U of I, including athletics. Instead, universities in the Dakotas that are willing to fight this Nazi-like antiNative American movement will become the beneficiaries. In addition, I am modifying my wills and trusts in such a way that any descendant [sic] who attends U of I will be unable to enjoy the benefit of my estate. In all, I estimate that this collaborative effort will result in the loss of several hundreds of millions of dollars that U of I would have received.30

Some of the anger was aimed directly at anti-Chiefers. Today a significant portion of this campus, University Alums, and other members of the Illini Community have experienced a significant loss. The least anti-Chief supporters can do is respect their feelings and not gloat.31 I’m an Illinois Grad, and I find this funny: All of the anti-Chiefers out there are suddenly telling us Pro-Chiefers to ‘give up’ and ‘quit whining’. Well, screw you all. You’ve been whining for years, you damn hypocrites.32


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Not all anti-Chiefers were by any means lovey-dovey, namby-pamby, niceguy, polite folks. Common sense did prevail. You should be sad that you don’t recognize what a hurtful thing in which you’ve participated. ALL THAT MATTERS is that Native Americans find the Chief offensive. You may as well be going on court in blackface. Take the extra time you’ll have now that the racist symbol of the chief has been banned, and examine your ethics, and how this whole ordeal has actually affected people besides white suburban kids who think they’re doing Native Americans a favor by honoring a tradition they find offensive.33

Outrage on the part of some (above) was counterbalanced by dripping sarcasm (below). Oh how the tears of regret well in my eyes at hearing about a white boys chagrin for not being able to dance a disrespectful jig for the adoration and entertainment of the masses. How will we ever move on? Although many adore the Chief, I was one of the ‘‘vocal minority’’ who was utterly disgusted by the Chief and all that he stood for – the outright, crass, and egregious disrespect of a group of people masked under the thin veil of an ‘‘honorable tradition.’’ What a load of crap. If I never see the Chief perform again it will be too soon. I have tried to be sensitive to the affections of Chief supporters, but their adamant support of the Chief proves that they refuse to be sensitive to my desire to not be humiliated by a the foolishness of a caricature dancing for a stadium full of paying spectators. In fact, I resolved to be as cold and insensitive as the Chief ’s many supporters. With that I say to the Chief, ‘‘Sit down and shut the hell up once and for all. You will not be missed.’’34 I caught a few minutes of the news highlighting the most recent Chief performance, and focusing in on the crowd reaction at the basketball game. One young girl was openly weeping. The ‘‘Chief’’ himself was breathing heavily through his nose and making quite the stern-looking face. Honestly, the whole thing cracked me up. Both sides take themselves entirely too seriously. If Bucky the Beaver were to retire next year, would people weep? I doubt it. Well, maybe, since some people are just nutty like that. But really, as someone who has unfortunately had the dubious ‘‘honor’’ of witnessing the Illini mascot go into what some people call a dance, but more closely resembles a protracted and painful series of uncontrollable muscle spasms, I have to say thank goodness he is being retired. Maybe someone can finally prescribe some medication to treat that problem.35

Third, there was anger at how the ideals personified by the mascot had been dishonored, disrespected. This is where the logic takes an illogical turn. In the pro-Chiefer’s worldview since the mascot is ‘‘positive,’’ attacks on it are ‘‘negative.’’ Not only that, but critics attack the ideals the mascot stereotype stands for, and in doing so demean, disrespect, and dishonor precisely what the pro-Chiefers find noble and good. Never mind that the ‘‘noble savage’’ stereotype of native Americans is just that, a stereotype, as

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I discuss later. Never mind that in creating the mascot stereotype, the proChiefers conjured up the object that anti-Chiefers are now attacking, that far from being innocent, passive victims, pro-Chiefers are the ones who invented the mascot in the first place that is now being attacked. This is more than ‘‘school spirit.’’ The Chief embodies the values we carry with us through life.36 The school could have fought the good fight. y But no.37 [Chief Illiniwek’s performance is] THE RE-CREATION OF A SOLEMN CEREMONY BY A PERSON WHO APPEARS ONCE AT A GAME, HONORING OUR ILLINOIS NATIVE HERITAGE.38

This is twisted logic: ‘‘honoring’’ native Americans of Illinois by dressing up and playacting. The post below takes this warped logic to its logical extreme: ‘‘this is a shameful day for native Americans.’’ Dismissing as ‘‘garbage’’ anti-Chiefers’ contention that the ‘‘noble savage’’ mascot is not ‘‘honorable,’’ the writer argues further that if the mascot is ‘‘bad,’’ then so, too, are all other signs of traditional life – ponytails, buckskin, turquoise, totem poles – ergo, they all need to go, too. The logical coup de grace is then delivered: in attacking the Chief, native Americans ‘‘have disgraced your ancestors and have disgraced hollow [sic] ground.’’ That whites expropriated native Americans, expelled them west of the Mississippi, and replaced them with a ‘‘noble savage’’ mascot is completely turned upside down and inside out here. This is a shameful day for native Americans. This has been nothing but a personal vendetta against an institution who has done nothing but honor the spirit of the native Americans. To uphold the criteria of even being considered of Chief is above all common levels of decency and respect for a given ethnicity. To use the old excuse of portraying hostile misinterpretation of native American for our students sake is garbage. If this is true then I want all native Americans to look at themselves in the mirror and cut your braided ponytail off, hide your turquoise and take your buckskins down from the wall because you don’t want to offend and portray a hostile image to the children. Next, close all native American burial grounds in which it is ok to display your ancestors bones for profit. If you really have an agenda then take down all the caricatures of these hideous totem poles spread throughout areas of native American history. And finally why not go after the ‘‘redskins’’ in Washington? I was there the day of Chief Fools Crow and was over [sic] by swelling emotion for the native Americans and its brotherhood with the U of I. It is all over now for a handful of activists with a vendetta but you have disgraced your ancestors and have disgraced hollow [sic] ground.39

Fourth, there was anger felt at the role money played, specifically the lost revenue to Illinois due to the NCAA postseason ban. This is a corollary to


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the dishonor and disrespect suffered by the Chief: the noble ideals ‘‘he’’ stood for have been traduced literally for a pot of money.40 The NCAA played the money card and the esteemed Board of Trustees acquiesced. This decision was not unanimous. Money talks in the end.41

Contrary to the noble ideals of honor, courage, and bravery, the ‘‘spineless’’ administration and Board of Trustees ‘‘gave up’’ and were ‘‘bullied.’’ ‘‘Is this the true Illini spirit?’’ The obvious answer is no. This administration has behaved shamefully. y One of the reasons the [UI president Joe] White administration should be shamed is for having given in to a minority of misfits, loud loonies, and professors who have more time (and competence) to be radical activists, rather than to teach – basically sinecure-hunters who brazenly suck a very considerable amount of money from this school’s outstretched and outspent tits.42 Unbelievable!! An 80 year old honored tradition is being discontinued by a clear minority opinion (not even near a majority) and a group of dictatorial misguided fools. y It’s time to get a spine and show these manipulating fools the error of their ways. y Do you really think the [Washington] Redskins or the [Kansas City] Chiefs are going to change? They refuse to be bullied. Is this the true ILLINI spirit?43 Anger at how in a democracy, the majority were outvoted, lost to a minority. Once again political correctness and a population minority rules.44 I didn’t like the divide of people, but this is a democracy, and the majority rules, not the minority. If they don’t like the Chief, turn the TV off, don’t go to games, etc.45 This is a democracy people; once you have 51% it doesn’t matter what the minority thinks.46 The University of Illinois administration got what it wanted. The NCAA got what it wanted. [Anti-Chief] Professer [sic] Kaufman got what he wanted. Everybody got what they wanted but the majority. Unfortunately, that seems to be America these days.47

These sentiments were coupled with a refusal to consider that matters such as the mascot controversy are not straightforwardly amenable to a simple vote, thumbs up, thumbs down, as in the following post comparing it to the school prayer controversy. It is difficult to understand how we in the majority lose to the few. This is much the same as the argument over ‘‘In God We Trust’’, prayer in schools or the Pledge of Allegiance. Though the poll numbers show over whelming support to the contrary y the voice of the few wins the day.48

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This argument about the majority versus minority, about a democratic vote needs to be unpacked, taken a step further. The assumption, no doubt correct, is that if the Chief controversy had been voted on, one person one vote, then the Chief would have ‘‘won.’’ The diverse stakeholders involved – University of Illinois administration, faculty, students, and alumni; native Americans on and off campus; the wider Champaign-Urbana community and Illinoisans generally – were sometimes polled, sometimes not. Yet it was always clear that power to decide lay with governing bodies with differing agendas (faculty senate, university administration, state legislature) and ultimately with the University of Board of Trustees – not least because the campus administration refused to take the lead. In the end, the key change that occurred over time was the glacially slow shift in the position of the Board of Trustees. Uncomfortable thought: a democratic vote is not always right. Rarely, however, was the issue framed as a majority versus minority one where simultaneously the views of the majority directly clashed with the moral, philosophical, and educational arguments of a minority, let alone one in which the position of a numerical minority trumped the majority will. Rather than directly engaging this key issue, here, too, the two sides mostly talked past one another. I think it’s detrimental [student referendum on Chief Illiniwek held February 2008] because we’re talking about a human rights issue here, and I really don’t think human rights issues should be left up to any particular population of students. The popular decision isn’t always the way to go in situations like these.’’49

Fifth, there was anger directed at the minority that won not because they had the votes, but only because they played the ‘‘political correctness’’ card. Again, there was a refusal to engage the arguments of so-called political correctness, a refusal to lend them any credence or validity whatever. The Chief is honorable: end of story. We are so caught up in being politically correct and not hurting someone’s feelings y get over it. I am so glad that a MAJORITY of people aren’t letting the Chief issue die. y I am so proud that finally the MAJORITY is standing up and saying ‘‘hey y we don’t like what’s going on or happening’’. The MAJORITY is tired of being Politically Correct and watching what they say for fear of ‘‘offending’’ someone y50 There is no law anywhere that guarantees you (or anyone else) the right to never be offended. Yet that’s what the shrill minority of anti-Chief zealots have done. They’ve stretched, distorted and perverted our anti-discrimination rights into some new right to ‘‘never be offended’’ and the Board of Trustees have happily embraced this new ‘‘Right of The Hypersensitive Minority y’’51 This was a pagan sacrifice on the altar of Political Correctness.


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I fear these leaders will do away with other traditions. y I think our present president and chancellor are not leaders. They are political-correctness kings. y The professors who pay attention to what they’re doing academically don’t have time to monkey around in other departments like he [Professor Stephen Kaufman] did.52 PC Jerks y53 ‘‘Being politically correct means always having to say you’re sorry’’ – Charles Osgood.54

Related to political correctness was the argument that although it may have been assumed that all native Americans were anti-Chief, ‘‘we’’ know this is not true, we know native Americans who were not anti-Chief. Everyone, it seems, has their ‘‘good’’ Indian. I grew up in Illinois and graduated in ’91. y I worked for an Indian (just in case you are ignorant enough to correct my use of Indian, they often use the term, maybe you’d correct them, help ‘em get politically correct) tribe for over 3 years and I’d guess that most of the opinionated folks involved with this issue are very ignorant in regards to Indians and could really care less what any Native American thinks or how they live in their country. I think about a night in 2005, I was travelling through McDermitt, NV, and I saw a high school age Indian boy wearing a Chief hat, I asked if he liked the Fighting Illini and he said Yeah, I like ‘em. y I guess that unimportant dark haired boy was just too ignorant to see all the harm that Chief symbal [sic] was doing?55

The implicit argument made here is that not all native Americans are antiChief. This is coupled with the claim, ‘‘I know an Indian, I met him driving one night in Nevada.’’ Yet anti-Chiefers did not spend a great deal of time addressing the issue that not all native Americans were, or had always been, anti-Chief. Talking past one another ran both ways. My husband and I are both alumni of U of I. We are proud to presently have a daughter who is a freshman at U of I. Most of my husband’s family still lives in Central Illinois and come from a Native American heritage. His family has always taken great pride in their heritage. Likely they have always looked at the Chief with esteem and have never been offended by him. On the contrary they are proud to have their heritage remembered and I have heard my husband comment that this is all the result of political correctness at its silliest. He is disappointed in the whole matter.56

Take this argument, this talking past one another, a step further. At base, the anti-Chiefers argued, ‘‘if native Americans say the Chief hurts, then it hurts. End of story.’’ I have a very good friend who is an alumnus of U of I and is of Native American descent. She finds the Chief to be hurtful and feels he trivializes and demeans her heritage. That’s enough for me. How many people does the Chief have to hurt until he is seen as being damaging? Give me a number, Chief defenders. This is not about being ‘‘PC’’ or anything else. The Chief causes people very real emotional pain and I want you to tell

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me exactly how many people must be hurt by his existence until it is allowable to get rid of him.57

Such an argument left pro-Chiefers with the weak response, ‘‘even if it hurts, it can’t hurt that much, it’s only a symbol after all,’’ an argument considered insensitive and uncaring. Yet the implicit assumption of the anti-Chief argument is that all, or virtually all, native Americans agreed that the mascot was hurtful, and the evidence for that claim is that they said so: if they said they had experienced hurt, then they had. Direct, personal experience is dicey to question and still harder to refute. Uncomfortable thought: the work of feminist and poststructuralist Joan Scott, of all people, can be used to support the implicit pro-Chief position here. Scott questions the evidence of ‘‘experience’’ when it is invoked by an individual to ipso facto justify and rationalize what may often be the result of both how an individual has learned to interpret his or her world (political context, social moeurs, historical contingency) as well as apparently unmediated personal experience (Scott, 1996). If Scott is on to something, it would account for why perhaps most but not all native Americans are anti-Chief, and why pro-Chiefers had a point when they raised the bugaboo of ‘‘political correctness.’’ Thus, to implicitly argue that all native Americans are antiChief leads uncritically to a position of political correctness: native Americans are assumed to be anti-Chief. This claim pro-Chiefers refuted by trotting out ‘‘their’’ pro-Chief native American, yet anti-Chiefers did not engage their position. Here precisely is where the two sides literally talked past each other.58 I honestly don’t know why this is happening at all [getting rid of the mascot]. I am 50% Seminole Native American with strong ties to the Seminole Nation and have relatives in both Florida and Oklahoma. I grew up near Florida State University and can tell you the Native Seminole population there would be very upset if the Seminole name and spear hurling Chief Osceola were removed. In fact, the Seminole Nation voted to support FSU’s continued use of the Seminole name to show to others we approve of our images use. The only people that should be qualified to judge this issue are the descendants of the Illiniwek (now in Oklahoma, I believe). I have personally seen Chief Illiniwek perform at least a half dozen times over two and a half decades or so and found no disrespect.59

Sixth, Chief supporters felt angry because the mascot did not die a natural death, that ‘‘they,’’ someone else, killed ‘‘our’’ Chief, that it was someone else that is doing this to us rather than us. Thus, it is not our fault, it is their fault: we are not responsible, they are. The pro-Chiefers were in total denial here: they were the ones who originally invented the mascot in the first place, and only after whites had earlier expropriated the native Americans living here.


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So, a strong subcurrent of anger was directed not only at anti-Chiefers but also at all those who were considered to have allowed, enabled, and engineered ‘‘his’’ demise, despite their protestations of concern, support. In other words, alleged pro-Chief friends betrayed us, and in so doing betrayed also the ideals the ‘‘noble savage’’ mascot stood for, and that we honored. Outside the University, the institution nearly universally vilified for its role in the death of the mascot was the NCAA.60 How hypocritical of the NCAA to ‘‘look the other way’’ about FSU when the only difference between the two situations is that FSU admittedly pays off the Seminole tribe and the NCAA believes such payoffs negate any hostile/abusive connotations of the savage Chief Renegade symbol. I live in Florida and all I hear and see is that tomohawk [sic] chop and their infernal chanting. But that is all OK isn’t it, because money talks and the NCAA is so corrupt it can’t think or see straight. What a bunch of baloney. Shame on the U of I administration for caving in so easily. FSU fought back and won. Why didn’t we try harder to save this great tradition? What wimps!!!61 The real problem we have in Illinois is we don’t have a tribe to buy off. Other tribes killed off the Illini. Look at Florida State. They buy the Seminoles off and it’s okay for a white kid to throw a flaming spear in the ground.62

To which a Washington Post writer replies, ‘‘He’s right about that. The hypocrisy on this issue prevents an across-the-board abolition of Indian mascots. You buy one tribe’s silence, and it’s okay to reject the claims of insensitivity by another.’’63 One Illinois alumnus and state legislator was especially upset: ‘‘It’s a sad day [banning the mascot]. What’s next? Mom, the flag, apple pie? Apple pie’s got trans fat in it.’’64 To punish the NCAA, the lawmaker introduced a bill to tax the organization.65 Not only the NCAA, but within the University the Board of Trustees and all those fellowtraveling administrators were the main betrayers. Why [sic] to go BOT, you have made a difficult decision easy for me. No Chief, No Donations from this alumni!! Oh, maybe you should ask the NCAA next time you need money, as they seem to be running the show these days.66

The Board of Trustees said they were on our pro-Chief side, but in the end they did us in. Instead of standing up to the NCAA and the politically correct anti-Chiefers – like the Chief would have done – they caved in. To add insult to injury, Board chair Larry Eppley arranged the decision behind closed doors and out of public view, likely in violation of the Open Meetings Act, announced it at the end of the week on Friday, and to take effect less than a week later. For this, Eppley was castigated for his sneakiness and trickery as well as treachery.67 The outpouring of criticism sums up many of the points made so far.

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This BoT vote [March 2007] does NOT cure Chairman Eppley’s Open Meetings Act violation. The Illinois Supreme Court has held that crystallizing a decision in private, only to ratify it later is still a violation of the Open Meetings Act.68 This decision was made by bullying. A small, vocal minority bullied the issue to the forefront, then refused to listen to reason until it got what it wanted. My kids used to do the same thing, but I forgave them, since they were only two years old at the time. Now the only thing left for the Board is to decide which spineless invertebrate will best represent the University of Illinois as a mascot.69 It’s unfortunate the Board of Trustees didn’t have the courage to stand up to the NCAA and fight for something worth fighting for.70 Shame on the BOT. I can now feel ashamed to be associated with such a spineless institution.71 The board has no backbone. The rumor is, they’ve already got another name picked out for Illinois. We’ll be the Spineless Chickens.72 No it isn’t awesome news [of end of mascot]. Not on the basis of being pro or anti Chief. It’s horrible news because one man arrogantly and brazenly made a decision based primarily on the financial considerations of what he felt the Chief was costing the athletic department, screw Eppley. If the Chief was to be retired it should be done but the University body after due diligence is done to the issue [sic]. NOT because a guy with an ego, on a power trip made cash King. We’ve all lost for losing Chief this way. Pro Chief or Anti Chief we’re all getting hosed right now.73 Growing up in Central Illinois, and as active undergrad and alum, this hurts me and some of us more than others. It is indeed like a member of the family has died. And it also feels like other members of the family (the board and its chair in particular) have turned on us by not being up front in the handling of the timing of the announcement. It’s like thinking you know someone for years and not knowing them at all now.74 We should not be harsh towards ‘‘Perfesser’’ Kaufmann, Emil Jones, Lawrence Eppley and their fellow travelers, for they cannot rise above the smallness of their lives and are compelled by envy to destroy what most find as good.75 I expect the University to stand for DIVERSITY of OPINION. Not to cave weak-kneed when the going gets tough, and CERTAINLY not to capitulate because of financial reasons. y It is NEVER right to back down from a fight when you are right. y values the Chief represents, by the way.76 The end of the Chief is bad enough, but the way it was done is dishonorable.77 May the Chief be back soon and reign long. And may the Board of Trustees rot in hell.78 As all alums I am saddened by the loss of the ‘‘Chief’’, but I was expecting this day to come. What hurts more is that he was suppose to be retired in a dignified and respectful way, celebrating the years of tradition that was a part of the Illini Tradition. But instead the Board of Directors chose to quickly enforce this and have his last performance be at


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a basketball game less than a week away that is not even nationally televised. How can the Board say they allowed the fans the chance to send the Chief off with respect and dignity?79 I’ll still tell people where my degree is from, but the pride I felt is gone. All because the sorry-ass weenies on the Board of Trustees refused to stand up to a strident minority. I will offer one last thought to my alma mater. If you’re looking for a school mascot in the future, there are LOTS of spineless invertebrates for the Board to choose from.80 I am a disgusted alum who never really had any great attachment to the Chief, but who has always disdained the University’s pathetic appeasement of the professional do-nothing radicals who hide out in the University because it is the only place where they can be unproductive and useless to society and still get paid for it, through taxpayer funded salaries, fellowships and scholarships.81 Shame on the Board again. y There are a lot of buildings on campus named for great leaders of our state and of our University. Next fall at the first football game in the Blue Lot we will be naming the Larry Eppley Port-o-Potty. Hopefully he will show up for that ceremony unlike the final basketball game where he would not show his face.82

This is where anger got mixed up with sorrow and which was then directed at the Board of Trustees. In short, this was not something that we did, the consequence of what we had done, a response to our actions – this is something happening to us, done by people outside, elsewhere; we are passive, being acted upon. A common thread here is that we have a will, but we are being walked on, trampled. This narrative is a story pro-Chiefers tell to other pro-Chiefers explaining away any culpability on their part. Rather than owning up to their active versus passive role, the reasons for the Chief ’s demise were rationalized away, displaced onto other folks, other entities, in a tortured logic that produced and reproduced already elements of a counter-narrative. Above all is the sense of betrayal by the Board of Trustees, and especially Chair Eppley. It is as if to say ‘‘we thought they were our friends, on our side, but they betrayed us, they caved in. Furthermore, they went against all the values noble Chief Illiniwek stood for – telling the truth, honor, and pride – doing what is right even if it is unpopular, standing firm against minority opinion, affirming the majority over the minority, the minority of the politically correct – the ‘radicals,’ wimps, weenies.’’ Such is the way the logic was twisted. Ultimately, the anger and resentment and betrayal felt by pro-Chiefers at the way the mascot was gotten rid of redounds on university administrators and the Board of Trustees for not taking a stand and making a decision themselves; in short, for not providing leadership. That the blame was allowed to be shifted elsewhere and onto other entities, such as the NCAA,

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meant that resentments festered and a narrative of ‘‘sneaky’’ Eppley, ‘‘cowardly’’ Board was produced. Lastly, upside down logic again warped the discussion of racism. It was commonly heard, for example, that ‘‘We are not racists: why can’t they see that the Chief is positive, honorable? Because it is positive and because we are honoring native Americans, by definition we cannot be racist, and to label us so is unfair and absurd.’’ If the purpose of a symbol/mascot is to bring honor, even if misguided, then it cannot be racist be definition. y By the way, now there is no motivation to continue discussion about Native-American issues on campus. Good plan?83 It’s sad to see that an honorable tradition can be labeled ‘‘racist’’ by a vocal minority, and that by simply making the statement, it must obviously be true. Has all rational thought been removed from civil society? Soon it will become self evident that primates have all the rights of humans and plants have feelings too.84

In a bizarre turn, to deny pro-Chiefers a voice abrogates their free speech, since to be American encompasses native America. The fact is that this is truly oppression of speech. Native Americans and their pandering followers are claiming that non-Native Americans are not allowed to express their respect and appreciation for Native American culture, despite the fact that as an American, Native American culture is MY history too.85

The twisted logic comes full circle in the following comment by a prominent pro-Chiefer, who simultaneously appropriates native American heritage for himself and challenges anyone to call him, as a Caucasian, a racist for doing so! Chief Illiniwek is part of my geographic heritage. y For anyone to dismiss that because I’m Caucasian, that’s racist.86

He is not alone: this theme is echoed by others. The heritage of the Illini and other Indian tribes that first populated what was to become Illinois is not the province of any one group; as an American and a native Illinoisan it is part of my heritage too. (Wise, 2003)

This whole thing is silly. We finally were able to rid ourselves of our racist mascot-why keep him lamely hanging on? It’s not like the BoT will ever have the opportunity to reinstate the Chief-the blow to the University’s reputation would be too great. Why not just let the whole thing die off so we, the sons and daughters of Illinois, can move on to something else?87


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Chief Illiniwek may have been retired, but he keeps coming back. Call it death and resurrection. Primarily because even those who got rid of the mascot were often of two minds: instead of a proactive decision, the University (administration and Board of Trustees) reacted to what was widely regarded as coercion by the NCAA. Instead of killing off the Chief themselves, instead of dead and buried, the Chief kept being resurrected, brought back, coming back. In March 2007 at the Board of Trustees meeting, some thought he was put away for good. The local newspaper, politically conservative and pro-Chief: The University of Illinois Board of Trustees took final action today to eliminate Chief Illiniwek and called on the campus and community to move forward. Trustees approved a resolution that confirms Board Chairman Lawrence Eppley’s action on Feb. 16 announcing the end to the Chief dances and the end to American Indian imagery being associated with the UI and its athletics programs. (Garennes & Wurth, 2007)

Certainly local resident, activist and faculty member, Debbie Reese thought so. I’ve been working alongside other Native people and our allies on this issue since I came here in 1994. THIS is the closure we’ve been working towards. The announcement made by BOT Chair Eppley in February was unsatisfying, because it did not acknowledge what is WRONG with the chief illiniwek. Today’s BOT meeting was different. It acknowledged what is wrong.88 I do think we’re at a definitive moment today. y I do think we’ve turned a corner.89

Then, as homecoming fall 2007 approached, students assumed that the ban on the Chief logo would apply to floats in the homecoming parade. Nonetheless, they raised the question. Surprisingly, the University Chancellor made a one-time exception, and lifted the ban on the grounds that free speech, however culturally derogatory, offensive, even racist, trumped the use of Chief Illiniwek that others regarded as a racist mascot, and precisely what the Board of Trustees had eliminated. ‘‘The University,’’ the Chancellor wrote, ‘‘values free speech and free expression and considers Homecoming floats, decorations, costumes and related signage all representations of such personal expression.’’90 Others disagreed. If a float maker wants to use KKK imagery or a noose hanging from a tree on a homecoming float, is this now also acceptable under the auspices of ‘free expression?’ Or if a float maker wants to use images of people copulating or nude participants on a float,

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would this also be accepted as the freedom of personal expression? And if not, why not? Certainly if public nudity is considered immoral or at least inappropriate, why not public racism?91

Clearly, the University had reversed itself. The ‘‘administration made the original decision to ban the Chief symbol and has lifted its own ban.’’92 What had happened was that the parade organizers, working with the University, established a new policy in August 2007 that banned parade participants from using the Chief Illiniwek logo. The ban was not challenged until the student newspaper published an article about it, which led the chancellor to scale back the ban and allow Chief-themed homecoming floats. This was too much even for some previously outspoken Chief supporters. ‘‘The University of Illinois should step up y by putting Chief Illiniwek to rest – for good,’’ wrote Sports Illustrated columnist Dave Zirin, who earlier had been pro-Chief but now came out anti-Chief (Zirin, 2007).93 To take the argument a step further and in a broader direction, the dispute ultimately raises profound questions about free speech. First, free speech is not absolute: it is against the law to yell ‘‘fire’’ in a theater. Second, there are distinct cultural and national differences. In the United States, the stress is on individual expression, which most often trumps the rights of groups not to be slandered or vilified, Jews for example. In Europe hate crimes, including speech, is criminalized: ‘‘death to the Jews,’’ and frankly anti-semitic material is not allowed.94 Distinctions between free speech and hate crimes are enormously difficult to distinguish, police, and prove, but arguably without the barriers afforded by hate crime laws how does a community or nation stanch the reproduction of past acts, including speech acts, today universally condemned, for example, the Holocaust? Then, on the one-year anniversary in February 2008 of the end of Chief Illiniwek, a pro-Chief group ‘‘painted the hall black’’ by distributing 900 black T-shirts with the Chief logo to the student cheering section at a basketball game to show their continued disapproval with the Board of Trustees’ action. ‘‘Present at the game was a delegation of members of the Illinois General Assembly. [Chairman] Larry Eppley was not sighted at the game,’’ a pro-Chief group reported sarcastically.95 Also marking the oneyear anniversary was the student newspaper with an article, ‘‘Has campus changed since the Chief left?’’ that prompted 38 responses. Subtitled ‘‘Remnants of the chief controversy still remain,’’ the piece detailed what had not changed (Wool, 2008). The music that accompanied Chief Illiniwek’s dance was still being played; the three-part composition dated back to 1928, two years after the Chief was invented.96 Although technically the music did


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not depend on the Chief ’s dance, its association with the former mascot was not lost on anybody. Pro-Chief: ‘‘I’m happy they kept it [the music]. y Even though the Chief isn’t there, the people still clap at the same parts.’’97 Anti-Chief: ‘‘I think [the music] evokes the same ideologies of having a person perform traditional [Indian] dances, and that’s offensive.’’98

Keeping the music is important, because it is clearly associated with the mascot. As with the name ‘‘Fighting Illini’’ (see later in text), however, a narrow, technical distinction was made regarding the music in order that it be retained. Not everyone agreed. The head of the undergraduate Marching Illini program argued that ‘‘it is wise to continue using the ‘Three in one’ marching routine but change the music. ‘The music for the ‘Three in One’ is created for the Chief Illiniwek performance.’’’99 Then, at the end of February 2008 in a nonbinding referendum students voted in favor of reinstating Chief Illiniwek 80% to 20%. More than onethird of all undergraduates sent ballots through email, the second-highest turnout in 10 years of online voting. Earlier in 2004 students had voted in favor of the Chief 70% to 30%.100 Then, in March 2008 ‘‘an Illinois fan dressed in a full Chief outfit’’ appeared at a basketball game, and during the halftime musical performance ‘‘made his way around the top concourse, walking with arms folded and stopping only to raise his arms during the ‘Hail to the Orange’’’ musical segment. ‘‘The appearance of the Chief brought the Assembly Hall crowd to its feet and earned a standing ovation’’ (Grodsky, 2008). Then, in April 2008 the winners of the annual Chief competition, begun in January, were announced. ‘‘The importance of tryouts is to ensure that there is always a student on this campus that, on instant, can perform the dance with pride and honor,’’ according to the last official student who played Chief Illiniwek (quoted in Anderson, 2008). The new unofficial Chief said he is of Mexican descent, but that he doesn’t see the Chief as being a racist symbol. ‘‘Not at all,’’ he said. ‘‘Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be here. My family is of mixed race. Racial tolerance has never been an issue for me.’’ (Monson, 2008a)

Get over it folks. The decision is finally [sic]. Time to move on.101

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I hope we can move on with life now.102 Saying goodbye to the Chief tradition is hard for many people, just as the Chief tradition itself was hurtful to many people. My goal in moving forward is to lead a healing process for everyone who cares about this issue.103

What is to be avoided is indefinite, ongoing denial and deferral, a limbo situation where instead of closure, there is a festering sore. This is what can happen not only to people and individuals but also to groups of people and societies. We are self-conscious beings, after all, cognizant of history: we live in history. Living in history entails dealing in the present with the past to move into the future.104 For societies, like individuals, can and do lose their way. This is what happened, for example, to France during the Nazi Vichy regime, 1940–1944.105 To continue with the individual and body analogy, what we strive for is a healthy body politic, one resistant to panics – moral, sexual, and political. Individuals can choose to undergo step-wise recovery programs; societies can conduct political purges (France 1944) or more recently so-called truth and reconciliation commissions (Africa, Latin America). In one and the other case, it is necessary at either an individual or societal level to recognize and acknowledge what has happened, process and work through the historical baggage, and get clear of it to move on. Coming to terms with the past results in a healthier, more mature social body. Yeah, right: easier said than done. All this is easy for an intellectual to prescribe, hard for a collectivity, community, or country to act on and carry through. Might as well say to Americans that the United States under Bush has become a nation that tortures people, that we need to stop the practice and apologize, that we need to acknowledge, work through, come to terms with, and punish the wrongdoers, to arrive at a resolution. Meanwhile, back in River City, er y Urbana-Champaign, so far this is precisely what is not happening. As seen earlier, reactions to the end of Chief Illiniwek have been overwhelmingly negative on the part of pro-Chiefers, marked by anger, resentment, rejection, pushing back and, it has to be said, often gloating on the part of anti-Chiefers (‘‘see, I told you so,’’ ‘‘we won’’). Yet ‘‘he’’ is not dead and buried, but keeps coming back y and back, and back again. What would be necessary (and I use the conditional rather than ‘‘is’’ on purpose) would be, first, to recognize that there is a problem with how the majority of students and local residents, alumni and Illinoisans view the history, significance, and demise of the UI mascot. Certain historical analogies may seem outsized relative to a local matter, especially a small potatoes matter like a sports mascot (‘‘why not work on serious issues,


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such as native American poverty, alcoholism, suicide?’’), yet they are useful, ‘‘good to think’’ in defining the stakes involved, for the larger issue here concerns identity. Already mentioned are such analogies as Vichy France, and the Algerian war of independence against France. Closer to home is Vietnam. Nationalist triumphalism was shunned and discredited in America after Vietnam. We were forced to see ourselves as others saw us, and it was not always pleasant. We understood, at least for a moment, the lie. But the plague of nationalism was resurrected during the Reagan years. It became ascendant with the Persian Gulf War, when we embraced the mythic and unachievable goal of a ‘‘New World Order.’’ The infection of nationalism now lies unchecked and blindly accepted in the march we make as a nation towards another war [the Iraq War], one as ill conceived as the war we lost in southeast Asia. (Hedges, 2003, p. 61)

When we think ‘‘the US and Vietnam,’’ we think first, US defeat, but also the so-called postwar ‘‘Vietnam syndrome’’ (the de facto ban on similar military aggression 1975 to early 1990s), and George H. W. Bush’s statement during the first Iraq War referring to this syndrome, ‘‘by God, we’ve kicked that.’’ And now with the second Iraq War begun in 2003, we have kicked it good, real good. Most societies never recover from the self-inflicted wounds made to their own culture during wartime. y This is why the wall of names that is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is so important. It was not a project funded or organized by the state but by those who survived and insisted we not forget. It was part of America’s battle back to truth, part of our desire for forgiveness. It ultimately held out to us as a nation the opportunity for redemption, although the state has prodded us back towards the triumphalism that led us into Vietnam.106

To continue with outsized historical analogies to ostensibly little local matters, let me elaborate on the comment I made earlier concerning those civil conflicts that have torn societies apart in recent history and that have been followed by some sort of so-called truth and reconciliation commission charged with working through collective trauma (Argentina, Rwanda, South Africa, Morocco). Such efforts occur in history, in real time; by definition they are imperfect. They are instances of political justice, which we can define as the intersection of justice – law – and politics – the art of the possible. Some, guilty as hell, get off scot-free. The little-bit-guilty are more often scapegoated. Some innocents are targeted, informed on, scores are settled. The reach of the proceedings are limited in time, in place. Few people, if any, are completely satisfied. The dead are not returned to life. Nonetheless, a scarring over, if not a healing, of sorts, occurs. People, communities, societies are enabled, enable themselves to come to terms with

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the past, a rough-and-ready resolution is arrived at, and nations move on into a future they have made different by their actions in the present. Likewise, in Champaign-Urbana so-called civic leaders and university administrators need to step up and take a stand. In particular, the history of the University of Illinois leadership throughout the years-long mascot controversy has been the failure of the leadership to lead. ‘‘While it is a poorly kept secret that many top UI administrators are tired of the Chief debate and would just as soon see the symbol dumped,’’ no one stepped up (Foreman, 2003).107 1997: ‘‘Show some moral leadership. y In short, ‘Do the right thing – Get Rid of the Chief’.’’108 2002: ‘‘The board [of trustees] needs to make a decision and stand by it.’’109 2004: ‘‘Illinois’ leaders must step up, get rid of Chief ’’ (Slezak, 2004). ‘‘The failure of the University of Illinois and its board of trustees to resolve the Chief llliniwek issue is evidence of a failure of leadership and shared governance at the university.’’110 2007: ‘‘By refusing to retire the mascot, at some level the university’s Board of Trustees tacitly condones the backlash on campus [such as the Facebook incident discussed above]. y The subtext in keeping the Chief amounts to a code of acceptance’’ (Wise, 2007). At the STOP forum in January 2007, The first question to [University President] White regarded his plans to change the use of Chief Illiniwek. His reply of appreciation for the forum was cut short by an ‘‘answer the question!’’ from the audience that drew applause. To answer, White declined to comment on what the Board of Trustees planned to resolve in 2007. y White, who seemed to be the crowd’s scapegoat for the night, endured more than a few interruptions and jeers from the audience. (Won, 2007)

October 2007: ‘‘In making the decision to allow Chief Illiniwek to return [for homecoming], [Chancellor] Herman acted in a manner of the inferior, following instead of leading’’ (Zirin, 2007). No doubt the costs of taking a stand are significant. In 2003 at the time of Trustee Frances Carroll’s ill-fated attempt to ban the mascot, thenChancellor Nancy Cantor said, ‘‘We sit here 50 years after the Brown v. Board decision, and this great country and this great university are still grappling with issues of race and inclusion. The delay is troubling to me, because this has been an extremely divisive issue that has held us back and unnecessarily clouded our future.’’111 To which the editor of the local, politically conservative newspaper responded, ‘‘to frame the Chief question in the context of Brown vs. Board of Education y is like trying to compare the Bataan Death March to a bad day at the office’’ (Foreman, 2003).112 No doubt current and past chancellors, and other leaders are sincere, yet


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polite public pronouncements – ‘‘My goal in moving forward is to lead a healing process for everyone’’ – do not cut it.113 (I write this during the waning months of George W. Bush’s second presidential term. The situation is so strikingly similar that the local appears to mimic the national, or is it vice versa?) Uncomfortable thought: at the same time, those of us who are educators have failed to educate, to educate many enough well enough soon enough. Yes, some of us have been doing all we can. Yet relative to the need, to what would have to be done, on balance we collectively have so far failed. Which raises the question: How do we educate? We might as well ask: How does learning happen? Education only occurs when people interact, come together on a relatively even playing field, when we move out of our comfort zone, think outside the box; when one person says or does something that connects, resonates, speaks to another. We have all experienced it: education is the a-ha moment when the coin drops, when we get it. I taught an undergraduate seminar several years ago with a dozen students, two of whom were African-American, one older than the other. We were all sitting around a big conference table having an animated, not to say heated, discussion with pro- and anti-Chiefers voicing their positions. The younger African-American spoke up in favor of the Chief. His older African-American classmate, forearms on the table, looked long and hard at him, and said, ‘‘Hey man, it’s all about ‘coons.’’ There was absolutely no comeback, no response by anyone. Q.E.D. The present moment is a teaching moment if there ever was one. What is necessary is a different perspective, to view the situation from a different angle, redskins analogous to ‘coons, ‘‘revered symbol’’ as racist mascot. Only by opening ourselves up to other viewpoints can we change our minds, their minds. Roger Ebert, Urbana native, University of Illinois grad, Chicago-based film critic, changed his mind. Chief Illiniwek is a positive, not a negative, symbol. y The Chief was created in goodwill, he is presented in goodwill, he is taken in goodwill, and there is nothing exploitative about him. (Ebert, 2001) I wrote an op-ed piece a week ago defending him [Chief Illiniwek] y and I realize it is time to think again. y I must listen again to what Native Americans are saying, and they are saying they feel wounded and dismayed by this depiction of their culture. If that is how they feel, then I must respect them. y It is time to move on y114

Apparently, NL learned. Illiniwek was some guy dressed up in a costume. Much like Santa Claus at the mall. Eventually, we all learned that Santa is not real, stopped our traditions of letter writing

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and leaving out milk and cookies, and went on with the rest of our lives y it doesn’t mean that Christmas was ruined forever.115

And so, too, did BG. I wanted to make one thing clear. I used to be pro-Chief. I’m a UI grad. My dad is an alum and used to take us to football games where we would reverently stand at attention as the chief ran out on the field. I followed suit by taking my kids to women’s basketball games where we would stand courtside, arms folded, as the chief performed. I used to think the chief truly was an honored symbol. Then, somewhere along the way, it dawned on me that the people we supposedly were honoring didn’t feel honored. When I saw that the Peoria tribe officially considered the chief to be demeaning, I started thinking that there was some weird kind of illogic in saying we were honoring a people that flat out did not want to be honored in the way we were honoring them. It just felt like we were saying to the Peoria that they were too ignorant/stupid to know that we were honoring them y ‘‘we’re honoring you people no matter how you feel about it.’’116

A 1998 faculty senate anti-Chief resolution noted the shift over time from viewing Chief Illiniwek as a ‘‘symbol’’ to a ‘‘mascot.’’ The University community is now aware that the caricature and impersonation of a Native American as the mascot of UIUC is a form of racial stereotyping.117

Historical observation: have you noticed that the drumming of the anti-Chief position has been so incessant in recent years that even still stolid pro-Chiefers have become increasingly aware of the anti-Chief arguments, in the process moving from a proactive to reactive stance? Responding to the racist mascot argument by saying, ‘‘I’m not racist,’’ for example. But what a hard sell! And such a slow, incremental one. What helps to change a person’s mindset, intellectually and politically, is other perspectives on sports mascots. Here our intellectual toolkit includes postcolonial studies notions ‘‘good to think’’ such as anthropomorphism, playing Indian, invented traditions, imperialist nostalgia, imagined communities, and noble savage. Chief Illiniwek is an extreme instance of anthropomorphism, ‘‘the ascription of human form or attributes to a thing or a being not human.’’ Pro-Chiefers who regard the Chief as real, a real person, who react emotionally to and form an emotional attachment to ‘‘him’’ are anthropomorphizing an ‘‘it’’ into a ‘‘him.’’ I am part Indian myself and I love nothing more than the SPIRIT of the Chief even if the dance isn’t real. All that matters is that he is real to me and makes me well up with pride for my University.118 I was born, lived, taught and grew up in Illinois. I know the Chief !119


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As I wrote some years ago, ‘‘Key y is that in the heart of the heart of Chief Illiniwek country, there is literally nothing, a historical absence, a nonperson. Chief Illiniwek is a sign without a historical referent, a freefloating signifier in a prairie-flat land wiped clean, erased of Native Americans. This makes the literalness with which pro-Chief supporters invoke and refer to Chief Illiniwek – as if it were a part of them – all the more of a conundrum’’ (Prochaska, 2001, p. 165). Except that ‘‘conundrum’’ is way too anodyne. Second, Chief Illiniwek exemplifies the much larger phenomenon of ‘‘playing Indian’’ (Deloria, 1998; Root, 1997): Boy Scouts, Eagle Scouts, Order of the Arrow, Order of Red Men, Campfire Girls, Woodcraft, Boston Tea Party. ‘‘White Indians’’: white New Agers playing Native American wannabes. And what is ‘‘playing Indian,’’ ‘‘playing native,’’ ‘‘playing an Other’’ all about? It is about play, for one thing, in the sense of dressing up, masquerade, the Bakhtinian carnivalesque (Bakhtin, 1984). It is also about appropriation, in the sense of taking on, assuming another’s identity, taking another’s identity. The implication here is replacing one with another, speaking for another, silencing another. Such appropriation is predicated on power, the power to appropriate; power is the necessary prerequisite for appropriation. Cultural appropriation is often counterpart to physical expropriation. ‘‘Indian play y necessarily went hand in hand with the dispossession and conquest of actual Indian people’’ (Deloria, 1998, p. 182). I want the tradition back, and I mean the real tradition, not the version put in place over the last 16 years. This really started down-hill when Terry Shepard ([former chancellor] Mort Weir’s ‘‘hitter on Indian questions’’) and Gary Smith supposedly fixed some ‘‘shortcomings’’ in the ‘‘Chief Illiniwek Tradition,’’ a written description of the tradition handed out to applicants for the role of Chief. That was all in the name of ‘‘accuracy and sensitivity.’’ Horse you-know-what! We need to call it what it was back then and still is: Illinois’ ‘‘redskin tradition’’. What’s wrong with that? And speaking of horses, I want the homecoming parades back with the Chief on a horse. I think [last Chief Illiniwek portrayer] Dan Maloney would look just fine on the back of a horse. Goodness, but haven’t we become so proper and correct that we can’t even play Indian.120

Yet for critics, playing Indian is exactly what the mascot does, and which makes it a throwback to an earlier era. Having recently moved here from Oregon, this was a new experience [witnessing Chief Illiniwek]. To say I was shocked when he came running out would be an understatement. It was so kitschy, so anachronistic, that I stood in slack-jawed amazement that a character could be portrayed as such a blatant stereotype, and is still in existence today. It was living, dancing example of what I remember as a child growing up on ‘50s Westerns. (Stewart, 2003)

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Did you all really believe John Wayne movies that much?121

Third, Chief Illiniwek is an invented tradition. Yes, pro-Chiefers view it as a sacrosanct and immutable, local and university tradition that goes back to 1926, celebrated as if every halftime performance was some sort of mini-July 4 commemoration. Following Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, however, we can say that Chief Illiniwek is a classic case of an ‘‘invented tradition,’’ a tradition ‘‘actually invented, constructed and formally instituted’’ (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983, p. 1). This [eliminating Chief Illiniwek] wasn’t a case of a tradition becoming an anachronism. This was a pagan sacrifice on the altar of Political Correctness. When I graduated from the U of I, they played ‘‘Pomp and Circumstance.’’ Why? Because it’s a tradition at commencement ceremonies. It would have been y well y weird to have them play anything else. Our traditions are how we pass our culture on to the future generations [my emphasis DP].122 If you really believe tradition is how we pass on our culture, I suggest you read an article called ‘‘Invented Traditions’’ [sic]. Most traditions have no roots in the past whatsoever and are a recent creation.123

As a social construction, an ‘‘invented tradition’’ consists of ‘‘a set of practices y which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past’’ (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983, p. 1). In short, Chief Illiniwek is a tradition invented during halftime at an Illinois football game in 1926. As the leading figure spearheading the anti-Chief movement, Charlene Teters, put it, ‘‘You say ‘your Chief,’ of course he’s your Chief, you invented him’’ (Rosenstein, 1996).124 Fourth, Chief Illiniwek exemplifies imperialist nostalgia. Imperialist nostalgia occurs when ‘‘people mourn the passing of what they themselves have transformed’’ (Rosaldo, 1989, p. 69) An unconscious or ideologized reaction, imperialist nostalgia was first applied to anthropologists, missionaries, and other agents of change in the Philippines who denied to themselves complicity in changes occurring to the indigenous population that they themselves had been instrumental in bringing about. Similarly, those who consider Chief Illiniwek an ‘‘honored symbol’’ of the historical Illini are displaying imperialist nostalgia. First, white Americans ran the Illini out of Illinois. Second, current students and others wax nostalgic over what their forefathers wrought and transmute it into a commemoration of ‘‘what they themselves have transformed.’’ The Chief represents a symbol of imperialist nostalgia, not respect for Native American culture. There is something sick about thousands of Non-Native American fans screaming and cheering as a white male dressed in faux Native costumes dances and


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prances around in a mock Native American dance. y This ‘‘celbration’’ only represents nostalgia for a revisionist history regarding Native peoples. We like to remind ourselves that Natives were brave and strong, but like to forget that in the end, they were murdered in mass [sic] and sent to live on reservations – as noted above – while settlers took there [sic] land and legacies as part of their own ‘‘heritage.’’125

In short, ‘‘‘The chief ’ stereotype is that of a figure from the ‘golden age’ of Indians, a purer, more innocent time before Native culture was destroyed and altered by the coming of Europeans. This kind of imperialist nostalgia informs every aspect of ‘the chief ’’’ (Garza, 2007, p. 6). Fifth, the community to which Chief Illiniwek appeals is what we can call an ‘‘imagined community.’’126 ‘‘At precisely such moments [singing the national anthem], people wholly unknown to each other utter the same verses to the same melody.’’ Thus, the Chief standing with raised arms after his dance and the crowd singing the alma mater is an occasion ‘‘for the echoed physical realization of the imagined community.’’127 Sixth, Chief Illiniwek exemplifies the noble savage stereotype of native Americans. It is the flipside of the bloodthirsty savage stereotype. Although the noble savage stereotype is a ‘‘positive’’ image, while that of the bloodthirsty savage is a ‘‘negative’’ one, the key point is that they are both stereotypes. As such they are reductive, simplistic, and caricatural images that misrepresent more than they represent, miss more than they capture, of native American history past and present. At the end of the day, they tell us more about whites who invented the stereotypes than about those who are stereotyped. It was, and is, appropriate that Chief Illiniwek, the embodiment of the Red Men who had vanished before the overwhelming waves of White Men, should return to the land of their fathers. It is fitting that he should revisit the Illinois campus. In the name of his tribe and in memory of his forefathers and of the warriors who had struggled and died both in prehistoric and historic Illinois, it was proper and pleasing that the Chief should strut his stuff and perform his ancient ritualistic dances, in the lovely days of Indian Summer, while the Marching Band played weird incantations before the packed Stadium of contemporary Palefaces. (Burford, 1952, p. 407)

Chief Illiniwek as a noble savage goes to the core of the still-continuing controversy over whether it was a ‘‘symbol’’ or a ‘‘mascot.’’ Although Chief supporters retreated at least some on almost every other front, they were unyielding on the Chief as ‘‘symbol’’ versus ‘‘mascot.’’ Some seemed to acknowledge that the other side really did view the Chief as a mascot. But beyond that they were unwilling to go. The line throughout was that it was an ‘‘honored symbol.’’ ‘‘ ‘I don’t think it [the creation of the Chief ] was to honor us, because, hell, they ran our (butts) out of Illinois,’ as Chief Froman

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of the present-day Peoria put it.’’128 How can something so positive be viewed by some as negative, a bad thing? Admittedly, this is a tricky argument to make. And to be perfectly frank, I find intellectual explanations for the palpable, heartfelt, visceral feelings pro-Chiefers express for the mascot ultimately dissatisfying, wanting. Complicating matters is that, as former Yale chaplain William Sloan Coffin, Jr. once put it, what is emotionally rooted is not intellectually soluble. Certainly, playing Indian is broadly similar to minstrelsy, but our predecessors – not, of course, us – were meant to laugh at more than empathize with Amos and Andy and others of their caricatural ilk. And yes, in broadly general terms, identifying with the mascot is an anti-modern, nostalgic embrace of a now-defunct lifestyle, but the problem is that to say ‘‘broadly general’’ fails to connect satisfactorily with the real, live crowd in the stands. For me, Vine DeLoria, Jr., comes closest when he writes, ‘‘playing Indian gave white Americans y a jolt of self-creative power’’ (Deloria, 1998, p. 185). Yet I would guess this is only part of what pro-Chiefers would acknowledge they are feeling, if that.129 Uncomfortable thought: native American anti-Chiefers say they are genuinely hurt by the mascot; pro-Chiefers say they feel a genuine emotional bond to the Chief. Who is to say – and on what basis – that one reaction is less authentic than the other?130 Yet pro-Chiefers were and have been heaped with scorn and derision for not ‘‘getting it.’’ ‘‘I think people realize the ‘savage’ depictions are not okay, but only slowly are they realizing that good caricatures, the whole ‘honorable warriors who loved nature and are connected to the land’ and all that kind of thing, are also not okay.’’131 And again: The Chief portrays Native Americans as one dimensional cartoons, and no matter how high the pedestal upon which he’s placed, how many wonderful characteristics are attached to his name, or how honored his treatment, he’s still y a caricature. y It says, in effect, ‘as far as Indians go, we prefer our version.’132

‘‘Symbol’’ versus ‘‘mascot’’ is in short a classic case of talking past one another. Or, as Michael Be´rube´ says, it demarcates ‘‘as much a cultural divide as a political one.’’ on came the Chief himself [at a basketball game]. It was a profoundly cringe-inducing experience. y I turned to Nick [his son] and said, ‘‘never mind the debate about whether the Chief is racist – this stuff should be banned for sheer cheesiness alone.’’ y For as I watched and cringed and cringed some more, I noticed that sure enough, people around me were cheering and tearing up. And I began to think, this is as much a cultural divide as a political one, a divide between those with a liberal cringe reflex and those without. Surely, for my fellow Illinois fans, my visceral reaction to the Chief was just the mirror image of their visceral reaction to the Chief – except that mine was defined by what they


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would see as an elitist, nose-pinching PC rectitude that symbolizes everything wrong with liberal college professors. y Please, I thought, let this hopping-and-skipping minstrel show end, and let’s get back to basketball. I didn’t come here to meditate on town and gown – or on what we’d now call blue and red America.133

An instance of mutually unintelligible interpretive communities. Of there being no compromise possible, as Trustee Roger Plummer concluded in his report to the Board of Trustees.134 At base White people with good intentions believe they have the right to honor persons of color. White people can do this by appropriating symbols, images, and meanings that are associated with another group and its way of life. If the intentions of whites are honorable, then their actions are beyond reproach. Those who would criticize them, are engaging in cultural politics, in a form of political correctness. Hence the views of such critics can be dismissed.135

Yet this is already a twisted view of political correctness in the Illinois case. In an irony that could only be found in the bizarre lexicon of university political correctness, the group [Students for Chief Illiniwek] uses the word ‘‘symbol’’ instead of ‘‘mascot’’ because the term ‘‘mascot’’ is offensive to Chief Illiniwek. (Zirin, 2007)

Such views explain some of the twisted arguments and strange turns that the UI mascot controversy took. That a fiction, a thing was taken to be real, a person. That a cultural stereotype was ok, so long as it was a ‘‘positive’’ one. Thus, one reason, already discussed earlier, why folks were so angry when the Chief was done away with was that the noble ideals of honor, bravery, integrity personified by the mascot were being dishonored, disrespected, trampled on. A second argument heard after Chief Illiniwek was banned was that since ‘‘he’’ was a ‘‘positive’’ ‘‘symbol’’ and not a caricatural mascot, it would be far better to not replace ‘‘him’’ with anything instead of some ‘‘cute animal’’ mascot like other school mascots. Nullity squared, I guess you could say, a void within a void: refusing to replace with anything a thing that never existed to begin with. As far as what is next, I would recommend no mascot at all. After 80 years of the Chief being embraced as symbol of spirit, honor, and respect, any new portrayal of the University would be a sham.136 I feel like maybe that’s the only way to honor the Chief, by not having anything. y He will be missed.137 I hope this University will retire Chief Illiniwek and recognize the beloved Chief is the only deserving mascot for all time for this great University. There can be no replacement – anything less would be to blaspheme the legacy of one of college’s greatest symbols and institutions that meant so much to its alumni and community.138

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And from the other side: ‘‘I do think it’s time to move on and get a real mascot. Having a hole, encouraging people to resent what was taken from them and nurse anger, is not okay.’’139 A third, illogically logical argument was that although ‘‘we’’ believed in the nobility of the Chief, the tawdry reality of Indian life today, from casinos and alcohol abuse to Pine Ridge poverty, belies all the ‘‘good’’ that ‘‘he’’ represented. how about taking some pride, and show us how an Indian acts? All we see is discord, poverty and gambling insitituitons [sic]. At least the Chief was a since [sic] of pride for a lot of people, and we did not see him as an indian. he was bigger than that.140

A stereotype is a person ‘‘bigger than’’ a real Indian! Right. Our Chief did more to raise a positive image of the American and Midwest Indian than any other Indian symbol of our generation. It is a tragedy the vocal minority and politically correct elite doesn’t see it this way. Maybe they will understand when they wake up and see the only contemporary icon our children’s children will associate the American Indian with will be gambling casinos and Chief Wahoo. What a shame.141 I’m offended by Indian Casinos, I’m offended by Political Correctness run amoke [sic], I’m offended by racebating [sic] scaremongers, I’m offended by the ‘‘victim class’’ that always wants something at everyone else’s expense.142 so many of the give away, special rules like casinos, special treatment like the NCAAs rulings on Chief Illiniwek and preference programs for Native Americans are fueled by guilt and pity for past wrongs. As Native Americans bring more and more ‘‘victim checks’’ to the bank to be cashed the balance in that account is diminishing. It would be wise to spend the balance on something more substantive and profitable than Chief Illiniwek.143

In January 2007 the Oglala Sioux demanded the return of regalia worn by the mascot bought in the early 1980s. ‘‘If you want to get into cliche´s, the first thing that comes to my mind is Indian giver. y We bought it. It’s ours.’’144 To try and dispel some of the ‘‘positive’’ connotation of Chief Illiniwek, let me go into the history of the noble savage myth in somewhat greater detail. At the beginning of the film [Rosenstein, 1996], the following quote appears on the screen: ‘‘It has ever been the way of the white men in relation to the Indian, first, to sentimentalize him as a monster until he has been killed off, and second to sentimentalize him in retrospect as the noble savage.’’ (James Gray, ‘‘The Illinois,’’ 1940)145

The first point is that European notions of the primitive by the time of the Renaissance imagined ‘‘lands lying far away to the west or long ago in the past whose citizens dwelt in an ideal(ized) landscape and gentle climate in


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harmony with nature and reason.’’ These ideas ‘‘influenced the Renaissance explorers’ perceptions of the native peoples they encountered’’ and ‘‘shaped the vocabulary and the imagery the explorers and settlers used to describe their actual experience in the New World.’’146 Second, the noble savage myth came to the United States only in the nineteenth century – much later than Europe – because it was first necessary to physically eliminate native Americans as threats to colonization before they could be reinvented as noble. Just as it has been said that the Europeans could easily ennoble the Indian because of their remoteness from savage warfare, so commentators have argued that American authors and artists of the Eastern United States only conceived of the Indian as noble after that section of the country had eliminated its Indian problem.147

Significantly, less time transpired from the arrival of the noble savage idea in the United States to the invention of Chief Illiniwek in 1926, than from the ‘‘birth’’ to the ‘‘death’’ of the mascot. For the nineteenth-century arrival of the noble savage via Europe occurred – and this is the third point – at the same time as Indians were allegedly dying out. ‘‘To pity truly the poor dying Indian, American authors and artists had to transform him from a bloodthirsty demon into a Noble Savage.’’148 As painter George Catlin put it, Nature has nowhere presented more beautiful and lovely scenes, than those of the vast prairies of the West and of man and beast no nobler specimens than those who inhabit them – the Indian and the buffalo – joint and original tenants of the soil, and fugitives together from the approach of civilized man; they have fled to the great plains of the West, and there under an equal doom, they have taken up their last abode, where their race will expire and their bones will bleach together.149

Fourth, some native Americans qualified as noble savages more than others, and it was those who had ‘‘fled to the great plains,’’ the Plains Sioux, who came to apotheosize this stereotype. ‘‘Eventually the stalwart tribes peoples of the Plains became the quintessential American Indian in the eyes of the White citizens of the United States.’’150 Ultimately, the two primary white stereotypes of native Americans, the bloodthirsty savage and the noble savage, are two sides of the same coin, because they are both stereotypes. Eventually, both Indians go under; whether savage or noble, both are doomed. ‘‘Regardless of whether the Indian was savage or noble, he would inevitably be replaced by White civilization.’’151 Native Americans were forced out of Champaign county in 1832; Chief Illiniwek was invented nearly 100 years later, in 1926. The modern-day descendants of the former inhabitants of east central Illinois are the Peoria, who live in Oklahoma, yet Chief Illiniwek’s costume is Oglala

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Sioux.152 Chief Illinwek, a white boy playing Indian, wearing Oglala Sioux dress: Chief Illiniwek was the quintessential noble savage, ‘‘safely dead and historically past.’’153 Uncomfortable thought: to critique, give up the ‘‘noble savage’’ stereotype means viewing native Americans as less than ‘‘noble.’’ If they are not ‘‘savage,’’ then they are not ‘‘noble’’ either. They are just like other folks: some noble, some not so much, many not, just like any other human group. Therefore, all those New Age-y ‘‘positive’’ stereotypes – spirituality, connection to the earth – are equally in need of historical deconstruction. Corollary: so does this not mean that anti-Chiefers’ New Age-y ‘‘positive’’ emotions are structurally analogous, if not identical, to pro-Chiefers’ ‘‘positive’’ feelings?

Different people proposed different ideas for moving on. One possibility for moving on is to stage a museum exhibition.154 I think having some exhibit about the tradition, if it clearly states where the tradition is from (i.e. people meant well, but it’s a Boy Scout Indian-in itself an extremely American traditional thing-and not actually educational about the people who did live near here), and keep some memorabilia, in a museum context, it could be a good thing.155

Good idea, except that an exhibition is not, ipso facto, unproblematic, as the writer above seems to assume. Recall the Enola Gay exhibition proposed then scuttled by the Smithsonian. A museum exhibition is all well and good, but it raises the question: Who owns the history? Who decides what is exhibited how with what signage? In short, an exhibition could be an excellent educational and esthetic tool, but it is not ipso facto a way of moving on and putting the matter to rest. In the process of mounting it, an exhibition is very likely to stir up the whole controversy all over again. A second possibility: What is in a name? Initially, I was going to conclude this essay by having some fun and discussing new proposed mascots: ‘‘spineless invertebrates,’’ a reference to the Board of Trustees; ‘‘cute animal mascot,’’ such as a baboon (‘‘That way, even if we’re losing, we can throw poop at the opposing team’’). One faculty member proposed HAL from the film 2001: I respectfully submit that we think of the Chief as a beloved but aging CEO of an old family company who has now begun to drool, force crazy decisions on the company, and make lewd and probably actionable remarks to women and people of color. Time moves on, culture changes, and it’s time for him to go. y In his place, I suggest you recruit the computer HAL from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. He is, after all, supposed to have


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been created in a computer lab on the Urbana campus y HAL would be ideal in several ways: he would publicize the university’s long history and current superiority in computer development, [and] his huge red eye and unforgettable synthesized voice could issue prophecies and commentary at halftime that would be every bit as compelling as the Chief.156

My own personal favorite is Farmbot. There are many things that Farm Bot stands for. For one thing, it stands for ‘‘Fing Awesome Robot Mascot.’’ What other university’s non-mechanized mascot would stand up to the awesome might of our gigantic metal hero? What other figure could we rally around at halftime to literally crush our foes on the gridiron and on the basketball court? What other symbol shoots corn out of his arm cannon and bottle rockets out of his stovepipe hat, resembling Illinois’ most honorable statesman and uniter, Abe Lincoln? y Let us all unite amid Farm Bot’s cries of ‘‘Let’s Cornhole ‘Em!’’157

But, again, I was missing the point. If the pro-Chiefers cannot have ‘‘him’’ (their ‘‘symbol’’), they do not want anything (some ‘‘cute animal’’ mascot). In other words, if not the Chief, who never existed, who was a blank, a void, but whom the pro-Chiefers brought to life, breathed into existence as a symbol, then no mascot, no nothing, because anything mascot-y would be unacceptable. Here again, the administration and Board of Trustees have mostly sidestepped the issue, and so, too, it must be said, have the anti-Chiefers for the most part. Sigh.

Thus, to discuss or suggest new mascots is all well and good, but it is not going to happen, or is very unlikely. Since at least Frances Carroll’s 2003 resolution to the Board of Trustees, anti-Chiefers concentrated on getting rid of the Chief, the dance, the regalia and the logo, but have mostly been alright with retaining ‘‘Fighting Illini’’ so long as no visual image goes with it. As with the music discussed earlier, Chief Illiniwek and Fighting Illini are technically separate and distinct: Fighting Illini refers to soldiers from Illinois killed during the First World War.158 ‘‘Illini’’ was first used as the name of the student newspaper from 1874, and eight years later in 1882 the paper clearly explained the origins of the name. ‘‘Illini is but another form of the Indian word Illinois, and has the same meaning, i.e. ‘real men.’ Perhaps it is a French abbreviation of the term.’’159 From the campus newspaper the name spread to the students and alumni, and from there to the athletic teams. ‘‘In all cases, it was meant to evoke the name of the state as well as the state’s Native American origins.’’160 And there exactly is the rub: yes, Illini antedates Chief Illiniwek by a good 50 years, but they both evoke the name of the state’s former native American inhabitants.

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The ‘‘Fighting’’ in ‘‘Fighting Illini’’ came later, just before Chief Illinwek was invented. Trustee Plummer thinks that ‘‘the names [such as] Fighting Irish y are meant to suggest college teams that strive valiantly for victory.’’161 Three years later Trustees chair Eppley in appealing the NCAA’s ban on the mascot seemed to agree with Plummer. ‘‘‘Illini’ is taken from the name of our patron state and ‘Fighting Illini’ refers to our University’s winning spirit and drive to excel.’’162 Could it be that neither Plummer nor Eppley were aware that ‘‘Fighting’’ was added to ‘‘Illini’’ to commemorate Illinois’ World War I veterans? The following blogger has it right: Some have incorrectly linked Chief Illiniwek with the nickname Fighting Illini. Though many assume that both are based on Illinois’ Native American traditions, the name ‘‘Illini’’ was first associated with the school by the student newspaper. y The addition of the adjective ‘‘fighting’’ originated about five years before the appearance of Chief Illiniwek as a tribute to Illinois soldiers killed in World War I. Similarly, the on-campus football venue, Memorial Stadium, was named in honor of these fallen soldiers.163

There is just one problem: for most people most of the time Chief Illiniwek and Fighting Illini are indissolubly linked – just as with the music. Both were born in the same historical moment, the 1920s; they go hand in hand. Certainly the NCAA found it contradictory at least initially to ban the one and not the other, for in August 2005 it banned both the names Illini and Fighting Illini, and the Chief Illiniwek mascot as ‘‘hostile and abusive.’’ The University appealed and three months later in November the NCAA agreed that the names could be retained but kept Illinois on the sanctions list due to Chief Illiniwek.164 So, a narrow, technically accurate, legalistic distinction made between the two has inadvertently left the whole issue open, unresolved, in a liminal state.165 On the one hand, a goodly proportion of pro-Chiefers argues strenuously against any mascot replacing the Chief precisely because for them ‘‘he’’ is a revered symbol rather than some ‘‘cute animal’’ mascot. On the other hand, the UI administration has made no moves to add anything, to concretize in any way ‘‘Fighting Illini’’ – no image, no personification, no nothing. And finally, for most anti-Chiefers ‘‘the Chief ’’ was the main issue, only a minority pushed also to eliminate ‘‘Fighting Illini’’ and few, if any, anticipated any future problem.166 Certainly, Eppley hoped to avoid any future problem. The News-Gazette: Tell us at what moment you decided to make this statement [to get rid of the mascot], when did you know it was going to happen? Eppley: Last spring [2006]. Last spring we knew we won the names. It was important for a lot of people because a lot of people were confused over if we don’t have the Chief,


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what do we call ourselves? We’ve always tried to be clear, as far as we’re concerned, Illini and Fighting Illini are different from the Chief and we got the NCAA to agree.167

Yet the diehards die hard. Some say that after four years students graduating will have had no first-hand experience of Chief Illiniwek, and thus it will gradually die out. Others are doing what they can to keep it alive. Since the Chief ’s ‘‘Last Dance’’ in February 2007, a student group, Students for Chief Illiniwek, has held a ‘‘Next Dance’’ in both 2008 and 2009; there were anti-Chief protests both years. We will see.

NOTES 1. Initially, the Peoria were in favor of the Chief mascot. That changed in 2000 when the tribal council voted 3 to 2 in favor of a resolution calling on the ‘‘the leadership of the University of Illinois to recognize the demeaning nature of the characterization of Chief Illiniwek, and cease use of this mascots [sic].’’ They have been anti-Chief ever since. ‘‘Peoria Tribe of Oklahoma Request That UIUC Cease Use of Chief Illiniwek as Mascot’’ (April 13, 1999), cited in ‘‘Chief Illiniwek,’’ Wikipedia. 2. Leutwiler and Borchers were the first two students to play Chief Illiniwek in the 1920s, Livingston played the Chief mascot in the 1990s, and Maloney was the last Chief portrayer. 3. ‘‘I know I rushed to purchase Chief merchandise, and rightfully so. TIS [local bookstore] was full of people buying Chief items as fast as they could, many on cell phones w/loved ones asking for sizes etc.’’ Posted by Chris (February 16, 2007 at 2:30 pm) to Andrew Mason, ‘‘What’s next for UIUC?’’ Daily Illini (February 16, 2007). http://www.daily illini.com/blogs/ (Hereafter posts not otherwise identified are responses to the Daily Illini. See http://www.daily illini.com/blogs/). ‘‘I went out and got my Chief gear. Dropped a ton and none of it at the [University] bookstore.’’ Posted by Run On Merchandise (February 16, 2007 at 6:24 pm) to Mason, ‘‘What’s Next.’’ 4. A year earlier in 2004 the North Central Association, the body that accredits the University of Illinois, clearly stated that the mascot had to go, but refused to impose sanctions. ‘‘In separate observations that accompanied the formal report, the [accreditation] team y was clear in its desire to have the campus get rid of the Illiniwek symbol. ‘As the nation has moved over the last century to de-legitimize and reduce discrimination against minorities, it has become less tolerant of the use of stereotypes and language regarded as offensive by minorities and many others’, the team wrote. ‘If UIUC continues on course, it will be increasingly out of step with the times’.’’ Jim Paul, ‘‘Review team raps U. of I. on Illiniwek issue,’’ Chicago Sun-Times (August 25, 2004). Nine years before that in 1995 a discrimination suit lodged with the federal Department of Education resulted in a ruling that the mascot did not violate the civil rights of native Americans – not on the grounds that the mascot was not discriminatory, as pro-Chiefers claimed, but for lack of sufficient evidence. One of the plaintiffs, psychologist Dennis Tibbetts, wrote, ‘‘As an educator I find it inconceivable for reasonable university officials to expect Native Americans to

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feel welcomed and included into a campus community that uses their culture as a mascot or licensed trade mark to serve as a University logo. Furthermore, it is not reasonable to expect Native people who witness a non-Native person with face paint, in ceremonial regalia, dancing for people at a sporting event, to believe their culture is being respected and honored. y Chief Illiniwek’s performance coupled with the chief logo creates an atmosphere that unfairly places Native people into a position where they are not treated as modern day people who have a viable culture, but people of the past who entertain at sporting events and serve as logos for everything from letterhead to jackets’’ (1998 faculty senate resolution, http://www.retirethechief. org/Documents/ILsenate.html). 5. Board of Trustees president Lawrence Eppley quoted in Christine Des Garennes, ‘‘Eppley discusses timing of Chief decision,’’ News-Gazette (February 16, 2007). 6. Facebook website, since removed. A Web posting threatened Professor Stephen Kaufman, an outspoken critic of the mascot, to ‘‘expect some burning crosses on your lawn.’’ See Kari Lydersen (2007) and Matt Spartz (2007). 7. The forum also addressed sorority and fraternity theme parties such as ‘‘Tacos and Tequila’’ held fall 2007. For Chancellor Richard Herman’s campus-wide January 9, 2007, email in which he got behind the previously planned forum, see http:// www.nah.uiuc.edu/archived-news.htmhttp://www.nah.uiuc.edu/archived-news.htm 8. Pro-Chiefers blasted Eppley’s attempt to circumvent the Open Meetings Act, and castigated him and the Board for being spineless and failing to stand up for the Chief mascot. See later in text. 9. The recommendation to retire Chief Illiniwek was cut from the final report, ‘‘Framework for the Future,’’ issued in spring 1995. 10. The vote was 97 to 29. Already by 2000, the following departments and academic units had passed similar resolutions calling for the end of the Chief: Anthropology, History, College of Medicine, Center for African Studies, Psychology, Social Work, School of Life Sciences, Sociology, English, School of Life Sciences, and Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences. 11. Emphasis added. Actually, I have cut the second part of the sentence, which reads: ‘‘and discontinue licensing Native American Indian symbols as representations of the University.’’ Thus, the resolution went a step further to ban licensing the logo and other symbols. 12. Emphasis added. When the mascot was eliminated in early 2007 Chancellor Richard Herman was tasked by the Board of Trustees with resolving remaining issues concerning trademark rights to the name, logo and other activities associated with the mascot, such as the music played during the performance (see later in text). In outlining how he planned to proceed, Herman ironically used the exact same wording as Carroll’s heavily criticized resolution four years earlier: ‘‘I have initiated a comprehensive process and intend to move expeditiously, all the while keeping in mind the board’s stated goal of honorable retirement [emphasis added], ‘‘Chief Illiniwek: The End of An Era,’’ Illinois Alumni Magazine, vol. 19 no. 6 (May/June 2007). 13. On a copy of Carroll’s resolution alumnus John Gainer wrote, ‘‘Part of my heritage is the war dance at halftime by Chief Illiniwek. Why destroy my heritage?’’ (sent to Board of Trustees, November 11, 2003).


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14. Subtitle to Daily Illini Staff Report, ‘‘One Dance Left,’’ Daily Illini (February 19, 2007). 15. The only text on page 1, Daily Illini (February 22, 2007). 16. Posted by Alumnus Joel (February 16, 2007 at 10:26 pm) to Eric Naing, ‘‘RIP: The Chief,’’ Daily Illini (February 16, 2007). 17. Posted by illinijd76 (February 17, 2007, 9:47 am) to Christine Des Garennes, ‘‘Eppley discusses timing of Chief decision,’’ News Gazette (February 16, 2007). 18. Jrocke217, Male 27 years old, Mahomet, Illinois, ‘‘Kornfields & Metal in the Ghetto.’’ 19. See Brian Klein, ‘‘Retirement greeted by a polarized public unafraid to weigh in on issue,’’ Daily Illini (February 19, 2007). 20. Patrick Wade, ‘‘Students rally in support of the Chief,’’ Daily Illini (February 19, 2007). 21. In the first three months of 2007 as the mascot controversy came to a climax, 77, 20, 26, 43, 45, 45, 57, and 63 responses, respectively, were posted to eight articles alone in the Daily Illini and News Gazette. In early 2008 during the events occurring around the first year anniversary of the ban, and which I discuss later as the ‘‘resurrection’’ of the Chief, an additional 68, 22, 28, 27, and 111 responses, respectively, were posted to another five articles. This is by no means an exhaustive or comprehensive tally of all the articles and posts. In addition, several petitions were put up on the Internet. A ‘‘Save the Chief!’’ petition garnered 15,505 signatures (http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/987672837?ltl ¼ 1172801140), and one to ‘‘Save Chief Illiniwek!’’ obtained 17,463 names (http://www.petitiononline.com/ mod_perl/signed.cgi?savchief). A petition that called on anti-Chief Professor Steven Kaufman to resign (he was already retired) was signed by 3,436 individuals (http:// www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/316267750?ltl ¼ 1161138603). One ‘‘Save the Chief!’’ signatory wrote, ‘‘Im only 11 years old. And I cried for at least 2–3 hours after the chief walked of the court. I am not a negative person at all but the antichiefs should read all 15,000 some signatures and what it means to those people. y I have wanted to be the chief for at least 5 years now but when i heard the news i about collapsed. I was so mad and sad i couldnt even cry. I SAY BRING THE CHIEF BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’’ Posted by Trey Reidel, Normal, IL (August 6, 2007, 9:36 pm). 22. Posted by Larry Rauch, St Augustine, FL (February 18, 2007, 4:26 pm) to Jodi Heckel, ‘‘Chief portrayer had hoped common sense would win,’’ News Gazette (February 18, 2007). 23. Posted by FormerChiefIlliniwek (February 17, 2007, 12:03 pm) to Garennes, ‘‘Eppley discusses.’’ 24. Posted by bfair (February 18, 2007, 12:17 pm) to Heckel, ‘‘Chief portrayer.’’ 25. Quoted in Schenk (2007a). 26. Posted by illinijd76 (February 17, 2007, 9:47 am) to Garennes, ‘‘Eppley discusses.’’ 27. Posted by dntown (February 17, 2007, 3:51 pm) to Garennes, ‘‘Eppley discusses.’’ 28. Posted by Plainswarrior (February 17, 2007, 1:30 am) to Garennes, ‘‘Eppley discusses.’’

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29. Posted by Skoeberlein (February 17, 2007, 6:47 am) to Garennes, ‘‘Eppley discusses.’’ 30. Posted by William Price (March 13, 2007, 11:30 am) to Kathleen Foody, ‘‘Trustees ratify Feb. 16 decision to retire Chief Illiniwek.’’ Daily Ilini (March 13, 2007). 31. Posted by Kara (February 16, 2007, 10:19 am) to Vasanth Sridrahan, ‘‘Chief, Retired?’’ Daily Illini (February 15, 2007). 32. Posted by Jeff in Alabama (March 13, 2007, 5:31 pm) to Foody, ‘‘Trustees ratify.’’ 33. Posted by isaacarms (February 18, 2007, 7:05 pm) to Heckel, ‘‘Chief Portrayer.’’ 34. Posted by Truth (February 18, 2007, 11:29 pm) to Heckel, ‘‘Chief Portrayer.’’ 35. Posted by Nonesuch (February 19, 2007, 12:55 pm) to Heckel, ‘‘Chief Portrayer.’’ 36. Posted by Mikki (February 16, 2007, 8:41 am) to Sridrahan, ‘‘Chief, Retired?’’ 37. Posted by jmayer (February 17, 2007, 11:08 am) to Garennes, ‘‘Eppley Discusses.’’ 38. Posted by Tom Matyas (February 18, 2007 at 9:54 am) to Andrew Mason, ‘‘Your letters about the Chief update,’’ Daily Illini (February 17, 2007). 39. Posted by honor9chief (February 16, 2007, 9:15 pm) to Garennes, ‘‘Eppley discusses.’’ 40. On the other side, anti-Chiefers criticized the University for the money spent on defending the mascot for so long and so hard. 41. Posted by cbebt01 (February 17, 2007, 10:03 am) to Christine Des Garennes, ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’s last dance set for Feb.21,’’ Daily Illini (February 16, 2007). 42. Posted by Eng. Graduate (January 18, 2008, 10:52 am CST) to Eric Anderson, ‘‘Council of Chiefs Opens Tryouts,’’ Daily Illini (January 18, 2008). 43. Posted by mustwhiz (February 16, 2007, 12:53 pm) to Garennes, ‘‘Chief ’s Last Dance.’’ 44. Posted by jmayer (February 17, 2007, 11:08 am) to Garennes, ‘‘Eppley discusses.’’ 45. Posted by Heather (February 19, 2007, 5:31 pm) to Mason, ‘‘What’s next.’’ 46. Posted by Paul S. (February 21, 2008, 3:44 pm) to Wool (2008). 47. Posted by Frank Dutton (February 16, 2007, 7:07 pm) to Foody, ‘‘Trustees ratify.’’ 48. Posted by tcheatum (February 16, 2007, 5:26 pm) to Foody, ‘‘Trustees ratify.’’ 49. Jen Tayabji quoted in Paola Cisneros ‘‘Chief Illiniwek Issue Steps Closer to Vote by Students,’’ Daily Illini (February 11, 2008). 50. Posted by Mallory (February 21, 2008, 2:46 pm) to Wool (2008). 51. Posted by RegularGuy (February 17, 2007, 3:02 pm) to Naing, ‘‘RIP: The Chief.’’ 52. Alfred Hendron, 69, of Mahomet, retired UI professor of civil engineering quoted in Schenk (2007b). 53. Posted by Jack65 says (February 17, 2007, 12:31 pm) to Mason, ‘‘What’s next.’’


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54. Posted by RegularGuy says (February 16, 2007, 11:03 pm) to Naing, ‘‘RIP: The Chief.’’ 55. Posted by Chuck (February 17, 2007, 10:13 pm) to Naing, ‘‘RIP: The Chief.’’ 56. Posted by Anonymous (February 19, 2007, 4:08 pm) to Mason, ‘‘Your Letters.’’ 57. Posted by Jason (February 16, 2007, 2:06 pm) to George Knue, ‘‘Let It Go,’’ in ‘‘What’s Goin’ On, Chicago Sports Blog’’ (blogs.chicagosports.chicagotribune.com). 58. ‘‘That should be the criteria: If an ethnic group approves, it’s good. If an ethnic group doesn’t approve, it’s bad’’ (Morrissey, 2003). But who decides and how: a representative body or a vote open to all? If the latter, a plurality of the entire ethnic group or simply of those casting votes? During the 2000 mascot ‘‘dialogue,’’ ‘‘we were finding that 75% of the people in that Native American category favored retention of the Chief,’’ although the unreliability of the data was emphasized by those collecting it (Garippo Report, Addendum, p. 69). Yet national opinion polls of native Americans in recent years ‘‘have not been much help’’ (‘‘Chief Illiniwek,’’ Wikipedia). A Harris poll found over 80% favored Indian mascots, whereas a comparable percentage in a poll by Indian Country Today, a native American newspaper, opposed such mascots. 59. Posted by Joe S. (February 16, 2007, 12:39 pm) to Knue, ‘‘Let It Go.’’ 60. Note how the anger is displaced here onto an external object. 61. Posted by Lanse (February 16, 2007, 9:22 pm) to ‘‘Text of UI announcement on Chief Illiniwek,’’ News-Gazette (February 16, 2007). 62. John Gadau quoted in Wise (2007). 63. Wise, 2007. Earlier Florida State University mascots Sammy Seminole and Chief Fullabull, played by white undergraduates, were banned by 1972. They were replaced by the historical Seminole chief Osceola, again played by a white student, and his horse Renegade. FSU makes various payments and contributions to the Seminoles, and in exchange the Seminoles agree to the use of the Seminole name and mascot antics by the university. Because the Seminoles have gone on record as okaying use of their name, the NCAA pretty much had to go along: ‘‘The decision of a namesake sovereign tribe, regarding when and how its name and imagery can be used, must be respected even when others may not agree.’’ Quoted in Wieberg (2005). 64. Chapin Rose quoted in Schenk (2007b). 65. ‘‘He has proposed legislation calling for the association to be charged a 10-percent tax on revenues it earns in the state. Mr. Rose argues that the low graduation rates among men’s basketball players show that the NCAA has abandoned its educational mission and therefore does not deserve its tax-exempt status. y Mr. Rose acknowledges that his tax proposal is directly in response to the Chief Illiniwek controversy.’’ See Peter Schmidt (2007). 66. Posted by Bob (March 13, 2007, 12:01 pm) to Foody, ‘‘Trustees ratify.’’ 67. See, for example, Daily Illini Staff Report, ‘‘One Dance Left.’’ 68. Posted by Robot (March 13, 2007, 12:22 pm) to Foody, ‘‘Trustees ratify.’’ 69. Posted by RegularGuy (February 16, 2007, 11:03 pm) to Naing, ‘‘RIP: The Chief.’’ 70. Tom Maloney quoted in Schenk (2007a). 71. C. Ruthman (February 16, 2007, 10:06 pm) to Foody, ‘‘Trustees ratify.’’

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72. John Gadau, a Champaign lawyer and member of the Honor the Chief Society who has spent thousands of dollars on billboards denouncing former Chancellor Nancy Cantor, ‘‘Keep the Chief. Dump Cantor,’’ and located on the highway leading from the airport into town, quoted in Wise (2007). This article was published more than two weeks before the Board banned the mascot. 73. Posted by Tom (February 16, 2007, 3:02 pm) to Naing, ‘‘RIP: The Chief.’’ 74. Posted by dntown (February 17, 2007, 3:51 pm) to Garennes, ‘‘Eppley Discusses.’’ 75. Posted by mbeesley (February 16, 2007, 3:33 pm) to Garennes, ‘‘Chief ’s Last Dance.’’ 76. You Said Anonymous Posting Is Allowed (February 18, 2007, 6:35 pm) to Mason, ‘‘What’s next.’’ 77. Posted by illinijd76 (February 16, 2007, 12:58 pm) to Garennes, ‘‘Chief ’s Last Dance.’’ 78. Happy Alum (January 18, 2008, 3:23 pm) to Anderson, ‘‘Council of Chiefs.’’ 79. Posted by Louie (February 16, 2007, 8:36 pm) to Garennes, ‘‘Chief ’s Last Dance.’’ 80. Posted by RegularGuy (February 16, 2007, 10:45 pm) to Mason, ‘‘What’s next.’’ 81. Posted by Brian (February 17, 2007, 6:08 am) to Mason, ‘‘What’s next.’’ 82. Posted by Alumni (March 13, 2007, 11:14 am) to Foody, ‘‘Trustees ratify.’’ 83. Posted by illinijd76 (February 17, 2007, 9:47 am) to Garennes, ‘‘Eppley Discusses.’’ 84. Posted by Dan Nelson – 1987 (February 17, 2007, 5:04 pm) to Vasanth Sridrahan, ‘‘All things Chief-Open Meeting Act,’’ Daily Illini (February 16, 2007). 85. Posted by Brian (February 16, 2007, 11:29 am) to Knue, ‘‘Let It Go.’’ 86. Roger Huddleston, a local home builder and the president of the Honor the Chief Society, quoted in Wise, 2003. Not only does the logic get twisted, it gets jumbled, too. ‘‘The NCAA is racist to call him a mascot, and to ban him reeks of ethnic cleansing. It’s far less disrespectful than state governments forcing the association of Native Americans with addictive vices like gambling.’’ Posted by Charlie (February 16, 2007, 1:44 PM) to Knue, ‘‘Let It Go.’’ 87. Posted by TheSquire (January 18, 2008, 12:01 pm) to Anderson, ‘‘Council of Chiefs.’’ 88. ‘‘Trustee Sperling acknowledged the heartfelt sentiments of pro chief people, saying he felt that way at one time, too, and is sad that it has to end, but that it is important to let it go and move on y Trustee Montgomery (newly appointed) y [stated] this is a MORAL issue and is about doing what is right,’’ Debbie Reese blog (March 13, 2007), http://nativeperspectiveonchiefilliniwek.blogspot.com/2007_03_ 01archive.html 89. ‘‘The school will retain the name ‘Fighting Illini’ – and remake ‘Illini’ such that it does not have any Native imagery or association. Whether they will be successful or not is a question and concern. y It is my preference that they get rid of ‘Illini’ too and begin anew with an entirely new sports team name, logo, and mascot,’’ Debbie Reese blog (March 13, 2007). 90. Quoted in Maiellaro and Spalding (2007).


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91. Prof. Antonia Darder, open letter to Chancellor Richard Herman (October 25, 2007), http://www.nah.uiuc.edu/mascot-news.htm 92. Maiellaro and Spalding (2007). 93. Contrasting the national with the local press, it seems clear that the farther away from Champaign-Urbana, the more support for the mascot dropped off. 94. Recent case of anti-Semitic content on Urbana Public Television, which city counsel argued had to be allowed legally (Monson, 2008b). For a comparison of the controversies over anti-Semitic videos broadcast on Urbana Public Television and the Chief Illiniwek mascot in terms of free speech versus hate crimes, see Fields (2008). 95. http://www.studentsforchief.com/. 96. In 1928, two new marches written for the University band, ‘‘Pride of the Illini March’’ and ‘‘March of the Illini,’’ were added to the alma mater, ‘‘Hail to the Orange,’’ and telescoped together to form a trilogy, the so-called ‘‘Three in One,’’ still used today. ‘‘University of Illinois Chief Illiniwek Auditions’’ (January 22, 1993). Manuscript, Chief Illiniwek reference folders, University of Illinois Archives. 97. Megan Myers quoted in Wool (2008). 98. Miranda Jimenez quoted in Wool (2008). In response, one person wrote, ‘‘You have arrogant types like Ms. Jiminez [sic] still whining and preaching about ‘‘white male elitists’’ – only now it is because the band music doesn’t suit here [sic] ‘‘taste.’’ Just who the bloody h–l is Ms. Jiminez? Clearly she’ll only be happy when people like her become the supreme and final arbiters of what can be said, played, shown, etc. on campus – in other words, the majority will kowtow to eltists [sic] like her. And by the way, Ms. Jiminez, the ‘‘white male elitists’’ (and their families) still constitute 70% of this country’s population – and are getting damn tired of being pushed around by minority groups who think they are the new royalty.’’ Posted by Old Illini (February 21, 2008, 11:40 am) to Wool (2008). 99. ‘‘Chief Briefs,’’ Daily Illini (February 22, 2007), p. 7A. 100. Posted by Brent (February 29, 2008, 7:39 am CST) to Andy Kwalwaser, ‘‘Chief referendum draws large amount of support,’’ Daily Illini (February 29, 2008). ‘‘The 78% in favor of the Chief is a good indication that the percentage would have climbed even higher if all students had voted. And students, that only proves what has been evident all along – this University’s Board of Trustees does not ultimately serve you first and foremost. They serve the almighty dollar that goes hand in hand with the NCAA. In this instance, the NCAA is our daddy.’’ 101. Posted by gdkgeo (February 18, 2007, 11:23 am) to Heckel, ‘‘Chief Portrayer.’’ 102. Posted by Julia (February 19, 2007, 1:13 am) to Mason, ‘‘What’s next.’’ 103. UI Chancellor Richard Herman, quoted in ‘‘End of an Era,’’ Alumni magazine, May/June 2007. 104. In the case of Algeria see, for example, Benjamin Stora (1992). 105. See Paxton (1972). 106. Hedges, War, pp. 80–81. 107. Note that this was written in 2003. 108. Letter by Morton Winston, University alumnus and Chair of the Board of Amnesty International USA, to Susan Granvenhorst, Board of Trustees chair, July 16, 1997, one day after Jay Rosenstein’s In Whose Honor? aired on national TV (quoted in 1998 faculty senate resolution).

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109. Trustee Roger Plummer at the time he issued the Plummer Report, quoted in Sharita Forrest, ‘‘‘No compromise’: Plummer’s report – Options are to retain or retire the Chief,’’ Inside Illinois, 21, 16 (March 21, 2002). 110. Report by North Central Association, the accreditation agency for the University, quoted in Heckel (2004). 111. Quoted in Wood (2003). 112. Cantor came closest to taking an unequivocal stand and was literally run out of town as a result. She is currently president of Syracuse University. 113. Four months after making this statement Chancellor Herman reversed his earlier position on the Homecoming policy discussed earlier. 114. Ebert quoted in Norman Denzin, ‘‘Redskins and Chiefs,’’ pp. 184–212 in his Performance Ethnography, (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003) at pp. 205–206. The chapter title is ‘‘Redskins and Chiefs.’’ 115. Posted by NL (February 19, 2007, 12:02 pm) to Mason, ‘‘What’s next.’’ 116. Posted by BG the TB (March 01, 2008, 6:29 pm) to Kwalwaser, ‘‘Chief referendum.’’ ‘‘As an alum who once had a very long and enlightening conversation with a Native American over the fact that I was wearing a t-shirt with the Chief on it, I am glad to see this symbol retired. I ceased wearing anything with the Chief on it years ago, and I never understood the purpose of having a white guy dressed up as a Native American perform at sporting events. The Chief is representative of an era that is past and no longer has a place in the 21st century.’’ Posted by illinoisalum (February 16, 2007, 1:07 pm) to Knue, ‘‘Let It Go.’’ ‘‘In yesterday’s News-Gazette, in regards to the ‘Chief,’ Trustee Sodemann was quoted as saying ‘Unless you’ve lived here, you probably don’t fully understand.’ I have lived here, for almost 22 years – I was born and raised in Champaign. The University of Illinois has always been an important part of my community. I grew up loving Illinois athletics, and I grew up loving the Chief. It was hard for me to realize that the ‘Chief’ was wrong. As a child, coming to athletic events, I thought the ‘Chief’ was fabulous. The message I got growing up in this community was that the ‘Chief ’ honored and celebrated the culture of Native Americans. y I learned that the dance was authentic; I learned the chop. I learned a lie. It took a long time before I was willing to listen to the other side. But I realized that for me, as a Muslim, if there were a caricature of our religious leader dancing around at halftime, I would not feel honored. And I realized why the ‘Chief’ does not honor Native Americans. I have lived here, and I do fully understand – I fully understand that the Chief is wrong’’ (Imran Rashid, address to Board of Trustees, November 13, 2003). See also Craig (2005) and Dossett (2005). 117. 1998 Faculty Senate resolution. The resolution continues, ‘‘For over seventy years, University of Illinois students, faculty, and alumni considered the Chief an appropriate symbol for our great University. When the Chief danced at athletic events students, faculty, and alumni thought they were honoring the Native Americans who once lived here y [Some alumni] maintain that students at the University learn about Native Americans from the Chief. More recently, the University community has gradually come to realize that the image and performance of the Chief raise serious concerns. It is now clear that the Chief ’s costume and dance are not authentic. Native Americans tell us that Chief Illiniwek is a stereotyped image. In 1995 Joseph Gone, a Native American of the Gros Ventre tribe and graduate student in psychology wrote: ‘The Illini were Woodlands people – not


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Plains people – and as a result evidenced an entirely different material culture than the Lakota people whose clothing the current Chief dons. The Chief ’s dance was reportedly derived from a Lakota ritual known as the Devil’s Dance and taught to Lester Leutwiler by Sioux people in Colorado as part of a scouting project’.’’ The oft-repeated pro-Chief argument that the mascot educates whites about native Americans can be traced all the way back to the Boy Scout handbook. As such, it is directly related to playing Indian. 118. Posted by Heather (February 19, 2007, 5:31 pm) to Mason, ‘‘What’s Next.’’ 119. Posted by lrauch (February 18, 2007, 4:26 pm) to Heckel, ‘‘Chief Portrayer.’’ 120. Posted by Opinions (February 18, 2007, 1:18 pm) to Heckel, ‘‘Chief Portrayer.’’ 121. Greg Tafoya, Tewa people, Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, email to Michelle Thompson, Board of Trustees (September 2, 2004). He continues, ‘‘Its time for your state, and your university to set an example by stopping the use of Native Americans (myth or factual) as symbolic mascots. Its time for you to stop living in the 1920s when racism was largely accepted. Its time for you to honor my people by admitting that this wrong. We deserve better than to be represented by stereotypical dances, outfits and war cries.’’ 122. Posted by RegularGuy (February 17, 2007, 3:02 pm) to Mason, ‘‘Whats Next.’’ 123. Posted by Kathleen (February 17, 2007, 6:28 pm) to Mason, ‘‘Whats Next.’’ 124. This is acknowledged, with no apparent understanding, in the following. ‘‘The Chief is a symbol, not a mascot as some would call him. He is our symbol. We created him.’’ Melissa J. Abel, email to Michelle Thompson, Board of Trustees (October 25, 2003). 125. Posted by l. crittenden (February 16, 2007, 2:10 pm) to Knue, ‘‘Let It Go.’’ 126. See Anderson (1983). 127. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 132. 128. Chief Ron Froman of the Peoria quoted in Zirin (2007). 129. For a longer and more detailed, yet in the end perhaps no more satisfying discussion, see Prochaska (2001), pp. 167–169. ‘‘What exactly is going on with ‘the Chief’, between the crowd and ‘the Chief’? Could there be some faint memory trace across the generations, some physiological synapse that is triggered? Nonsense, and yet many commentators claim to see some link, some connection between the crowd, ‘the Chief’, and native Americans. y The problem here is to link past and present in a historically satisfying manner, to connect event and structure, to link the individual with a larger collectivity, to combine a social analysis with a cultural interpretation. Look at it this way. The white conquest and defeat of Native Americans by whites during the nineteenth century, marked at the century’s end by the closure of the frontier, which in effect undermined the raison d’eˆtre of Manifest Destiny, constitutes a historical break or rupture of paramount significance that can be viewed as an original or primordial trauma in the Freudian sense. Trauma, for Freud, is characterized by continual return, the ‘return of the repressed’, which ‘acts-out’ but does not resolve the original traumatic event until and unless it is ‘worked-through’. Invented little more than a generation after the final defeats of Native Americans by whites, part of the cultural work Chief Illiniwek performs is staging this historical trauma. y Therefore, what is significant is not the invention of Chief Illiniwek in 1926 (production), but that

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he ‘took off,’ resonated with Illini fans then and now (reception). y The Chief ’s dance reinvokes the once-threatening Indian as noble and savage, and the resolution acts out white conquest as ‘anti-conquest’, that is, as pacific conquest: smoking a peace pipe in 1926 and walking arm-in-arm off the field with Penn, singing the alma mater in communal unison today. Key, however, is that the ‘Chief ’s acting out does not satisfactorily resolve the disjuncture between past Native American reality and present Chief Illiniwek myth. y The ‘Chief’ displaces but does not work through the original historical rupture or trauma; he can only continually return to ‘play Indian’ over and over at half-time. This is why ‘the Chief’ is a generic Indian rather than a historical individual. This is why he is ‘warlike’ and the team is named the ‘Fighting Illini’. This is why he wears Plains Indians Sioux regalia – the ‘noble savage’ apotheosized – rather than Woodlands Illiniwek clothing. This is why whites, preferably Eagle Scouts, and not Native Americans must play the Chief, for Chief Illiniwek is literally a story whites tell about themselves, part of their cultural construction of ‘whiteness’. Not only is Chief Illiniwek not a Native American, he is not about a Native American or even Indians generally, but about Indianness and how it figures as a constitutive element of whiteness.’’ 130. See above for discussion of Joan Scott on the evidence of experience (Scott, 1996). On the one hand, ‘‘I believe that if someone states they are being hurt physically, or mentally by consistently damaging the image of their culture, heritage and tradition, the abuser should stop the cycle of that pain. Why is that so hard to understand?’’ (Rhonda Hunter, email to Michelle Thompson, Board of Trustees secretary, May 12, 2005). On the other hand, ‘‘I can’t attend a U of I game without thinking of the Chief ’s appearance bringing a tear to my father’s eyes, and now it has the same effect on me’’ (Dean Hinueber, email to Michelle Thompson, Board of Trustees secretary, August 31, 2004). 131. Itazurakko! (February 19, 2007, 11:01 am) to Mason, ‘‘What’s Next.’’ 132. Tom Garza, ‘‘Some thoughts about the ‘Chief’’’ (December 4, 2003), http:// www.retirethechief.org/Letters/TG120403.html 133. Michael Be´rube´, former UI professor of English, blogging about a 1997 mascot performance, ‘‘Hail to the Chief’’ (March 31, 2005), http://www.michaelberube. com/index.php/weblog/hail_to_the_chief 134. ‘‘Seeking a Compromise – Chief Illiniwek. A Report by Trustee Roger Plummer to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees (March 13–14, 2002), http:// www.uillinois.edu/trustees/plummerreport/index.html. Two years later in 2004 the Board of Trustees reversed course yet again and resolved to arrive at a ‘‘consensus conclusion’’ of the mascot controversy, a position that even pro-Chiefers found confusing and contradictory. 135. Denzin, Performance Ethnography, p. 136. ‘‘I am sad to hear U of I will be retiring the chief. I thought him to be a reverent and respectful representative of a fine University that I am proud to call my alma mater. I guess I just do not understand at all why Native Americans find him offensive. He has never been portrayed as a comical caricature, and has always been presented in the very best light. Maybe it is better that he is retired – that way, the Illini tribe and their descendents can be completely forgotten about. Maybe it is better to not honor or remember a tribe of people who are obviously narrow-minded and have a skewed, self-serving agenda. I do not want my great university to be associated with such nonsensical people who


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cannot or do not want to comprehend an honor that has been bestowed upon them.’’ Posted by Mary (February 16, 2007, 2:30 pm) to Knue, ‘‘Let It Go.’’ 136. Posted by John (1999) (February 18, 2007, 11:18 am) to Mason, ‘‘Your Letters.’’ 137. Kara Holzgraefe quoted in Schenk (2007b). 138. Posted by mcdchi (February 18, 2007, 7:52 pm) to Heckel, ‘‘Chief Portrayer.’’ 139. Posted by Itazurakko! (February 19, 2007, 11:01 am) to Mason, ‘‘What’s next.’’ 140. Posted by karlyn1219 (February 17, 2007, 6:28 am) to Garennes, ‘‘Eppley Discusses.’’ ‘‘Why is it acceptable to have their Native American names and traditions associated with casinos (alcohol and gambling) but not with a great university such as ours??????’’ Melissa J. Abel, email to Michelle Thompson, Board of Trustees secretary (October 25, 2003). 141. Posted by mcdchi (February 18, 2007, 7:52 pm) to Heckel, ‘‘Chief Portrayer.’’ 142. Posted by J Skater (February 19, 2007, 1:38 pm) to Naing, ‘‘RIP: The Chief.’’ 143. Posted by LYN (February 19, 2007, 1:00 am) to Heckel, ‘‘Chief Portrayer.’’ 144. Local lawyer and pro-Chief contributor John Gadau, quoted in Wise (2007). 145. Quoted in Garippo, history of controversy, http://www.uillinois.edu/ trustees/dialogue/report_files/V.html 146. Berkhofer, White Man’s Indian, pp. 72–73. 147. Berkhofer, White Man’s Indian, p. 88. 148. Berkhofer, White Man’s Indian, p. 88. 149. Catlin quoted in Berkhofer, White Man’s Indian, p. 89. 150. Berkhofer, White Man’s Indian, p. 89. 151. Berkhofer, White Man’s Indian, p. 92. 152. After living with the Oglala Sioux for several weeks in the 1840s, historian Francis Parkman certainly did not view them as noble savages. See Berkhofer, White Man’s Indian, p. 95 153. Berkhofer, White Man’s Indian, p. 90. 154. Posted by Itazurakko! (February 19, 2007, 11:01 am) to Mason, ‘‘What’s next.’’ 155. Posted by Matt (February 18, 2007, 2:25 am) to Mason, ‘‘What’s next.’’ 156. Prof. Paula Treichler email to Board of Trustees (November 18, 2003). 157. Students for Farm Bot (February 16, 2007, 3:27 pm) to Mason, ‘‘What’s next.’’ 158. ‘‘An element that gets discussed at times y is the notion that Illini and Fighting Illini are necessarily tied to the fate of the Chief. I don’t agree. I acknowledge that the people of the Illinois or Illiniweh confederation have sometimes been referred to as Illini, especially since 1900.’’ ‘‘Seeking a Compromise – Chief Illiniwek: A Report by Trustee Roger Plummer to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees’’ (March 13–14, 2002), http://www.uillinois.edu/trustees/plummerreport/index.html 159. Quoted in Plummer, ‘‘Seeking a Compromise.’’ 160. Plummer, ‘‘Seeking a Compromise.’’ 161. Plummer, ‘‘Seeking a Compromise.’’ 162. Quoted in University news release, ‘‘NCAA okays names Illini and Fighting Illini: Chief Illiniwek tradition remains an issue’’ (November 5, 2005). 163. Posted by commonsense1138 (February 17, 2007, 11:30 pm) to ‘‘Text of UI announcement on Chief Illiniwek,’’ News-Gazette (February 16, 2007).

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164. The University appealed again, but the NCAA upheld its ruling in April 2006, which led directly to the mascot’s ban in February 2007. 165. The same applies to the Three-in-One music discussed above, which technically separate from the mascot is nonetheless associated with it in the minds of pro-Chiefers. 166. Suzan Shown Harjo had it mostly, but not entirely right, when she wrote, ‘‘Native people at UIUC want to get rid of both the name [‘Fighting Illini’] and the mascot, while the white folks on their side want to compromise by ending the career of the dancing mascot only. White folks on the other side, spurred by right-wing journalists, want to keep the name and mascot and get rid of the Indian protestors.’’ Harjo, ‘‘NCAA: Keep your eye on the ball,’’ Indian Country Today (May 26, 2005), http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id ¼ 1096410987 167. Eppley quoted in Garennes, ‘‘Eppley discusses.’’

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Norman Denzin and Rich King for their support, and John Castree for his invaluable research assistance.

REFERENCES Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities. Verso: New York. Anderson, E. (2008). Council of Chiefs opens tryouts. Daily Illini, January 18. Bakhtin, M. (1984). Rabelais and his world. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Berkhofer, R. (1979). White man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the present. New York: Random Books. Burford, C. C. (1952). We’re loyal to you, Illinois. Danville, IL: The Interstate. Craig, D. (2005). One-time supporter no longer backs Chief, letter to editor, News-Gazette, May 24. Deloria, P. J. (1998). Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press. Dossett, S. (2001). Pain Chief causes changed opinion, letter to editor, News-Gazette, June 1. Ebert, R. (2001). Noble spirit more than just a mascot. Chicago Sun Times, March 6. Fields, B. (2008). UPTV and the Chief Controversies. The Public I, Summer, p. 4. Foreman, J. (2003). Ill-advised statements diminish UI chancellor. News-Gazette, November 16. Garennes, C. D., & Wurth, J. (2007). UI trustees approve resolution to end Chief Illiniwek. News Gazette, March 13. Garza, T. (2007). An honored tradition. The Public I, March, p. 6. Grodsky, J. (2008). ‘‘Chief makes a surprise return,’’ part of story ‘‘Seniors exit Hall as winners’’. Daily Illini, March 10. Heckel, J. (2004). Report critical of UI on Chief. News-Gazette, August 25. Hedges, C. (2003). War is a force that gives us meaning. New York: Random House. Hobsbawm, E., & Ranger, T. (Eds). (1983). The invention of tradition. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lydersen, K. (2007). School hears calls to end mascot’s act. Washington Post, February 2.


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Maiellaro, B., & Spalding, M. (2007). Parade’s ban of Chief logo lifted. Daily Illini, October 26. Monson, M. (2008a). New Chief Illiniwek portrayers announced. News Gazette, April 29. Monson, M. (2008b). Council unlikely to stop man from airing anti-Semitic views. NewsGazette, May 4. Morrissey, R. (2003). Chief Illiniwek turns into offensive foul. Chicago Tribune, November 16. Novak, R. D. (2007). Death of the chief. Washington Post, February 22, p. A19. Paxton, R. O. (1972). Vichy France. New York: Random House. Prochaska, D. (2001). At home in Illinois: Presence of Chief Illiniwek, absence of native Americans. In: C. Springwood & R. King (Eds), Team Spirits (pp. 157–185). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Root, D. (1997). White Indians: Appropriation and the politics of display. In: B. Ziff & P. Rao (Eds), Borrowed power (pp. 225–233). New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Rosaldo, R. (1989). Culture and truth. Boston: Beacon Press. Rosenstein, J. (1996). In whose honor? Indian mascots and nicknames in sports (film written, produced, directed by Rosenstein). Champaign, IL: Jay Rosenstein. Schenk, M. (2007a). Current Chief ’s parents: Whole thing is such a travesty. News-Gazette, February 19. Schenk, M. (2007b). Mood at UI game mix of anger, sadness. News-Gazette, February 19. Schmidt, P. (2007). Illinois Lawmaker seeks to punish NCAA for Chief Illiniwek’s Ouster. Chronicle of Higher Education, March 2. Available at http://chronicle.com/article/ Illinois-Lawmaker-Seeks-to/5464 Scott, J. (1996). The evidence of experience. In: T. J. McDonald (Ed.), The historic turn in the human sciences (pp. 379–406). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Slezak, C. (2004). Illinois’ leaders must step up, get rid of Chief. Chicago Sun-Times, September 7. Available at http://www.suntimes.com/output/slezak/cst-spt-carol07.html Spartz, M. (2007). Facebook postings alarm UI officials. Daily Illini, January 16. Stewart, P. (2003). Outsider was not impressed by Chief, letter to editor. News-Gazette, November 16. Stora, B. (1992). La Gangre`ne et l’oubli. Paris: La Dećouverte. Thacker, P. D. (2007). Ugly turn in Mascot dispute. Inside Higher Education, January 10. Available at http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/10/mascot Wieberg, S. (2005). NCAA allowing Florida State to use its Seminole mascot. USA Today, August 23. Wise, D. M. (2003). My chief concern. Chicago Tribune, November 18. Wise, M. (2003). Squabbling Illini: Rallying cries lead to rift. New York Times, December 16. Wise, M. (2007). Illinois still on offensive. Washington Post, January 27, E01. Available at http:// www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/26/AR2007012601792.html Won, C. (2007). ‘‘Hostile’’ campus environment leads to demand for administrative action. Daily Illini, February 2. Wood, P. (2003). Chief protagonist. News-Gazette, November 16. Wool, E. (2008). Has campus changed since the Chief left? Daily Illini, February 21. Zirin, D. (2007). Chief concern: After resurfacing, Chief Illiniwek should stay retired. Sports Illustrated, October 30. Available at http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/ dave_zirin/10/30/chiefilliniwek/index.html

STAGING AN INTERVENTION IN A VIRTUAL DYSTOPIA: THE ONLINE FALLOUT OF THE RACE, POWER AND PRIVILEGE FORUM AND THE REMOVAL OF ‘‘CHIEF ILLINIWEK’’ Cassidy C Browning I was working on my Master’s degree in Theatre History and Criticism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) when the university’s controversial mascot, ‘‘Chief Illiniwek,’’1 was removed. The activism that led up to this action received a large amount of media attention, particularly in The Daily Illini,2 ‘‘the independent student newspaper’’ at UIUC. Comments on the newspaper’s website such as, ‘‘You individuals at The Native American House, in addition to the members of STOP [Students Transforming Oppression and Privilege], ought to be ashamed of yourselves. If you don’t like living in Illinois or the United States MOVE somewhere else!!!!!’’ found after the February 23, 2007 article, ‘‘STOP Responds to University Chief Decision,’’ were all too common. Although I later became involved with the STOP Coalition and other campus groups, my initial engagements with activism in the community were virtual.


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At the time, the newspaper’s website featured all print content accompanied by a comment function. No registration was required to comment on an article or editorial; a valid e-mail address and agreeing that your posting was not spam were the only prerequisites. There was a line for a name to be entered, but it was often used as a title for the comment. Anonymity was not only possible, but the norm on these comments, although some individuals created and sustained avatars within and between threads. The Archives section of the site maintained the newspaper content as well as the resulting comments; however, the website, located at http:// www.dailyillini.com/, has recently been remodeled. Comments may be posted after current articles, but the Archives only feature the original newspaper content. From the time following STOP’s Race, Power and Privilege Forum (RPP Forum)3 held on February 1, 2007, until well after the removal of the mascot ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ the next month, I spent many hours posting comments on The Daily Illini website’s extensive racially and ethnically charged content. As I read the outpouring of anonymous hatred, blatant misrepresentation,4 and ignorance in the newspaper content and on the comment threads, I felt compelled to intervene. I simply could not tolerate the thought of a person reading the comments on The Daily Illini website and thinking that it was an accurate representation of the campus and community any more than I could abide others blindly spewing messages of intolerance. I specifically sought to disrupt the anonymity, polarization, and lack critical engagement which are unfortunately common in the Internet medium. Hence, I always posted under my full name,5 explained my thoughts in detail, and asked others to elaborate and defend their posts and, at times, the original article. My liberal inclinations were probably easy to glean from my posts, although I never simply proclaimed my stance; I made a concerted effort not to do so unless specifically asked, as it seemed that little resulted from such actions. I do admit than my emotions got the better of my objective intervention goals on more than one occasion. Not surprisingly, I became a target for pro-’’Chief ’’-ers and those who disliked the RPP Forum in particular, and activism in general. Dismissal and generic name-calling progressed into personal attacks and threats with my continued presence on the comment boards. While I was not the only target, during this time, I was rather singular because of my identifiable and maintained presence. Proof of my infamy on the UIUC campus – at least among activist circles – was demonstrated at the first STOP meeting that I attended. I entered the

Staging an Intervention in a Virtual Dystopia

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room of about 25 people, all of whom seemed to know one another. There was a bit of silence when I was recognized as a new person, and I was asked for my name.6 When I replied, ‘‘Cassidy Browning,’’ one member asked, ‘‘The Cassidy Browning?’’. I laughed a bit before confirming my identity, as it was clear that my reputation had preceded me. I was greeted warmly and praised for my posts on the comment boards of The Daily Illini. My online efforts yielded several research projects, including the one you are currently reading. Another path led me to a collaborative work on cyberbullying with a fellow UIUC graduate student from the Department of Human Community Development, Aimee Rickman. Her 2007 paper on cyberbullying defined the phenomenon as ‘‘the act of willfully sending or posting intentionally distressing, demeaning, defaming, manipulative, or threatening aggressive electronic messaging or information using the Internet to gain power through anonymous or misleading harassment or public humiliation.’’ Far from the Virtual Utopia it was once hoped to be (i.e., without race, gender, differing abilities, etc.), the Internet has proven to reproduce the same prejudices experienced in real, everyday life (Sharpe, 1999, p. 1093; Nakamura, 2008, p. 174). After all, the people posting on websites and creating characters on World of Warcraft were raised and exist in the real world. My intervention on The Daily Illini website was both motivated by and resulted in acts of cyberbullying, although I maintain that it was not a moot effort. As a feminist educator, I sincerely agree with bell hooks (1989, p. 51): Feminist education – the feminist classroom – is and should be a place where there is a sense of struggle, where there is visible acknowledgment of the union of theory and practice, where we work together as teachers and students to overcome the estrangement and alienation that have become so much the norm in the contemporary university.

Hence, the discord resulting from my intervention is anything but a sign of failure. I also see the union of practice and theory as a strength, not a weakness; after all, how can we agree with theory in classroom, and then leave it at the door? I feel that studying what occurred is important because, as Christina Elizabeth Sharpe (1999, p. 102) wrote in ‘‘Racialized Fantasies on the Internet,’’ ‘‘we continue to seek to regulate bodies and thoughts on the Net in the same ways we do in RL [real life].’’ Lisa Nakamura’s (2002, p. 61) book, Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet, echoes this sentiment and analyzes stereotypes from older media (film, television,

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books) onto new media (i.e., the Internet). Virtual actions and representations are vital subjects because they reflect – and inform – real life (RL) actions and representations. In this chapter, I will use examples from the online comments from The Daily Illini’s website to illustrate problematic trends surrounding the removal of ‘‘Chief Illiniwek.’’ These ideologies are served by the Internet medium, which facilitates cyberbullying. I will then extrapolate these ideas and apply them to the larger concerns surrounding subaltern studies programs, as well as more recent events on the campus. It is my belief that it is, in fact, because the Internet allows for anonymity and play not afforded in RL that behavior exhibited there is more authentic, as less censors and filters are utilized. This phenomenon is oftentimes referred to as the ‘‘hyperpersonal effect,’’ as coined by Joe Walther (Bans, 2008, p. 58). With the absence of physical proximity, accountability and culpability are practically nonexistent, which eases social anxieties. Sherry Turkle (1999, p. 643), a prominent member of the Internet Studies field, details how the fragmentation and anonymity of Internet identities allow experimentation and an overflow of passion that is not normally permitted in RL. We are free, to a certain extent, to explore, but that freedom is still grounded in RL. However, ‘‘It is not simply that we can be more ‘honest’ about race issues on the Internet because we are not accountable but that the personas we create (even if they begin as ‘us’) start to take on lives of their own in relation to those whom they encounter’’ (Sharpe, 1999, p. 1094). Identities are forged as much in opposition to as in alliance with others; the interaction between authors oftentimes results in a (false) dichotomy. This feeds the limited critical engagement, as posts consist of simplistic sentiments such as, ‘‘I completely agree’’ or ‘‘You couldn’t be any more wrong.’’ A particularly potent example of the problematic behavior on the comment boards happened in response to the presence of a member of the STOP Coalition who was actively involved in running the RPP Forum. This individual is commonly read as a Middle Eastern immigrant female, although she wears clothes unremarkable on the UIUC campus and has no distinguishing dialect. Regarding this individual’s actions during the Forum, ‘‘Jenna T.’’7 complained about ‘‘[t]he Muslim lady who can’t realize that she is ‘empowered’ to talk about American ‘racism’ while she wouldn’t be allowed to open her mouth in her native culture,’’ after the article ‘‘STOP Forum Lets Students Voice Concerns’’ on February 2, 2007. The individual which ‘‘Jenna T.’’ is referencing never spoke of her religion, and there was no visual indication that this individual was Muslim, except for the


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connotation of her phenotypic characteristics. This individual was wearing a head wrap that covered all of her hair and the top of her ears and twisted into a knot on the back of her head, which was seemingly being mistaken for a hijab.8 This type of head wrap is not, as far as I am aware or can find, indicative of Muslim identity. After my inquiry as to the accuracy of ‘‘Jenna T.’s’’ label of ‘‘Muslim’’ and reference to her ‘‘native country,’’ ‘‘Martin’’ posted, ‘‘she was dressed in traditional Muslim garb – not that creepy, one-eyed ‘total’ burkah, but something highly recognizable as such, nevertheless [sic].’’ After numerous posts by myself and others, ‘‘Martha’’ posted: [M]y favorite part of her (a couple too) many interventions [referring to my posts] was when she started to explain how it wasn’t obvious that a sadly dressed lady from the ‘‘open forum’’ was from wherever she was. Yeah, sure, it wasn’t obvious, not at all. After all, it could have been Armani, right? After all, a woman allowed to glance at the outside world through one little hole is more ‘‘oppressed’’ by a sports mascot than by her burk y, oops, sorry for being so insensitive, through her ‘‘Armani’’ dress?

‘‘Martin,’’ ‘‘Martha,’’ and ‘‘Jenna T.’’ were reading this individual in the manner in which they were comfortable reading her: as a woman oppressed by her culture and religion who should be happy with the better life afforded her in the wonderfully liberated United States. Susan Muaddi Darraj (2002, p. 298) directly addresses this mindset of colonial feminism in ‘‘It’s Not an Oxymoron: The Search for an Arab Feminism’’: American feminists, like the rest of the nation and the Western world, had accepted the flawed image of the Middle East and Middle eastern women without question. ‘‘Of course, they (meek and silent Arab women) are oppressed; we (liberated, assertive Western women with voices) must help them’’ [y] the tone of white Western feminism – with its books about ‘‘lifting the veil on Arab women’’ and Arab women ‘‘lifting the veil of silence’’ – was that Arab feminism was nothing greater than an amusing oxymoron [emphasis in the original].

These authors mark the woman as oppressed by her ‘‘native culture’’ while simultaneously oppressing and silencing her themselves. Ironically, they both denounce (what they assume is) the treatment of Middle Eastern women and criticize this particular woman for her deviation from those same expectations. ‘‘Jenna T.,’’ ‘‘Martha,’’ and ‘‘Martin’’ applied their own cultural expectations on the individual to co-opt and silence her. They exercised their power to judge this individual based on her appearance alone. As this individual was visually ‘‘other,’’ she was therefore from ‘‘there,’’ not ‘‘here’’; ‘‘there’’ being inherently worse than ‘‘here,’’ and so, she has

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been saved by being ‘‘here.’’ And as an ‘‘other,’’ she had no right to critique ‘‘here.’’ The construction of ‘‘there’’ as worse is important to U.S. interests and as well as the presence of U.S. troops ‘‘there’’; it was also important that this individual was both identified and maintained as ‘‘other.’’ When I posted arguments regarding the colonialism enacted through feminism directed at ‘‘Third World’’ countries, a (predictable) violent backlash ensued. It is worth noting ‘‘Martha’s’’ amalgamation of burquas and hijabs, which are two very different items of clothing, but which Americans – specifically American (colonial) ‘‘feminists’’9 – have an interest in keeping conflated. There are also important implications in ‘‘Martha’s’’ label of ‘‘sadly dressed’’ and sarcastic use of ‘‘Armani.’’ Posing ‘‘sadly dressed’’ as the opposite of wearing Armani sends a clear message about class and status: If you can afford to wear Armani, then you have more license to speak your mind and you are probably less oppressed. However, if you are an oppressed ‘‘other’’ (both signified by and a result of your ‘‘sad’’ clothing), than you do not have money or the privilege to speak against the imagined glory of ‘‘America.’’10 The individual in question was perceived to be Muslim because of the combination of her phenotypic characteristics and a head wrap, which was misread as a hijab. ‘‘Martha’s’’ invocation of a burqua (which was in no way similar to any clothing item that the individual was wearing) supports ‘‘her’’ argument about the oppressed nature of women in Muslim cultures better than the more socially acceptable hijab (although tensions surround both). ‘‘Martha’s’’ disinterest in specificity and accuracy is emblematic of ‘‘her’’ desire to stereotype others and maintain the position of superiority as someone from ‘‘here.’’ The removal of the ‘‘Chief ’’ mascot was complicated by its close ties to tensions surrounding subaltern studies. As an institution known for its engineering and science programs, the humanities at UIUC are generally an afterthought in comparison. The split between politics and academia is rooted in the fallacy that academia can and should be completely objective; hence, why the humanities and subaltern studies programs are viewed as illegitimate fields of study and any perceived political aim renders them suspect. This is particularly evident at UIUC, as its flagship programs are all in the sciences. The false dichotomy between the ‘‘real’’ sciences and the ‘‘tainted’’ and ‘‘fabricated’’ humanities is clearly felt on the campus and was evident in many posts. My Letter to the Editor about this imbrication was published on February 27, 2007, and assigned the title, ‘‘A Holistic Look at the Chief Controversy.’’ Instead of engaging with these intertwined tensions,


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‘‘Econ. Alum. (2007)’’ provided an excellent example of the trend my letter addressed: There’s nothing new about the substance of the courses offered by the Angry Studies departments. That is, there never was any [y] What is new now is that the beggars claim to be choosers. They are not happy with the many millions handed over to them, with no reasonable expectations of ANYthing in return. They are not happy with the dozens of courses (ridiculously overlapping, in a carnival of manifest waste and triumphant demagoguery) that they’re being overpaid for [emphasis in the original].

As previously stated, the performativity of online identities often yields polarization; either one agrees or does not agree with the opinion posted and ignores the intricacies of the debate. The individual responds accordingly, identifying with or defining themselves against one another. This creates two main camps and leads to group mentalities, and therefore, less open engagement with others; hence, why ‘‘Econ. alum’’ did not engage with my argument, but simply sounded off on their view of the problems within the humanities. This trend fed into the general railing against subaltern studies and ‘‘PC-ness’’ in the online forums. There was a building of privileged identities in opposition to all ‘‘others,’’ which, as seen above, were oftentimes lumped under the banner of ‘‘Angry Studies.’’ ‘‘Singer and Chief Fan’’ (2007) posted the following after the article, ‘‘STOP Responds to University Chief Decision’’ printed on February 23, 2007: Perhaps we should create a petition including not only the Chief matter, but also a provision according to which the University’s budget should not be wasted anymore on third-rate ‘‘pity departments,’’ producing nothing but ignorance, racism, and hatred. Imagine how many useful things could be done on this campus if we saved the hundreds of millions spent on ungrateful semi-professionals who’re always unhappy, whatever they’re given [sic].

The ‘‘real’’ problem, according to ‘‘Econ. alum’’ and ‘‘Singer and Chief Fan,’’ lay within the Angry Studies departments, who alone fabricated the ‘‘chief’’ controversy; without their baiting, there would be no issue with the mascot. These broad insults directed at the humanities and identity-based studies became personal attacks at times. After the February 3, 2007 article, ‘‘STOP Forum Lets Students Voice Concerns,’’ ‘‘Jenna T.’’ posted the following in response to one of my posts: Nobody will ever hire you because of your political views, distorted and shrill as they are in my view, or amazingly progressive and immaculately ethical, as they may seem to you. Proudly writing ‘‘I opposed the ‘racist’ Chief[’’] in your C.V. won’t get you anywhere.

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Newsflash: you need to actually be competent in something. Sorry if that is ‘‘sexist,’’ ‘‘classist,’’ ‘‘racist’’ or whatever. Life after graduation is not really consistent with the self-righteous cocoon you live in, right now [y] Perhaps you should spend a little more time in the library?

Another common mode for attack was gendered comments. Although I used my full name, I never identified any aspect of my identity other than that which could easily be found on the UIUC search engine (i.e., my major and degree). Therefore, although my sex and gender were never proclaimed, I was commonly infantilized and demeaned with feminine characteristics. ‘‘Silly little girl’’ was commonly used by the comment author ‘‘Martin’’ to demean me and my posts. In addition, other posters utilized gender to criticize me for deviating from their ideals of female students/citizens. ‘‘Martha’’ posted the following in a comment after the article ‘‘University to End Chief Performance’’ published on February 16, 2007: Frustrated, incoherent chicks like a certain Cassidy C. B. [y] hopeless virgins with no life, with no hope of a real life – will feel their worthlessness being cheaply vindicated for at least one lonely night [by the BOT decision to end the dancing of ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ at sporting events] [y] Look on the bright side, little girl. Whatever you do in life, there will never EVER be any insinuation that you would have slept your way to the top of that Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. People will know better than that.

It is also interesting that a political issue – the ‘‘Chief ’’ mascot – was routinely sexualized, and that sexuality was used to police individuals and their views in tandem with gender. Similarly, another author was criticized for his lack of manhood by ‘‘Martin’’ on the comments following ‘‘STOP Responds to University’s Chief Decision’’ published on February 23, 2007. ‘‘Oh, man, sorry you’ve got such a small dick but, let me tell you, you could wear the outfit of five Chiefs, you still couldn’t satisfy any chick.’’ This also alludes to the presumed masculine prowess that the regalia is seen to bestow and the virility attributed to (and feared of) Native men. Failure at female-ness was utilized as an insult directed at me on more than one occasion. ‘‘Martin,’’ after ‘‘Dissention to the Forum,’’ printed on February 5, 2007, posted the following comment: To tell you the truth, and please don’t take this personally, I had ulcers which were more charming, I’ve met literally illiterate persons who had more common sense, I’ve sent out – in five stars restauraunts farts – which were so much more seductive than (the discourse of) certain persons at the ‘‘open forum.’’ One can guess, if not sense, when somebody’s looking hard, desperately so, for a husband. When it comes to the subject of old maids, I suspect some of the ‘‘open forum’’ protagonists may be called on one day on Oprah, to give their uniqiely authoritative insights on the subject [sic].


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As I had specifically asked on several occasions to not be gendered, it is not too surprising that it became a common mode of dismissal. However, it is still important that ‘‘Martin’’ identified the only possible motivation for participation in these events and causes (for assumedly heterosexual females) to be finding a male mate. For these insults to be effective, the assumption is that all individuals are participants in Western heteronormativity and that the ‘‘correct’’ performance of gender and sexuality is a paramount concern. Activists often face external questioning and personal doubts about the relevance of their efforts. Since the removal of ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ in March of 2007, many pro-‘‘Chiefers’’ have demanded, ‘‘What has changed? What did the ‘Chief ’ have to do with racism or our everyday lives?’’. There were numerous posts that were heartening for me throughout this intervention; one was posted under the name, ‘‘UIUC’’ after the February 7, 2007 Letter to the Editor entitled, ‘‘Dissention to the Forum’’: It’s amazing how dismissive and maligning people can be when they do not have to associate themselves authentically with the thoughts they spew. Cassidy, your willingness to explain these difficult constructs is extremely giving. Your continued presence on these boards has been inspirational in your clear understanding of humanity, and in the belief you show in the power information and reflective knowledge can play in building awareness, empathy, and social justice [y] Please be aware that you and the sentiments you have so generously expressed over the last week on these boards are very supported from many who do not wish to be thrown into the disrespectful fray that discussion on race has become on this campus [sic].

Needless to say, this post was mercilessly attacked and even attributed to me in the attempts to discredit the sentiments. Packing all dissenting voices into one corner was a common tactic to ‘‘other’’ and dismiss. However, the post gave me hope, as I hoped my posts did for others. As Maria Fernandez (2002, p. 41) wrote in ‘‘Cyberfeminism, Racism, Embodiment’’, ‘‘[b]y acknowledging the power of embodied, nonverbal practices, cyberfeminists can subvert and deploy established forms of discipline to form and strengthen positive, powerful alliances.’’ The virtual behavior and ideologies discussed in this chapter are evident in the RL vandalism of a recent art installation on the UIUC campus. ‘‘Beyond the Chief,’’ by Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne-Arapaho), an internationally renowned multimedia artist, consists of 12 outdoor signs identifying and remembering the campus and Illinois as Native lands. On seven separate occasions since the opening on February 18, 2009 to May 20, 2009, the signs have been vandalized, damaged, and most recently, several were stolen. These acts reinforce that which the piece is

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meant to disrupt: appropriation, entitlement, and forgotten histories. The signs physically exist in and around the cultural houses on campus – the Native American House, the Asian American Cultural Center, La Casa Cultural Latina, and the Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center – thereby violating these safe spaces and adding further significance to the transgression. Although many saw the activism surrounding the removal of the ‘‘Chief ’’ and the RPP Forum as creating discord, the goal was to bring harmony to a campus already in chaos. In this era of what Patricia Hill Collins (2004, p. 54) calls ‘‘New Racism,’’ it is very common for those speaking of existing systems of power and privilege to be characterized as imagining discrimination. Evidence of such systems is demanded, and then the evidence is commonly discredited as too specific or the hypersensitivity or imaginings of only one person. As individual rights for women and people of color are now in the law books, the United States has entered a dangerous conceptualization of our development: ‘‘post-sexism,’’ ‘‘post-racism,’’ and ‘‘post-discrimination.’’ Former, less ignorable, institutional discrimination is forgotten in our post-state of place and being. Cultural/historical amnesia masks complicity in these systems. ‘‘Legitimate’’ oppression has become impossible to claim and is often used against the non-privileged attempting to articulate their lived experiences. The President of the local NAACP chapter spoke at the RPP Forum during the public comments section. In his speech, he quoted Jonathan Swift, poignantly noting that University President Joseph White had recently done the same at the 2007 Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration: ‘‘There are none so blind as those who will not see.’’ The goal of my intervention was to help others to see, although I recognize my own need for glasses.

NOTES 1. I put the name ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ in quotes to mark that it is a fabricated mascot and not an actual Chief or an actual person. I feel that this is an important demarcation because of the appropriation of Native culture inherent in the former mascot as well as the common anthropomorphizing utilized to defend its use. 2. The Daily Illini has no official ties to UIUC, although it is the primary (and free) source for news on and about campus.


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3. The Forum was held in Foellinger Auditorium, which is on the main UIUC campus. It included a panel of UIUC administrators (President Joseph White, Chancellor Richard Herman, Provost Linda Katehi, Vice Chancellor Rene Romano, Dean of Students William Riley, and Faculty Senate member Vernon Burton) who attended to both listen and answer questions. The event was billed as ‘‘an open forum to discuss the presence of racism, power and privilege’’ on the campus and was attended by approximately 3,000 students, faculty, and staff and watched live online and on monitors set up throughout the campus by hundreds more. 4. Oftentimes, articles misreported facts and misquoted individuals. The misinformation regularly benefited the public image of the UIUC administration. 5. My full name allowed access to my e-mail address, department, major, and office phone number through the UIUC homepage’s ‘‘Directory’’ function. 6. STOP had experienced several breeches of trust and confidentiality just before that time, and so, the members were a bit cautious about newcomers. 7. I put all names of online comment authors (and any connected pronouns) in quotes to denote their performativity; the names are constructions of the authors and may or may not have any real connection to their actual identity. 8. I feel that this conclusion is reasonable given the recent (post-9/11) surge of interest/hysteria regarding Muslim identity markers. More evidence supporting this conclusion is included later in the chapter. 9. I put the word ‘‘feminists’’ in quotation marks because I feel that the term has come to signify something very different than I believe the philosophy supports. 10. This classist and racist mentality is reinforced by tensions surrounding Affirmative Action practices. Admission to UIUC is regarded as highly selective, and those thought to be present through Affirmative Action policies and scholarships are sometimes labeled as ‘‘inferior’’ students. These policies were in the news and discussed on the comment boards at length in The Daily Illini in the fall of 2007 (The Daily Illini Editorial Board, 2007).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks to all of my STOP colleagues, who were a family to me which I will never forget. Also, thanks to my professor, Shefali Chandra, who recognized my passion – and perhaps obsession – with this effort and encouraged me to write about it; the collaborative effort in her class with fellow students Emily Schell and Susan Johnson-Roehr was unique and wonderfully productive. As I continued this research, my colleague Aimee Rickman has been an essential sounding board and resource. And finally, thanks to my partner, who has been there through all of these stages and reminds me when it is time to let it go for the night and get some sleep.

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REFERENCES Bans, L. (2008). Same shit different world. Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, 39, 56–62. Collins, P. H. (2004). Black sexual politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism. New York: Routledge. Darraj, S. M. (2002). It’s not an oxymoron: The search for an Arab feminism. In: D. Hernańdez & B. Rehman (Eds), Colonize this!: Young women of color on today’s feminism (pp. 295–311). California: Seal Press. Econ. Alum. (2007). A holistic look at the chief controversy, February 27. Message posted to http://media.www.dailyillini.com/home/index.cfm?event ¼ displayArticle&ustory_id ¼ 0ddce232-b8e0-4859-8a89-78fa7cfb1544 Fernandez, M. (2002). Cyberfeminism, racism, embodiment. In: M. Fernandez, F. Wilding & M. M. Wright (Eds), Domain errors! Cyberfeminist practices (pp. 29–44). New York: Autonomedia. hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking black. Massachusetts: South End Press. Jenna T. (2007). STOP forum lets students voice concerns, February 2. Message posted to http://www.dailyillini.com/home/index.cfm?event ¼ displayArticle&ustory_id ¼ 9ee4bf0113cf-4236-8ebc-404e506654b9 Martha. (2007a). STOP forum lets students voice concerns, February 2. Message posted to http://www.dailyillini.com/home/index.cfm?event ¼ displayArticle&ustory_id ¼ 9ee4bf0113cf-4236-8ebc-404e506654b9 Martha. (2007b). University to end chief performance, February 16. Message posted to http:// media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2007/02/16/News/University. To.End.Chief.Performance-2724408.shtml Martin. (2007a). Dissention to the forum, February 5. Message posted to http://media. www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2007/02/05/Letters/Dissension.To. The.Forum-2695503.shtml Martin. (2007b). STOP forum lets students voice concerns, February 2. Message posted to http://www.dailyillini.com/home/index.cfm?event ¼ displayArticle&ustory_id ¼ 9ee4bf0113cf-4236-8ebc-404e506654b9 Martin. (2007c). STOP responds to university’s chief decision, February 23. Message posted to http://media.www.dailyillini.com/home/index.cfm?event ¼ displayArticleComments& ustory_id ¼ c90b194b-7331-478a-95bc-6cb11576bf14&startRow ¼ 1 Nakamura, L. (2002). Cybertypes: Race, ethnicity, and identity on the Internet. New York: Routledge. Nakamura, L. (2008). Digitizing race: Visual cultures of the Internet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sharpe, C. E. (1999). Racialized fantasies on the Internet. Signs, 24(4), 1090–1096. Singer and Chief Fan. (2007). STOP responds to university’s chief decision, February 23. Message posted to http://media.www.dailyillini.com/home/index.cfm?event ¼ displayArticleComments&ustory_id ¼ c90b194b-7331-478a-95bc-6cb11576bf14&start Row ¼ 1


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The Daily Illini Editorial Board. (2007). Race, power, and progress at forum?, February 1. Available at http://media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2007/02/ 01/Editorials/Racism.Power.And.Progress.At.Forum-2690943.shtml. Retrieved on November 4, 2007. Turkle, S. (1999). Looking beyond cyberspace: beyond grounded sociology. Symposium, 28(6), 643–648. UIUC. (2007). Dissention to the forum, February 5. Message posted to http://media.www. dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2007/02/05/Letters/Dissention.To.The. Forum-2695503.shtml.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHIEF ILLINIWEK? CONSUMING ‘‘INDIANNESS’’ IN THE SHADOWS OF MEMORIAL STADIUM Michael D. Giardina Social realism in this country is a television commercial celebrating America. – Joe Bageant (2007)

PROEM Looking back, I remember the moment, as a graduate student many moons ago (or, perhaps, it just seems like it), going to a football game my first semester at the University of Illinois and witnessing the much talked about halftime spectacle of its ‘‘embodied mascot’’ (King, 2007), Chief Illiniwek, performing (fake) ‘‘traditional’’ war dances. It was altogether too easy to get caught up in the pomp and circumstance of the moment: swaying back and forth with fellow students and alums alike as the marching band played the traditional ‘‘Three-In-One’’; experiencing the crescendo of emotion; joining in the sense of collective membership in some grand idea – school spirit, or whatnot. A sense of community prevailed throughout. At the same time, it was also really, really, unsettling, recalling the mesmerizing, unified, pridein-nation imagery running rampant throughout Leni Riefenstahl’s Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 34, 151–167 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2010)0000034011

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(2006[1936]) Olympia. And this was only the first time I had experienced the ritual performance in person. But a great many of the 52,417 in attendance that day had been coming to their Greek-columned church of Memorial Stadium to pay homage to the football gods their entire lives, especially students from the state whom had grown up always already with an eye on attending the university (of which was common). Had been living under the constant bombardment of mediated pedagogies continuously working to construct and frame ‘‘the Chief ’’ as an accurate, respectful, and honest depiction of Native Americans. Had been reiteratively negotiating these competing discourses in their daily lives ad infinitum. All of it resulted in a near-unflinching and unquestioned allegiance by many to a cultural ‘‘tradition’’ that was, but a ‘‘truth’’ that wasn’t. Because this truth was pure fantasy, pure cultural mythology. A lie believed, made true, out of its falsity (or perhaps its wikiality, as Stephen Colbert might have it): the real seemingly disappeared into the surrounding cornfields.

Traversing the fractured landscape of cultural politics operative on the University of Illinois campus – and in the United States more generally – this chapter offers a series of narrative collages concerning both Chief Illiniwek and other mediated pedagogies of ‘‘Indianness’’ circulating throughout contemporary popular cultural formations. I write from the position of someone who was a student at the University of Illinois during the time when the Chief debates were ongoing and who is now a professor at the same institution in the post-Chief performance days. As such, it is unsurprising that I have friends on both sides of the Chief debate, creating a dialectic struggle that has no doubt informed what follows below. One thing, however, is clear: as both students and professors at the University of Illinois can attest, the Chief has always already informed the atmosphere of our campus environment.

CONSUMING MEDIATED PEDAGOGIES OF ‘‘INDIANNESS’’ February 16, 2007. Checking my email in the morning, I am surprised to find a note from the University’s Chancellor with a banal ‘‘MASSMAIL – Chief Illiniwek’’ subject line. To my amazement, the message – sent to all faculty, staff, and students – reads simply and in part: ‘‘A decision has been made

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regarding the Chief Illiniwek tradition. For more information, go to http:// www.uillinois.edu/chief.’’ When I follow the link, I’m shocked to find a press release, which begins: Chief Illiniwek Will No Longer Perform: NCAA to lift sanctions on Illini athletics URBANA – The University of Illinois today announced that Chief Illiniwek will no longer perform at athletic events on the Urbana-Champaign campus after this season’s last men’s home basketball game in Assembly Hall on February 21. As a consequence, the University will immediately become eligible to host post-season National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship events.

After 81 years as the corporealized face of the University, and after decades of controversy and turmoil, heated debate and town hall dialogues, national media attention, and public celebration/derision, the issue is finally ‘‘settled,’’ written away to the dustbin of history with a two-page press release. All that was left to come was the intense backlash, and come it certainly did, in the form of campus protests, local news reports, and even in public comment sections of various blogs: Dark day for the Illini. The Chief was never considered a ‘‘mascot’’ by the students, but a symbol of the fighting spirit of the Illini. The dance was not over-done and provided a halftime reunion for students and alumni. Too bad that the primary moving force is the almighty dollar. Big deal about hosting NCAA events. I believe that the vast majority of Native Americans who would have viewed the appearance, [the] dance of the Chief, and the enthusiasm it provided to all who were there would have felt immense pride and joy in the celebration. DM – class of 1960.

Or this: It’s sad to see that an honorable tradition can be labeled ‘‘racist’’ by a vocal minority, and that by simply making the statement, it must obviously be true. Has all rational thought been removed from civil society? Soon it will become self evident that primates have all the rights of humans and plants have feelings too. Anon – Class of 1987.

Or this, posted on The Daily Illini’s blog by an intrepid reader: Nobody actually has legit descendence [sic] from the Illiniwek tribe, though. The Peoria’s claim is very negligible. It represents us [University of Illinois students, apparently] far more than them [Native Americans]. (quoted in Contorno, 2007, Emphasis added)

Or even these three ‘‘fan responses,’’ contained in the print version of the ‘‘alternative conservative libertarian’’ campus paper, the Orange & Blue Observer1: I was upset and angry that a tradition was taken away. There was no good reason to get rid of [the Chief].

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I am disappointed and angry. The Chief is a tradition of honor and loyalty. He is the pinnacle of what the school represents. [The retirement of the Chief] kills the spirit [of the University students] and is insulting.

Social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook correspondingly reveal the ever-unfolding story in real time, with dozens upon dozens of ‘‘Save the Chief ’’ groups springing up, and thousands of people joining. Caustic comments on the order of ‘‘F the Illiniwek tribes, this is our heritage’’ pervade, perhaps encouraged by the anonymity of online space. Others write that the Chief symbol ‘‘encourages unity and togetherness.’’2 I see several students in my class the Tuesday following the announcement wearing black Chief t-shirts and read in the campus newspaper of a plan to hold a candlelight vigil in his honor! (see Sturges, 2007). Other students plan public rallies before the final game of the basketball season. Sales of Illiniwekbranded apparel shoot through the roof as students, fans, and alums alike seek to hold onto a fading remnant of the(ir?) past (DesGarennes, 2007).

March 31, 2007. The weekend before baseball’s 2007 Opening Day, Major League Baseball (MLB) hosts a ‘‘Civil Rights Game’’ in Memphis, Tennessee. One problem: someone did not give it much thought. As the editorial crew from Deadspin – considered by many the premier sports blog on the Internet – was quick to point out in a post sarcastically titled, ‘‘If The Indians Win, Do Native Americans Get Civil Rights?’’: In about a half an hour, Major League Baseball is going through with something they’re calling ‘‘The Civil Rights Game,’’ which was a really really nice idea y until Major League Baseball screwed it up about as badly as anything can be screwed up. Participating in the Civil Rights Game will be the Cleveland Indians, who have a redfaced caricature of a Native American as their mascot. It’s kind of like having a 9/11 benefit game, and asking Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [one of the principle architects of the 9/11 attacks] to throw out the first pitch. (Deadspin Editorial, 2007, p. 1)3

They go on to quote Memphis Bengal (2007, p. 1) of The Sports Frog as stating, The problem [with the game]? MLB invited the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cleveland Indians. Of the Chief Wahoo Indians. To a city that was on the Trail of Tears. With people in and near Memphis that are ancestors of that particular genocidal event. To a game that is supposed to commemorate one race’s struggle for equality and acceptance. With a team that sports, to a good chunk of the people that matter, a logo and name that is inherently offensive.


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Almost without fail, the national print media was largely absent from any criticism of the ‘‘historic’’ event, choosing instead to celebrate MLB for laudably commemorating African American achievement in baseball and to promote its initiatives for increasing African American participation in youth baseball.4 However, the New York Daily News – the fifth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the country – saved the day, ably referring to the game and its controversy as a ‘‘primer on how to inadvertently stage an ironic insult to a local and large population of Natives y Professional baseball apparently wants to pretend that Native Americans are all dead and don’t matter, like dinosaurs’’ (Bondy, 2007, p. 1). In what was a clear mea culpa, MLB decreed that both teams would wear ‘‘special’’ Civil Rights Game uniforms, meaning that Cleveland would not be displaying any representations of its Chief Wahoo mascot (which Zimmerman [2007] describes as ‘‘a grotesque caricature grinning idiotically through enormous buck teeth y [and] a reminder of the days when whites regarded native Americans as savages on the warpath, with scalps dangling from their belts’’). However, it was a wholly unconvincing moment of backpedaling. As pointed out in an article titled ‘‘Tribal outcry: Chief Wahoo walks the Trail of Tears’’ for Cleveland Scene (First Punch, 2007, p. 1): [Cleveland Vice President Bob] DiBiasio says there’s nothing demeaning about the Indians’ name or logo. ‘‘We are who we are. Our logo is what it is y When people look at our logo, they think of baseball.’’ Unless, of course, they don’t. ‘‘I don’t see baseball,’’ says [Pat] Cummins [of Tennessee’s Alliance for Native American Indian Rights]: ‘‘I see the exploitation and the disrespect toward an entire ethnic group.’’

When I email some the above snippets to a fellow colleague, who is an authority on Native American mascot issues, representations, and histories, she responds with an irritated yet unsurprising: ‘‘They should just hang a giant sign on the outfield wall that says ‘Colonial oppression and racial hierarchies represented here.’’’

April 26, 2007. When The Daily Show with Jon Stewart – the preeminent fake-news program in the country – comes calling to your University to

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cover an issue, you know you have cringingly made it to the big time. Featuring such satiric-minded teˆte-a`-teˆtes as Leanne Howe, Professor of Native American Studies: The University made the absolute correct decision getting rid of Chief Illiniwek. American Indians are not dancing clowns; we are human beings. Asif Mandvi, The Daily Show: Okay, but what if the football team totally kicks ass?

Correspondent Asif Mandvi skillfully presented ironic musings on both sides of the debate that in many ways far out-paced any of the (allegedly) not-fake local or national news coverage afforded the University (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 2007).5 Have we thus come to a point in American journalism where ‘‘fake’’ news is more insightful and critically oriented than ‘‘real’’ (i.e., not fake) news? Apparently. When questioned by Bill Moyers (2003) of PBS as to whether The Daily Show was ‘‘practicing an old form of parody and satire y or a new form of journalism,’’ Stewart replied with a keen sense of introspective humility laced with a degree of professional frustration: Well then that either speaks to the sad state of comedy or the sad state of news. I can’t figure out which one. I think, honestly, we’re practicing a new form of desperation. Where we just are so inundated with mixed messages from the media and from politicians that we’re just trying to sort it out for ourselves. [y] we don’t make things up. We just distill it [y] I can’t tell you how many times we’ll run into a journalist and [they’ll] go, ‘‘Boy that’syI wish we could be saying that. That’s exactly the way we see it and that’s exactly the way we’d like to be saying that.’’6 And I always think, ‘‘Well, why don’t you?’’7

In point of fact, as Fox, Koloen, and Sahin (2007, p. 222) conclude in their comparative analysis of The Daily Show to traditional broadcast television news coverage of the 2004 presidential election, The Daily Show’s coverage was ‘‘just as substantive as the broadcast networks’ campaign coverage.’’ Not only that, a National Annenberg Election Survey (Annenberg Public Policy Center, 2004) found that viewers of The Daily Show were ‘‘more educated and more interested in the presidential campaign than the average American and have higher campaign knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers – even when education, party identification, following politics, watching cable news, receiving campaign information online, age, and gender are taken into consideration.’’ Given the sad state of traditional media forms (i.e., print and broadcast), is it any wonder, then, as to how woefully uninformed we as a public are about Native issues? (Oh well, at least the President is up-to-speed about such issues, right?)


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(No.) George W. Bush, speaking at the ‘‘Unity: Journalists of Color’’ conference in Washington, DC, on August 6, 2004, was asked the following question by Mark Trahant, editorial page editor for the Seattle PostIntelligencer and former president of the Native American Journalists Association: ‘‘What do you think tribal sovereignty means in the 21st century, and how do we resolve conflicts between tribes and the federal and the state governments?’’ Although a complex, multifaceted question, one would hope the leader of the free world (elected or, Mr. Bush’s case, otherwise) could muster a response more nuanced than the following: Tribal sovereignty means that; it’s sovereign. You’re a – you’re a – you’ve been given sovereignty, and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity. And, therefore, the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.8

Wait – what? Given sovereignty? That sounds a bit, what’s the word, imperialist, perhaps? As Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians remarked in the wake of Mr. Bush’s comments, ‘‘[Sovereignty] is not something that was given to us. As tribes, we see sovereignty as something we’ve always had’’ (quoted in Kamb, 2004, p. 1). Despite the contemptible lack of understanding of Native issues on the part of our former president, ignorance of Native issues has not always been the order of the day on the part of national political figures (just most of them, it would seem). In his passionate book, The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days that Inspired America, Thurston Clarke (2008) writes at length about the extent to which Bobby Kennedy’s campaign for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination forcefully engaged with critical issues concerning the treatment and condition of Native Americans. As Clarke (2008, p. 155) recalls, No issue outraged Kennedy more than the high suicide rate among Indian teenagers. When he announced that he was running for president he condemned what he called ‘‘the inexcusable and ugly deprivation which causes y young Indians to commit suicide on their reservations because they’ve lacked all hope and they feel they have no future.’’ He kept talking about Indians throughout his campaign, telling Indiana steelworkers and Nebraska farmers that the reservations were a national disgrace, and that after discovering that an Indian child had died of starvation on the same day he visited her reservation, [he said] ‘‘a little bit of me died, too.’’

Clarke, to his credit, extends an entire chapter to the campaign interactions between Kennedy and Native causes, pointing out that of the 70 public events held during the first month of his 1968 campaign, 10 were on reservations or at Indian schools.9 He also notes numerous personal instances of Kennedy’s dedication to and frustration with federal responses to Native

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issues and causes throughout the 1960s, including one incident at a reservation in which Kennedy, who had been given the name Brave Heart at the 1963 convention of the National Congress of Indians, ‘‘became so furious after seeing a library book with an illustration of an Indian scalping a blond girl that NBC News correspondent Sander Vanocur decided [Kennedy] was someone who functioned ‘in a near state of outrage’’’ over the conditions of poverty and injustice in the United States (see pp. 153–165). Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s, magisterial treatment of Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and His Times (1978), identifies the book in question as Evelyn Nevin’s (1952) Captive of the Delawares (a fictionalized biography of Frances Slocum), noting, In 1967 [RFK] persuaded the Senate to set up a committee to study Indian education. He went into the schools on the reservations and asked if there were Indian teachers and whether they were teaching Indian culture and history. He looked at library shelves to see what Indians could read about their own past. At the Blackfoot reservation in Fort Hall, Idaho, they turned up only one book on Indians – Captive of the Delawares, its jacket showing an Indian scalping a blond child. (p. 793)

The implication here is that the imagery adorning Nevin’s text performs a pedagogical function of standardizing knowledge within an educational environment. As Michael Apple (2004, p. 80) argues, It has become increasingly evident that the formal corpus of school knowledge found in, say, most history books and social studies texts and materials has, over the years, presented a somewhat biased view of the true nature of the amount and possible use of internecine strife in which groups in this country and others have engaged. Our side is good; their side is bad. ‘‘We’’ are peace loving and want to end strife; ‘‘they’’ are warlike and aim to dominate.

In his discussion of politicized knowledge and standardized ways of knowing, Christopher D. Stonebanks (2008, p. 259) reminds us of the ‘‘particular enigma of Thanksgiving’’10 and the normalized operations of power at play in many contemporary celebrations circulating around that particular holiday. By way of example, he points to the ostensibly banal grade-school exercise of making ‘‘stereotypical black and white Pilgrim hats’’ at a fall festival (an activity that I myself recall doing as a child in elementary school), and how ‘‘natural’’ it seemed for both teacher and child alike. Yet, as such an act has become discursively naturalized, it has lost any ties to its critical history: When Stonebanks (2008, p. 160) asked the students who supervised a Pilgrim hat-making activity at a community festival why they had chosen to do so in the first place, they responded that ‘‘it just


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seemed like the thing to do; it was what they could readily find; it seemed harmless; and, ultimately, it seemed normal’’ (emphasis in original).11 At the core of Stonebanks’s (2008, pp. 259, 265) example is the implication concerning the ‘‘profound considerations about the manner in which we view knowledge – how it is attained y how it is disseminated’’ and how it reproduces ‘‘the same injustice and miseducation.’’12 I do not believe it a giant leap to suggest that it was precisely these kinds of implications that Robert F. Kennedy was reacting to when he came across Captive of the Delawares that day in Idaho.

About two months after the Chief retirement is announced, I invite a colleague to give a guest lecture on the sport-oriented marketing and promotion of Native American imagery throughout the twentieth century – including a brief bit about Chief Illiniwek – to my upper-level ‘‘Sport, Culture, & Advertising’’ class. While the lecture goes well at the start, there is a palpable mood change in the room when she moves on to her Chief material. During the question and answer period, students bombard her with questions, some confrontational in nature. Maybe, I think to myself, I shouldn’t have brought in the speaker y Perhaps the issue is still too ‘‘touchy’’ in the lingering wake of the decision y

But later, when the semester is over, I receive an email from a Latino student who was present for this particular lecture that changes my mind: On a final note before I graduate, I would like to let you know that I really like the fact that you implemented the ‘location branding’ section [in the course], and encouraged a discussion on the exploitation of poor, minority-based communities in the name of profit in places like Baltimore and Memphis instead of just talking about economic growth and corporate business opportunities like many other professors do. The second topic I most enjoyed was when you brought in the speaker to discuss the Chief. I think that section would be even better if it was extended for a larger discussion. The fact that you chose to have a discussion on the mascot issue at all was a sign of progress to me since most professors choose to leave it out completely. So, thank you for that – it was much needed.

October 30, 2007. At homecoming last week, an old face resurfaced. That’s right, the ‘‘retired’’ Chief Illiniwek was on hand, as ‘‘[h]is likeness appeared on the side of a couple of floats, face-forward, fully framed in feathers’’ (Saulny, 2007, p. 1). It was in the name of ‘‘free speech’’ that the prohibition

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on the usage of the Chief logo and attendant variations was lifted. Per a University statement: The university values free speech and free expression, and considers homecoming floats, decorations, costumes, and related signage all representations of such personal expression. Therefore, Chancellor Herman has directed the Homecoming Committee to strike the existing policy from the homecoming float guidelines. (Saulny, 2007, p. 1)

While this pronouncement alleviated some of the campus tension caused by the potential re-emergence of the Chief, it raised another set of questions. As education scholar (and University of Illinois professor) Antonia Darder (2007) asked in an open letter to the Chancellor: If a float maker wants to use KKK imagery or a noose hanging from a tree on a homecoming float, is this now also acceptable under the auspices of ‘free expression?’ Or if a float maker wants to use images of people copulating or nude participants on a float, would this also be accepted as the freedom of personal expression? And if not, why not? Certainly if public nudity is considered immoral or at least inappropriate, why not public racism? [y] Historically, public institutional expressions of racism in this society have only changed when people had the courage, dignity, and love to stand against such immorality. With so many colleges and universities across this country showing real commitment and wherewithal in stopping the use of ‘‘Indian’’ mascots, why not UIUC [University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign]? How can such a prestigious university allow itself to behave so backward, in the face of so much suffering?13

Darder’s statement makes me think of the position of David Diehl, a lineman for the National Football League’s New York Giants (and an alum of the University of Illinois), who introduced himself during the pregame coverage of a recent Giants/Cowboys game as ‘‘David Diehl, from the University of Chief Illiniwek.’’ The remark, made during a nationally televised primetime game, received scant notice in the press, save for the occasional blog comment of support, such as ‘‘I was proud of Diehl’s proclamation. Obviously, I am on the side to Save the Chief. I think the Fighting Illini Indian is a dignified symbol of Native American ancestry. It should definitely not be looped in with Chief Wahoo of the Cleveland Indians’’ (Pivoney, 2006), or in the minutiae-laden ‘‘Page 2’’ area on espn.com (see Gallo, 2007). Diehl is known for his charitable involvement with numerous causes and was, according to a colleague of mine who remembers teaching him in a Speech Communication course, an excellent student.14 By all accounts, he is a sterling representative of the University of Illinois, both athletically and academically; an alum to whom others can point with pride for his professional achievements and community


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involvement. Yet what effect does his ‘‘from the University of Chief Illiniwek’’ statement have on those students vehemently opposed to the Chief ? Or on alumni who are ashamed of their alma mater for taking so long to retire the Chief ? Or on the reputation of the University as a whole? Or, just as importantly, on those who wish to see the Chief reinstated? [And then I think of the orange and blue University of Illinois fleece blanket folded up in my bedroom closet. There’s an embroidered image – dead-center – of the Chief on it. It was a gift from a friend who meant it in a wholly non-ironic way. As was the longsleeved Illini Basketball t-shirt from a different friend, also an alum, which likewise features the Chief ’s visage on the front. If asked, both would say they are in favor of reinstating the Chief, although it is more of a case of the Chief being a passing non-issue for them rather than some deep-seated commitment to retaining a piece of their undergraduate experience from yesteryear. Is their continued promotion of the Chief, passive or otherwise – through the wearing of Chief apparel or giving it as gifts – of any greater offense than David Diehl’s? Should I be calling him out for his actions just because he happens to be in the public eye? No. Unless I’m prepared to call my friends out first.]

CODA A year after Chief Illiniwek’s retirement as an embodied mascot – and some 40 years after Bobby Kennedy forcefully brought Native issues into the political mainstream – we find no new answers, just lingering questions, as mediated representations of ‘‘Indians’’ and ‘‘Indianness’’ remain in the forefront of our late-capitalist [sporting] epoch: Atlanta Braves, Chicago Blackhawks, Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Chiefs, Washington Redskins, North Dakota Fighting Sioux, Florida State University Seminoles, and San Diego State University Aztecs. The list goes on and on. As for the University of Illinois, ‘‘the Chief’’ issue remains imbedded within the daily flow of flotsam and jetsam. During the February 2008 student elections, a non-binding ballot referendum passed by a vote of 7,718 to 2,052 in favor of reinstating Chief Illiniwek; under the column from the Daily Illini’s online reporting of the issue (see Kwalwaser, 2008, p. 1), 111 comments were left by interested parties (although most devolved into petty name-calling; naturally, Godwin’s Law was broken by about the fifteenth post). In numerous other campus articles attending to the anniversary of the retirement, pro- and anti-Chief comments by students remained the order of the day, ranging from ‘‘It represents the pride we have in our school: honor, strength, and the heritage of the state’’ on one hand to ‘‘When you have a symbol that’s like a minstrel show, I find that problematic y I feel it’s

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dehumanizing’’ on the other hand (quoted in Wool, 2008, p. 1). In a similar fashion, the Council of Chiefs, which is composed of former Chief Illiniwek performers, partnered with the Honor the Chief Society to name a new Chief, so as to ‘‘ensure that there is always a student on [the University of Illinois] campus that, on instant, can perform the dance with pride and honor’’ (Anderson, 2008, p. 1; see also Wilson, 2008, p. 1). Moreover, and while the University ordered that Chief merchandise ‘‘be phased out by the end of 2007,’’ the University was recently in negotiations ‘‘to license the Chief logo to a company that specializes in selling ‘vintage collection’ merchandise’’ (Daily Illini Editorial Board, 2008, p. 1). Thus, and despite the official ‘‘retirement’’ of Chief Illiniwek, the conditions on the ground have but only slight changed, the decision still too fresh in the minds of some students, alums, and local citizens to move beyond and look to a new day. In the last analysis, where we go from here is anyone’s guess.

NOTES 1. To get a general feel for this self-defined ‘‘alternative conservative and libertarian’’ paper, the same edition featured a cover story on the ‘‘joys of abstinence,’’ a ‘‘Draconian Code of the Month’’ segment (in this particular issue, it was the University’s policies on tolerance, respect, sensitivity, hate, and hate speech), disgust directed toward ‘‘negative’’ Christian labels, and a backpage story on how ‘‘unfair’’ Affirmative Action is. Numerous other points included calling living wage laws ‘‘socialism,’’ reproductive rights ‘‘abortion,’’ and hate speech ‘‘anything that conflicts with liberal ideas.’’ In 2005, the pamphlet made news by raffling off an AK47 assault rifle on campus to raise money to pay for the publication of future issues of the thrice-semester pamphlet, as well as ‘‘raise awareness about the benefits of gun ownership’’ (Siemplenski, 2005, p. 1). 2. As of June 9, 2008, there are 104 Facebook groups dedicated in some fashion to Chief Illiniwek, including the 7,701-member ‘‘Chief Illiniwek Forever’’ group, the 4,333-member ‘‘We’ll Never Forget Chief Illiniwek’’ group, and the 4,953-member ‘‘Save the Chief’’ group. Of note, a pro-Chief Facebook group was involved in promoting ‘‘threats of violence against an American Indian student, and hate speech directed at all American Indians’’ in January 2007 (see Herman, 2007a, 2007b, n.p.). 3. Coincidentally, Deadspin’s founding editor is Will Leitch (2007), a University of Illinois alum who now writes for New York Magazine. On the day after Chief Illiniwek was formally retired, Leitch posted the following editorial comment on the website, which is a subsidiary of the Gawker Media group, that adroitly captured the apatheistic mood of those whom have tired with the Chief issue: Last night, as tons of teary-eyed Central Illinoisians will tell you this morning, was the final dance of Chief Illiniwek, the skipping, painted white-guy-dressed-up-as-Injun who


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has ‘‘performed’’ at halftime of our alma mater’s sporting events for the last 80 years or so. Like most alums—or at least the ones who have a hard time emotionally identifying ourselves with a college kid in war paint, or any mascot, really—we’re both kind of sad that a symbol of our youth won’t be around anymore and pleased that the whole "debate" will finally end and we can get on with our lives. Can’t we just be the Wildcats like any other university? It would be nice to have a dumb, innocuous mascot that nobody thinks or cares about. (http://deadspin.com/sports/college-basketball/the-lastnight-of-the-chief-238746.php)

4. The official explanation as to why Cleveland was chosen to participate in the game stems from its long history of pioneering African Americans on the ballclub, such as Larry Doby, who was the first black player in the American League (in 1947, three months after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier), and Frank Robinson, MLB’s first black manager (1975). While never expressly stated, the St. Louis Cardinals were likely a default selection, as their AAA affiliate plays in Memphis, and whose stadium hosted the game. In 2008, the Chicago White Sox and New York Mets played each other in the second annual Civil Rights Game (also held in Memphis). 5. The Colbert Report, a spin-off from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, featured a pre-retirement-era Chief Illiniwek during the February 1, 2007 show. The imagery appeared during host Stephen Colbert’s satirical ‘‘Racism Retrospective’’ segment chronicling racial stereotypes in popular culture. The segment can be viewed at http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId ¼ 81635. 6. For example, the late Peter Jennings of ABC News, who has said that Stewart is ‘‘the man who often says in public what the rest of us tend to say only in the newsroom.’’ The full-throated indictment of the traditional news media has for many years been a cause ce´le`bre for Stewart, whether being interviewed as a guest himself (such as going on CNN’s now-defunct Crossfire, 2004, program to implore the hosts to ‘‘stop hurting America’’ because of their partisan hackery, 15 October), or when he is interviews journalists on his own show. One such example of the latter case occurred on June 17, 2008, when Stewart interviewed CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent, Lara Logan, about the U.S. news media and its coverage of the ‘‘realities’’ on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan: Stewart: Do you watch the news that we’re watching in the U.S.? Do you see what we’re hearing about the war [in Iraq and Afghanistan] here in the U.S.? Logan: No. If I were to watch the news that you’re getting in the U.S., I’d blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts.

7. Interview transcript available at http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_stewart.html 8. The video of the question and answer can be found online at http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v ¼ B5xVRXLgLxw 9. Clarke (2008) further notes that Kennedy’s campaign aides discouraged him from holding such events because they viewed them as ‘‘wastes of time’’ that would not yield votes and went so far as to remove the visits from his schedule. In response, Kennedy is remembered to have called his staffers ‘‘callous sons of bitches’’ before reinstating the events and to have later remarked to Fred Dutton (his de facto

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campaign manager), ‘‘Those of you who think you’re running my campaign don’t love Indians the way I do, you’re a bunch of bastards’’ (pp. 155–156). 10. Villaverde and Kincheloe (2005, p. 149) put it in very direct terms: A large part of myth and historical erasure, Thanksgiving celebrations and school lessons pain a picture of American Indian-English settler relations that is quite misleading. Such a depiction is important because Thanksgiving serves the central role of providing a national origin myth. From the traditional morality play of settler-Indian interactions, students gain an ideological understanding of America specially blessed by God, America forged by civilizing both the savages and the wilderness in which they resided, America as the representation of order in the sea of indigenous chaos—an ethnocentric vision of nation and self.

11. He goes on to note that after pushing the students a little harder about what they knew of the settlers of the Plymouth Colony, they responded that they honestly knew nothing. They did not know that they had been chronicled as ‘‘giving thanks to God for the smallpox plague y that devastated the Native population,’’ that they were ‘‘often seen as grave robbers who relied on Indian generosity,’’ and that within half a year of settlement, they had ‘‘killed a large percentage of Indians living in their proximity.’’ (Villaverde & Kincheloe, 2005, p. 149, 260)

12. Listen to the radical historian, Howard Zinn (2003, p. 685) describing his own educational interaction with similar origin stories, in A People’s History of the United States: From the first grade to graduate school, I was given no inkling that the landing of Christopher Columbus in the New World initiated a genocide, in which the indigenous population of Hispaniola was annihilated. Or that this just the first stage of what was presented as a benign expansion of the new nation (Louisiana ‘‘Purchase,’’ Florida ‘‘Purchase,’’ Mexican ‘‘Cession’’), but which involved the violent expulsion of Indians by unspeakable atrocities, from every square mile of the content, until there was nothing left to do with them but herd them onto reservations.

How depressing it is, in retrospect, that I had to wait until high school, when I read Zinn’s classic text on my own, to hear for the first time the Columbus myth exploded. Until then, the Thanksgiving and discovery holiday performances of my youth mirrored that of the stereotypical encounters chronicled by Zinn, Stonebanks, and others. 13. The full text of Darder’s open letter can be found at http://www.iresist. org/darder_open_letter.html 14. According to Laura Hettiger (2008) of The Daily Illini, Diehl graduated in three-and-a-half years and is currently only one course away from finishing a Master’s degree in Human Resource Education.


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REFERENCES Anderson, E. (2008). Council of Chiefs opens tryouts. The Daily Illini, 18 January. Available at http://media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2008/01/18/News/ Council.Of.Chiefs.Opens.Tryouts-3157768.shtml. Retrieved on June 1, 2008. Annenberg Public Policy Center. (2004). National Annenberg Election Survey (NAES). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania. Apple, M. (2004). Ideology and curriculum. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Bageant, J. (2007). Deer hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s class war. New York: Crown. Bengal, M. (2007). The civil rights game. The Sports Frog, 8 March. Available at http://www. sportsfrog.com/2007/03/the_civil_rights_game.php. Retrieved from March 26, 2008. Bondy, F. (2007). Selig’s uncivil wrong: Bud sends Indians and insulting message to Rights Game. The Daily News (New York), 8 March. Available at http://www.nydailynews.com/ sports/2007/03/08/2007-03-08_seligs_uncivil_wrong-2.html. Retrieved on March 27, 2008. Clarke, T. (2008). The last campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 days that inspired America. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Contorno, S. (2007). What losing the Chief means for athletics. DI Sports Wrap Up (a Daily Illini blog), 16 February. Available at http://blogs.dailyillini.com/sports/2007/02/16/ what-losing-the-chief-means-for-athletics Crossfire. (2004). Interview with Jon Stewart by Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson, 15 October. CNN. Daily Illini Editorial Board. (2008). Time for closure on the issue of the Chief. The Daily Illini, 18 January. Available at http://media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/ news/2008/01/18/Editorials/Time-For.Closure.On.The.Issue.Of.The.Chief-3157553.shtml. Retrieved on June 1, 2008. Darder, A. (2007). Open letter to the chancellor, 25 October. Available at http://www. iresist.org/darder_open_letter.html. Retrieved on March 28, 2007. Deadspin Editorial. (2007). If the Indians win, do Native Americans get civil rights? Deadspin.com, 31 March. Available at http://deadspin.com/sports/mlb/if-the-indianswin-do-native-americans-get-civil-rights-248670.php. Retrieved on March 26, 2008. DesGarennes, C. (2007). Apparel items with logo flying off shelves. The News-Gazette, 22 February. Available at http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2007/02/22/apparel_ items_with_logo_flying_off_shelves. Retrieved on June 6, 2008. First Punch. (2007). Tribal outcry: Chief Wahoo walks the Trail of Tears. Cleveland Scene, 21 March. Available at http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/tribal-outcry/Content?oid= 1498016. Retrieved on March 27, 2008. Fox, J. R., Koloen, G., & Sahin, V. (2007). No joke: A comparison of substance in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and broadcast network television coverage of the 2004 presidential election campaign. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 51(2), 213–227. Gallo, D. J. (2007). NFL insight you can’t find anywhere else. ESPN.com, 10 September. Available at from http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page ¼ gallo/070910& sportCat ¼ nfl. Retrieved on June 2, 2008. Herman, R. (2007a). MASSMAIL – Chief Illiniwek, 16 February. Email sent by the office of the Chancellor to all faculty, academic professionals, civil service staff, undergraduate students, and graduate student. Available at http://www.uillinois.edu/chief/Chief Release2-16-07.pdf

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Herman, R. (2007b). MASSMAIL – Violent threats unacceptable, 9 January. Email sent by the Office of the Chancellor to all faculty, academic professionals, civil service staff, undergraduate students, and graduate student. Available at http://nativeperspectiveonchiefilliniwek.blogspot.com/2007/01/chancellor-hermans-response-to-threat.html Hettiger, L. (2008). From big ten to big apple. The Daily Illini, 25 April. Available at http:// www.dailyillini.com/home/index.cfm?event ¼ displayArticle&ustory_id ¼ b9ad9173-c8294e2e-8f09-38909c4e37da. Retrieved June 2, 2008. Kamb, L. (2004). Bush’s comment on tribal sovereignty creates a buzz. Seattle PostIntelligencer, 13 August. Available at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/186171_ bushtribes13.html. Retrieved on June 2, 2008. King, C. R. (2007). Hostile environments: Anti-Indian imagery, racial pedagogies, and youth sport culture. In: M. D. Giardina & M. K. Donnelly (Eds), Youth culture and sport: Identity, power, and politics (pp. 147–160). London: Routledge. Kwalwaser, A. (2008). Chief referendum draws large amount of support. The Daily Illini, 29 February. Available at http://media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/ 2008/02/29/News/Chief.Referendum.Draws.Large.Amount.Of.Support-3243973.shtml. Retrieved on June 3, 2008. Leitch, W. (2007). The last night of the chief. Deadspin, 22 February. Available at http://deadspin.com/sports/college-basketball/the-last-night-of-the-chief-238746.php Retrieved on January 19, 2008. Moyers, B. (2003). Interview with Jon Stewart, 11 July. NOW on PBS. Available at http:// www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_stewart.html Nevin, E. C. (1952). Captive of the Delawares. New York: Abington-Cokesbury Press. Pivoney. (2006). View from the middle, 13 November. University of Chief Illiniwek. Available at http://kingpin1613.blogspot.com/2006/11/university-of-chief-illiniwek.html. Retrieved on June 13, 2007. Riefenstahl, L. (2006[1936]). (DVD). Olympia: The complete original edition. [Original release 1936]. Venice, CA: Pathfinder Home Entertainment. Saulny, S. (2007). University reverses policy to allow mascot’s return. The New York Times, 27 October. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/education/28mascot.html. Retrieved on June 1, 2008. Schlesinger, A. M., Jr. (1978). Robert Kennedy and his times. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Siemplenski, G. (2005). AK-47 assault rifle raffled at rally. The Daily Illini, 1 April. Available at http://media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2005/04/01/News/Ak47Assault.Rifle.Raffled.At.Rally-909876.shtml. Retrieved on June 3, 2008. Stonebanks, C. D. (2008). From politicized knowledge to standardized knowing: The trickledown effect in schools. In: N. K. Denzin & M. D. Giardina (Eds), Qualitative inquiry and the politics of evidence (pp. 250–269). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Sturges, J. (2007). Illiniwek supporters to hold vigil tonight. The Daily Illini, 26 February, p. 1. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. (2007). Trail of cheers, 3 May. Written by Asif Mandvi, Produced by Glenn Clements. Comedy Central. Available at http://www.comedycentral. com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId ¼ 86244. Retrieved on March 28, 2008. Villaverde, L., & Kincheloe, J. (2005). Engaging students as researchers: Researching and teaching thanksgiving in the elementary classroom. In: S. Steinberg & J. Kincheloe (Eds), Students as researchers: Creating classrooms that matter (pp. 149–166). New York: RoutledgeFalmer.


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Wilson, M. (2008). Council selects new Chief. The Daily Illini, 29 April. Available at http:// media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2008/04/29/News/Council.Selects. New.Chief-3354645.shtml. Retrieved on June 1, 2008. Wool, E. (2008). Has campus changed since the Chief left? Remnants of the Chief controversy still remain. The Daily Illini, 21 January. Available at http://media.www.dailyillini.com/ media/storage/paper736/news/2008/02/21/News/Has-Campus.Changed.Since.The.Chief. Left-3224658.shtml. Retrieved on June 2, 2008. Zimmerman, J. (2007). The Cleveland Indians’ mascot must go: Chief Wahoo is a symbol of hatred and prejudice. The Christian Science Monitor, 15 October. Available at http:// www.csmonitor.com/2007/1015/p09s01-coop.html. Retrieved on June 1, 2008. Zinn, H. (2003). A people’s history of the United States: 1492-present (5th ed.). New York: HarperCollins.

(NOT) WRITING ABOUT THE CHIEF David Roediger My first six years at University of Illinois were also the last six years of Chief Illiniwek. No brag, just coincidence. The Rate My Professors webpage on my Illinois teaching does feature in its first response the view from a disappointed student that I seemed okay in class but then turned out to be a fiend playing a central role in doing in ‘‘Our Chief.’’ At one point more than 3,000 petitioners called for my removal from the faculty for anti-Chief activities. It would be nice if I had been able to contribute so decisively to the anti-Chief movement to deserve such vilification. But in fact I spent lots of time at demonstrations, lots more thinking about the university’s mascot, and very little addressing the matter effectively in the forum that I supposedly do best – that is, by writing. This short, experimental collage describes and sometimes reproduces the short bits of anti-Chief writing I did publish in the context of the struggle to remove him, but as importantly it hopes to describe what I tried to write and could not, suggesting ways in which academic writing and the requirements of social struggle are sometimes incommensurate or maybe just that life is hard. Something like full disclosure seems required first. In deciding to move back ‘‘home’’ to Illinois after years at University of Minnesota, I was fully aware of the presence, if not the weight, of the Chief on campus. Minnesota had a powerful American-Indian Studies faculty, among whom were close friends, and as I mulled the move, a copy of Jay Rosenstein’s wonderful anti-Chief video In Whose Honor? twice appeared in my campus mailbox.


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Thus, the yahoo cry of pro-Chief forces – ‘‘If you don’t like the Chief, why did you come here?’’ actually applied in my case. Indeed doubly so, as I grew up in southern Illinois where the mascot was always present if not anything like so frenetically beloved as in midstate. Moreover, I knew from playing high school sports that asking students to give up on Chief Illiniwek meant them also in many cases having to question the local mascots they grew up with. Indeed when I was in school it took protracted pressure to convince the Pekin, Illinois high school that the team name ‘‘Chinks’’ did not register love and admiration for Chinese people. One St. Louis school where I briefly taught after-hours tennis classes long kept ‘‘Igorot,’’ as its team name, drawn from a captive Filipino group displayed at the 1904 World’s Fair. I should have had no illusions, but I did foolishly credit recruitment pitches holding that the Illinois mascot was halfway out of the door as I came to the campus. When I began teaching in a sea of Chief t-shirts, it became clear that his demise had been oversold. By the end of my first full year on campus, I joined other protesters in testifying at a Board of Trustees meeting. My words tried to emphasize that much of the opposition to the mascot was Illinois-grown, not the product of the ‘‘outsiders’’ whom pro-Chief forces found it so easy to dismiss. I described how I had been raised in really southern Illinois, with racist language and even a pretend-harmless attachment to Confederate symbols as facts of childhood, but learned better in the context of radical priests and the wondrously brave civil rights movement in Cairo, Illinois. I made the pitch with eyes wide open, knowing that it potentially played into the tendency make the issue one to be decided among (white) Illinoisians, a way to dismiss native American protests. At the time I did not appreciate the distinct strain of anti-Semitism that was also ripening as a way to identify the University’s own chancellor as a New York Jewish outsider, and a woman to boot. Billboards screaming ‘‘RETURN CANTOR. KEEP THE CHIEF’’ soon dotted the area. Chancellor Cantor and other administrators probably sensed the anti-Semitism quite before I did. In any case they much appreciated the statement to the trustees and privately shared frustrations over lack of motion on the issue. My serving as founding director of the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society at Illinois grew out of these dynamics. Although I thought that the initiative for a very high-profile and well-funded Center also inevitably served as a cover for a university unable to act on the most starkly drawn question of racism facing it, the friendly administrators still seemed confident that ‘‘something would be done’’ quickly on the issue. They were careful not to discourage the Center from supporting student initiatives

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against the mascot. Indeed the Center’s lavish 2004 newsletter devoted all of its front page and much of another to a beautiful picture of student antiChief protest, sporting a headline reading ‘‘Multiracial Democracy in the Shadow of the Chief,’’ and text saying in part: From its inception two years ago the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society has emphasized that universities have little claim historically to championing the values suggested by the paired adjective and noun that are central to our center’s nameySadly UIUC has provided an apt reminder of that reality as the long shadow of the university’s symbol, Chief Illiniwek, has cast its pall over our activities, complicating and even mocking any claims of inclusion we make. Our most esteemed visiting speakers have often commented on the irony of a campus so committed to racial justice and so unable to address that very issue in the way that it symbolizes itself. The Board of Trustees has ignored its own report and its pledges regarding the Chief. In an almost perfect illustration of the tension between the high-sounding phrase ‘‘multiracial democracy’’ and racist histories and assumptions of historically white colleges and universities, the student government mounted a referendum in which the included voted on the propriety of the Chief, a symbol of exclusion. At the same time, tremendous pressure from American Indians, on and off campus, from a multiracial student coalition, and from progressive legislators, has brought unprecedented pressure on the Board to adopt a unifying symbol for the University, and has clarified how sharply lines are drawn over the symbol of the Chief. Insofar as a founding principle of the Center was to identify forces already making decisive contributions to multiracial democracy [we] salute the efforts of those bringing such pressure.1

I now regard my decision to lead the Center as mistaken, given the context, and have tried to write about the costs of allowing universities to maintain self-images and marketing strategies stressing their good intentions and racial liberalism, even as they powerfully reproduce white supremacy, in a recent article in Washington University Journal of Law and Policy (http:// law.wustl.edu/journal/18/p203Roedigerbookpages.pdf). That article concludes with a section specifically on Illinois. In one passage it sums up the costs the university paid to not be seen as giving in to anti-racist pressure. ‘‘The university has recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a report on the Chief [and] hundreds of thousands more losing a legal case attacking the free-speech rights of faculty protesting the mascot,’’ it reads. The university further witnessed its own ‘‘trustees attempt to interfere in a departmental employment decision regarding an anti-Chief filmmaker, pressured its own university press into rejecting a superb book critical of the use of Native American caricatures as mascots [and] lost an esteemed chancellor who broke ranks with anti-Chief opinion’’ (Roediger, 2005).

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To provide public relations benefits around race to such a university through participation in the Center was obviously at best a close call. Since it seemed that support for a student movement against the Chief was key to any forward motion – with official and especially faculty governance channels at a dead-end – and since the Center could provide some such support, I felt for a good while that participating was wise. At the same time, I increasingly confined my own support for the student movement to attending its events but not advising it, out of both a longstanding belief that even the mistakes of young people are often more productive than advice from elders and out of a particular desire not to foster illusions that this was an issue that the university had in hand. When a heroic group of students took over the administration building in April 2004, I was close enough to them to be wrongly accused of helping to engineer the protest, but also was unwilling to participate in negotiations to get the students to end the occupation. My sense is that the accusation of both my advising the students and my unwillingness to advise them to end the protest helped to ensure that I would never again be in a position to make the Center relevant to positive change on campus. In such political marshes, my typical pattern has long been to try to write, if not on the exact quandary, at least more generally in pursuit of a way to frame the struggle, usually historically. That I did so only to such a meager extent around the Chief stems in part from the happy fact that the issues had already been elegantly historicized and framed, on film and between book covers, by others. But it is also true that I often began to write and stopped, in ways that suggest the lack of fit between my theoretical tools and the exigencies of this particular struggle. If, as Michel Foucault once suggested, every act of writing is necessarily simultaneously also one of (self-)censorship, the latter clearly got the best of the former for me in this instance. It is to brief pieces of writing and to voluminous non-writing about the Chief that I therefore turn in the balance of this article.

EXAMPLE 1 – HOW RACISM BECOMES COMMON SENSE: SPORTS AND MEDIA WHERE WE LIVE In 2003 I published in the excellent local independent left zine, Public I, the article reprinted after this headnote. Three remarks serve to introduce it. The first is that I personally can scarcely remember ever having not listened to sports-talk radio. My understanding is that the genre is just over four


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decades old and that is how long I have listened. On all levels I take it very seriously. The second is that this article represents an instance in which a corner of my academic knowledge, even theory, did seem able to speak to the needs of the anti-Chief movement. Finally, the article in general ways informed two bits of practice, one completely ill-fated, if not noteworthy for its backfiring, and the other slightly successful. The ill-fated one occurred in the brief period when I was in close touch and frequent meetings with administrators and some faculty leaders. At every opportunity I argued that if the university leadership seriously wanted to be rid of the Chief, it needed to question its relationship to the flagship station of University of Illinois sports, WDWS. To allow wild tirades against opponents of the Chief to serve as lead-ins for broadcasts of university sporting events was, I argued, pathetic even by the standards of company towns, let alone those of serious thinkers. When I raised the issue to administrators, nervous laughter and quick subject changes always followed my remarks. If I succeeded at all it was in conveying how influential sports-talk radio actually is. In any case hyper-cordial visits from administration spokespersons to an unreconstructed WDWS are now the order of the day. Beyond administrators, the tactics suggested by the article had more success. When WDWS radio personality and sports columnist Loren Tate berated an African-American member of the Board of Trustees for proposing speedy resolution to the mascot issue, labeling her an outsider, I was able to quickly co-coordinate an impressive petition campaign against his column. Signers expressed very sophisticated understandings of the role of media in the struggle against racist mascots. The Public I article read: As I grew up in southern Illinois, few things enjoyed a better image than common sense. It was what made us avoid driving drunk, and what let us fix things without exactly the right parts. It was a surprise then to hear almost immediately on getting to college that common sense could be a bad thing. Faculty at Northern Illinois University taught us the work of the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci. He argued, they said, that common sense was part of what made exploited people accept their fate – to learn how to avoid some of the hazards of a workplace, for example, rather than to figure out how to demand safe places to work. People at home had told me that college teachers lacked common sense. Come to find out, they did not even want it. In finally reading Gramsci, I found out that there was more to it than that. His arguments were not against ordinary people pooling their experiences and creating popular wisdom. Instead the call was for us to realize how thoroughly the coercions of governmental power, of corporate media, and of the ‘‘free’’ market shaped popular experiences and distorted some aspects of common sense. Blind loyalty to an employer, for example, might make sense given a lack of visible alternatives. But it also kept people from finding those alternatives. Common sense, for Gramsci, was a powerful force

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capable of creating the ‘‘folklore of the future.’’ At the same time it was also a ‘‘relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place,’’ a limit on what could be imagined and done. Such theorizing can seem pretty abstract until we see how common sense, and its rigidities, are made in our lives. We do not have to look far to see this, and what we see locally speaks to important national trends. Amidst skyrocketing tuition, threats of war, unprecedented attacks on civil liberties, and widespread child poverty, a fairly significant chunk of the local and university population has drawn the common sense conclusion that defending a racist sports mascot ought to shape their political passions and fashion choices. On its loonier edges, this group resorts to vicious personal attacks designed to remove the very campus leaders who have at least attempted to address the pressing problems of the university. Pro-Chief forces portray themselves as salt-of-the-Corn Belt local folks, full of Midwestern wisdom. They portray opponents as muddle-headed outsiders, and as ‘‘reverse racists’’ who would deny white folks their natural right to imagine and control the racial world. Common sense, or at least the letters section to the local News-Gazette, says that anti-Chief professors should somehow be made to leave their university jobs, and hopefully the area as well. In confronting such madness, which naturally calls itself common sense, it is important to realize that lots of local people do not agree with it for a minute. Moreover, the ways in which reactionary opinions take shape do not discredit the idea of popular wisdom but instead call into question the structures that create pro-Chief common sense. On the specific issue of the mascot, for example, racist common sense is profoundly shaped by the substitution of white folklore for serious history of American Indians in our schools. It is no accident that the wonderful recent on-campus lecture on ‘‘how history textbooks make us racist’’ by Decatur, Illinois-born historian James Loewen focused precisely on this issue. But the popularity of the pro-Chief position, and its ability to gather other forms of reactionary politics around it, also rest on factors less often examined. Clearly media consolidation plays a major role. Champaign-Urbana is of course a one-newspaper area. That newspaper, whatever the virtues of individual reporters, pursues an obsession with the Chief on its sports pages and on its highly conservative editorial pages. It continually runs letters to the editor vilifying anti-Chief individuals and calling for extravagant actions against them. The same group owning the paper owns WDWS, the largest talkradio station. Some of its local talk show hosts also write for the paper, and read from the paper on the air. Like the paper, they promiscuously mix consideration of the Chief as a sports topic and as a political one. Their shows connect the Chief with alleged racism against whites and mount sneering attacks on ‘‘diversity’’ in general. Highly personalized vendettas against individuals are again the order of the day, this time supplied by the callers. The habit of passionately denouncing individual performances and coaching decisions, so central to sport talk radio, seeps into other radio conversations easily. These performances, often specifically targeting UIUC administrators and staff, are bizarrely followed by broadcasts of Illinois games. Given the station’s role in carrying the games, it has unsurpassed access to


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coaches and its rantings during the rest of the day gain luster. Moreover, the symbolic point that supporting the team somehow involves supporting the Chief (and opposing ‘‘diversity’’) gets implicitly made by the pairing of sports programming with the talk segments. Rush Limbaugh, the tragically-still-influential guru of rightwing talk radio, grew up like I did, in earshot of the giant KMOX radio station in St. Louis. Flagship station of the Cardinals, KMOX also pioneered in both sports talk radio and in conservative political talk radio. Limbaugh, after a career in sports promotion, took KMOX’s act nationally. You can hear Rush middays on WDWS, before the Illinois games and on KMOX, before the Cardinals’s games. Those of us who want to create a new common sense have not taken the question of media concentration seriously enough. Nor have we thought sufficiently about the ways the right has captured popular enthusiasm for sports. Certainly sports are not inherently conservative. Indeed sports talk radio is often a refreshing forum for deep thought and democratic exchange, when it is not connected to reactionary political programming. We need to understand and challenge those connections. Examining the links of Illinois’s sports with the right wing of your radio dial is a good place to begin. (Roediger, 2003)

EXAMPLE 2 – UI SHOULD NOT TWIST HISTORY TO SUPPORT CHIEF In November 2005, the celebrated historian of American Indians Fred Hoxie and I published a short op-ed in the local News-Gazette. Op-ed is the perfect word in this instance as the paper itself was a model of crude and unreflective pro-Chief opinion. The particular column did not hope to correct all that but instead represented a particular use of academic knowledge by historians (here relying on the research of others) to intervene regarding a very meaningful detail influencing how National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sanctions against the university for its continued use of the Chief were to apply. The university argued, and the NCAA seemed to accept, that the nickname ‘‘Illini’’ could somehow be delinked from the ensemble of anti-Indian imagery featured historically in marketing University of Illinois athletics. Illini, so that argument went, predated identification of the teams with the Chief and with Indians more generally, so that it could simply mean ‘‘people of Illinois’’ or ‘‘students of University of Illinois,’’ carrying no racial baggage. The historical record, we pointed out, told a very different story. That the NCAA stayed with a

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compromise involving use of Illini and the ‘‘retirement’’ of the Chief much enhances the prospect that the University of Illinois student section will continue to perform the dance of the Chief at halftimes for many years to come. The persistence of the team name and of the precise music associated with the Chief, at just the same point in the festivities as when the Chief appeared, establish powerful continuities. But we tried: In a recent editorial, the Chicago Sun-Times advised the University of Illinois to put public-relations experts onto the job of refurbishing Chief Illiniwek’s image, which it admitted was not good. Aunt Jemima got a successful makeover, the paper held, so why not the Chief? However interesting its connection of racist symbols from different realms, the editorial was bound to infuriate historians because of its blithe insistence that history is never so weighty, or painful, or true, that a good adman can’t spin it to fit whatever direction the moment requires. Sadly, we do not need to read the Chicago press to find the same cavalier attitude toward history and the truth. In their efforts to control the debate over the future of the Chief, U of I leaders have not only excluded American Indian faculty and experts in the field, but they have also repeatedly distributed historical information that is not true. For example, one guideline for consensus decision-making propagated by the UI Board of Trustees asserts that for many years the university has ‘‘drawn on and paid tribute to the culture and traditions of the native people of Illinois.’’ This proposition is clearly not true. Several university officials have claimed that students long ago called themselves Illini with no reference to Indian people. They declare the name referred originally only to the state, or perhaps to veterans of World War I. Sorry. Not true. From its inception, ‘‘Fighting Illini’’ has been associated with images of American Indians as well as with white people who pretend to be Indians. Soon after the student newspaper changed its name to the ‘‘Illini’’ in 1874, university clubs arose named ‘‘Sachem’’ and ‘‘Ma-wan-da’’ and their members held ceremonies in which white students wrapped themselves in blankets and smoked ‘‘peace pipes.’’ Early 20th-century athletic teams were often referred to as ‘‘Indians,’’ and in 1914 (three years before the United States entered World War I) an association of athletes was created called ‘‘The Tribe of the Illini.’’ The link of ‘‘Fighting Illini’’ and American Indians was established long before the Chief made his first appearance. And of course for most of the last 80 years, the UI has worked overtime and spared no expense precisely to connect ‘‘Fighting Illini’’ with the white men who pretended to be the phony Chief Illiniwek. As historians who challenge young people to face the past honestly and to pursue the truth wherever it leads them, we are most distressed by anyone who claims that history can simply be put in the service of convenience or self-promotion. When university leaders follow that cynical path, we cannot remain silent. Everyone, even university trustees, must tell the truth. Whether designed to preserve some vestige of an outworn tradition or packaged to create a compromise between pro-Chief and anti-racist forces,


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any misuse of history undermines the central values of this great university. (Hoxie & Roediger, 2005)

THE UNWRITTEN CHIEF AND A THIRD EXAMPLE The very first public event on the mascot issue that I attended after coming to Illinois was an open hearing in November 2000, presenting the results of a study on the subject coordinated by an Illinois judge. Under pressure and needing to be seen as responding somehow, the university paid the judge obscenely to more-or-less just receive incoming emails, mostly from people who liked the Chief. He then reported that lots of people liked the mascot and a big event was organized to greet the news. Lots of folks, including many alums with unbelievably big manufactured WE LOVE OUR CHIEF buttons sat in Foellinger Auditorium to join in the fun. Questions, as is the custom in undemocratic venues now, could not be asked out loud but only written, then culled, and presented to the judge. Knowing that ‘‘Are you serious?’’ was unlikely to get through, I tried for something offbeat: ‘‘Has the Chief always been a white guy?’’ Sure enough, the judge soon addressed just that query, with real curiosity. Gosh, he said, I guess that is pretty much the case. (In fact there was a wartime woman Chief and some nods to multiracialism near the end of his career, but the judge did not need to investigate much to earn his pay.) I quickly decided to write about the whiteness of Chief Illiniwek, as critical white studies is an area in which I do research and as the mascot could serve as the poster boy for the field. I assembled photos, especially those taken from behind the Chief, looking up at a sea of white fans. I assembled copies of every letter to the editor on the mascot in the town and college newspapers over many years, noting the rich imagination and fearsome sense of entitlement to exercise control over how the racial universe was imagined that led so often to letters responding to criticisms of the Chief with variations on ‘‘You are racist against our Chief.’’ That is, if Indian protesters objected to the presence of a white kid ham-handedly (ham-footedly?) imitating sacred native dances, the Indians were somehow racist. Although the pictures of the Chief ended up having some use in my law review article on race and the putatively liberal university cited earlier, mostly I just reread the source materials on white identity and the Chief every so often and then pushed them aside. In many instances my work on

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white identity in the past had led to carefully opening the issue of racism up for discussion. If, for example, I initially asked largely white groups of autoworkers at union summer schools ‘‘What makes some workers think it is important to identify as white workers?’’ instead of ‘‘Aren’t lots of white workers racists?’’ the interest and openness of the group increased and racism quickly emerged as a centerpiece of a much more productive discussion that emerged from within rather than being imposed from without. This positive dynamic seemed potentially important in addressing a specific tactical issue in the anti-Chief movement, but it was much more successful among autoworkers than among university folks. Administrators and too many faculty wanted to address support for the Chief without ever using the term racism. I had no sympathy with that position, and thought it important to model the fact that discussions of racism did not have to devolve into the charge that X or Y personally ‘‘is a racist.’’ I hoped that the addition of the concept of whiteness into the discussion could make a consideration of white supremacy emerge organically. However, around the mascot, no such intellectual curiosity regarding white identity manifested itself in a way that opened intellectual space, at least not in discussions I witnessed. I only managed to write an article on Chief Illiniwek and blackface minstrelsy after the mascot was discontinued. The perfect hook was available. Samson Raphaelson, the playwright and screenwriter who wrote the drama eventually produced in the 1920s as film The Jazz Singer had graduated from University of Illinois in 1917. I knew of his presence on campus because he shared student housing as an undergraduate with a heroine of mine, the great pacifist and Catholic anarchist Dorothy Day, who before her religious conversion was a revolutionary socialist (Sampson, 2002). As I poked around, things got more interesting. Although Day dropped out and moved on, Raphaelson stayed on campus after graduation, in part to raise money for the construction of the giant Memorial Stadium for football. He thus was in Champaign for the early 1920s when Indian imagery and sounds more and more saturated football halftimes, leading up to the emergence of the Chief.2 Indeed in the early 1920s Raphaelson cowrote the Illinois football near-classic ‘‘Fight Illini (The Stadium Song)’’ hard by his writing what would become The Jazz Singer. I only found this specific and fascinating connection recently – partly because the song is again being played after points-after-touchdowns in Illinois games. But had I known of it I would not necessarily have known exactly what to make of it politically and would have thought that writing on it would have been frowned on by those thinking that not talking about racism, and certainly


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not about urbane university-based racism, was tactically essential to getting rid of the Chief. When I did get around to the article, it was easily the best thing I wrote related to the Chief: ‘‘Land of the Chief/Home of Modern Blackface Minstrelsy’’ U of I grad Samson Raphaelson is enjoying a nice little comeback lately, a quarter of a century after his death. Members of the marching band might recognize the name. A song that he coauthored in the 1920s has recently turned up and undergone a revival with, as the university’s website reports, the band featuring it this season after pointsafter-touchdowns. You have heard ‘‘Fight Illini: The Stadium Song’’ if you go to games. Playing it is appropriate enough. After graduating during World War One, Raphaelson stayed on to play a leading role in the fund-raising for Memorial Stadium, write the first account of the stadium’s story, and orbit around the marching band as the figure of Chief Illiniwek took shape in the 20s to the strains of songs like ‘‘Fight Illini.’’ Beyond the corn fields none of those accomplishments account for the extent to which Raphaelson’s name has recently resurfaced. He is discussed instead in connection with his role in bringing into being the foundational talking film, The Jazz Singer. The film, which also is the critical link between blackface minstrelsy and modern U.S. culture, turned eighty this year. It was recently the subject of a lavish retrospective at the American Cinematheque in Beverly Hills. The story of the Raphaelson as the U of I football fan and that of Raphaelson as the sophisticated writer responsible for the play on which The Jazz Singer was based are in fact the same story. This reality greatly complicates the ways in which the university ought to think about its own racial past, about its students’ present flirtations with blackface makeup and with other racial impersonations at parties, and about its inability to let go of Chief Illiniwek. At about the same time that Raphaelson wrote Day of Atonement, which would become The Jazz Singer, a lynching occurred on the edge of the University of Missouri campus. The great African American writer W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that Missouri could claim the dubious honor of being the first university to offer a course in racist atrocity. University of Illinois could similarly cast itself as the academic home of modern blackface minstrelsy. The story is sadly fascinating. In 1917, Raphaelson saw a performance of the imperialist classic Robinson Crusoe in Champaign-Urbana. Al Jolson, the eventual star of The Jazz Singer, headlined in multiple roles, one of them – think about this! – in blackface as the ‘‘native’’ character Friday in the Crusoe story. Raphaelson fell in love: I shall never forget the first five minutes of Jolson – his velocity, the amazing fluidity with which he shifted from tremendous absorption in his audience to a tremendous absorption in his song ... when he finished I turned to the girl beside me, dazed with memories of my childhood on the East Side ... my God, this isn’t a jazz singer, this is a cantor!

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The horrors and history of white performance in blackface here fully gave way before an opportunity to use racial disguise as if it had nothing to do with antiblack racism. On this view blackface could even be said to pay respects to jazz and to combat racism in the form of anti-Jewish sentiments. The result was Day of Atonement, published in Everybody’s Magazine in 1922, at about the same moment that Raphaelson wrote ‘‘Fight Illini.’’ Dramatizing something of Jolson’s own life, the play followed the Americanization-through-music of a young entertainer and the ways in which his Jewish roots both were transcended and survived. Jolson and George Jessel, then the bigger star of the two, both pitched production of the play on stage and as a film hard. Approached early on was D.W. Griffith, who rejected making a movie of the play as too ‘‘racial.’’ Presumably this meant too Jewish as Griffith’s vicious use of blackface performance in the service of antiblack racism in Birth of a Nation, had already linked the minstrel tradition and U.S. silent film, as The Jazz Singer was to do for ‘‘talkies.’’ When the film finally appeared in 1927, the victimization of African Americans by blackface was so off the studio’s radar that it was touted as being made ‘‘for the sake of racial tolerance’’ because it allegedly critiqued anti-Semitism. We should keep Samson Raphaelson in mind as we think about the persistent confusion and racism of young white partygoers on campus and the reappearance of Chief Illiniwek at this year’s University homecoming parade as two sides of a weighty coin. Those blackfaced partygoers are routinely criticized as representing a departure from the traditions of a liberal and inclusive university. They ought to be criticized. But so should the traditions, which are in truth anything but inclusive or antiracist. At their liberal best, such traditions reproduced and recreated white supremacy. Samson Raphaelson was very far from conforming to the academic and Hollywood stereotype that has conservatives, blue collar workers and hicks doing all of the heavy lifting required for building and rebuilding white racism. Jewish and urbane, he lived as an undergraduate with the great founder of the Catholic Worker movement Dorothy Day. After Illinois, he joined forces with the director Ernest Lubitcsh in Hollywood, writing such witty and marvelous films as Heaven Can Wait and Trouble in Paradise. During the post-World War 2 Red Scare in Hollywood, his politics earned him the enmity of Red Channels, the anti-Communist scandal sheet that insisted he should be blacklisted as a radical. When he returned briefly as a celebrity to teach writing at Illinois his star students included that embodiment of U.S.-style cosmopolitanism, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. Just before Raphaelson died, the left-liberal journalist Bill Moyers filmed a warm tribute to him. Nor, for sheer ugliness of racism, was The Jazz Singer anything like Birth of a Nation. Indeed when the late Michael Rogin dissected the special dangers presented by the modernist blackface of The Jazz Singer – dangers arising precisely because it combined a white supremacist form of racial disguise with liberal and pro-religious tolerance subtexts – his Blackface, White Noise generated a host of tortured defenses of the film: but Jolson admired jazz; but the impersonation expressed solidarity with Blacks; but, lighten up.


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As complicated as the whole story is and must be, Rogin was right and his critics wrong. Similarly the important historian of nineteenth-century blackface, Alexander Saxton, was right to insist that the very form of the act undermined any potential for it to carry progressive messages within a white supremacist social order. Indeed the very claim to control race and to decide if blackface, and Indian-face, are well-meaning, admiring, or somehow not about race is itself an act of white privilege. When the contemporary students who party in blackface or around anti-Mexican stereotypes offer justifications for their behavior they act up within a tradition. It pains me, coming from really southern Illinois, to sometimes hear people in the university imagine that small-town people there are a reason that the university cannot do the right thing and acknowledge Chief Illiniwek as a longstanding racist mistake. Mostly, none of us down there cared about the Chief (Southern Illinois University’s Salukis, maybe) as I grew up and do not care now. The Chief was made, endlessly marketed, and scandalously held onto for fifteen years after intense protest by Indians by cosmopolitan, often liberal, university-connected people, most powerfully by trustees and administrators. Those same forces are now unable to acknowledge that the Chief was their, and their university’s, mistake. They resort to all sorts of fancy footwork around whether the eighty years of selling it – not ‘‘him,’’ as a symbol of whiteness the Chief requires an impersonal pronoun–was a mistake at all, or just a phase we all needed to go through. Perhaps our reflecting on the uncomfortably close local histories of modern blackface minstrelsy and of Chief Illiniwek will lead students, if not administrators and trustees, to a little more clarity on these issues.3

The article had scarcely appeared before I received a message from a top administrator on how ill-advised he found it to air such painful old stories.

AN UNWRITTEN CHIEF MYSTERY Finally and most significantly, I did not write a murder mystery with Chief Illiniwek as the victim, although I did begin a draft, setting up a web of intrigue around fraternity life, sex, and business connections among local capital, big capital, local media, and the university. Maybe if the NCAA decision had not gotten rid of Chief Illiniwek, I would have finished it. But I was already backing off out of a sense that I could be misperceived as wishing ill to the sad boys who actually impersonated the Chief. Instead the choice of the mystery form grew out of my increasing dissatisfaction with the view that something as vague as the prejudice or backwardness of ‘‘locals’’ lay behind the desire to keep the mascot. Regrettably it is true that some local working people did and do buy into pro-Chief rhetoric and gear. However, at every turn when money was raised for billboards, when leaders emerged in pro-Chief groups, and the university took elaborate notice of

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pro-Chief opinion, it was not ‘‘locals’’ generally but local and regional elites – bankers, small manufacturers, investors, newspaper editors, media owners, construction companies, lawyers, and landlords – in the fore. The murder mystery, with its typical insistence on following money and power, would seem the perfect vehicle for trying to understand what Chief Illiniwek’s role was in symbolizing ties to local capital and in keeping the university, so firmly tied to global corporations in so much of its research, as a regional institution in its contracting practices and a narrowly parochial one in its self-presentations.

NOTES 1. ‘‘Multiracial Democracy in the Shadow of the Chief,’’ Reconstructing Democracy, 1(2) (August, 2004), pp. 1, 8. 2. Jennifer Guiliano’s forthcoming University of Illinois doctoral dissertation, ‘‘Native Americans on the Field: Sports Mascots and the Consolidation of an American Empire, 1920–2005,’’ Chapter 2 has contributed greatly to my understanding of the broader campus and musical culture surrounding the emergence of Chief Illiniwek. 3. See Roediger (2007).

REFERENCES Hoxie, F., & Roediger, D. (2005). UI should not twist history to preserve Chief (ChampaignUrbana). News-Gazette, November 13, p. B-4, op-ed. Roediger, D. (2003). How racism becomes common sense: Media and sports in ChampaignUrbana. The Public I, (March). Roediger, D. (2005). What’s wrong with these pictures? Race, narratives of admission, and the liberal self-representations of historically white colleges and universities. Washington University Journal of Law and Policy, 18, 203–222. Roediger, D. (2007). Land of the chief/home of modern blackface minstrelsy. Public I (November–December), p. 5. Sampson, R. D. (2002). Red Illini: Dorothy Day, Samson Raphaelson, and Rayna Simons at the University of Illinois, 1914–1916. Journal of Illinois History, 5(Autumn), 170–196.

ON DEAF EARS: AN ACTIVIST’S COMMENTS TO THE UNIVERSITY’S TRUSTEES Stephen J. Kaufman On March 9, 1998, the elected University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) Senate, the governing body of the campus elected from its faculty and students, voted 97 to 29 in favor of the resolution, The University Administration and Board of Trustees immediately retire Chief Illiniwek and discontinue licensing Native American Indian symbols as representations of the University.

At that meeting, the voices of students and faculty were heard, a supporting petition signed by more than 700 faculty was presented to then Chancellor Michael Aiken, and data from 10 other institutions were presented and attested that those colleges and universities did not experience any diminution in gift-giving as a consequence of retiring their Indian mascots. It seemed the retirement of Chief Illiniwek and the end to the use of Native American imagery in the UIUC sports program would be imminent. No one, certainly not me, thought it would take another ten years before the mascotry ended. During that prolonged interim, I requested and was granted permission to speak to the University Board of Trustees during the mandated Open Intake session of their meetings. The following represents the texts of my messages, which by Board policy needed to be confined to 5 minutes, and which by practice were never responded to. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 34, 183–202 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2010)0000034013

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At the March 13, 2007 meeting of the University Board of Trustees on the Urbana campus, approximately 20 years after the mascot issue was brought to their attention, the 10 voting members of the Board passed the following resolution, with one dissenting vote, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED: 1. THAT the Board adopts and ratifies the actions announced on February 16, 2007, ending the performances of Chief Illiniwek and further approves, adopts, ratifies, and confirms all other actions taken by University officials with respect to the consensus process, and 2. THAT the motion regarding Chief Illiniwek adopted by the Board of Trustees on October 11, 1990, be revoked insofar as it requires that Chief Illiniwek be retained, and 3. THAT the Board hereby directs the immediate conclusion to the use of Native American imagery as the symbol of the University of Illinois and its intercollegiate athletics along with the related regalia, logo, and the names ‘‘Chief Illiniwek’’ and ‘‘Chief,’’ and the Board hereby directs the Chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign campus to manage the final disposition of these matters and report the decisions back to the Board and in so doing to remain in compliance with the NCAA policy, and 4. THAT the Board fully confirms the continued use of the terms ‘‘Illini’’ and ‘‘Fighting Illini’’ as they reflect our State, students, faculty, staff, and alumni, and 5. THAT this Resolution concludes the Board’s consensus process regarding the matter of the Chief Illiniwek tradition.

As of this writing, the university has ceased the performances of its mascot Chief Illiniwek; however, it continues to use Native American imagery in its athletics program. The last entry herein contains the text of my comments to the Board of Trustees, March 26, 2008, and asks, ‘‘When is this going to end?’’ Stephen J. Kaufman Professor Emeritus Urbana, Illinois April 21, 2008 ____________________________________________ Professor Stephen Kaufman Department of Cell and Structural Biology, UIUC Pine Lounge, Illini Union April 8, 1998 Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to visit with you today. The Faculty and Students of the Urbana campus sent a clear and definitive message to you on March 9; they disagree with your current policy and

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overwhelmingly advocate retiring Chief Illiniwek. In the past, some of you indicated that you did not understand what all the ‘‘fuss’’ was about. Myths and misinformation regarding alumni and faculty support, about a so-called educational role of the chief, and other fallacious concerns have been abundant. I hope that the information related to you through the deliberations and action of the Senate, and from individual departments and units, have clarified all that misinformation for you, and, that you will act to retire the ‘‘chief ’’ at your next meeting on May 14. If any of you still have questions, please know that the faculty remain on call to respond to your individual concerns, or to you as a whole. We view this as an educational and moral issue and stand ready to work with you in whatever form or forum you choose. Please also know that the faculty feel passionately about this. Although the recommendation of the Chancellor’s Committee on Inclusivity to retire the chief was disregarded in 1994, I urge you not to dismiss the Faculty again. I can say to you with certainty, this issue will only go away if it is dealt with in a constructive fashion that addresses our concerns. Through discussions with 10 other institutions that have made similar changes over the past 30 years, we have learned that any negative response from alums or the local community was short lived. This was especially true, when leadership from the top was strong. I truly regret that such leadership has not been forthcoming on this campus. Although this has become a very real national embarrassment to the University, our leaders have chosen to hide rather than lead. Hiding behind statements like ‘‘it’s the policy of the Board’’ or ‘‘the Alumni won’t like it’’. Furthermore, there is a real air of intimidation that surrounds this issue and this exists at all levels of the campus. This atmosphere of fear, intimidation, and divisiveness is toxic and it certainly is a contradiction to what the leadership of this institution should promote. I believe this is part of what the Senate is trying to tell you, and in that regard, they gave you a well-deserved F at mid-semester. Nevertheless, the Senate resolution does present you with a new opportunity, and it urges you to end this 10-year debacle and redeem yourself. Moreover, we get laudable, vigorous statements from you on codes of behavior and goals espousing racial harmony, proper ethical behavior, and aspirations to build an inclusive campus community. Yet, what we see is a tenacious adherence to something that no longer serves the interest of the University, that contravenes the very statements you advocate and the goals you set, and worse, that promotes racial stereotyping.

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A prime example of this is in our Code on Campus Affairs, on page 1, it states, ‘‘Individual rights are both legal and moral.’’ And you, the Board of Trustees recognized this, and approved this as part of the rights and responsibilities of all members of the campus community: (and I quote) Resolved by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois that it reaffirms its commitment and policy (a) to eradicate prohibited and invidious discrimination in all its forms; (b) to foster programs within the law which will ameliorate or eliminate, where possible, the effects of historic societal discrimination y

But what do we find, instead of acting to ameliorate or eliminate the effects of historic societal discrimination, you choose the opposite path, one that perpetuates racial stereotyping and its insidious consequences on Native Americans. You violate your own policy, and you are accountable for that. I cannot believe this hypocrisy is not obvious to you, but if it is not obvious, let us work together during the next month to educate each other. Unfortunately, you missed an extraordinary opportunity this weekend to discuss with national Native American leaders how Chief Illiniwek contravenes both the goals you have for the University and your policies to end invidious discrimination. Fortunately, video recordings are available, and I encourage all of you to view them. If you are really interested in knowing about what honors Native Americans and why the ‘‘chief’’ does not, take this opportunity, and also talk with our Native American students. So I close and reiterate, let us work together during the next month, before the next Board meeting, to educate each other, after all, that is what this institution is all about. You can retire the chief on your watch, with or without dignity, the choice is yours. ___________________________________________ Stephen Kaufman, Professor Department of Cell and Structural Biology, UIUC Pine Lounge, Illini Union May 14, 1998 Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today. Referring to Chief Illiniwek, Governor Edgar stated, ‘‘This is an issue to be resolved by the Urbana campus.’’ The Urbana campus responded to that, and on March 9, the elected representatives of the students and faculty


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voted overwhelmingly to retire the chief. Since then, responses in the press from some members of the Board and from President Stukel reflect an apparent disregard of the students, faculty, and the Governor. As neither the board nor any of its committees have considered retiring Chief Illiniwek during this academic year, I urge you do so soon for the following reasons: 1. Suppositions regarding alumni and faculty support, about a so-called educational role of the Chief, and about ‘‘honoring’’ native peoples have all been shown to be fallacious. Individual departments and entire schools on the Urbana campus have also informed you of their educational and professional concerns regarding the chief. In fact, all substantive parts of your original motion of October 11, 1990 to retain the chief have been addressed and shown to be inaccurate. 2. The Black Student Union and nine additional black student organizations recently petitioned the removal of Chief Illiniwek as a dehumanizing symbol of this University. Likewise, The Champaign County Branch of the NAACP reaffirmed their position against racist mascots and symbols, and they call for the retirement of the chief. These groups know racism when they see it and I urge you to be attentive to their judgment. 3. The current position of the President and Board of Trustees on this issue violates the Campus Code, Statutes, and General Rules Concerning University Organization and Procedures. The Nondiscrimination Statement in The General Rules states, ‘‘Be It Resolved that the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois hereby reaffirms the University’s commitment to foster programs which lead to more pluralistic campus environments and that will ameliorate and, where possible, eliminate the effects of societal discrimination.’’ What could be more clear than the societal discrimination that has been fostered on Native Americans for the past 500 years and that is perpetuated by the chief ? Similar statements are in the Statutes and Campus Code. 4. By not dealing with this issue, The Board of Trustee is also in violation of its own Bylaws, specifically section 6, that speaks to the roles of its standing committees: The Academic Affairs Committee is charged, ‘‘To support the statutory responsibilities of the colleges and campus senates in matters of academic policy.’’ The Senates of both the Urbana and the Springfield campuses call you to retire the chief. The Human Resources Committee is charged ‘‘to promote diversity, and to foster a climate in which University goals and objectives can best

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be achieved.’’ You have been presented with copious amounts of information that attest to how the chief contravenes realizing this aim. The Student Affairs Committee is supposed to ‘‘Review and evaluate information that reflects on all aspects of student development and life on campus.’’ Certainly, the chief is the most divisive aspect of life on this campus. A failure to resolve the issue of the chief is a failure to fulfill the duties of these committees and the duties of the Board. 5. The continuation of racial stereotyping embodied in the chief violates NCAA Operating Principles 23.2.1.1 (b), (c) and (d), 23.2.4.2, and 23.2.1.4. The University has been informed of this and has chosen to continue to violate these rules of the NCAA, leaving no other recourse than to report these infractions. 6. The Chancellor’s Task Force on Inclusivity recommended in 1994 that the chief be retired. That recommendation went unheeded and is omitted from the Framework for the Future of this campus and from consideration in the upcoming accreditation review of this campus. However, this issue will be brought to the North Central Association Commission on Institutions of Higher Education because, as the task force and UIUC Senate have stated, Chief Illiniwek interferes with the institution accomplishing its educational goals and it compromises the University meeting the Commission’s criteria for accreditation. I believe we all agree that the depiction of an American Indian as the University symbol was not intended to be negative. But times have changed. Whereas symbols are intended to unite, this one now divides the University. Even many who support the chief call for his retirement because this symbol no longer serves the University well. Moreover, and regrettably, the name of this University and the heritage of Chief Illiniwek will continue to be tarnished if the retirement of the chief is not resolved soon. The time for you to retire the chief with dignity is now. Waiting for that to be imposed on us is clearly not in the interest of the University. Governor Edgar, as an ex officio member of the Board of Trustees, I urge you to call on the Board to deal with this issue now and retire the chief with dignity. If confronted with the continued refusal to do so, I urge you to initiate replacement of this Board with members who will adhere to the rules of this University and who will foster its interests and integrity. I request that this statement be included in the minutes of this meeting and that a copy be sent to Governor Edgar. I thank you and would be happy to try to answer any questions. ___________________________________________


Board of Trustees Meeting March 2, 2000

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Thirteen independent academic leaders from around the country comprised the accreditation team that evaluated the academic programs of this campus. Although the campus has received accreditation, the report they submitted through the North Central Association (NCA) is a disgrace to the University of Illinois. It speaks of the lack of integrity of the institution, its failure to adhere to its own high ideals, and the failure of its leadership to address the issue of Chief Illiniwek in a manner consistent with the principles of the NCA and with the goals of the University at UrbanaChampaign. The accreditation team voiced in the strongest possible terms its concern about the governance of this University and cited an urgency to change the institution’s methods of addressing the Chief issue. The University was cited to lack integrity on is the actualization of shared governance, adherence to its own policies against invidious discrimination, and its failure to adhere to its own ethical values. The NCA dedicated more than 10 of its 36-page report to this issue. It makes absolutely clear, ‘‘That the use of the Chief is an educational issue.’’ In doing so, it reaffirmed the report of the Chancellor’s Committee on Inclusivity, the student faculty Senate of this campus, many departments, scholars, and local and national Native American students and leaders. The accreditation team, senior academics from 13 different institutions, reached its conclusions after considering the viewpoints of both proponents of the Chief and those who advocate his retirement. But there is really nothing new in those 10 pages in the report. You have heard it all before and chose not to respond. For more than 10 years, the students, faculty, and alumni of this campus have been telling you that there is a problem and that there should be open discussion of it. Mountains of information and testimony have already been presented and systematically disregarded. Unfortunately, your recent response, your resolution of January 13, 2000 fails to address the problems associated with continued use of a Native American as the mascot of the UIUC athletic programs. It seems designed to diffuse the issue and placate the concerns of the accreditation team rather than enter into responsible self-criticism and a morally serious consideration of the need for change. The official response of the campus administration to the NCA report confirms this interpretation. They have had the gall to trivialize this issue and refer to the report as a ‘‘nudge.’’ Ten pages is not a nudge. Public condemnation of hypocritical behavior is not a nudge. And untruthful public denial of this as an educational issue does not reflect a commitment to an honest dialogue.

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I do find it constructive that in item 1 of your resolution you have acknowledged for the first time that there is a controversy. However, to say in item 2 of that resolution, that you reaffirm your commitment to dialogue and debate is totally disingenuous considering that for the past 10 years you and the University administration have not only refused to engage in a dialogue but repeatedly took steps to prevent discussion and refused to enter into a process of conflict resolution. Given the sorry history of administrative leadership on this issue and the recent responses of the campus administration and the Board, there is no evidence whatsoever that you are committed to anything other than the continued defense of the status quo. Unfortunately, this is substantiated by: 1. Your immediate reaffirmation of your position on the Chief, rather than an affirmation of an open-minded willingness to reconsider the issue. 2. By your failure to engage any concerned individual who has a viewpoint different from your own in formulating a plan to resolve this controversy. 3. By your failure to seek or include any input on the selection of the senior legal professional you propose to employ from anyone who holds a viewpoint different from your own or who does not directly serve at your pleasure. According to Associate Chancellor William Murphy, the Board, President Stukel and Legal Counsel, all persons who have made their positions quite public in support of the Chief, will select a presumably ‘‘impartial’’ arbitrator. How nice, the foxes are going to decide who guards the chickens! Hardly a way to commence a process that will have any connotation of impartiality or honesty. Hardly a process designed to restore integrity. 4. Instead of following the University Statutes that prescribe how educational issues are to be resolved, you have initiated a process that subverts the Statutes and establishes a precedent that certainly is not in the interest of the University. Let me expand on that. In his amendatory veto of the legislation that would have made the Chief the legal mascot of the University, then Governor Edgar remanded that issue to the UrbanaChampaign campus. He did so, appreciating and valuing the longest tradition at this University, that the governance of the University lies within it, that the educational issues of the University are not to be decided by public or legislative popularity. This is a principle that all faculty and administrators at this University subscribe to. The process you propose, to seek a popular opinion poll, violates that principle and subverts the Statutes. I submit that this is a dangerous and unpropitious way to begin to heal a divisive issue. It certainly has the campus appropriately concerned about what other issues you plan to resolve in this fashion.


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Ladies and gentlemen, the integrity of this University is in question and appallingly, your response perpetuates the problem. I am a biologist and in fact study the integrity of tissues. What I can tell you is that severe disease is the response to the lack of proper integrity and that applies equally to cohesion between cells or adhesion to the laudable principles of the institution. The significance of integrity is no different for an institution than it is for our bodies; without it, there is disease. That is the message of the accreditation team, and its charge to the institution is to heal itself ! As you know, the NCA intends to be vigilant in seeing that charge is met. I submit that carefully crafted deception and charade will not suffice. Lastly, I would like to read one comment from the NCA report, written by a former president of another Big 10 institution. I know how crucial it is for academic institutions to provide leadership in encouraging and affirming diversity. As a result, I am writing to urge the North Central Accreditation Association to review carefully the negative impact which the current Illinois mascot has on building a diverse educational community. I am a lifelong supporter of Big 10 athletics. Nevertheless, Chief Illiniwek and similar racial caricatures are symbols of discrimination and ridicule. They are an anathema to good sportsmanship and to building cultural understanding and mutual respect.

Ladies and gentlemen, the demographics of this country are changing. The American Indian population is the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States. By the year 2040, current minority groups will be the majority. Leadership, especially on issues like this, and particularly at educational institutions, should be ahead of the curve, especially, when the integrity of the University is at stake. The custom of dressing up in the costume of a defeated minority may have had a logic in 1927, but that is not sustained in the year 2000, not to mention in the years to come. The confederate flag too had one connotation in the 1860s, but it has another today. There are good reasons why the national NAACP passed a resolution this summer condemning the use of Native Americans as sports symbols and mascots, as did the NCAA. There are good reasons why the overwhelming majority of organizations that represent Native Americans have taken this issue on as a high priority, and there are good reasons why the Urbana-Champaign Senate considered this educational issue and voted overwhelmingly to retire the Chief. Mountains of information and testimony, on both sides of the issue, have been presented to you. The NCA report is a call to action, not more obfuscation. I dare say that everyone here knows that the Chief will no longer be the mascot of the UIUC sports teams. The only questions that remain are when that will happen and how much continued disgrace this University must

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endure. Collecting more opinion is not going to change anything unless you want it to. Some say that the real reason immediate action is not taken is the perennial fear that the budget of the University might be compromised. Ladies and gentlemen if that is your rationale, you have a shameful lack of confidence in the value of this institution and the plans for its growth. An impartial external evaluation committee of unquestionable integrity has reviewed both sides of the issue and has given you overwhelming justification for taking immediate action to retire the Chief. Restore the integrity to this institution that it deserves and do that now. I ask you, for the good of the University, stop what everyone knows is a charade and act constructively now; act to restore integrity to this institution. ___________________________________________ Stephen J. Kaufman Professor

March 7, 2001

Comments to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees UIUC Pine Lounge, Urbana, IL Mr. Shea, President Stukel, past and new members of the Board: Thank you for the privilege to address you today. I sincerely hope this is the last time it is necessary to urge you to end the use of Fighting Illini and Chief Illinwek as the symbols of our sports teams. I hope you have come to understand that these no longer constructively serve the educational mission or the athletic programs of the University. Certainly, the evidence for that is overwhelming. Faculty, students, and alumni have provided volumes of testimony to this fact. Native Americans have told you that you are not honoring them but hurting them, their children, and their future. They have told you they would like to come to this campus but do not because of the painful racial confrontations they would encounter. You have been told by the campus Senate and by the Chancellor’s committee on diversity why a race-based mascot is no longer in the interests of the University. The NCAA told you that Member institutions with Indian mascots y do not comply with the NCAA’s commitment to ethnic student welfare. [and that] The continuation of this practice sends a clear message that administrators, [you] who have the responsibility of nurturing our students, have an insensitive disregard for the native culture of this country.

You have been told by our Chancellor’s committee during the NCAA’s review of our athletic programs that this has already interfered with the


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recruitment of student–athletes and that is certain to broaden if this is not resolved soon. And let us not forget the impact on the ongoing search for a new Chancellor. Our Student Counseling Service has told you of the psychological damage done to our students. And you have heard how our racebased mascot is promoting a new generation of racial discord and bigotry in our public schools and community. You have been told by local and national church leaders of the moral imperative to listen to and act on behalf of minorities who do not enjoy the positions of power and privilege that you and I do. And you have heard from the National Governors Conference, from the NAACP, and from dozens and dozens of local and national educational organizations, on why American Indians should not be used as mascots or symbols of sports teams, regardless of the intent. And yes, you have heard from many alumni of their attachment to the Fighting Illini and the Chief. And, you have also heard from alumni who have called for an end to that tradition. But I speak now also for the alumni you have not heard from. In the ‘‘dialogue’’ process, you directed more than 300,000 letters to alumni, asking them, if they felt as deeply as you do, to please write. As only 3% responded, it is evident that the overwhelming majority does not feel this attachment. Clearly, there is no mandate for the status quo from alumni. Alumni are concerned about the value of their Illinois degree and the reputation of this institution. And these continue to be eroded by prolonging resolution. I like documentary films. They tell us where we have been and the paths we have traveled. They point out the best and sometimes the worst in humanity. Moreover, they tell of the promise for a better future. My favorite is Ken Burns’ series on baseball. Just look what happened to sports because Branch Rickey had the courage to bring Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers and thereby open the doors of participation to people of all colors. I ask you to think back too to the documentaries of the 1960s, when governors like George Wallace stood defiant, surrounded by their trustees, and obstructed the racial integration of the University of Alabama and other schools, because segregation was their tradition. Although much of that has changed, as you know, there are still those who would fly the confederate flag in support of that tradition. Our Fighting Illini and Chief Illiniwek are as much of an anachronism today as the confederate flag. My friends, the cameras are rolling. Tomorrow’s documentaries are being made, here, now. No one questions your authority. In fact, I appeal to your role as trustees, to put aside personal preferences and nostalgia, and to provide leadership.

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You have an extraordinary opportunity. You can choose to impede the progress of this institution by standing in defiance of racial justice, or, you can open our doors to a future that embraces all people, that exemplifies the best we can be, and that is true to the laudable principles of nondiscrimination, equal opportunity, and truth in education that are the foundations of this institution. The time to exercise that leadership and make that choice is today. The answer we await to hear from you this afternoon is whether you have the courage and integrity to make that choice. ___________________________________________ Remarks of Professor Stephen J. Kaufman to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees March 13, 2002 Mr. Shea, President Stukel, Members of the Board: Thank you for the privilege to address you today. Throughout the past decade of debate, the intent and the passion for the Illiniwek tradition were never in doubt. At the same time, local and national concerns for its impact on Native Americans, especially children, and concern for the educational and institutional integrity of this campus were likewise genuine and not to be denied. As educators, we have tried to address your concerns, we have tried to dispel myths, and most of all, we have sought to open doors to facilitate change. Since I addressed you last March, the United States Commission on Civil Rights has called for an end to the use of Native American images and stereotyping in sports. I hope that during this period, you too have come to understand that the Illiniwek tradition no longer constructively serves the educational mission or the athletic programs of the University. I hope that through your thoughtful consideration you have reached a new place in your minds and hearts and that you are now able to put personal preferences aside and act in the interest of the institution. For as difficult as that may seem, that is to be applauded, and that is what leadership and being a trustee are all about. You have given us a wonderful new Chancellor in Nancy Cantor, a true dynamo, with enlightened, broad visions and plans for this campus. However, on some key issues, she is working with hands tied behind her back. All organizations and committees on campus concerned with racial


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opportunities and diversity have clearly pointed out that little progress can be made in this arena until the Illiniwek issue is resolved. You are called upon today to action that will give the Chancellor and the campus a platform upon which to build and realize the aspirations she has for us. And that action can be nothing short of ending the Illiniwek tradition. There are no half measures that will mollify or cure. A few scholarships, a new Dean, attempts at authenticity will not resolve this issue. It is time to say Go Illini, go to your resting place with honor and dignity. It is time to close this chapter in Illinois history, with celebration of the past and commitment to our future. It is all of our responsibility to take this opportunity and use it to make this great institution even greater. Trustee Eppley was cited in The News-Gazette last week as saying he would like to hear from administration and campus officials. If the Board has not heard from them to date, I hope you will now invite their candid input. You have already heard from the academic leadership of the campus. The overwhelming majority, 90% of the Swanlund chairs and members of the Center for Advanced Study, have joined with more than 800 faculty in recommending retiring Illiniwek. And Stanley Ikenberry, former president of both this University and the American Council on Education, recently agreed that Illiniwek no longer serves the University as a unifier of enthusiasm and support for our sports teams, and therefore, we should move on. Like many of you, I recently received a letter from Ron Guenther, Director of Athletics, announcing The Fighting Illinois Visa Card. With no reference to Native Americans and no Indian logo, The Fighting Illinois is an acceptable compromise for a new symbol of our sports teams. In saying that, I am speaking not only for myself but also for the national leadership of the American Indian Movement, the National Coalition Against Racism in Sports and Media, and the American Indian Arbitration Institute. The Fighting Illinois, with no reference to Native Americans and no Indian logo, is a compromise acceptable to all. And I congratulate Mr. Guenther for his initiative on this. True, you may prefer to wait for a solution to be imposed from outside, by the NCA or by the NCAA. Or, you may exercise your role as Trustees and provide the leadership that will end this conflict and thereby thrust the University back into the spotlight as an exemplary national educational institution where all are welcome. Your decisions often change the breadth and the face of the University with new programs and new buildings. But today you have the opportunity

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to change the character of the University and restore the institutional integrity and national respect that have eroded over the past decade. And, you have an opportunity to foster the realization of Chancellor Cantor’s vision for our future. My grandpa used to say, ‘‘Some things appear hard to do and others really are hard to do. In either case, you just have to do them or you’ll stay stuck in your tracks.’’ We have been stuck too long on this issue. Please move us forward. ___________________________________________ Stephen J. Kaufman, Professor November 13, 2003 Remarks to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees Chairman Eppley, Members of the Board of Trustees, President Stukel, There is never a good time to make difficult decisions, but there is always a right time, and the right time to resolve the Illiniwek issue is today. After more than 14 years of debate and an intensive study that culminated in a report by former Trustee Roger Plummer more than 20 months ago, the right time to put an end to this conflict is now. It is always the right time to end racial stereotyping, it is always the right time to end injustice, and it is always the right time for Trustees to lead the University in a direction that will strengthen the institution and make it a better place for all. After spending more than a million student and taxpayer dollars defending Illiniwek, the time to move ahead is now. For some of you, to vote to end the Illiniwek tradition might be a difficult personal decision. However, being a Trustee of this University is not about personal preferences; it is about doing what is in the best interest of the University, and it is about making it the very best place it can be for all of us, today, and in the future. And retiring the Illiniwek tradition today is in the best interest of the University. To those of you who have other loyalties, I hope that your allegiance to this institution will now take precedence. A brief glance at the media indicates that this controversy is being monitored around the country. In spite of the recent awarding of two Nobel Prizes to Urbana faculty, this is the story that is defining the University nationally and this is the issue faculty are continuously confronted with when they go to national meetings. Is the Illiniwek controversy really what you want the University of Illinois to be known for?


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In spite of financial shortcomings, under the leadership of Chancellor Cantor, this campus has never exhibited more vitality and direction, at least in the 30 years that I have been here. However, the success of many of the programs she has initiated, including The Center on Democracy in a MultiRacial Society and Native American House, depends on the campus ending the hypocrisy of advocating diversity while maintaining a race-based mascot. All units on campus concerned with opportunity and diversity have clearly stated that little progress can be made in this arena until the Illiniwek issue is resolved. And I am deeply concerned that your failure to do so today will send a message that Chancellor Cantor’s aspirations for this campus cannot be realized. The elected student–faculty Senate of this campus voted 97 to 29 to retire the Chief, departments have documented that Illiniwek interferes with fulfilling their missions, the student government has repeatedly voted to retire Illiniwek, and more than 800 faculty have petitioned you to do so as well. They have been joined by dozens of civil rights organizations, including the NAACP and the United States Commission on Civil Rights, and by religious organizations that represent tens of millions of people. These groups join with the local, state, and national Native American communities in their quest to end racial stereotyping of American Indians in sports. There are no honorable racial stereotypes, regardless of intention, and this should be especially clear when the people you intend to honor repeatedly tell you so. If you really want to honor Native Americans and the heritage of this State, make this campus a welcoming place for these students to come and succeed. As Native Americans have testified, they want to come here, but choose not to because it is too painful to live in an environment that is so hostile to their culture. As former Trustee Plummer stated in his report, ‘‘The University of Illinois and its Board of Trustees are at a crossroads and leadership is required y if the Board of Trustees acts in a way that unifies the University of Illinois family during this process, it can establish a new beginning.’’ What is before you today is a compromise, originally crafted by Trustee Plummer and presented today by Trustee Frances Carroll. And I thank Trustee Carroll for her leadership. I encourage you to unite and support this resolution and launch a new beginning for this University. The governing and non-discrimination statements of the University of Illinois are quite clear on this subject, and there is every reason to include Native Americans in the protection of the University’s policies.

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You have an extraordinary opportunity to unify the campus, respect the wishes of Native Americans, and restore integrity to this institution. You can open the doors of the University to a future that embraces all people, that exemplifies the best we can be, and that is true to the laudable principles of nondiscrimination, equal opportunity, and truth in education that are the foundations of any great educational institution. The time to exercise leadership is today. ___________________________________________ Stephen J. Kaufman Professor

March 10, 2005

Comments to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees UIUC Pine Lounge, Urbana, IL Good morning Mr. Eppley, members of the Board of Trustees. President White, WELCOME. My name is Stephen Kaufman. I am a professor of Cell Biology. For 15 years, Native American students and citizens from throughout the country respectfully requested that you stop using Chief Illiniwek as the sports symbol of this campus. They told you repeatedly that the resultant stereotyping of their people as mascots presents a serious obstacle to their education and to an already difficult task of maintaining Native culture. When a swastika appears on a dormitory door, there is, and rightfully so, condemnation from the administration and community. Well, every day, Native students of this campus walk a racial gauntlet in dormitories, on the quad, and down Green Street. Your logo is their swastika. ‘‘CHIEF’’ in bold letters on T-shirts calls out ‘‘BOY.’’ Instead of condemnation, you foster this. Students and faculty have painstakingly crafted statements that they hoped would educate you and permeate whatever the barrier is that keeps you so entrenched, so clinging to a tradition that the social and moral evolution of this country has passed years ago. You have heard from religious leaders and civil rights and educational organizations representing millions of people. You have heard overwhelmingly from your faculty. And you have heard from every organization that represents people of color on this campus and from campus committees convened to study Diversity. All testify that Illiniwek presents an obstacle to the University achieving its goals and developing its future. You claim sole authority over the Illiniwek controversy; yet in 15 years, you have failed to resolve it. Our Alumni are concerned about the value of


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their Illinois degree and the moral integrity of this institution. And these continue to be eroded by prolonging resolution. President White stated in a TV interview that you have an ongoing active process to resolve the Illiniwek controversy. Thomas Hardy responded for the University that this ‘‘process’’ is the change from ‘‘honoring’’ to ‘‘celebrating’’ Native Americans and ‘‘implementing a consensus solution,’’ all of which remain undefined. If you have an active process, please make public what it is. Mr. Eppley, you have stated, ‘‘Logically and historically, it is really tough to build a case for having y’’ the Chief. ‘‘It’s likely a Boy Scout dance, at best.’’ ‘‘it’s a matter of when rather than if y Illiniwek will be retired.’’ What will move you to that day? Please tell us. Two separate committees of distinguished, independent scholars and administrators representing the North Central Higher Learning Commission issued scalding reports on your failed leadership to resolve the Illiniwek issue. Your response to their 1999 report failed to address this in a principled and productive way. Their most recent report urges you to retire the chief and discontinue the use of the symbol. And what has been the response to that report? 1. ‘‘A comprehensive study of the matter’’ was recommended. But, the Commission’s report faults the University for lack of action, not study. Mountains of information have been presented to you. 2. The sale of merchandise with an even more offensive stereotype of Native Americans was approved. 3. The Board reneged on a Trustee’s public promise to introduce a resolution to retire Illiniwek last summer. 4. A Trustee participated in a celebration of Illiniwek that excluded real Native Americans. 5. The Board passed a resolution affirming that the campus will now ‘‘celebrate’’ rather than ‘‘honor’’ Native Americans. Hardly a significant response to 15 years of debate! In sum, you offer no credible indication that you will resolve this in the foreseeable future. I believe it is not a matter of educating you, nor is it a failure to present you with compromises and opportunities to honorably retire the Chief that impedes resolution. Instead, the impasse appears to be good old Illinois politics. It appears that many of you have business, political, and other interests, ambitions and allegiances that you allow to compromise your

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acting in the best interest of this University. Well, this is a great institution and it deserves better governance. In several of his public statements, President White referred to integrity and commitment as important qualities he brings to his office. Well, I hope he will share these with you, to end this farce, and transform retiring Illiniwek from ‘‘when rather than if y’’ into NOW. ___________________________________________ Remarks of Professor Emeritus Stephen Kaufman to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, March 26, 2008. Good morning. Although the university has ceased the performances of Illiniwek, it continues to use Native American imagery in its athletics program, thus violating NCAA and Board policy. These violations include the following: 1. Enfranchising the sale of merchandise with the Illiniwek logo. On January 5, 2008, Associate Vice Chancellor Robin Kaler announced plans to continue selling Illiniwek merchandise in ‘‘select apparel, non-apparel and headwear categories.’’ Ms. Kaler went on to state, ‘‘Such use is in accordance with NCAA y policies.’’ Ms. Kaler’s assertion is misinformed. 2. Continuing the halftime performance of the music known as ‘‘The March of the Illini-The Chief ’s Dance.’’ This music accompanied Illiniwek performances and clearly mimics American Indian culture. I urge you, stop juicing up the crowds at the expense of human beings. 3. Use of the Illiniwek logo in promotional material for the Illinois Women’s basketball team. That advertisement appeared in the Fall, 2007, and also contains a picture of Coach Jolette Law, who was hired May 11, 2007, two months after the Board’s resolution prohibiting use of the logo. 4. Use of the Illiniwek logo in advertising by the Verizon Corporation. 5. The use of Native American imagery during Homecoming, a universitysponsored event, reiterates that no policy has been established on the Urbana campus to foster compliance with the NCAA’s policy or to educate its students on racial stereotyping. Imagery that promotes a hostile and abusive environment and violence is not protected free speech; it is the equivalent of the swastika and confederate flag. 6. The award of the ‘‘Sweet Sioux Tomahawk’’ following the IllinoisNorthwestern football game. 7. ‘‘Cheerleaders, who are members of the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics, lead the crowd by folding their arms, standing in a line and


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chanting ‘‘Chief.’’ How can the students move on when the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics obviously hasn’t?’’ Quoted from The Daily Illini. 8. The university permitted an impersonator of Illiniwek to appear during the halftime band performance of the ‘‘The Chief’s Dance.’’ Ironically, real Native Americans have been forcibly removed from the Assembly Hall and prevented from voicing their opinions against the mascot. For those of you who consider this a free speech issue, let me remind you that nothing impedes you from exercising your First Amendment rights; yet, nothing has been done by the administration or the Board to inform and educate on racial stereotyping of Native Americans. 9. Fundraising by the university and DIA continues to use American Indian imagery. Levels of contributions are denoted as The Chief Club, The Warrior Club, The Brave Club, The Tomahawk Club, and The Tribal Council. 10. Failure to return Fools Crow’s regalia to the sovereign Lakota Nation. Moreover, there has been no effort by the university to comply with the NCAA’s recommendation of November 11, 2005 which states, ‘‘because the term ‘Illini’ has become associated with Native Americans through its use in conjunction with Chief Illiniwek, the [NCAA Executive] committee strongly recommends that the university undertake an educational effort to help those among its constituents and in the general public understand the origin of the term and the lack of any direct association with Native Americans.’’ In the absence of such compliance, the opposite has taken place. Chancellor Herman has either chosen to or has been directed to avoid compliance with the Board’s policy. As stated in the The News-Gazette, ‘‘So Chief Illiniwek, dethroned in March [2007], is not really gone at all.’’ As a consequence of these administrative decisions, the Illinois athletic program remains a source of racial divisiveness and continues to perpetuate racial stereotyping and a hostile and abusive environment. Your music, your logo, your chanting ‘‘chief,’’ and T-shirts are heard and seen by Native American students and faculty as ‘‘nigger, f—— you, you remain our entertainment, you are invisible.’’ And, they represent your failures as administrators. I am here to ask you, ‘‘When is this going to end?’’ Your resolution called for immediate implementation. When are you the Trustees and you Chancellor Herman going to have the moral backbone and integrity to stop blaming the NCAA and start educating your students and the public that ending the Illiniwek tradition

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was the right thing to do, and as Trustee Montgomery stated, the moral thing to do? Just as silence has historically perpetuated other injustices, your silence endangers the future of the institution and perpetuates racial discord and hostility. When is this going to end? Some suggestions: 1. Chancellor Herman, make known to all constituencies within the university, especially the DIA, ‘‘No more Chief, no more Indian imagery, no more cheerleading ‘‘Chief ’’; no more advertising; end all sales and enfranchisement of the Illiniwek logo. No more playing Indian. 2. No more Chief’s Dance music. Stop juicing up the crowd at the expense of human beings. 3. End the ‘‘Sweet Sioux Tomahawk’’ tradition 4. Issue a public statement on why ending the ‘‘Illiniwek Tradition’’ is in the interest of the university fulfilling its educational mission and the moral thing to do. 5. Freshman Orientation: Allow input on why ending the ‘‘Illiniwek Tradition’’ is in the interest of the university and the moral thing to do. Stop perpetuating racial stereotyping and discord to new generations. 6. Comply with the NCAA’s recommendation of November 11, 2005 and undertake an educational effort to help university constituencies and the general public understand the origin of the term ‘‘Fighting Illini’’ and the lack of any direct association with Native Americans. 7. Return the Fools Crow regalia to the Lakota without further delay.

PART II NEW INTERPRETATIVE WORKS

‘‘BORN TO BE WILD’’ OR A ‘‘TALE OF TWO THEORIES’’: A PERFORMANCE OF BLACK WOMANHOOD IN THE UNITED STATES$ Amira Millicent Davis ABSTRACT Communications professor, Norman Denzin, describes interactional moments that create potentially transformational experiences as epiphanies, which are subdivided into the major, the minor, the cumulative, the illuminative, and the relived. In his paradigm for the examination of racialized identity formation, psychologist William Cross offers a Nigrescence Model with a four-stage approach to understand the development of Black racial identity. Cross’ model has been modified to assess other aspects of identity formation such as gender consciousness. My story illuminates how the convergence of these theories offers a new lens through which to view the maturation of raced and gendered subjectivities. This performance text uses an Africana feminism performance pedagogy rooted in Yoruba feminist philosophy to expose the reproductive violence perpetuated against Black women and recover the healing, generative force of female power. $

This performance text is written to be co-performed.


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In the climatic scene of Sally’s Rape, African-American performance artist Robbie McCauley stands naked on an auction block, encouraging spectators to bid on her body, while she describes the sale and repeated sexual abuse of her great-great-grandmother, a slavey. How does McCauley manage to reclaim her body from the inscriptions which have persistently haunted representations of women of color: the exotic other, white-man’s pawn, tragic victim? y She inherits a tradition of black performance which is both politically and mimetically sophisticated, expanding it to express the often obscured experience of gender. (Nymann, 1999, p. 577) A coperformance story brings the audience back into the text, creating a field of shared emotional experience. The phenomenon being described is created through the acts of representation and presentation. A resistance model of textual performance and interpretation is foregrounded. A good performance text must be more than cathartic – it must be political, moving people to action, reflection, or both. (Denzin, 2003, p. xi). ‘‘It has been said that the strongest single figure in America is the Black woman, the Black mother’’ Larry King to Tyler Perry (Hirzel, 2009, February 20).

INTRODUCTION Critical Race Feminist, Kimberle Crenshaw (1991) posits a theory of intersectionality in the experiences of Black women where their collective, essentialized identity is obscured by the whiteness of womanhood and the masculinity of Blackness. Black women, among them writers, scholars, performers, have sought to create a Black women’s counterpublic in which their voices are heard, their victimhood exposed, their culture is validated and their victories valorized. The matrix of multiple and competing oppressions experienced by Black women daily – individually and collectively – are cumulative; having accrued over the life of the situated subject and the historically constructed group, informing their responses to the present and, if allowed to crystallize, presage their future. Denzin (1989, p. 15) describes interactional moments that have the capacity to impact individual lives and bring about transformational experiences as epiphanies. These disruptive ‘‘turning point experiences’’ make manifest personal character. Denzin identifies four types of epiphanies: ‘‘the major (shatters a person’s life), the cumulative (the result of a series of events that have built up), the minor and the illuminative (underlying tensions and problems in a situation or relationship are revealed), and the relived (the person relieves a major turning point moment).’’ In 1971, William Cross constructed a descriptive model The Negro-toBlack Conversion Experience that consists of five stages: (a) preencounter, (b) encounter, (c) immersion-emersion, (d) internalization, and

‘‘Born To Be Wild’’ or a ‘‘Tale of Two Theories’’

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(e) internalization-commitment (Cross, 1978, pp. 13–31). Cross’ Nigrescence Model1 focuses on the construction of Black subjectivity as a process of transformation across time. It involves several phases: pre-encounter, encounter, immersion-emersion, and internalization/transformation. According to Jackson and Stewart (1991) Nigrescence is a ‘‘resocializing experience,’’ seeking to transform preexisting Black identity, signified as a ‘‘nonAfrocentric identity’’ into one that is ‘‘Afrocentric.’’ Cross’ model presupposes the saliency of racial/ethnic identity as a response to normative socializing forces that attempt to construct assimilated identities that reflect ‘‘deracination and/or deculturation’’ (Jackson & Stewart, 1991, pp. 148–208). The convergence of these two paradigms creates a third structure through which we can understand how racial encounters, as epiphanic moments, can be life-changing events. Cross’ ‘‘encounter’’ stage corresponds to Denzin’s ‘‘major’’ epiphany, signally a ‘‘life-shattering’’ episode when one discovers their racial otherness. Within a racist society, the initial encounter may represent a major epiphanic moment, but it is seldom a solitary, isolated occurrence. Through this work, I apply Cross’ Model and Denzin’s ‘‘moments’’ to understand the processes constitutive of constructed raced and gendered identity. I maintain that the cycle of Cross’ model from encounter through internalization/commitment can repeat throughout the life, involving higher, increasingly more complex levels of encounters and commitments. The convergence points of Denzin’s epiphanic moments and Cross’ Negriscence model provides a lens through which an understanding of the complex, reiterative (cumulative) ways racialized subjects and intersubjectivities are formed leading to the conclusion that being Black in the United States is the fertile space for successive epiphanic moments that can lead to calcifying racial identity to the point of exclusionary forms of nationalism, racial distrust/mistrust and/or out right hatred towards the perpetrators of racial oppression: a form of violence that is also inwardly felt. Born to Be Wild or a Tale of Two Theory examines the racial and gendered construction of Black women’s identity that has led to their marginalized social status and violent repression. As such, it is a critical performance autoethnography (Denzin, 2005) that re-presents the personal, political, social, cultural, and historical. It recasts the social drama of Africana woman, locating her upon a battlefield of warring cultures where she is pulled between the tensions of double consciousness: simultaneously valorized and victimized; her reproductive labor respected as a right of human existence while being constructed as a feral ‘Other’ producing a surplus, disposable population. A rigid Western patriarchy maps the margins of the globe in the name of empire and, in the process, colonizes Black women’s wombs by

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enacting high levels of surveillance, control, and regulation, effectively limiting – sometimes denying – their reproductive freedom. In presenting this story I utilize a multimedia, multisensory performance format that combines elements of African ritual performance (E`fe`/Gẹlẹdẹ),2 the ‘‘epic theater’’ of Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht and aspects of Boal’s 1972 Theater of the Oppressed, specifically forum theater (see Boal, 1985; Willett, 1957). This work aims toward the utopic possibilities of animating a Black women’s public sphere where cross-cultural dialogue can lead to the building of coalitions that engage in collective struggles for social justice and the respect of human dignity; where the trinity of wisdom, rationality and intuition are harmonically converged. By doing so, it responds to Robin Kelley’s call to dare to pursue libratory dreams by opening new paths and searching new ground (Kelley, 2002). For Kelley, surrealism provides a space for Black radical scholars to think outside of the box for libratory solutions because of its capacity to support ‘‘key elements of Black culture’’ such as ‘‘the unconscious, the spirit, desire, magic, and love’’ (Kelley, 2000, p. xxi). Kelley points to the ‘‘great spiritual powers’’ that Black women often manifest (p. xx). He queries how we are to interpret this power? The aim of my work is to demonstrate the use of this power in the process of r/evolution and to mine its transformative potential. I have theorized a methodology of an Africana Feminist Performance Pedagogy that represents the evolution E`fe`/Gẹlẹdẹ. In its rearticulation through the bodies of Black women in the African diaspora, the elemental powers of the mothers, ordinarily masked in the popular domain behind stereotypes, caricatures and misrepresentations, are uncovered and recovered in the performance styles of Africana feminist cultural workers. Specifically, these artists reproduce Gẹlẹdẹ’s goal of the promotion of peace, beauty, and social harmony through a concept known among the Yoruba as I`fọgbọntaáyeé, literally meaning, ‘‘using wisdom to remake/improve the world’’ (see Drewal, 1973; I`bı´ to´kun, 1993; Lawal, 1996).

PERFORMANCE TEXT Staging: Three main characters, a narrator, and a tech person. Seated audience as co-performers. Epiphany No. 1: They Killed That Man – On Becoming Racialized Amira:

I was born into the struggle. My reception into the world was interrupted by the shocking news of Emmitt Till’s death, a collective epiphanic


Speaker 1: Speaker 2: [SLIDE 2: [SLIDE 3: Amira:

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moment for African America. The Civil Rights/Black Power movement and I are conjoined twins. My father, a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was a Jazz man – living and loving to men called Yardbird and Cannonball. My mother is a blues woman like Sarah, Billie, Ella & Lena Horne. She was a longtime officer of the Kansas City Chapter of the NAACP. I come from ‘‘race people’’ who gathered after church at least one Sunday a month in the living rooms of their various working class homes to talk about the ‘‘situation’’ of the Colored people to the crass wit of Moms Mabley and Red Foxx. My siblings and I would listen in from the top of the stairs, seen but not heard, the way of all good children, until our laughter at Fox spelling Mississippi meant a post-gathering whipping. My favorite uncle, who came out of Arkansas during the Great Depression in search of D’Troit only to get as far as Kansas City, Kansas was always vociferously complaining about someone named Jim Crow. I was 13 before I understood the meaning of their gatherings. My mother and I were sitting in front of the TV when I heard my mother say: ‘‘Oh, my God. They’ve shot that man.’’ ‘‘What man, mama?’’ Video: Clip 1: Cronkite, (first 1:35 min. of 8 min. clip); Clip 2: Rather (0:31); Clip 3: Garbage trucks, News Anchor (0:59)]3 ‘‘The Riots’’ – This video includes images of the riots and a narration on the riots following King’s death] I had been radicalized. The next day I went to school only to march out an hour later as one among a mass of young bodies moving as one the 2 miles back to our neighborhood where we met at the elementary school to discuss the ‘‘situation.’’ As the day wore on, the smell of smoke got heavier, the incessant reporting of guns and rifles drew nearer as my family and I sat confined by fear on our screened in porch y watchingywaiting. Soon I was going to ‘‘spirit rallies’’ where every strand of youthful Black revolutionary told their stories, asked for money & even sanctuary; where groups of Black children sang freedom songs. My high school heroes were named Mao, Che, Castro, Marx, Jones, Lee, Sanchez, Giovanni and Evans. My symbols were Huey and Angela, commodified but no less potent. My political education came from wild animals named Panthers. George Jackson was my secret lover losing myself in the romance of a warrior. I sported an 8 inch fro. My classmates dubbed me ‘‘Militant Millicent.’’ I crave the rhythm, word and fire. Several years later, I met one of my warrior heroes, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). It was another encounter/ transformative epiphanic moment. We smoked a joint on the ‘‘yard’’ of Morehouse’s campus, and I became a born again member of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party.4

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[Amira plays drums behind speaker] Woman 1: Why can’t I be a Revolutionary Cultural nationalist with territorial, separatist leanings speaking in neo-Marxist tongues? An assault gun tucked under my bright & flowing Grand Boubou loaded, cocked and locked beneath my tie-string lappa? Why wouldn’t I stash a razor in the gele that wraps my head to slice the jugular of ameri-kkk-a? I’m gonna be down fo’ mine when you git down fo’ yours I’m gonna be down wit’ mine when you go down wit’ yours Amira: But even then, I knew I was a prolific mother, long before the moniker of Mama Amira became a brand; long before I birthed my own tribe [Amira begins playing drum again] Woman 2: How many children you gon have? My sister-in-law asked in feigned disbelief. Seven for the revolution, I yelled back As I jumped into my 71 VW beetle, personally pin-striped An 8 inch flow blowing in the wind i had my first children when I was 8 in the attic of our house, coveting my mother’s babies for myself i quickly learned that mothering was only adorable in white, in suburban homes where my father labored when he wasn’t shuffling and scraping to the name of George on the Santa Fe line he brought me the cast-off symbols of domestication


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that tired their daughters school desks where I taught my babies, a little log cabin erected in our backyard where I housed them my brothers & his friends played their games ‘‘Cowboys & Injuns’’ circling about me until most fell dead I stirred my pies, fed my children my Cowgirl Jane gun in its holster right above the stove Amira: But while I was realizing my revolutionary self and dreaming of its reproduction, a Chicago girl lay in a Texas facility having her womb removed. Audience: In November of 1971, a 13 year-old African-American female ward of the State of Illinois was hysterectomized without her father’s consent (McClory, 1973). Audience: Spokesmen for Negro organizations, angry over the case of the teenage girl y accused the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, the girl’s guardian, of negligence in giving permission for the operation (McClory, 1973). Audience: Representative Emil Jones: ‘‘Federal funds [we]re being channeled into the IDCFS for genocidal purposes; for the illegal and immoral purposes of destroying human potential, inflicting humiliation and pain, denying civil rights, and confiscating the God-given right to procreate’’ (McClory, 1973). Audience: The father: ‘‘The department never asked [my] permission for the operation nor informed me of it. My daughter was very upset when she found out she had been sterilized – six months later when she was back in Illinois’’ (McClory, 1973). Audience: Patrick Murphy, Guardian ad litem: ‘‘The department officials told me a pathologist’s report said the girl had cancer and that the operation was necessary y no records y have been provided y social workers, the majority of whom are white and middle-class, consider wards as ‘‘less than human.’’ They cannot grasp or understand the problems of young blacks. Our clients who get screwed over the worst are Black’’ (Erwin, 1973, Aug. 2). [SLIDE 4: ‘‘HYSTERECTOMY – The removal of a woman’s uterus sometimes accompanied by the removal of their fallopian tubes, cervix and ovaries. Removal of a woman’s ovaries is called female castration’’] Narrator: Hysterectomies are the second most commonly performed operation in the U.S. second only to C-sections. At 650,000 a year, the U.S. performs

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the most hysterectomies of any developed nation providing the medicalindustrial-complex with billions of dollars at between $7K-$40K per surgery. More Black women receive hysterectomies than whites and they are 3 times more likely to die. Ninety percent of all hysterectomies are unnecessary, a large number are still done for sterilization. Audience: Gynecologists as late as the mid 20th century thought that the ‘‘uterus ha[d] but one function – childbirth; once women have had their last planned pregnancy, the womb and all its accompanying components should be gotten rid of. Audience: The post-childbirth womb is a ‘‘useless, bleeding, symptom producing, potentially cancer-bearing organ.’’ Excised ovaries were tossed into surgery room slop jar pots. Audience: Wombs make women ‘‘hysterical, lunatics.’’ Audience: Husbands would take their wives to the doctor to be hysterectomized (Stokes, 1986). Audience: Attending doctors used hysterectomies of Black and poor women to train young residents while enriching their pockets (Dally, 1991). These ‘‘secret’’ hysterectomies were euphemistically known as ‘‘Mississippi Appendectomies’’ (Roberts, 1997; Washington, 2007). Audience: Fannie Lou Hamer had one in 1961 (Lee, 2000). Audience: IDCFS lawyer, Frank Kopecky: ‘‘The decision to perform the hysterectomy [was] a ‘‘medically sound one and a long way from genocide y not getting the father’s permission [was] a blunder but that omission had not been illegal since, ultimately, the State, through the department, had ultimate authority in such matters when it is appointed the child’s guardian (McClory, 1973). Audience: In other words, ‘‘whose your daddy?’’ Audience: Uncle Sam? [SLIDE 5: ‘‘GENOCIDE – Any intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial, or religious group is genocide’’] Audience: Carrie Buck, the 17 year-old the daughter of a single mother said to be ‘‘feeble-minded’’ paved the way for legalized eugenic sterilization in the United States. Her case went all the way to the Supreme Court, Buck v. Bell 1927. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote on behalf of the majority: Audience: ‘‘We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrificesy. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kindy. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.’’ (Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Buck v. Bell 1927)5


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[SLIDE 6: ‘‘CARRIE BUCK – Carrie Buck lived a long life and read regularly. Her little girl did well in school until her death at the age of 8’’] Audience: ‘‘We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members’’ (Margaret Sanger to Clarence Gamble in re: The Negro Project, 1939) Narrator: ‘‘[T]he oppressed Negro citizens of the United States, segregated, discriminated against, and long the target of violence, suffer from genocide as the result of the consistent, conscious, unified policies of every branch of government.’’ [from a petition entitled We Charge Genocide submitted to the 1951UN Genocide Commission by William L. Patterson and Paul Robeson, co-authored by W.E.B. DuBois] (Vargas, 2005). Audience: ‘‘That the Negro American has survived at all is extraordinary – a lesser people might simply have died out, as indeed others have. That the Negro community has not only survived, but in this political generation has entered national affairs as a moderate, humane, and constructive national force is the highest testament to the healing powers of the democratic ideal and the creative vitality of the Negro people’’ (United States Department of Labor, 1965). Audience: Between the late 1960s and early 1970s, over 150,000 women and girls, predominantly Black, were sterilized annually, either through tubal ligation, removal of the ovaries or hysterectomies. Epiphany No. 2: They Took My Womb – On Becoming Gendered Amira:

I am a mother of six and a grandmother of 9 so when a white, male doctor – the quintessential symbol of white, bourgeois patriarchy – suggested I needed a hysterectomy, I left the office, with a ‘‘thanks, but no thanks.’’ Two years later, it hit me: the worse abdominal pain ever, as if my entire pelvic region was trying to escape my body via my vagina. I laid in bed, in pain an entire weekend with simulated labor pains. I was 51 years old and, I was told, not perimenopausal. When I finally reached 3 days later, I learned that one of the rather large tumors that had been seen during an ultrasound two years prior, the one that had made my last and final pregnancy insufferable was now, itself, attempting to be born. And, well, of course, ‘‘I didn’t know nothin’ bout birthin’ no tumors. Hee. Hee.’’ The gynecologist, this time a white female about my age, stated that there were only two options: either have a hysterectomy or live with the pain. I asked about alternative, less invasive, less drastic procedures. There were none, she said. On December 18, 2006, three days after celebrating my 33rd year of motherhood my uterus, cervix, left ovary and fallopian tube were removed.

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[Amira begins singing Obba’s chant: A wai wai, ma cho, a wai a waiy] Woman: ‘‘Why didn’t they just sew me up, just sew me up, period? I felt like I didn’t have a sexy I wasn’t a male and I wasn’t a female. Just asexual. I didn’t have a sex, because if I was a woman, I could have children, I hide. I hid. I think I’m sort of still hiding, but there’s nothing I can do. It made me dislike myself. And I don’t ever think I can like myself. It is the most degrading thing, the most humiliating thing a person can do to a person is to take away a God-given right.’’ (Begos, Riley, & Deaver, 2005)6 [SLIDE 7: ‘‘EUGENICS MOVEMENT – U.S. Eugenics 1900–2009: A biopolitics of Disposability’’]

Sir Francis Galton founder of modern eugenics movement – 1883 Eugenics taught as an academic discipline in early 20th century American Breeders Association one of the first member groups In 1907, Indiana enacts first compulsory sterilization laws 33 states would later follow Over 65,000 U.S. citizens were sterilized Harry Laughlin, an epileptic, author of U.S. eugenic laws, praised by Hitler Sterilizations in U.S. decreased after the Nazi extermination project Court later found over 100,000 women & girls, predominantly Black, were sterilized with state funds during the late 60s and 70s Reasons given for sterilization included being poor, being on welfare, having a child out of wedlock, having sex with Black men or being deemed ‘‘feebleminded’’ ‘‘We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.’’ Richard Baker, a Congressman from Baton Rouge in response to Hurricane Katrina Eugenicism, transhumanism/posthumanism are words used in the postmodern discourse on bad/good genes/bodies

Narrator:

‘‘Talking at the gate’’ is a euphemism for the way the enslaved would speak to one another out of the master’s hearing when carrying out their daily tasks. In these private-public spaces grapevine communication systems were enacted which passed messages or gossip. At the gate is the discursive space of pedagogy intersecting what Haymes (2003) calls a homeplace; a safe and sacred space for


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counter-hegemonic discourses. In this public-private place knowledge is produced and meanings are formed. It is a space that resembles the traditional ‘square’ where the African community gathered to critique themselves, the society and metaphysical events. In daily practices, it is the laundry mat, the work lounge, the grocery store or the beauty shop. ‘‘Talking at the gate’’ responds to the gaps in knowledge resulting from the filtering of Black women’s histories of oppression, resistance and agency through, at the least, ambivalent and, at worse, racist and sexist dominant discourse in which Black humanity is elided, occluded and/or negated. Speaker 1 and Speaker 2 are at the beauty shop. Speaker 1: Y’all know the first total hysterectomy done in the U.S. was on a Black enslaved woman named Matilda in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1856 by Docta’ Baker. Matilda was a domestic who thought she was pregnant. It was a tumor – (Speaker 1 turns to the audience and winks) a tumor the size of a 7 month baby. It took Matilda four months to get better. She could have gotten better sooner if she coulda’ tolerated the morphine. Speaker 2: That couldn’t have been more than 9, 10 years after Doctor Sims did his work. Dr. J. Marion Sims from South Carolina; y’know, the sheriff’s son who went off to study medicine with the old alcoholic doctor and came back with a few books, never having touched a body. He went off to practicing on the job, as they say on the bodies of Black folk. Speaker 1: Yeah, after he perfected his surgical hand and them homemade tools on three enslaved women: Anarcha, Lucy and Betsy. That poor Anarcha. She had been in labor for three days but couldn’t push the baby out. Y’know those slave diets – barely anything to eat – caused rickets. It’s a wonder they reproduced as much as they did. Speaker 2: But they kept making them have babies. Some of those women had over 20 children. Audience: A lot of them died before they turned one, others were sold off. Audience: ‘‘I consider the labor of a breeding woman as no object y a child raised every two years is of more profit than the crop of the best laboring man y with respect therefore to our women & their children y it is not their labor, but their increase which is the first consideration with usy’’ (Jefferson, 1819).7 [SLIDE 8–9: ‘‘THOMAS JEFFERSON – Thomas Jefferson had 187 slaves. Images of Jefferson, Hemings and their descendents’’] Audience: I guess he would know. I heard he had several kids by his wife’s half sister. Audience: What? Audience: Yeah, her name was Sally Hemmings. She was the daughter of Jefferson’s father-in-law, or actually Jefferson’s sister-in-law.

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Audience: You mean the man was siring his own nieces and nephews? Speaker 1: Child, and they put us on Maury Povitz Women laugh [SLIDE 10: ‘‘SIMS & ANARCHA – images of J. Marion Sims, Anarcha, his instruments and monument’’] Speaker 2: Anyway, Anarcha’s owner called for Doc Sims. The plantation owner had gotten rid of the midwife ‘cause he was scared of her. Said she was too powerful. Sims tried to pull the baby down by using some forceps he’d made. Probably some spoons he put together. Speaker 1: Well he sure messed up Anarcha with those forceps. Tore her up pretty bad; she couldn’t hold nothing back, if you know what I mean. Of course, she was no value to her owner like that – either on the auction block, in the field or in the bed – so he asked Doc Sims to fix her. Speaker 2: Well, he did 34 operations on Anarcha without anesthesia or antiseptic. He kept her doped on morphine between times. The kinds of sutures he was trying to use kept causing infection, swelling and a bunch of other stuff. He finally fixed her fistula with silver wire suturing. He made himself into a big man after torturing and terrorizing those women. Audience: Sims subscribed to a commonly held Calvinist’s belief that Africans had a special tolerance for pain. He never anesthetized his black patients. Audience: The white women who came to him later, after the surgery was an accepted form of treatment, were unable to withstand the same operation without anesthesia, Sims noted. So he gave them anesthesia. Audience: Plantation owners were happy to turn over their slaves to Sims for experimentation. Between 1846 and 1849, Sims experimented surgically on as many as 11 patients at a time. He justified the experimentation on Black women as his efforts to save the fairest of God’s creatures, ‘‘white women’’ (see Dally, 1991). Audience: He operated on them in a tent he erected in his backyard. Speaker 1: You know the neighbors had to have heard him torturing those women; all the screaming and moaning. Speaker 2: They didn’t care then and if they care now, it doesn’t seem like they know what to do about it. Look at Katrina and this current economic crisis that is turning folks out on the streets and making ‘em crazy. Poor folks, Black folks, Red and Brown folks. They’re all crying out, begging for mercy. Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn’t need Giroux to tell us about the biopolitics of disposability. We’ve always known that we were considered expendable.


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Speaker 2: Maybe now with Obamay They look at each other, laugh and exit [SLIDE 11-17: ‘‘KATRINA – images of women in Katrina’’] Narrator: Katrina was another collective epiphanic moment, transforming the consciousness of Black people, as was Obama’s election. But to what end? Black women’s bodies birthed unfree, unpaid laborers for the Republic, increasing the labor force from 1 to 4 million in 50 years despite high rates for maternal and infant mortality aiding the industrial revolution. Now, in the neoliberal, postindustrial moment, they are constructed and reproduced in the media as breeders of a surplus, underclass. The wombs of Third World women are increasingly under attack: Cut the root, you kill the tree. Many women of color look to Michelle Obama’s rise as a sign of their own humanity rather than the conservative reiteration of the patriarchal, nuclear household where motherhood is sanctioned within marriage and a politics of Black respectability mediates the world for all Blacks. Claire and Heathcliff Huxtable are a virtual reality unachievable to most Black women who need models of collective, extended families and social networks that enact an ethic of love and reciprocity. The current discursive texts that assemble to represent the masses of Black women are public pedagogical projects rooted in hyperbole. Black women – including Michelle Obama – like all historical, socially constructed subjects, are palimpsests. [SLIDE 18: ‘‘‘THE POLITICS OF SKIN’’ – lithographic images of Black women being branded and whipped’’] Narrator: ‘‘As part of a generalized ideology of domination, stereotypical images of Black womanhood take on special meaning. Speaker 1: Because the authority to define societal values is a major instrument of power, elite groups, in exercising power, manipulate ideas about Black womanhood. Speaker 2: They do so by exploiting already existing symbols, or creating new ones. The objective of stereotypes is ‘‘not to reflect or represent a reality but to function as a disguise, or mystification, of objective social relations’’ (Carby, 1987 quoted in Morgan, 2004). Amira: ‘‘These controlling images are designed to make racism, sexism, poverty, and other forms of social injustice appear to be natural, normal, and inevitable parts of everyday life’’ (Hill-Collins, 2000, p. 69). [SLIDESHOW 19: ‘‘POLITICS OF PIGMENT’’ – an animated slideshow of a Black woman’s naked back. Words appear, fall, are hidden and erased on and from her skin. The following poem is embedded in the slideshow]

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AMIRA MILLICENT DAVIS I am a palimpsest re-writ/righting my-self a text of subalternity and bodily spectacle chromo keyed in Black skin inside these walls of flesh and hue my humanity dissimulates under the gaze Eshubi mines my intersecting spaces the crossroad at which Race and Gender run as two dead end streets moving for miles to nowhere he smiles with upturned palms awaiting his sacrifice three pennies, three stomps I salute him in spaces boxed in/locked in behind doors gallery walls filled with images, redolent choking, suffocating, air-taking Representations that crowd me into even smaller spaces where light refuses to travel a revolving door stuck in its turnstile unable to r/evolve unable to move walls I push against with words and silence I inhale to tighten the flesh about my bones just so I can fit in no love out, no love in unable to break


Narrator:

Amira: Speaker 1: Speaker 2: Amira: Speaker 1: Speaker 2: Together: Amira: Speaker 1: Speaker 2: Amira: Together: Speaker 1: Speaker 2: Amira: Together: Speaker1:

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the barriers of my skin skin brown, Black, blue, Black, caramel, Black, cream, Black Skin African-American women, though not a monolith, are overwhelmingly situated at and defined by multiple and competing oppressions within the framework of a globalized neoliberalism that is expansionist and imperialist. Through all this, Black women maintain a spirit of survival and resistance, hope, charity and love; a commitment to family, community and humanity. Just as white men hold aloft their ideal of mother in the images of the Virgin Mary, Madonna, Mona Lisa and even Whistler’s Mother, we must unmask and reclaim our mother. Harmonizing the dialectic of material and spiritual will lead us to re-theorize her full power. Alfonso Cuaron’s 2006 dystopian film, Children of Men illuminates this point. His stark, surrealist vision posits the Black woman’s womb as a source of hope and faith in the face of overwhelming futility and despair. Some contend our survival is the result of the oratory force possessed by Africana mothers who own the ability to call into being (ajẹ) and to make the impossible happen. These women deploy elemental aspects of female power that manifest in ọfọ ajẹ (the power to pray effectively).8 We are here because our mothers prayed Oh how our mothers prayed because they prayed we are here Glory Glory Glory Hallelujah In the searing sun On the birthing bed In the midnight of despair Our Mothers prayed words filled with power poured into fingertips palms clasped extended in angles that reconnect god to herself arched backs onto which the words of 400 years are inscribed in welted sorrow

220 Speaker 2: Together: Speaker 1: Speaker 2: Amira: Speaker 1: Together:

AMIRA MILLICENT DAVIS reshaped as light polyvocal bodies speak in mirrored tongues frail yet resolute knees bent, bruised feet sore, calloused a barren desert lost in the oasis of their wombs they form the bridge across which we’ve come

NOTES 1. Cross’ Nigrescence Model has been refashioned to assess other identity formation processes such as the stages of addiction for gays and lesbians, biracial identity and, in what is described as a total appropriation, the construction of whiteness (Ponterott, Casas, Suzki, & Alexander, 2001). 2. E`fe`/Gẹlẹdẹ is a ritual masked performance of the Yoruba of West Africa that honors women, specifically mothers. In this communal celebration men dress as women in costumes that accent the breast and buttocks signifying their centrality to the ideal of womanhood/motherhood. The men don carved masks topped with superstructures that critique aspects of society. This communal celebration is done in honor of the great power of The Mothers or Iyami. The masked dancers are always men as it is thought improper for women to honor themselves (see Drewal, 1973; Drewal & Drewal, 1983; 1993; Lawal, 1996). 3. CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite 4-4-68, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v ¼ SUJkSVLwM3A&feature ¼ related; CBS News special report, MLK murder 4-4-1968 part 1, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ¼ yZ6DPFXfpVI; CBS News special report, MLK assassination part 2, http://www.youtube.com/watch? v ¼ GBMfyraHP0k&feature ¼ related 4. The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) is a socialist group founded by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. His goal in founding this party was to create and manage the political economic conditions necessary to the emergence of an AllAfrican People’s Revolutionary Army that would lead the military struggle against settler colonialism, Zionism, neo-colonialism, imperialism, and all other forms of capitalist oppression and exploitation. The A-APRP has branches in several countries and several US states. Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael) was one of the party’s leaders from the 1970s until his death (Source: Wikipedia.org). 5. Buck v. Bell 274 U.S. 200, Holmes, J., Opinion of the Court Supreme Court of the United States, Cornell Law. Available at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/ historics/USSC_CR_0274_0200_ZO.html 6. Testimony of Elaine Riddick Jessie, a woman sterilized during the 1970s by the NC eugenics board and later hysterectomized. Testimony taken in 2005. 7. Letter to Joel Yancey, January 17, 1819, Bruce Fehn, Thomas Jefferson, and Slaves: Teaching an American Paradox, Organization of American Historians. Available at http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/earlyrepublic/fehn.html


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8. Washington (2005) text offers an in-depth analysis of the elemental feminine power of A`jẹ from the perspective of an African-American woman trained in the spiritual and cultural traditions of the Yoruba in Yorubaland.

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Kelley, R. D. G. (2000). Foreword. In: C. J. Robinson (Ed.), Black marxism: The making of the black radical tradition (pp. xi–xxvi). Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Kelley, R. D. G. (2002). Freedom dreams: The black radical imagination. Boston: Beacon Press. Lawal, B. (1996). The Gẹlẹdẹ spectacle: Art, gender, and social harmony in an African culture. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Lee, C. K. (2000). For freedom’s sake: The life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. McClory, R. T. (1973). In sterilization probe, Rep. Jones hits use of U.S. cash. Chicago Defender, August 1, p. 1. Morgan, J. L. (2004). Laboring women: Reproduction and gender in New World slavery. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Nymann, A. E. (1999). Sally’s rape: Robbie McCauley’s survival. African American Review, 33, 577–587. Ponterott, J. G., Casas, J. M., Suzki, L. A., & Alexander, C. M. (Eds). (2001). Handbook of multicultural counseling (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Stokes, N. M. (1986). The castrated woman: What your doctor won’t tell you about hysterectomy. New York: Franklin Watts. United States Department of Labor, Office of Policy Planning and Research. (1965). The Negro family: The case for national action. D.P. Moynihan. Available at http://www.dol.gov/ oasam/programs/history/webid-meynihan.ht. Retrieved on January 25, 2008. Vargas, J. H. C. (2005). Genocide in the African Diaspora: United States, Brazil, and the need for a holistic research and political method. Cultural Dynamics, 17, 267–290. Washington, M. (2007). Medical apartheid: The dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present. New York: Doubleday. Washington, T. N. (2005). Our mothers, our powers, our texts: Manifestations of A`jẹ in Africana literature. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Willett, J. (Ed.) (1957). Brecht on theatre. New York: Hill and Wang.

ROMANCE, NOSTALGIA, AND DANGER: DISPOSING OF THE WHITE MALE GUIDE Richard J. Doherty PROLOGUE (Koyaanisqatsi video excerpts, showing clouds, water, land.)

ACT I LEARNING Scene 1 Romance: Scouting (Single actor wearing a Boy Scout shirt, shorts, and kerchief.) In the 1960s my family lived in suburban Boston. We started in Cub Scouts, my brother and I. My dad was a scoutmaster and my mom was den mother until my sister came along. They were way into it, so we were too. We went to pack meetings at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church – our church. We worked our way up the ladder of achievements then into the Boy Scouts – tenderfoot, second class, first class. My dad was an eagle scout. I made it to second class in 7th grade before I could not stand it anymore. When I was a cub scout, I entered the pinewood derby. You make a little car from a standard block of wood and wheels you buy. I got a slab of lead from my grandfather. We had paint and decals from making models. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 34, 223–237 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2010)0000034015

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Mine was emerald green metallic. I worked really hard on it and won third place – a boy scouts pocket-knife that had two blades and a bottle opener. It had carbon steel blades and faux wood grain side. It was my first knife, and it changed my life. The whole family went to Boy Scout Camp for a few summers when my brother was old enough, and then when I was. At first my mom and I would stay in the family campground part, whereas my dad and brother were in the Boy Scout part. We would hardly see them, but dad would come back to our campsite for cocktails and socializing. My first summer going as a scout was my last. I was confused about sexuality but quite clear on my orientation at that point in my life. The big secret news at camp was about guys getting caught giving each other blowjobs, so it was a little tense. I wanted a blowjob or to give one but did not want to get caught. I was not really liking the regimentation and the organized competition, but I loved being outdoors in the woods and learning to swim and canoe. One morning after breakfast, I had gone back to my tent platform to get ready for the day As I was heading out I was stopped by my group leader. He had some other guys with him and he asked how I liked my first year at camp so far. I said OK. I do not remember how it happened, but they decided that it was time to initiate me. They grabbed me. I resisted. They said everyone goes through this and that I should be a good sport. I resisted more. I said I was not into this. The four of them had me by the arms and legs and were taking me to the pump. We got our water from an old-fashioned metal pump, painted red. The water was wicked cold. They got me quite close to the pump, and I was really struggling, but could not get loose. My group leader Alan said, ‘‘Come on, this is supposed to be fun! I said, ‘‘maybe for you.’’ I was determined not to go under the pump. I remembered my knife that I won from the cub scouts. It was in my pocket. Because they had me under the armpits I was somehow able to get the knife out of my pocket and flip the blade out. They dropped me. Slightly shocked, they said ‘‘Come on, what are you doing?’’ I said I was not into their initiation and was not getting wet by force. They gave up, but my leader took me to his tent to talk. He explained how inappropriate it was for me to pull a knife and that they do this to everyone new, and it was for fun. I was too flustered to say anything. I told my parents about it, and we never went back to Boy Scout camp and that was fine with me. After that summer we moved to rural NH and left the Boy Scouts behind as well as our church.

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Scene 2 Nostalgia: Living Like Indians (Setting is a television infomercial.) ENTHUSIATIC ANNOUNCER

EXASAPERATED HEAD CHIEF

SECOND CHIEF

HEAD CHIEF

ENTHUSIATIC ANNOUNCER

Ever dream of the old days, when life was simpler and people had a connection to nature? Kids still need that, maybe more in this modern world. Here’s a book that will reconnect them with the life of the Indians. Take the weather for example: Today we have an enormous accumulation of weather-wise data. Millions of dollars are spent on scientific instruments for weather forecasting and far-flung, strategically plotted web of weather stations. But as you weigh radio and newspaper weather ‘‘forecasts’’ you’re amazed. Amazed, for how it is possible for so many weather reports to be so wrong in their predictions! The chief who can read and interpret nature’s own weather signs avoids much inconvenience and uncertainty. With so much information, and misinformation regarding weather, we undertake the difficult task of weather forecasting based on our experience, in the hope that it will be of some service to modern chiefs. Weather is made in the West, so it is wise to keep a weathereye in that general direction when trying to figure out what sort of weather to expect. A chief will do well to find out from someone on the spot, from what direction the local good, and bad, weather comes. A game warden, forest ranger, farmer, or fisherman usually knows. This profusely illustrated guide leads would-be braves on challenging adventures of exploration, tracking and trailing. Includes valuable information on observing wildlife, cooking, conservation, canoeing, watercraft, water sports, field games, signaling, and storytelling. Excellent pointers on safety and first aid measures stressed throughout. For camp counselors, teachers, church groups, amateur naturalists, parents.

Scene 3 Danger: White Male Weather (In the background light techno music is playing. On the left a woman at a table, typing an email on her laptop. She speaks what she types. This alternates with the TV journalist Vince Vitrano on the right, in front of a computer typing his

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blog. The screen behind shows alternating images of the entire TMJ4 white male weather crew with wild weather with the letter and blog typed out over them.) VINCE

Let’s see, I need a titleymaybe ‘‘It’s Not All Power Outages and Car Accidents Some People Love the Weather.’’ VIEWER Dear Carole, well once again TMJ4 was miles ahead of the competition. This time it was the weather crew this past weekend. VINCE Virtually no one has school in Southeast Wisconsin today, and some of them are taking full advantage of our winter wonderland. VIEWER I was in Salem, MA on 6/7 and had no idea how frightening the weather was back in Milwaukee until I made an ordinary call to my family. They quickly informed me that at that very moment I was calling, it was pouring rain like mad and tornadoes were a possibilityyright in the vicinity of my new house in Franklin! VINCE My neighbor, Heather in Greendale just sent this photo in of the kids making a great snowman. Thanks girls. Nice job. If you’re looking for more to do today, could one of you head across the street and shovel my driveway? Just asking. VIEWER I typed in ‘TMJ4’ on my laptop andyvoila! I was able to see live and comprehensive coverage of the storm. I was able to easily follow every single minute-by-minute detail. Scott Steele was superb! Michael Fish, Jay Olstad andyomg (oh my god) I can’t remember the other reporter’s name who reported from Randolph, WIyand I do apologizeywere excellent, supportive, informative and extremely helpful. I knew exactly what was going on and where, to the point when I knew it was safe to call my family once the storm blew over. VINCE It’s an important reminder that snow is fun. We focus a lot on the inconvenience and the dangers of snowfall, freezing rain and ice storms. That said, I think most of us wouldn’t have it any other way – that’s winter in Wisconsin. VIEWER I would like to thank ‘‘TMJ4’’ for reporting that goes WAY above and beyond. I have depended upon ‘‘TMJ4’’ now that I am working outside of the Milwaukee area and can count on your reliability and accuracy. VINCE I got an email the other day reminding me of that, with photographic evidence. Here’s what Julie writes: So tell the weathermen to stop acting like it’s all so scary when it’s only a couple of inches! C’mon, people, we live in WISCONSIN! Maybe focus on the positive aspects of snowfalls y downhill ski, cross-country ski, sledding. VIEWER TMJ4 is truly in a class by itself. Your hard work and dedication are appreciated more than you can ever know. Please keep up your outstanding quality. It shows. Sincerely, Joan Martoll, formerly Thornton VINCE Point taken. So folks, drive carefully please, but then have fun! Keep the emails and photos coming! Music fades.


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ACT II UNDERSTANDING Scene 1 Romance: Counter-Culture (Single actor dressed hip 1970s clothing.) Everybody has a story from high school. Mine is about being a target of Tony DiFanzo, acne faced Anglo, narrow-minded jock. Of course his locker was next to mine. I was friendly with all the different groups – jocks, greasers, hippies, bookworms, and band people. I played guitar in band and jazz band. I liked cooperating more than competing. I was in love with my English teacher Mr. Barns, a Robert Redford look-alike. Good friends guessed and joked about it. He coached sports, including baseball. I joined the team and went to all the practices. I never got to play. I was not bad, but it was the jocks that always got to play. It was about winning. I quit and they were surprised. Instead I played Frisbee, went biking, hiking, and skiing with my best friend Danny McCorlis. He was part Native American and was such a nice guy. We loved outdoor stuff. It was a conscious decision to reject the mainstream, the powerful. Danny and I hung out with these sisters Janet and Glenwyn Steppens and their friends Elise and Cathy. I remember they plotted this kissing game once and I just could not do it, could not kiss the girl. They did not mind. So Tom DiFarzo hated the fact that I could be friends with girls. He showed me this by stealing stuff from my locker. I reported it, and he tried to punch me in front of the vice-principal. I ducked. He always tried to hassle me at lunch. I had a friend from band, Kelly, walk me to the third floor to avoid him so I could get safely to my class. At the Fall Festival, Students vs. Faculty field hockey game, Tom had been in for two quarters already so I told him it was time for other people to have a chance to play. His response was to hit me in the nuts with the field hockey stick. Faculty and students saw this and did not say a word. I made no sound, looked at him, narrowed my eyes, and left on my motorcycle. I was furious and wanted to run him down but knew I would get in trouble because I was an outsider. He would not, he was one of the good old boys. He and his buddies later that weekend saw Danny and me at the local convenience store. We were in my mom’s Chevelle, They walked over the car denting the hood and roof. I do not remember what happened. I like to think his life sucked and he got what he deserved for being an oppressor.

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Scene 2 Nostalgia: Weather Legends (The silhouette of two Spirits sitting in the clouds watching a large screen flat panel or projection, like a TV in front of them. On the screen 2 people dressed in professional attire stand at either side of a round wood table that has a few copies of this book on it. They hold it up, open and page through a bit while talking. Each time the Spirits talk the people freeze, then resume). NEW AGE FEMALE Weather plays a major role in the lives of everyone. It impacts the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the homes we live in, and our outdoor activities. And so it was for the Native Americans who lived in North America long before European settlement. CYNICAL SPIRIT European settlement? Didn’t the Europeans basically steal the native’s land and kill them off? DISGUSTED SPIRIT And most Americans today are completely shielded from the weathery DOMINANT MALE Modern science provides us with complex explanations for meteorological events and the tools for forecasting weather. From simple equipment, such as weather vanes and rain gauges, to satellites that track hurricanes from space, and Doppler radar that provides early warning of tornadoes and flash floods, humanity has never been better equipped to prepare for severe weather. We simply turn on the television or check the Internet for the latest weather update. CYNICAL SPIRIT Right, so what do the most susceptible of humanity who don’t have television or a computer with internet access do? DISGUSTED SPIRIT Ahhhylook at the rain gauge and weather vane? NEW AGE FEMALE In ancient times, these tools didn’t existy CYNICAL SPIRIT Duh! But people lived and worked outside and knew the world around them intimately. They didn’t need those tools, and people don’t really today! NEW AGE FEMALE Native Americans viewed the events taking place in the sky as a blend of physical and spiritual parts. The sun, wind, and clouds were believed to be living entities with a spirit and personality of their own. Humans interacted with these and other spirit beings who inhabited the earth and sky – for better or worse – and provoked reactions as beautiful as a rainbow and as violent as a tornado. DISGUSTED SPIRIT Now we are getting somewherey

Romance, Nostalgia, and Danger CYNICAL SPIRIT NEW AGE FEMALE

CYNICAL SPIRIT DISGUSTED SPIRIT

DOMINANT MALE

DISGUSTED SPIRIT

CYNICAL SPIRIT

DISGUSTED SPIRIT CYNICAL SPIRIT

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YeahyNative Americans saw and treated the natural world like part of the family. The actions of individual humans or entire tribes sometimes had dire consequences on the weather. Punishment for provoking spirits often came in the form of floods, severe storms, or prolonged drought. Sounds like today with global warming. But more than that, Native Americans had an intimate knowledge of the natural world from generations of observations and direct experience, what about that? Weather Legends retells the native legends of murderous serpents, immense sky warriors, and kindly spirits beings, and how these entities are linked to the amazing dramas that take place in the sky overhead. The book also gives a brief summary of how scientists understand the meteorological forces that dominate the atmosphere and create the weather we experience. So the spiritual stuff is what is important, not the way they observed and interacted with their environment? It sounds like the editor said ‘‘Oh, but you have to include some actual science in the book. We are marketing this to grade school teachers and they won’t buy it if it doesn’t connect with the science standards and ‘‘no child left behind.’’ Not a book I’d buy. Me neither!

Scene 3a Danger: Cold Winter! (Three actors on a plain set tell this joke. The chief uses the audience as his tribe. He and the National Weather Service guy have cell phones to talk to each other. Smooth jazz music plays in the background.) SLEEPY NARRATOR

The Blackfeet asked their Chief in autumn, if the winter was going to be cold or not. Not really knowing the answer, the chief replies that the winter was going to be cold and that the members of the village were to collect wood to be prepared. Being a good leader, he then went to the men’s room, pulled out his cell phone and called the National Weather Service.

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COMMANDING BLACKFOOT CHIEF SLEEPY NARRATOR PERKY NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MAN SLEEPY NARRATOR

COMMANDING BLACKFOOT CHIEF PERKY NWS MAN SLEEPY NARRATOR

COMMANDING BLACKFOOT CHIEF PERKY NWS MAN

‘‘Is this winter to be cold?’’ The man on the phone responded. ‘‘This winter is going to be quite cold indeed.’’

So the Chief went back to speed up his people to collect even more wood to be prepared. A week later he called the National Weather Service again. ‘‘Is it going to be a very cold winter?’’ ‘‘Yes, it’s going to be a very cold winter.’’ So the Chief goes back to his people and orders them to go and find every scrap of wood they can find. Two weeks later he calls the National Weather Service again. ‘‘Are you absolutely sure, that the winter is going to be very cold?’’ ‘‘Absolutely, the Blackfeet are collecting wood like crazy!’’

Scene 4 Danger: Weather Worriers (A single actor on stage recites this poetry. The Weather Channel style music plays in the background. Actor uses bandana around head, warrior style, them moves it to ladies kerchief for worrier). The Weather Channel has this bit they do called Weather Warriors where you email them a picture of your favorite weather. This somehow makes you a warrior. I think they need a new bit called Weather Worriers. Where they solicit viewers to text message them


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about how worried The Weather Channel forecasts make them. About how they can barely face the day because of the bad weather outside and the danger they may be in today because of the weather, even though fewer and fewer US citizens spend time outside.

ACT III QUESTIONING Scene 1 Romance: Two-Spirits, the Actor (Imagined interview in a typical office setting between the Tecumseh! Human Resources Coordinator and the author. Tecumseh!, an outdoor historical drama, is staged at the Sugarloaf Mountain Amphitheatre near the Indian Burial Mounds in Chillicothe, OH.) INTERVIEWER AUTHOR

INTERVIEWER AUTHOR

INTERVIEWER

So why do you want to be a performer in our outdoor drama Tecumseh!? I’ve always had a strong connection to nature. Native American culture and history seem like our guide in this country. Growing up in New England you can’t escape the remnants – places, rivers, mountains are names from native languages. I was a boy scout and we learned about Native American culture too. Something about romping around outdoors, wearing hardly any clothesymaking items you need from natural resources, like baskets or arrowsya simple life close to nature. Do you have any acting experience? Well, I spent almost 20 years acting like a heterosexual male. I got quite good at it to the point where I had a girl friend, and most people I knew thought I was straight. Umydo you know our show provides a unique viewing experience for the audience? They sit beneath the stars as sheer spectacle surrounds them with a herd of galloping horses, a live military canon, and the most dazzling battle sequences?

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INTERVIEWER

AUTHOR INTERVIEWER

AUTHOR

INTERVIEWER

AUTHOR

INTERVIEWER

AUTHOR

INTERVIEWER

RICHARD J. DOHERTY Sounds pretty fabulous to me! Half naked men running around outdoors wrestling! How does the story line of the drama address the injustices done to Native Americans? Well, the story is written by seven-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and Emmy recipient Allan W. Eckert. He wrote that widelyacclaimed series of historical narratives entitled ‘‘The Winning of America.’’ Ok, well what is the focus of the show? So as a performer in Tecumseh! you lead ‘‘Behind the Scenes’’ tours before the dinner buffet and the drama performance. You share detailed historical information give demonstrations of weaponry, stunts, make-up, plus explain the communication systems and stage design. How would you feel doing this? Well I’ve been a naturalist before, and I can shoot a bow and arrow. Physically I’m pretty flexible, and the make-upyI’ve done drag a few times. So tell me, how are the Native Americans portrayed in the drama? Our performers demonstrate guns – flintlock rifles not bow and arrows. In any case, after the 3-hour performance, that by the way has been seen by more than 2 million Americans, there is a ‘‘Meet and Greet’’ where the audience gets up close and personal with the cast. Would this pose any problems for you? It might. I’m wondering what all those Americans come away with from the performance, besides ringing in their ears from the canons and indigestion from the buffet where nobody leaves hungry? If we are telling a story, who is telling it, and what do they hope to accomplish beyond entertaining the masses? I think I already told you. The story is written by seven-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and Emmy recipient Allan W. Eckert! Lookypeople don’t forget this show! It’s an affordable, funfilled, adventure-packed family entertainment experience that we’ve been providing for over three generations! I’m getting the feeling you may not be the actor we are looking for. I have the same feeling. I’ve had a love affair with Native American culture since I was a young boy though my connection with nature. I feel intense remorse for how my ancestors treated them. It seems to be way past the time to expose the injustices and stop the sugar coated stories that deflect the white Europeans’ responsibility for the Native Americans’ downfall. HmmmmyI do get what you’re saying. Maybe you’d like to rewrite our script?


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Scene 2 Nostalgia: Indian summer (White male professor of Meteorology has students present findings on the origin of Indian summer. Game show type music starts and the piece begins.) ENTHUSIASTIC PROFESSOR

TENTATIVE STUDENT ENTHUSIASTIC PROFESSOR KNOW-IT-ALL STUDENT ENTHUSIASTIC PROFESSOR KNOW-IT-ALL STUDENT

Welcome to class everyone. I am excited to hear your findings on the meanings and origins of the meteorological term: Indian summer. Let’s start with a basic definition of Indian summer. Who would like to give us a definition please? It’s often a period of mild weather occurring in late autumn after the first frost or freeze. Anyone have something to add to that? Well, the literary world adopted the term to be a pleasant, tranquil, or flourishing period occurring near the end of something. Like say, the Indian summer of racism! Super job! So where did the term Indian summer come from? There has been a considerable amount of interest given to this topic in literature. One of the most intensive studies by Albert Matthews, written in 1902, made an exhaustive study of the historical usage of the term. Matthews uncovered a letter by Frenchman St. John de Crevecoeur in 1778. A portion of the letter states:

‘‘Sometimes the rain is followed by an interval of calm and warmth which is called the Indian Summer; its characteristics are a tranquil atmosphere and general smokinessyalthough snows and brief freezes often occur long before that date.’’

TENTATIVE STUDENT

KNOW-IT-ALL STUDENT (cutting in)

Nobody really knows why it was called Indian summer. Explanations offered early in the nineteenth century after the term was well established were that Indians predicted it, or explained it, to European settlers; that it was at a time of year when Indians moved to winter hunting grounds; even that Indians caused it by setting smoky fires to drive game out of hiding. Or that maybe the Indians made use of the dry, hazy weather to attack the whites before the hard winter set in, or that this was the season of the Indian harvest. Another idea was that the earliest English immigrants equated Indian summer to ‘‘fools’’ summer, given the reliability of the resulting weather.

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TENTATIVE STUDENT

ENTHUSIASTIC PROFESSOR

Indian summer became a fixture of American weather and language. In 1843, for example, John Greenleaf Whittier wrote of ‘‘The Indian summer of the heart!’’ and in 1867 Oliver Wendell Holmes could mention ‘‘an Indian summer of serene widowhood.’’ So the term has been perpetuated over the years, without question it seems, even today! Did you know that it also is a favorite of popular musicians for a song name? In the iTunes Stores there are over 60 different songs named Indian summer. So what might we call this meteorological phenomenon if we wanted to rename it?

Music fades.

Scene 3 Danger: Making Connections (Academic homosexual couple at their cabin the woods. One watching TV, the other making dinner.) RICHARD KEVIN RICHARD KEVIN RICHARD KEVIN RICHARD KEVIN RICHARD

I can’t believe they said that! What is that about? What are you watching? The weather. They do this all the time. Do what? Say they’ll get the sun out this afternoon, or that they’ll hold off the rain until afternoon. Really? No, really? I swear, they are claiming control over the weather. We should do a study. OK, how do we start?

Weather Proverbs (Two actors use movement to enhance this piece. A call and response with movement where one moves and the other copies them.) LEADER FOLLOWER LEADER FOLLOWER FOLLOWER ____________

Red sky at night, sailor’s delight Red sky in morning, sailors take warning. English Proverb

LEADER FOLLOWER

Before the weather channel and satellite photographs People relied on folk wisdom to predict the weather.

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Romance, Nostalgia, and Danger LEADER FOLLOWER ____________ LEADER FOLLOWER LEADER

FOLLOWER

Some believe the accuracy of those proverbs is as reliable as the weatherman. What do you think? Many of the weather proverbs have been used for thousands of years. Some are simple superstition, but some are based on observation. The problem is that even the conventional wisdom that is true was often developed in a different part of the world and does not apply to where you live. As for the red sky, it may be true if you live in the northern hemisphere.

Instant Weather Forecasting (Phone conversation between father and son. Father sent book about how to look at the sky and clouds to determine what the weather will be over the next few days.) FATHER SON FATHER SON FATHER SON FATHER SON

Hello? Hi Dad? Hey did you get the package I sent? I did. Thanks so much! It’s a book I used a lot while living on the boat. It’s one of those books everyone needs. Yeah well most people seem to leave it up to the experts now. Righty who can be bothered to even go outside and look at the sky?

EPILOGUE (Koyaanisqatsi video excerpts, showing human destruction and cityscapes.) The power and dominance of the white male extend to all corners of this society. It’s pervasiveness helps it disappear into the surrounding space. From the Boy Scouts to the weather

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to Native Americans white males use romance, nostalgia, and danger, to guide the public in one direction. Can one resist? Are there other guides? Need we reconnect with nature? How can we remember?

Coda There is a danger in accepting and believing stories and histories without question. Written with the filters and perspective of those in power they hide more than they reveal. Questioning exposes the injustices and domination over others in these stories. Not questioning them supports the status quo and ignores the others. As citizens in a democracy, it is our duty to ensure that everyone can participate at an equal level and be represented fairly. My research will continue to expose domination, injustices, and other truths concerning native people and the environment through performance that encourages others to do the same for social change.

PERFORMANCE CREDIT Answers.com. Indian summer. Available at http://www.answers.com/topic/indian-summer. Retrieved on October 23, 2008. Deedler, W. R. (1996). Weather historian. National Weather Service. Available at http:// www.crh.noaa.gov/dtx/stories/i-summer.php. Retrieved on October 23, 2008. Hathorn, L. G. Personal web page. Weather page. Available at http://www.hathorns.net/ weather/proverbs.htm. Retrieved on October 21, 2008. Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of balance. (1983). Godfrey Reggio. Documentary Film.


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Macfarlan, A. A. (1999). Living like Indians: A treasury of North American Indian crafts, games and activities. Courier Dover. Available at http://books.google.com/books?id ¼ k3PBvjnRVx8C. Retrieved on October 25, 2008. Meekins, C. (2008). Viewer critique of weather coverage. Available at http://www.todaystmj4. com/bloggers/meekins/19753459.html. Retrieved on October 24, 2008. Spotted Eagle, Douglas. HomePage. Cold winter! Available at http://www.spottedeagle.com/ jokes.htm. Retrieved on October 23, 2008. Sweeting, A. (2003). Beneath the second sun: A cultural history of Indian summer. University Press of New England, p. 16. Tecumseh! (2008). Outdoor historical drama [brochure]. Chillicothe, OH. Vitrano, V. (2007). It’s not all power outages and car accidents: Some people love the weather. Available at http://www.todaystmj4.com/bloggers/vitrano/12357121.html. Retrieved on October 24, 2008. Vogel, C. (2001). Weather legends, Native American lore and the science of weather (Available at http://www.recognitionscience.com/cgv/weather.htm. Retrieved on October 23, 2008). Minneapolis, MN: Millbrook Press.

‘‘AND HER DEATH FILLED HER WITH GREAT PLENTITUDE’’: WHITENESS, ERASURE, AND RACIALIZED SCHOOLING Myra Margolin ABSTRACT Whiteness. We appropriate the word to erase it. We laugh – ha, ha – whiteness. I begin with my experiences as a white, upper-middle class girl raised up in a racist and racialized educational system. This authoethnography revolves around an epiphanic moment resulting from the impact of years of involvement in this system. I look at various ways educational practices that are meant to alleviate pain, inequity, and a legacy of racism can function to allow white people to distance ourselves from the ugliness of privilege, silence criticism, perpetuate inequity, and, ultimately, limit human growth and connection.


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Welcome to: The School of Racialized Education When: End of the millennium Where: American suburbia CLASS SCHEDULE: Passing Period Period 1: Biology: The Dominant Allele Passing Period Period 2: English: Shooting the Canon Passing Period Period 3: Seminar in Whiteness Studies: The Need to Destroy Its Object of Study Passing Period Dismissal

PASSING PERIOD I want you to know that we have two hallways. The one is the long, dark underground hallway leading out of Hades, out of the land of the dead, up into the world of the living. Some may call this a tunnel. Here, we call it a hallway. A deep, long, dark, transitional hallway between the dead and the alive. The live and the dead. The other is a hallway on the second floor of the east wing of my high school. It is empty and quiet. The fluorescent lights buzz, murmur. You can feel the students here although there are no students here at this moment. Perhaps, it is after school. Perhaps, it is at a time when classes are in session. We have these two hallways, here beside each other. Long stretches from here to there. Sites of passage, of transition, of travel. We will go away from these hallways now but will return to them, will populate them, will walk them up and down, will journey. Remember them. Keep them. Do not forget. The bell rings.

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Whiteness, Erasure, and Racialized Schooling

FIRST PERIOD: BIOLOGY: THE DOMINANT ALLELE Slowly but surely a horrible truth has come to light: the smartest and best-intentioned individuals can find themselves contributing to what other cultures and later eras identify as racist and ethnocentric projects. (Sandra Harding, 2002)

You sit in biology. First in 3rd grade, then in 5th, again in 7th, and then in 9th and 12th. The teacher tells you of Gregor Mendel, the quiet monk who, through contemplative gardening, matched and mated his peas and fathered modern genetics. Mendel showed that certain traits – pea pod color for instance – were determined by dominant and recessive alleles. You are given a worksheet with a four-by-four box and are asked to determine the genetic make-up of the offspring of a green-pod plant and a yellow-pod one. You fill in the squares. Small g (recessive), big G (dominant). Green. Small g, small g. Yellow. Big G, big G. Green. With two hybrid plants, there is a one-quarter chance that the next generation will manifest the recessive trait. It is all there, within the four squares. Within the percentages. G

g

G

GG Green

Gg Green

g

Gg Green

gg Yellow

The ‘‘mating’’ of two hybrid pea plants (Gg). ‘‘G’’ is the dominant allele (green). ‘‘g’’ is the recessive allele (yellow). The textbooks tell you: DNA has a code that is like a recipe for you. DNA: The blueprint for life Genes make you who you are Genes are the things that determine physical traits y and lots of other stuff about us. They carry information that helps make you who you are: curly or straight hair, long or short legs, even how you might smile or laugh, are all passed through generations of your family in genes. (What is a Gene?, 2009)

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Year after year you fill out the pea plant boxes. Your teacher gives you examples: Do you have blue eyes? That is a recessive trait. Both of your parents must carry the allele for blue eyes. Do you have blond hair? That is a recessive trait too. Both of your parents must carry the allele for blond hair

b

b

B

B

Bb Brown

Bb Brown

Bb Brown

bb Blond

b

b

B

B

Bb Brown

Bb Brown

Bb Brown

bb Blue

Hair: Brown (BB) with Blond (bb) Eyes: Brown (BB) with Blue (bb)

Year after year – the example of the blond hair, the blue eyes. The blond and the blue generations of blond hair carriers, generations of blue eye carriers. The dominant alleles so quick to erase the blond, the blue. These vulnerable, fragile, threatened traits. The perseverance of the recessive in the face of mixing with brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin. But you are not given the example of skin color for your blocks of squares. Yellow peas. Blue eyes. The rest is implicit. Unsaid. Even unintended. (Remember: ‘‘the smartest and best-intentioned individuals can find themselves contributing to what other cultures and later eras identify as racist and ethnocentric projects.’’) B

b

B

BB Black

Bb Black

b

Bb Black

bb White

Skin color: Black (BB) with White (bb) You are told, in the language of objective science: genes are the building blocks of life. Your genes make you who you are.


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James Watson, winner of the Nobel prize for his contribution to uncovering the structure of DNA, wrote in 2007: Irrationality must soon recede y Finally, we should be able to establish the relative importance of nature as opposed to nurture y DNA sequencing should give us the answer. The thought that some people are innately wicked disturbs me. But science is not here to make us feel good. It is to answer questions in the service of knowledge and greater understanding. (Watson, 2007)

Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1994) published The Bell Curve, a book Barack Obama, then a civil-rights lawyer, called, ‘‘a return to good old-fashioned racism’’ (Obama, 1994). From the dust jacket: Breaking new ground and old taboos, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray tell the story of a society in transformation. At the top, a cognitive elite is forming in which the passkey to the best schools and the best jobs is no longer social background but high intelligence. At the bottom, the common denominator of the underclass is increasingly low intelligence rather than racial or social disadvantage.

Listen: The common denominator of the underclass is increasingly low intelligence. According to Herrnstein and Murray, intelligence is genetic. There currently are more Black people in the ‘‘underclass’’ and more white people in the upper class. Therefore, white people must carry more genes for high intelligence. Scholar Ronald J. Samuda (1998, p. 199): The Bell Curve is most accurately described as racist, political propaganda, presented under the guise of scientific and psychological research.

Sociologist Frank Harold Wilson (as cited in Samuda, 1998, p. 200): The entreé of The Bell Curve was made possible by a climate of public opinion that is ripe with ambivalence, inertia, confusion, and denial with respect to racial matters.

Scholar and Activist Ronald Walters (as cited in Samuda, 1998, p. 199): Herrnstein and Murray are in the tradition of those who have sought to use pseudoscientific findings of differences in intellectual capability between Blacks and Whites as a political tool to impede the struggle for racial equality.

The Bell Curve was on the New York Times best-seller list for 16 weeks and had an estimated 400,000 copies in print two months after its

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publication (Kamin, 1995). Murray received $1 million from conservative think tanks to write the book (Miner, 1995). Herrnstein and Murray discouraged the investment of public funds toward addressing the racial achievement gap. According to their thesis, the achievement gap exists because of genetically determined intelligence. And genetics cannot be changed. The Bell Curve did not present marginal ideas. The headlines of the past decade proclaim, First Gene to Be Linked With High Intelligence Is Reported Found. (The New York Times, 14.5.1998) Intelligence Gene Identified. (Science Daily, 27.4.2006) Genes and Genius: Researchers Confirm Association Between Gene and Intelligence. (Washington University School of Medicine, 26.2.2007) Remember: ‘‘the smartest and best-intentioned individuals can find themselves contributing to what other cultures and later eras identify as racist and ethnocentric projects.’’

And there you are in 3rd grade, in 5th grade, in 7th, 9th, and 12th grades, filling in four squares – yellow pea pods and green pea pods – recessive alleles, dominant alleles. (Neutral, objective science.) (The neutrality of the grade school curriculum. The middle school curriculum. The high school curriculum. The college curriculum. The graduate school curriculum. Neutrality and objectivity.) Several children’s books have been published by James Watson’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to teach children about genetics. These all have illustrations of two children on their cover (each one has a different illustration). Each of these shows one child with white skin and one with brown skin, looking out at the reader, smiling. The books tell us: Genetics affects everything about every living thing on earth. An organism’s genes y control how it looks, behaves, and reproduces. (Robinson, 2005) DNA is the building block that makes you the unique person that you are. Once upon a time you were y made of just one tiny cell. But the incredible thing about that tiny cell was that all the instructions to make you were hidden inside it. (Balkwill & Rolph, 2002)

All. The. Instructions. To. Make. You.


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You are your genes. The white child and the Black child looking out from the cover, telling us: our genes make us different. They make us racially different. Despite a plethora of scientific counterevidence, genetics as an explanation for the educational racial achievement gap obstinately persists well into the new millennium.

We go now to my high school. The following article was published 13 years after my graduation but illustrates the same rhetoric around the achievement gap that I heard when I was in school (highlights are mine). ‘‘Mixed’’ reviews for THS English program (Rosenthal, 2008) September 23, 2008: Township High School administrators on Monday night discussed a recently implemented class structure that has become controversial in recent weeks. ‘‘Mixed’’ senior English classes were the focus of a 20-minute talk at the meeting. The classes, which include regular students and honors students in the same room, have sparked complaints from some parents. The classes were created in hopes of inspiring low-achieving minority students by letting them see the work of high-achieving students. District 202 school board members questioned the classes’ effect on students from both ends of the spectrum. Margaret Lurie asked ‘‘what higherachieving students (are) getting out of the class,’’ while student Board representative Adam Newman said the low-achieving students were being ‘‘totally disregarded’’ in the debate over mixed English. The board agreed to continue monitoring the classes to make sure they help all students.

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Note the language: ‘‘regular students and honors students in the same room’’ As if a radical idea The conflation: ‘‘Regular students’’ (‘‘low-achieving minority students’’) ‘‘Honors students’’ (‘‘high-achieving students’’) There is no racial identifier for the latter – the whiteness made invisible ‘‘Both ends of the spectrum’’ A polarity Two opposite ends No spectrum at all – just two poles ‘‘Letting them see the work of high-achieving students’’ As if a favor ‘‘In the hopes of inspiring low-achieving minority students’’ The problem defined as ‘‘mionority students’’ who lack inspiration Margaret Lurie asked ‘‘what higher-achieving students (are) getting out of the class.’’ Read: Racial desegregation ¼ lowered academic standards

I was 16 the year The Bell Curve was published. In that year, 1994, I was a junior in a highly segregated high school in a (relatively) racially diverse suburb of Chicago. In my high school, the student body was fractured. A white girl from a family of academics, I was a straight-A student in all honors and AP classes. I ate in a cafeteria with almost all white faces. One floor below was a cafeteria with almost all black faces. My classes had almost all white students in them. The other classes, that I was not in, were referred to as ‘‘regular.’’ Or ‘‘lower-level.’’ The students in these classes were mostly black. Our school looked like the world presented by The Bell Curve – white faces ready to catapult into the ‘‘best schools and the best jobs.’’ I wonder now what my teachers saw, the white ones, the black ones, the ones who were neither white nor black. What did they think, day after day, looking out at classrooms filled alternately with white faces and black faces. Did they have scorn for us, disgust for rooms full of unaware white kids, with such a sense of entitlement, with so much ignorance of our own complicity in a racist system? It is clear that there were lines, that there were


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things that could not be said (for they were not ever said) to us. My place in honors classes was never questioned. It was never suggested that I had arrived there based on anything more than pure intelligence and hard work. And I floated through my days, through the hallways, aware of this segregation, but without a framework for understanding it. And, as I benefited from it, I did not push myself to understand it. Or even to question it. It is in this context in which we are in school. The bell rings.

PASSING PERIOD I am in an empty hallway of the high school – between classes? after school? – and a boy passes me – a Black boy of my age. I recognize him immediately – in a nostalgic way I am just barely old enough to feel – a flash of a faded photograph from a long time ago. His name is Golden – a round face, cheeks like circles, large, warm eyes. We were in second grade together – the year before the student body really divided by race, before we stopped playing with kids who did not have skin like our own, stopped talking to each other, and, for me, stopped noticing kids who were not like me. By third grade, my world was little white Jewish boys who teased me and tall white Christian boys who mocked me, little white girls whose fathers were in seminary school who told me secrets, and small awkward white girls with glasses and braids who had me over to their big houses where I marveled at their mothers’ decorative glass collections. For several years, this was my world. But in second grade, we were still intimately connected with each other – bonded as a class – a strong enough glue. So that, when I see Golden, this boy from my second grade world, I recognize him immediately as a much bigger but otherwise nearly identical version of his seven-year-old self. On seeing him, there is a physical memory. My body remembers – a comfort, an ease – a visceral memory of some shared childhood enterprise –did we build something together? play something together? walk as buddies? – I cannot place it – but there is a fondness, a lost familiarity. I have not seen him in a full decade – more than half of my life – although most likely we have been at the same schools the entire time. Now we are nearing each other in the hall. I see him but unconsciously intend to walk past him, on auto-pilot, as I have been programmed to do. I intend to let the

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memory waft backwards, an ash, a wisp, to float. It has been so long. There are our entire lives between us. He is a vague memory to me. Yet, as he nears, he unexpectedly pauses, smiles, looks up, and says, with no inhibition, with surprise, familiarly, a smile, ‘‘Hey, I know you.’’ I expected him to not know me at all, to not remember me, the small white girl from so long ago. He was in my life. Was I, too, in his? There is so much between our child selves and this moment. The bell rings.

PERIOD TWO: ENGLISH: SHOOTING THE CANON The following article was published about a school across the country but represents a broader national movement in English class curriculum (bold is mine; text in brackets is mine): April 26, 2006: Schools’ reading lists get a rewrite (Thompson, 2006) Largely in response to their more ethnically diverse student bodies, high schools y are broadening their literature selections to include more contemporary writers, more women and more minorities y The classics haven’t been discarded, though. Despite their drubbing the past decade for being elitist, inaccessible and written almost exclusively by dead white males, the traditional literary canon – Homer, Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare, to name a few regulars – still makes up the bulk of high-school reading. But the classics are increasingly interspersed with novels by contemporary writers such as Toni Morrison, Rudolfo Anaya and Maxine Hong Kingston. [Continuing to dichotomize – as if the books are radically different, as if they belong in separate categories. Polarity.] ‘‘We haven’t dropped the canon. We’ve just added to it,’’ said Tami Nesting, a former English teacher.


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yThe classics were never really replaced. (A) 1993 survey of high-school reading lists found that the 10 most required books were ‘‘Romeo and Juliet,’’ ‘‘Macbeth,’’ ‘‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,’’ ‘‘Julius Caesar,’’ ‘‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’’ ‘‘The Scarlet Letter,’’ ‘‘Of Mice and Men,’’ ‘‘Hamlet,’’ ‘‘The Great Gatsby’’ and ‘‘Lord of the Flies.’’ y At Archbishop Thomas J. Murphy High School, a Catholic school near Mill Creek, the traditional literary canon is still seen as essential reading for college-bound students. Books by Sandra Cisneros, Sherman Alexie and Alice Walker are now optional reading for Archbishop Murphy students along with the required Homer, Virgil and Chaucer. [The books are treated as second class. As less legitimate.] Matt Wright, who chairs the school’s English department, said the classics expose students to the world of ideas and develop their critical thinking. y Taylor Graff, a senior at Archbishop Murphy, said it’s not just contemporary works that expose students to diverse cultures. ‘‘Homer’s Greece, Jane Austen’s England – those are totally different cultures to us,’’ she said.

In my high school English classes, we read a lot of literature written by Black women. Well, not at the beginning. In our first year, we read Beowulf, Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, and Dickens. In the second year was Hemmingway, de Maupassant, and Dickens and Shakespeare again. And Arthur C. Clarke. Then in the third year, we read more Dickens and Shakespeare, Faulkner, Ray Bradbury, John Steinbeck, Eugene O’Neill, and Tennessee Williams. This is after a middle school curriculum that had us reading ‘‘The Lady and the Tiger,’’ ‘‘The Gift of the Magi,’’ and ‘‘The Rocking Horse Winner’’ nearly every year. As if these were the only

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stories ever written. Then, in my fourth year of high school, we were suddenly assigned Zora Neale Hurston. Then Toni Morrison. Stories by Alice Walker. Poems by Nikki Giovanni. The sudden flood of black women authors, at the tail end of my secondary education, was a gesture, a too-late, shameful, bow-of-the-head compensation, to make up for the fact that in our AP class, and in all the other AP classes at the school, almost all of the students were white. As if to prove, we are diverse. We embrace diversity. As if a hierarchy. First the canon. Then the unusual, the exotic, the different. Not even Black men. Black women. I was confused by what we read. It did not sound like what we had read in other classes. The poetry woven throughout the prose. After years of reading and re-reading ‘‘Gift of the Magi’’ out of textbooks, ‘‘Our Eyes Were Watching God’’ sounded different, had nowhere to fit within my framework. Different style, different voices. By switching, suddenly, with no explanation, the teachers created a juxtaposition between the canonical literature and that of these contemporary Black women. [Remember: the polarity of ‘‘two ends of the spectrum.’’ Remember: the white child and the black child in the cover illustration on the children’s DNA books. Remember: ‘‘regular’’ minority students and ‘‘honors’’ students. Remember the dichotomy.] The teachers did nothing to contextualize the books, to explain their switch and, in their silence, communicated that everything that had come before was legitimate (‘‘essential reading’’) and that now that we were about to leave high school, now that we were advanced enough to be in an AP class, now we could spend some time reading these new books. Remember the article: ‘‘Books by Sandra Cisneros, Sherman Alexie and Alice Walker are now optional reading for Archbishop Murphy students along with the required Homer, Virgil and Chaucer.’’ It was, primarily, a token.

I am a junior in college and I find, in the coursebook, a class called black feminist thought. I remember the black women from high school. Not my teachers, not the girls in the hallway, but the women that we read, discussed, in our classroom of white faces. I write to the professor to request permission to take the course: ‘‘I want to learn more about black women fiction writers.’’ I do not have even the wording for my question. What I really want to know (but do not write) is the answer to what has nagged me since my senior year English class: ‘‘Why didn’t I like any of the fiction by black women? Why did it make me uneasy? What was I missing?’’


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I say later, ‘‘It is like a group therapy session I am not supposed to be a part of.’’ On the first day of class, a black student raises her hand – we are crammed two layers deep into a tiny seminar room – and says, ‘‘I’m so disappointed to see so many white people in here. I thought that finally this would be a space for us, on this campus where there are no spaces. None at all.’’ The teacher – this is what I remember – the teacher looks at her, sympathetic eyes, and nods. After class, I sometimes see students stay to talk to the professor, who is famous, whose work I read, whose work I cite. They speak quietly, personally, emotionally, with intensity. I overheard once, as I am leaving, a student say, ‘‘I was so upset. Can I tell you what happened?’’ And the professor taking her, leading her out of the room, holding her shoulder, I remember, a tableau. I know, instinctively, that this is not a relationship available to me. Toward the middle of the semester – without a fully formed intentionality – I test this hypothesis. One day, the professor told a personal story in class that I found striking. I was a film major and was, at that time, consumed with the idea of collecting stories and animating them. Yet it was just an idea, an obsession, that I did not have the technical skill or wherewithal to carry out. Nonetheless, I developed a brazenness I did not usually have – in part driven by the question ‘‘am I right? Will she not lead me by the shoulder? Will she not comfort me? Have I made this up?’’ – and sent her an e-mail request: would she be willing to meet with me and allow me to record this small story? Hypothesis: she will say no. I did not know what I would do if she did not say no. I was a scientist, sure in my hypothesis but needing empirical evidence nonetheless. She wrote back a day later. She said no. From me: extreme relief to not have to make good on my bluff – to actually meet with her, to actually record the story, to then have it, be responsible to it. But also – sadness. I was, on some level, right. The bell rings.

PASSING PERIOD We return to the first hallway: the passageway between Hades and the living world. In this, we find Rilke’s Eurydice, a woman who has been dead but is being returned to her lover Orpheus by his request. In the story, Orpheus retrieves Eurydice from Hades under the condition that he walk back up to the world of the living without turning around to look at her.

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She walks behind him and in Rilke’s imagining, Eurydice is already changed by death. She has ‘‘come into another virginity, her hands so unused that even a gentle touch offended her as too intimate.’’ She walks slowly, without impatience. From Rilke (1999), ‘‘She was within herself. And her being dead filled her like great plentitude. She was full with her great death, so new to her she understood nothing.’’ I have experienced whiteness like a death. We walk down the hall and glance into a classroom as we pass by. We see this moment in the photography studio: I have photographed my friend (white) in a long white dress with a black baby doll at her feet. My teacher (black) looks at the photograph and asks me, ‘‘Why did you choose a black doll?’’ It is the first I have thought of it. Noticed it. Oh, is it a black doll? Does it matter? I say, ‘‘It was what I had at home. The one that was the right size. That had bendable legs.’’ I say, ‘‘I don’t know.’’ No more than a nag, a vague feeling that I should know. But just a nag. A whisper. An ash. A wisp. I shrug. I say, ‘‘I don’t know.’’ He says, and says so gently, says, ‘‘It might be a good thing to think about these things. These choices mean something. Have meaning.’’ The wisp, whisper, I am slightly ashamed, slightly aware, have a hint – this is an ignorance in me. But my world – the world of tall Christian boys, of ornamental glass, of friends with houses bigger than mine, of whiteness – I have no idea how to even think about this further. Nowhere to file this comment. It is fuzzy – like a dream – like Eurydice in Rilke’s poem, ‘‘She was within herself, great with expectation, and gave no thought to the man going on ahead or to the path leading up to life. She was within herself. And her being dead filled her like great plentitude y (she was) full with her great death y she understood nothing’’ (Rilke, 1999). I have experienced whiteness like a death. She was within her. This death has filled me like great plentitude. ‘‘She was full with her great death, so new to her she understood nothing.’’ The bell rings.

PERIOD THREE: SEMINAR IN WHITENESS STUDIES: THE NEED TO DESTROY ITS OBJECT OF STUDY The social constructionist project of whiteness studies y takes shape in a gesture of historical retrieval of not-yet-white ethnics, whose experience y can be characterized as one not of ‘‘being’’ (white) but of ‘‘becoming’’ white. In this gesture, which I would call the foundational gesture of whiteness studies, the texts y coalesce as a kind of ethnic


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studies formulation, but one profoundly divided by the need to destroy its object of study– whiteness–as well.’’ (Robyn Wiegman, 1999, Emphasis added)

Whiteness fills the light-skinned immigrant. Within two, three generations, the light-skinned immigrant is white, discarding a cultural history, adopting a new history of the white American: slave ownership, lynching, eugenics, Jim Crow, and Herrnstein and Murray’s Bell Curve, unearned privilege. Whiteness feeds on us. My great-grandparents, coming in the rush of Eastern European Jews to New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of last century, made a Faustian bargain: freedom from religious persecution for the erasure of culture. I, their progeny, am so very white. My DNA has been removed. It has been replaced with the DNA of whiteness. There is a way in which whiteness erases. Leaving one with shallow roots. [The following is read as a chorus by all those in the room. Each segment is printed on multiple slips of paper and these are distributed randomly around the room so that each person has a slip. They are read by everyone all at once, creating a cacophony of whiteness studies, a confusion of whiteness discourse. Fight to have your segment heard! Say it louder, over the words of your neighbor. Repeat it over and over and over again.] 1. I’m white! Ha ha! Look at me! I can say it! Ha ha! I’m so white – look! My boyfriend wears khakis and button-ups – Ha! Ha! – look! I buy organic food! At Whole Foods! Ha! Ha! That thing I said in class – it was so white! White people are so white! Ha ha! White! White! I’m so progressive, so not really white, like ‘‘white’’ – you know – that I put that website ‘‘stuff white people like’’ on my g-mail away message. 2. Ha ha! – it totally describes me! Social commentary aimed at my racial privilege! Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha y (Repeat this syllable robustly). 3. (Repeat over and over) A self-hatred. 4. A black colleague says, ‘‘White people always ...’’ A white colleague nods vigorously, responds quickly, ‘‘Yes! Yes! I know! Isn’t that true! Yes, yes, white people always do that.’’ As if to say, ‘‘White people but not me. That doesn’t include me. Maybe I’m white but I’m not that kind of white – the ignorant kind, the racist kind, the kind that pretends to ‘give up privilege’ but still is the first to talk in class, still is the loudest voice.’’ 5. If I name it, you cannot. If I get there first, there is no space for critique. I claim whiteness. I own whiteness.

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6. Stuff White People Like: Divide the following onto three or four different slips of paper (Stuff White People Like, 2008)1: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

Coffee Religions their parents don’t belong to Film Festivals Assists Farmer’s Markets Organic Food Diversity Barack Obama Making you feel bad about not going outside Wes Anderson Movies Asian Girls Non-Profit Organizations Tea Having Black Friends Yoga Gifted Children Hating their Parents Awareness Traveling Being an expert in YOUR culture Writers Workshops Having Two Last Names Microbreweries Wine David Sedaris

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

Manhattan (now Brooklyn too!) Marathons Not Having a TV 80s Night Wrigley Field Snowboarding Vegan/Vegetarianism Marijuana Architecture The Daily Show/Colbert Report Breakfast places


37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

Renovations Arrested Development Netflix Apple Products Indie Music Sushi Plays Public Radio Asian Fusion Food The Sunday New York Times Arts Degrees Whole Foods and Grocery Co-ops Vintage Irony

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

Living by the Water Sarah Silverman Kitchen Gadgets Apologies Lawyers Juno Japan Natural Medicine Toyota Prius Bicycles Knowing What’s Best for Poor People Expensive Sandwiches Recycling Co-Ed Sports Divorce Standing Still at Concerts Michel Gondry Mos Def Difficult Breakups Being the only white person around Study Abroad Gentrification Oscar Parties Threatening to Move to Canada Bottles of Water

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76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100.

Musical Comedy Multilingual Children Modern Furniture The Idea of Soccer Graduate School Hating Corporations Bad Memories of High School T-Shirts The Wire Shorts Outdoor Performance Clothes Having Gay Friends St. Patrick’s Day Dinner Parties San Francisco Book Deals Music Piracy Free Healthcare Rugby New Balance Shoes Scarves The Ivy League Grammar Bumper Stickers Being Offended

101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

Children’s Games as Adults Sweaters Girls with Bangs Unpaid Internships Facebook Self Aware Hip Hop References Appearing to Enjoy Classical Music The Onion Frisbee Sports Pea Coats Hummus Halloween America Promising to Learn a New Language


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PASSING PERIOD When I meet Golden in the hall, he says, smiling, ‘‘I know you,’’ and I look at him with blank eyes – false eyes – the whole time aware that I am lying. Scrunching up my face. He says, ‘‘Your name is Myra.’’ And I am scared, thinking that I will get his name wrong. But I know it. Of course, of course I know it. And I want so much to connect with him – to say: ‘‘Of course! Golden! Where have you been?! Why haven’t I seen you in ten years?!’’ But I have not seen him in 10 years – (10 years! In the same spaces, the same buildings!). We have been separate, kept ourselves separate, been made separate. We have been given a jungle gym to climb on where it has been made clear – you are allowed to go halfway, no further; you, you can go up a few rungs more; and left me lift you all the way up here – a structure to sit on, to indulge the separation, to create it. And in the intervening years, it has been made clear – at least to me – that white people and black people – (not those few who are in my classes, many of whom live in white neighborhoods or come from a higher socioeconomic backgrounds, not them, but the students who are not in my classes, many of whom live in black neighborhoods, who come from lower SES families) it has been made clear that white people and black people do not get along, do not like each other – despite the reading of Alice Walker, Nikki Giovanni, the poetic literature given to wipe away the racism of the school, of the town, to ameliorate deep divides. In gym class, in middle school, I stood with my three friends – our skinny white legs coming out of our gym shorts, our perpetual missing of volleyballs that came right to us, our self-placement in the outfield, the sidelines, the remote regions of every game we were forced to play. We would stand in clusters, in huddles, and gossip and only know the game had ended when we heard someone shouting at us in the distance – come in! In gym class, there was a parallel group of black girls – one was Regina, I do not remember the names of the others – who were clearly good at sports, who slammed volleyballs, who ran so fast, who knew the rules of every game – we knew none – and who had breasts before we did, when we wore token, unnecessary training bras, making them seem not just stronger, faster, but older. And I do not remember what happened between them and us, but my self-narration has always been that they were mean to us – there is probably some truth to that and some lie. Whatever it was, animosity developed. But it was not overt, shouting and insulting animosity. It was a feeling from us to stay away, a feeling from us of being afraid, of not wanting to be around these girls, a real divide.

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In the 10 years that I had not seen Golden, I had learned this. I had been channeled into increasingly white arenas, played with white friends, went to white parties, did not know the black faces that passed me in the hall. I had learned this. I had read Toni Morrison and learned all the while – there is an intractable difference, an intractable divide. We do not talk to each other. And so Golden passes me with a lit-up face, with warmth, a connection, and I want to say, ‘‘Yes! You are Golden! Yes! Of course I remember! We were children together! We were children together!’’ But what do I do, in that instant, when there is not time to think, when my body just does before my mind takes the steering wheel? I scrunch up my nose – look at him and say, ‘‘Hmm. Yeah?’’ A feigned distance. A hesitant, haughty voice. ‘‘Hmm. You know me? I think I remember.’’ And now my mind has the wheel and is screaming, ‘‘What are you doing?! Why are you doing this?! Don’t do this! Fight this! You can fight this!’’ But my body is on a trajectory, it has been pushed down the hill and is rolling. I say, ‘‘Yes, I think I remember. What is your name?’’ I ask Golden, of course it is Golden, his name. He says, with less fondness, less familiarity, less openness, a drop in octave, ‘‘Golden.’’ ‘‘Yes,’’ I say. ‘‘I remember.’’ And we walk past each other, wisps, whispers, ashes blown in wind, floating. And I am left to face it: I have done this. This is who I am.

NOTE 1. The entire ‘‘Stuff White People Like’’ list is directly quoted from http:// stuffwhitepeoplelike.com.

REFERENCES Balkwill, F. R., & Rolph, M. (2002). Have a nice DNA. Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. Harding, S. (2002). Science, race, culture, empire. In: D. T. Goldberg & J. Solomos (Eds), A companion to racial and ethnic studies (pp. 217–228). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. (1994). The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York: Free Press. Kamin, L. J. (1995). Behind the curve. Scientific American, 272, 99–103. Miner, B. (1995). Who is backing ‘‘The Bell Curve’’? Educational Leadership, 52(7), 80–81. Obama, B. (1994). Charles Murray’s political expediency denounced, October 28. Available at http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2008/09/barack-obama-on-bell-curve.php


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Rilke, R. M. (1999). The essential Rilke. G. Kinnell and H. Liebman (Trans.). NJ: The Ecco Press. Robinson, T. R. (2005). Genetics for dummies. Hoboken, NJ: For Dummies. Rosenthal, B. (2008). ‘‘Mixed’’ reviews for ETHS English program. The Daily Northwestern, September 23. Available at http://media.www.dailynorthwestern.com/media/storage/ paper853/news/2008/09/23/City/mixed.Reviews.For.Eths.English.Program-3446337. shtml#cp_article_tools. Retrieved on December 4, 2008. Samuda, R. J. (1998). Psychological testing of American minorities: Issues and consequences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Stuff White People Like. (2008). Available at http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/full-list-of-stuffwhite-people-like/ Thompson, L. (2006). Schools’ reading lists get a rewrite. The Seattle Times, April 26. Available at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/snohomishcountynews/2002952874_readinglists26n. html. Retrieved on December 4, 2008. Watson, J. (2007). To question genetic intelligence is not racism. The Independent, October 19. Available at http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/james-watson-toquestion-genetic-intelligence-is-not-racism-397250.html. Retrieved on December 4, 2008. What is a Gene? (2009). Available at http://kidshealth.org/kid/talk/qa/what_is_gene.html. Retrieved on April 15, 2009. Wiegman, R. (1999). Whiteness studies and the paradox of particularity. Boundary, 2, 115–150.

STEPPING OUT, SPEAKING UP: RESISTING SEXUAL VIOLENCE THROUGH NARRATIVES Koeli Moitra Goel ABSTRACT This text focuses on the sexual violence that is often meted out to women who engage in political activism. Participants of a 2007 resistance movement in eastern India agitating against government land acquisition were disciplined severely by state-sponsored terror squads. Even though much of the struggle was covered by local and national media, the widespread rape and sexual violence against women was largely neglected. Government-affiliated women’s organizations preferred to downplay the horrible experiences of the women. The only act of resistance to this silencing was by the victims who spoke out to independent citizens’ groups and human rights activists.

CHARACTERS Malini Bhattacharya – National Woman’s Commission member Ansura Bibi – Mother of six, gang-raped; daughters raped and abducted Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar – Political activist; founder of human rights group, Udaan; Koeli’s sister Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 34, 261–268 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2010)0000034017

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Koeli Moitra Goel – Myself Dr. Gole – Doctor on duty at Tamluk Hospital who examined Ansura Media/ newspaper journalists Nandigram women Dr. Sobitendro Patro – Superintendent of Tamluk Hospital Anima Pramanik – Mother of young daughter; repeatedly raped through 2007 Lata Rai – Nandigram native, BUPC member, eye witness Women’s Commission member [When people are not named, it is because newspaper reports did not include their names or their dialogue is part of a videotaped naturally-occurring group narrative in which they did not identify themselves.]

PLACE:

Nandigram, Midnapore District, West Bengal, India Tamluk, Midnapore District, West Bengal, India Kolkata, West Bengal, India India–U.S. telephone conversations TIME: 2007–2008 STAGE SETTING: The actors perform while standing or sitting, in limited space, with a few chairs and a hospital bed as furniture. Clothes are same as worn by the actors themselves with a few Indian garments used by some of the actors portraying Indian women. There is a black flag representing the symbol used by Bhoomi Uchched Protirodh Committee (BUPC) farmer’s resistance movement. Black is also the dominant color on the set. PERFORMANCE This performance may be accompanied by a slide show of INSTRUCTIONS: pictures from the resistance movement in the background or by a video film of the women victims talking to human rights activists in the village square. ABOUT THE TEXT: This play does not have scenes but only moments to signify a unit of theatrical time mainly for the purpose of highlighting the change in the narrative styles, time, and place of the ongoing discourse and topical coherence.

Moment: History [The factual background of the Nandigram resistance movement may be spoken aloud by an actor or scrolled on the screen. It may be dramatized as part of a television script, read by a newsreader.]

The state of West Bengal is in eastern India and on the border with Bangladesh. The state has been ruled by a Leftist government led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) since 1977. Most of the viable opposing

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political forces have been squashed in the past 30 years. Elections are held but are never free and fair. The Left Front government has long championed farmers’ interests and opposed industrialization. However, West Bengal’s economy lagged behind much of the rest of India’s for decades, and its communist rulers wanted to imitate their Chinese counterparts. Therefore, the government tried using an 1894 Land Acquisition Act introduced by the British – to justify buying 36,000 acres of farmland, and displacing more than 50,000 people – to create two special economic zones (SEZ) (Page, 2007). One such SEZ, in Singur, 30 miles north of Calcutta, was to house a vehicle factory in which Tata, the Indian conglomerate, would build the world’s cheapest car. The other SEZ, in Midnapore district’s Nandigram area, was to include a shipyard and petrochemical plant built by Salim, an Indonesian company. The agriculture-based economy was obviously at risk from the rapid industrialization, and the population, mainly comprising of agricultural workers, opposed the land acquisition plan vehemently. In Nandigram area of Midnapore – 75 miles south of Calcutta or Kolkata, the state capital – farmers engaged in a coalition under the banner of BUPC or Land Save Committee to agitate peacefully against the government. As a result of their resistance, they faced intimidation and violence on an ongoing basis. Many were killed, injured, abducted, maimed, and raped. An escalation in activity from March 14, 2007, left 14 people dead (An Independent Citizen’s Report, 2008). The BUPC arranged frequent peace marches and rallies to retain members’ commitment over a wide geographical area covering the district of West Midnapore. The massive people’s movement in Nandigram town and several nearby villages including Gokulnagar, Kalicharanpur, Adhikaripara, Simulkunda, Satengabari, Ranichak, Bhangabera, and Sonachura joined hands and cooperated with the resistance group, the BUPC. However, the Leftist government took this as a direct threat to its uncontested power in the state and resorted to violence with its cadres frequently resorting to sexual assault as a potent weapon to dissuade women participants from engaging in the non-partisan peasants’ movement. Moment: Environment [Slide showing picture of Kakoli at a street corner in West Bengal, India]

Kakoli: With a complete disregard to the human rights of women in the state of West Bengal, which is actually under Marxist regime for the last 30 years, women are being raped, molested, accosted, killed in the cities and rural areas by the active political members of the Communist Party of India, owing their allegiance to the Marxist sector. Women cannot live

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KOELI MOITRA GOEL peacefully within their houses: they have to face domestic violence. And in such instances, this domestic violence against women is being supported by the leaders of the communist party ruling here. You don’t have to go far away looking for them, they come looking for you, for help to any woman who cares to listen.

Moment: Disciplining Resistance On March 14, 2007, the state violated all democratic norms and unleashed armed violence on its own protectorate. In tandem with the CPI(M) militia called Harmad Bahini, the state’s para military forces and armed police launched a massive attack on a large number of villagers who had joined the BUPC-organized shanti michhils (peace processions) to go to pujas and namaaz readings. The attack included indiscriminate and rampant firing, brutal attacks, and widespread sexual abuse of women. It left 14 people dead and more than 200 injured. Of these, 85 were hospitalized with serious bullet and baton injuries. Gang rapes and sexual molestation of women were reported in large numbers. On November 12, when the CRPF finally entered Nandigram, the CRPF director S.I.S. Ahmed said, ‘‘The private armies, comprised CPI(M) cadres, have already captured the area. It was only after that the CRPF personnel were allowed in. Now there is not much that the CRPF can do, except the maintain status quo and protect the private armies.’’ Finally, ‘‘peace’’ reigned in Nandigram, hooded, bloodied, and mauled, witness to the terror writ large on people’s faces. The CPI(M) has resorted to rampant sexual violence, using it as a weapon of power and intimidation to browbeat all the women of Nandigram who participated in large numbers in the movement against land acquisition. The women were courageous, spirited, articulate, and sharply analytical about their reasons for resisting the state policy. Violence against women ranged from verbal abuse and sexual threats. to sexual harassment under the pretext of conducting physical searches for concealed weapons, to gruesome acts of rape, gang rape and the shoving of rods/batons down women’s vaginas. (An Independent Citizen’s Report, 2008)

Moment: Sisters [Telephone conversation]

Koeli: Why are you crying? [Surprise, anxiety] Kakoli: I am scared. [Whisper] I am here in Midnapore, it is so late and dark everywhere. I am lying on a mattress on the floor of a room in the back


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of a guesthouse near Tamluk. I can hear gunshots very close by. I have been trying to talk to women and people who have been hurt badly in Tuesday’s violence, but I am afraid that if they catch up with me, they might rape me or kill me. [Sob] I am lying on the floor and under my pillow I have hidden all the pictures I could get and some interviews for your work. I will send them if I can get out of here.

Moment: Weaving Tales of Horror Group Narrative at a Nandigram Relief Camp [The slide projects a picture of a relief camp where women have gathered around community activist Kakoli to narrate their stories. Through their narratives they venture outside their boundaries and speak up about the Nandigram violence, rather than maintain the code of silence normalized in patriarchal Indian society. Through their acts of resistance, it is possible to understand the flow of events during the Nandigram massacre which ravaged the women there. They tell their stories in groups, each joining in with the other to narrate the chain of events. Even though there are disputes on minor details, the overall structure of the events is consistent.]

Nandigram woman 1: (Functions as a group leader among a group of over 30 women) We were told: do not fear, go, and listen to religious prayers. Suddenly ‘‘they came’’ and we begged with folded handsysaying, please leave, please leave y we are not giving up our agricultural land. We are praying now, please don’t disturb, leave. But they attacked us indiscriminately, started lobbing tear gas shells, fired at us, and physically assaulted us. And if someone fell down, they would pounce on them. The non-stop violence went unabated, bullets were fired, they pulled the women to the bushes by their legs y [pregnant silence] do you understand? Nandigram woman 2: They opened their zips and used viciously obscene language to address all ‘‘the land save women.’’ Nandigram woman 3: Who is our king? Buddhadev babu. If our Chief Minister’s wife had come, she is a woman, I think they have a daughter y if she had come today, she would be able to see how they had tortured the women. Women’s abuse like this y (tears) Men are here y I cannot say clearly y how much the women were abused and tortured. What can I say y They put the gun barrels up the women y understand? y What can I say y now you are here y please stay back and see what music they play at night. Where will we go with kids?

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Moment: Torn Up Nandigram woman 4: I don’t know what they did to this place (touching an area below her lower abdomen) y it is inflamed and infected. Nandigram woman 5: They tore off our clothes and I cannot explain how much they tortured us. (Tears). They said, you are participating in land movement y we will show you.

Moment: Stepping Out, Speaking Up [Anima Pramanik in the Relief Camp at Brij Mohan Tiwari Shiksha Niketan in Nandigram town]

Anima Pramanik: What is the point of filing a case with the police? First they raped me, now they’ll rape my daughter. My maan (honour) has been destroyed. People see the violence outside, but I have a fire raging inside me; who will understand the intensity of the fire raging inside me? I’ve been burning for eleven months, and yet I have to suffer more? I’m scared for my children now. (Breaks down.) Lata Rai: On the way to both the school, and to Tekhali Bazaar, I noticed that the sides of the roads were bloody. In some places the blood stains had been washed with water. I have heard of women, especially young girls, being taken in groups on vanrickshaws with their faces covered and blood dripping from their feet, which suggested that they had met with severe sexual assault. I don’t know why they are angry, we are poor people – we can’t fight with them. I don’t know anything. (An Independent Citizen’s Report, 2008)

Moment: Proof of Rape [Ansura is lying on a hospital bed in Tamluk Hospital, Midnapore, West Bengal, India. Dr. Gole is standing next to her bed in scrubs. The members of an investigating team comprising of the state Women’s Commission and the National Women’s Commission stand at a little distance, as if to dissociate themselves from her. Dr. Patro stands close to them. Journalists try to close in.]

Ansura:

It was around 8 p.m. on Tuesday (a day after the final onslaught on Satengabari from Khejuri was launched). My husband wasn’t at home. I was in bed with my daughters, aged 14 and 16. There was a knock on the door. Almost 25– 30 people were there. Five men barged into the house, pulled me out by the hair, hit me with rifle butts and raped me. My


Ansura: Dr. Gole:

Women’s Commission member:

Dr. Patro: Media, Ananda Bazaar Patrika: Dr. Patro:

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daughters were then dragged out and raped by four people in front of my eyes. [Voice choking] I had become senseless. When I regained consciousness, my daughters were missing. After that, they kept me confined for three days. And I still don’t know the whereabouts of my daughters. [Tears] I still don’t know what has happened to my daughters and where they are. There is no visible sign of rape, but she is a mother of a number of children. In such cases rape is difficult to confirm by physical verification. The medical report of the woman in the Tamluk hospital has no proof of rape. The woman has had six or seven children. This is the reason why it is technically difficult to prove rape. Moreover, the incident took place on November 6 and she reported it on November 10. She washed all her clothes from that day. There’s no way to prove anything this way. We have not told anyone that rape had been proved! What did you write on her medical examination report?

[Visibly discomfited] We do not keep copies of medical records. We send everything to the police. [Silence] Please, please don’t ask me anything else. I work for the government. I’ll get into trouble. Malini Bhattacharya, Ansura’s rape has not been proved. She is the one who has delayed this by coming to the hospital late. She first said National Woman’s Commission she was at her Uncle’s house. After that she said she came to the hospital by herself in a van. We think this member: affair is a little unusual. The police did not delay its FIR (first information report). The woman alleged that her daughters had been raped as well. We are much more anxious about that. We really need to find the girls. (Ananda Bazar Patrika, Bandopadhay, 2007, p. 7)

Moment: Spreading the Word [Telephone conversation]

Koeli: Kakoli:

Koeli:

I wanted you to know that the committee has approved that my documentary be shown at the campus film festival. Does it mean more people in your country will come to know of this carnage? These women are so brave. Their story, their resistance needs to get out. I think so. I think we will keep trying to get their stories out.

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Moment: Intellectuals’ Protest [Several local intellectuals, academics and students enter leading a huge procession. Some people are carrying placards and banners condemning the violence. One sign carried by a prominent feminist writer and filmmaker, Aparna Sen, reads ‘‘We want punishment for the criminals and cops who are responsible for the mass murder and rape in Nandigram.’’]

Group song: Blowin’ in the Wind (Dylan, 1962).

REFERENCES An Independent Citizens’ Report. (2008). Nandigram: Peasants’ demands for democratic rights and political choice, March, Kolkata. Available at Indian NGO, Sahayog’s, listserv. Retrieved on March 15, 2008. Bandopadhay, P. (2007). Woman complains of rape, commission points to lack of evidence. Ananda Bazaar Patrika, November 20, p. 7. Dylan, B. (1962). Blowin’ in the wind. Available at http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/blowin-wind. Retrieved on October 8, 2008. Page, J. (2007). Blood is the price as visions of the future clash with love for the past. The Times (United Kingdom), March 17.

THE CHARGELING Cory Holding ABSTRACT Narrative, autoethnographic portrait depicting a ‘‘hardened’’ soldier’s return home from military stint. By following Dig through quotidian routines – and what seems to become his search for meaning in them (as well as the narrator’s search for meaning in that) – this chapter explores challenges to re-assimilation into civilian life and family dynamics for one a recruit and his family who prove semper fideles to the core.

1. My brother Dig comes back from Basic Training in the back of a UPS truck. It is artichoke night, and there we all are, Mother, Father, and I, no one saying a word, but each stripping meticulously one leaf after another from the choke, dipping it in what had been steaming butter but by now begins to skim, and scraping off the leaf meat with our teeth. Yes, this is last thing I remember before the hum of the UPS truck sets off the dog, is noticing the differences in teeth tracks along the leaves. Mine show two long square tracks, for I have big square teeth that Dig always referred to as ‘‘Chicklets’’ where dad has about six teeth showing up in his leaf tracks, so fervent is he to get at every piece of meat that leaf can offer; where Mom has four teeth showing: two big square front teeth, like mine, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 34, 269–284 Copyright r 2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0163-2396/doi:10.1108/S0163-2396(2010)0000034018

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but a skinny side track to each that has been left by what one could only call her fangs. We have a joke, the family does, about Mom’s UPS habit – about how it is daily the UPS man would come to the house and leave for Mom a package. The UPS man and Mom have a joke about how Mom should have her own zip code, so many packages does she receive and (most of them from QVC), and so frequently. So when the dog goes off, and we put that together with the chortling motor and what we can see of the top of the brown box truck through the window, no one is particularly surprised. ‘‘Pass the salt,’’ Dad says. Mom smacks it down beside his hand, and we go on making our teeth tracks in the leaves. What I think makes us wonder, finally, is how long the barking goes on. It is perhaps that some tiny thing inside us happens to notice that the barking carries on much longer than usual. The dog goes on barking so long, in fact, that by the time we notice that she has been barking much longer than usual, and so get up from our chairs to see what is the matter – whether the UPS man has gotten lost on his way to our door, or what – the dog grows bored of barking altogether, and retreats to his poof beside the dinner table. Now what we see from the bay window is something I will never in my life forget. It will have yet in my memory the glow of what people imagine people will imagine when they think back on seeing their bride in her wedding dress for the first time, coming down the aisle, or their husband all tucked in a tux standing regally before the church with his arm out – a certain momentariness I think I shall never escape. But here is the UPS man lumbering up the driveway with what can from this vantage only be described as a heavy looking rectangle leaned onto his back, dragging on the blacktop. So heavy the thing is that the UPS man is forced to stagger, to take only a couple of shuffles at a time before having a rest, at which point, he bends forward and puts his hands on his knees and supports the weight of the thing through the rest. Perhaps, it is Father who identifies the parcel first, for he drops his shoulders and looks fragile all of a sudden. Certainly it is not me who does: ‘‘Is it a refrigerator?’’. Father is glued to the glass looking rueful. ‘‘Dig!’’, That is Mom. Me: ‘‘Dig?’’.

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And the UPS man staggers forth. As though waiting to be handed one of her boxes, Mom goes to the door and holds it open with one hand. She does not move to help him. The UPS man angles his charge up the one step to the walkway and takes a new approach to hasten it along, tilting the charge to one side edge and walking forward the other side edge in what could be called if you stretch your imagination ‘‘steps,’’ or something like them, and he is operating from behind the thing, until finally he gets to the three steps of the porch and says to my mother who grins from the door, ‘‘You’ll have to take it from here’’ and hands her over the clipboard and pen to sign. Mom signs and the UPS man says goodnight and leaves. Dad and I move to the doorway. Wind comes through the door and jostles the sprigs on the wreath. Mom says to the charge before I can properly see it, ‘‘Honey, how was your trip?’’. And there is no reply. Says Mom: ‘‘Never mind that. You’re just in time for artichokes.’’ Then she turns to Dad and me and says, ‘‘Get him in here.’’ What I see at the base of the steps is a big hunk of cement. Maybe it is a rock, who knows. It is long and gray. They gray of all the stones you looked past if you collected rocks as a kid. But there are bumps and nooks sufficient to suggest features like hands – yes, a couple of rounds here and there, and if you squint, you can just get to where a certain protuberance on the upper portion resembles a nose, and there is a dent you assign to mouth, and so on. ‘‘It’s a rock,’’ I say to Dad. ‘‘I see that,’’ he says. ‘‘But we’d better do as she says.’’ And the two of us descend the handful of steps to flank the charge. On closer inspection, I am happy to take scratches and other imperfections in the stone to signify the serrations between fingers, although I think even as I am doing it that this is a stretch. Dad suggests we tip the charge back and hove it up step by step – kind of walk, or scooch it up the levels. The charge is so heavy when first we tip it that I think I may be crushed underweight. But with a little practice, we get a rhythm, and lumber the charge through the door. 2. ‘‘One of the things the Marines have given him,’’ you hear her say to her friend on the phone in a conspiratorial tone, ‘‘is discipline. You remember that one time how he caught his dresser on fire with a cigarette?’’.

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Stand around a lip of wall, only feet away. Wonder what she will say next. ‘‘Well that would never happen now,’’ she says. Then after a pause, ‘‘He’s got all his ducks in a row. And you know what else?’’. Wait for it. ‘‘He’s stone cold sober,’’ she says, ‘‘stone cold!’’. 3. It is Dad who brings up the situation of the charge’s mobility. He is standing there still holding his briefcase, having just gotten home from work, and the dog is barking with joy and life when Mom comes popping around the corner and says, ‘‘Honey, I’m gonna need you to go ahead and get Dig out of the bathroom.’’ She was a little worried, she elaborated, for he had been in there most of the afternoon. Dad sighs. ‘‘Where do you want me to put him?’’. ‘‘Him?’’, I say to Dad. ‘‘Him,’’ he says, taking her side. ‘‘How should I know?’’, she says. ‘‘Wherever he wants.’’ And Dad puts down the briefcase and doffs his cap and coat and walks the short hall to the bathroom. He opens the door. Then for a little while I hear nothing, although having seen this before, I know he is circling the charge, reckoning the best angle for approach, trying for a grip on this or that bump, positioning his own body for leverage. Then there is what you might think of as the sound of your dishwasher, or maybe laundry machine being pushed across a linoleum floor. This is progress. Dad and the charge come wobbling down the hall, Dad behind the charge and the charge tipping this way and that, and now and again bumping against a wall and leaving a chip in the paint or small dent. ‘‘Help,’’ Dad says when he tires, and I do. Together, we maneuver the charge to the dining room, for it will be dinner in a matter of hours, and it would be a shame to have to enable it again before then. ‘‘There’s gotta be a better way,’’ Dad says once we position him in there in the corner, next to the bird cage. ‘‘Do they make dollies this size?’’, I ask. Dad puts a hand on one of the charge’s bumps and pats it as he might a shoulder and says he will have a look in the maintenance room at work.

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4. What you heard about the swim test was this: that each recruit was meant to swim the length of the full sized Olympic swimming pool and back with his or her hands tied at the wrists and feet at the ankles. This, you understood when someone first spoke the scenario to you – you know, set up for the story’s punch line – was something he would have been able to do pretty easily. The dolphin he could swim at a ripe young age, and the butterfly. He knew how to propel himself with his torso. But what you heard was that it almost killed him. Not because he was not strong enough, or coordinated enough, to swim both lengths without the use of his arms or legs, but rather because, once he embarked on the exercise, it was clear to someone, although you are not sure who, that he was not struggling nearly enough, and so a few of that someone got in the pool, or maybe were in the pool, and did what they had to in order to sink him. That is the punch line of the story. 5. It is not the dolly from work, which is designed for carrying boxes of paper up to small office furniture, that does the trick, but rather the reinforced platform on wheels that Dad improvises on spending a couple of weekend days in the basement. You would hear him banging around down there, hammering, and screwing with the electric drill and cutting with the buzz saw. To the hardware store Dad had gone to buy properly thick wood and rotatable wheels. What he and I agree we like about this arrangement, once we got the charge onto the platform was – apart from making the charge much easier to move from place to place – it gave the charge the look of roller skating. The dolly is seeming to do the trick right up until Mom decides to take the charge out in public. I am unsure what motivates her to do this, apart from she has made and seen to keeping our necessary appointments since we were children (so in this way, when I come home for Christmas and summer, I can expect to get my teeth cleaned and hair cut if I would like), and in this situation is just doing what comes naturally. But the morning she tells Dad as he is gathering up his things for work, the coat, the cap, the briefcase (the reverse order in which he puts them down nightly), that the charge has a hair appointment, he says, ‘‘No.’’ ‘‘Sorry dear?’’, she says. ‘‘Absolutely not,’’ he says, and I am standing there agape, for I am not used to hearing my father talk back to my mother.

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‘‘But it’s so disheveled,’’ she says. ‘‘What?’’, he says. ‘‘His hair.’’ Dad says everything he can say, and I credit him for his great patience and discretion in this regard, short of calling the charge an unwieldy hunk of rock and impossible to tote. He says, ‘‘Honey, might it be too soon? Mightn’t he yet be tired from the training?’’. Mom: ‘‘It has been a week and he is a strong boy.’’ Dad: ‘‘Oughtn’t you leave the decision to him?’’. Mom: ‘‘He needs a haircut.’’ Dad: ‘‘Son, do you want a haircut?’’. The charge just stands there on the dolly. Dad: ‘‘There, you see?’’. But Mom is onto him and starts to take matters into her own hands. She reaches out for the charge as though to haul it out herself and this seems to break Dad’s heart, and the next thing you know he has got the thing maneuvered lengthwise with the seats down, not unlike he used to do with our skis in the back of Mom’s Subaru wagon. Like afterthoughts, he steers me into the front seat and drops the reinforced platform on my lap. 6. It is not a particularly military family. In that regard, no one is certain quite what to have been impressed by at the Boot Camp graduation, or what do they call it. Your people were more preachers and farmers, here and there a teacher. Graduation, you hear, because you do not attend, is basically a series of lines. Lines of hats and lines of legs and moving lines. Lines there are on the guns, barrel lines, and then there are lines of guns, and gun tricks. One of the grandmothers says she likes the lines of gentlemen’s butts in uniforms. Lines ironed into uniforms and button lines, stripes and flanks. People are certainly impressed with what of him is left after all of the straightening: ‘‘thighs that could crack a walnut,’’ the grandmother says, and less the impish smile. 7. Now, you can imagine what the barber says once I get the charge in there. We cannot count on the barber for discretion, for he owes nothing

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to Mom but the tip and has little in the way of back story, or context on which to go. I bite my lip. The charge is on the platform. The barber gives it the twice over, starting at the top and then down to the bottom, and gives the platform pause, then back to the top. ‘‘What’ll it be?’’, he says to the charge. Charge says nothing. ‘‘Trim,’’ Mom says. ‘‘The boy needs a trim.’’ ‘‘Couple inches, or what are you thinking?’’, the barber says. ‘‘Just make it neat,’’ Mom says. ‘‘Right this way,’’ the barber says at the charge, so of course, I wheel the charge over to the chair. Barber stands holding the cape, then says, ‘‘Do you sit?’’. Charge doesn’t sit. ‘‘Does he sit?’’, Barber says to Mom. Mom: ‘‘He’s ex-military. I’m not sure what they do there.’’ Barber: ‘‘Hn.’’ Then, ‘‘Nothing I wouldn’t do for one of our boys,’’ the barber says and disappears into the back behind a sort of shower curtain, then reappears with a pot of wax. When what do you know, the barber takes the cape and ascends himself the chair and puts the cape around the charge, affixing it with Velcro, and from his perch up there, the barber’s, for the top of the charge is mightily high, he pulls out the wax and gets cracking. From my vantage behind the magazine, it looks like the barber is little more than coating the upper portion of the charge. This goes on awhile and is followed by blow-drying, after which the barber with a flourish, as they do in the movies with the people in chairs with new hairdos, grabs the charge and spins it around on its platform for the reveal. Mom looks up from her Reader’s Digest and says, ‘‘Perfect!’’ The charge looks exactly the same as before, only glossy. 8. Do not be alarmed despite all your inclinations until the sports bar. Here you sit with a new old friend who we will call ‘‘Matt.’’ Matt has greasy wavy dark hair and lost a lot of weight recently. The two of you sit on one side of the booth, waiting for him. After a few rounds of back and forth, you and Matt run out of topics for conversation, and conversation turns to what a difference the military will have made.

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‘‘Yeah, I was lost like that,’’ Matt will say these sorts of things intermittently, between sips. ‘‘I seen it.’’ He is late, which is your first clue that he is not completely renovated as everyone has been saying. Your second clue, of course, is that when he finally shows up with his girlfriend, he is drunk. Third, straightaway, you are having a conversation, and he is playing with a hunting knife, and talking about weaponry, how he has come to have a new sort of relationship to weapons, and it is something like romantic love. One takes one’s gun to bed, he explains, which is what you always heard, but had not imagined until this moment actually happened. Your fourth clue is that when he becomes passionate about one thing or another, he gets to flipping the open knife between fingers, and doing small-scale tricks with it, right there at the table, over beers. Fifth, he threatens to kill Matt if he crosses you and, as he animates the knife on this particular point, he slices his hand and commences on the table to bleed. 9. The dentist, you might think you could expect to be tactful, given the barber, who was perfectly so, in light of the dentist’s extensive education, presumably, and the link you have been trained to imagine between that and tact. But having managed with a passerby’s help to once again fetch the charge from the back of the wagon and onto the reinforced platform and from there got it clear up the walkway and up the six or seven steps to the little office built into a stately home, you begin to lose your optimism on this point when the receptionist says, on seeing the charge, ‘‘You’ll have to get that out of here.’’ ‘‘Sorry?’’ Mom says. ‘‘It could fall on one of the patients,’’ the receptionist says. Suddenly, I want intensely to protect Mom and the charge and so say to the nurse, quickly, ‘‘He’s stable.’’ Nurse: ‘‘I cannot allow potential harms to our clients in the waiting room. I have to protect the patients. You’ll have to get that out of here.’’ Mom looks aghast. I wheel the charge back to the hall and ask her to wait with it and return to the receptionist to see whether we might strike a compromise, explaining to her about the discharge, and how no, he has not quite been the same old Dig, but no, neither was he a menace or potential harm, petrified as he clearly was and obtrusive. The nurse says she remembers him, and after awhile, that she would do this one service to the

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family, us having been so long good clients, and offers to let us stash the charge in the broom closet until his turn is called. For the duration of the wait, Mom stands guard at the broom closet, looking hurt. It is the look I have come to recognize as her pre-cry. Know it by the purse of her chin, and the upturn of the inner edge of eyebrows. Worry that she is going to have her epiphany in public, but take heart when the dentist pops out of the back and calls our family name. Now it gets a little dicey here. I wheel the charge through the waiting room with the receptionist watching me like a hawk. Mom is lagging behind looking dolefully at paisleys on the carpet. Perhaps because I feel so scrutinized, to some extent on parade for the lot of these people, me and the charge, or perhaps because I am physically tiring – so comparatively small am I to it, while so totally responsible for its maneuvers – I start to make navigational errors. Like first I catch the platform wheels on a carpet wrinkle, and the charge wobbles like it is threatening to tip forward onto the dentist. The dentist seems not to notice the blunder, is at the precise moment of the wobble squeezing his eyes shut to have another go at discerning my brother, presumably. Then I run the charge into some hanging birthday decorations or other, and the whole wall’s worth of crepe paper and cardboard words comes down in staccato tape unpeelings around the charge. Mom is still way back there when the dentist addresses me by name, and asks, ‘‘why the boulder?’’ ‘‘Could you see to it?’’ I say quietly. ‘‘See to what?’’ the dentist says. ‘‘Its teeth?’’ I say. Dentist: ‘‘Teeth?’’ ‘‘Right around here,’’ I suggest, and point the index finger of my right hand at an area near the upper portion of the charge and draw a circle where there could be a mouth. Dentist looks from the spot, to Mom, to me. ‘‘Tell you what,’’ he says. ‘‘It could stand in the examination room while I lunch.’’ ‘‘That’ll do.’’ 10. There was the time with the recruiter where he, not the recruiter, was out of his mind on one thing or another, and you were wondering what it was the recruiter thought he had recruited, or how much it was he was willing to overlook for a quota. He, not the recruiter, had offered to take you to breakfast at McDonald’s. As he had perhaps never to this point in your lives bought you

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a meal, you take him up on it, although you hate McDonald’s, and trick yourself into thinking this is some sort of ripening, a culmination of kinship. But the recruiter decided to come too to the meal, for this was his prerogative, and to have him, not the recruiter, buy him a breakfast at the McDonald’s too, and the recruiter turns to you, with his little binder: ‘‘What do you say?’’ And gives you a frat boy look. ‘‘You could get education reimbursement y and me the day off, if you’re willing to fill out the form.’’ You can make up how you respond to this here: __________. But be surprised when he, not the recruiter, asks you seriously to sign up to be recruited, because he, the recruiter, is currently his, not the recruiter’s boss, and you can see from the look in his, not the recruiter’s, eye that there will be hell to pay if you don’t. Your turn. ‘‘Fuckin’ deer venison,’’ the recruiter says, and he, not the recruiter, volunteers how his mom used to make chili with it. The worst part, think, is how he wants so desperately for the recruiter to like him, to toss the venison back. But the recruiter, a pie in the sky, ignores this, and keeps working on you. For example, sign the form. Say you will go ahead and become a Marine for today. Go along with the recruiter when he suggests he and not the recruiter will take the recruiter’s car and you are to walk to the headquarters and to pretend you are no relation to him, not the recruiter, just someone who was happily converted on the street to the prospect. When the recruiter asks you your middle name to go by, so the Lieutenant, his boss, will not by chance make the link, give it to him. Respond to ‘‘Emily.’’ When he tells you, the recruiter does, to hide behind a bush while he runs the operation by the Lieutenant, hunker down. 11. Mom starts getting sick of the charge just in time for Christmas. You know this because she starts to leave it in one position for days at a time, and Dad’s back is starting to get better. In fact, sometimes it gets to being Dad who says, ‘‘Honey, do you know where our Dig is today?’’ Or, ‘‘Do you think our Dig might like to watch television as well?’’, prompting her to assert for the charge a destination, and goals, and things of this nature. It is as though he has bought in just enough to feel sorry for the charge, but not enough to be able to invent days for it. Sometimes Mom will say, ‘‘Sure, he’s in the laundry room, and we should get him up here in time for

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Animal Cops,’’ and sometimes she will say, ‘‘How the hell should I know. Find him for yourself.’’ Christmas at our house is many things, among them the red ‘‘Ho Ho Ho’’ we hang on the porch and the Christmas gorilla, who if you squeeze, says, like the sign, ‘‘Ho Ho Ho,’’ but then, ‘‘Merrrry Christmas!’’. It is one Christmas tree in the front window that everyone must be harangued into decorating, and the decorations that span us: Dad’s Mickey Mouse from Outer Space he got from his grandparents as a boy, the finger length Ronald McDonald he and I found in the grocery store parking lot when I was still young enough to hold his hand when we walked. It is a very specific layout of wreathes. This all, on writing it, I realize is unremarkable, entirely whoever you happen to be and whatever holiday you celebrate. We are, like you, this small bunch at holidays trying to cling to a common stem. But Mom is toeing the plunge. The morning of the 23rd, Dad is coming down the hall with the charge on the platform when Mom goes to pass him coming from the opposite direction, and gets impatient with the charge’s breadth, how it takes up the whole hallway, and so she pushes the charge against the wall to squeeze past, but the base of the charge does not – when Dad goes to re-right it – align quite with the platform, and Dad is not so strong as to catch it from behind when the charge thunks the wall and falls to the floor, kicking back at Dad, and crushing the piano bench. We all come from our places to the charges aid, and right the charge. The bench looks like a pile of kindling with a cushion here and there affixed. Mom, to Dad: ‘‘Honey, I’m going to need you to clean that up,’’ and points to the bits. And then she sends the charge to its room and says she does not want to see it again until dinner. It is only here, on trying to maneuver the charge to its room that Dad and I realize a wheel on the platform has broken off in the accident. 12. You are going to have to the brunt of the work for this segment. But I will give you some pointers. There is something about Atlanta, perhaps. Then something about somewhere else, like Louisville – or no, St. Louis. Somewhere Midwesterly. Something there is about a Hum-V and an airport. Something something chandalier something something something: I, for example, when I go to picture it, see him ascending an airport escalator

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in full rigout, the tidy hat and all as he is meant to wear on this sort of business, having slung over shoulder the rucksack they provided him for tootling about. When, and this is my favorite part, he gets to the top of the escalator and just keeps ascending. Still holding the rucksack by a couple of fingers, and gorgeous, as gorgeous he is, he sails up at an even rate toward the airport rafters, which as a normal passenger you would not usually bother looking to, but since we are here in the story, way up here and speculating, you can go ahead and take in the beams and stucco or what makes the ceiling, its beige, and him with his one free tanned hand to the ceiling, trying humbly to push off, to return to the ground and the security check, as he had intended. But he, as we saw from an earlier section, was not particularly designed to sink, and so he bobs there, and we watch him bobbing, watch as he clutches the rucksack to keep it from falling on innocents below. It is not long before he craves the blue day, the Midwest sky – at once less ostentatious, and more opportune – before he starts bumping around in the rafters and looking for an out. Maybe he would find a vent, or grips along the wall by which to clamber down to door. Or maybe – is this far fetched? You or I feel generous, and pencil in a knotted rope. But you have probably seen birds caught accidentally in doors. Just the other week, for instance, when I got back from spring break, there was a dove on the third floor of my apartment building. It was pecking at wood, and freaking out, and had pooped several times up and down the hall, which is how I come to know how long it must have been trapped. When I found it, it was throwing itself at a closed window, as one might expect. I stood behind the bird and opened the window from the top pane, and the bird stopped flapping when the wind came and paused to reckon just before getting the hell out of there. So it is our hero is caught in the concave on the upside of a magnificent airport chandelier, trapped as he his in the crystal beads, and everywhere a rainbow, waiting for someone to come along, and pluck him down. Now you try. 13. Christmas morning: we are used to having to wait for Dad to get off the pot. He is married to it particularly on Christmas morning. One of us has called through the door from him to please get a move on every Christmas morning since memory. Presently, Dad comes out of the bathroom.

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Mom: ‘‘Behold,’’ to me, and gestures toward the heaps of presents under the tree. The far side of the pile, as has also always been the case, is for me, the near side for my brother. Mom, calls to the quiet house: ‘‘Dig!!!’’ There is no reply. Dad and I look at each other and get going in search of the charge. He takes the downstairs and I take the upstairs, and we find it down by Dad’s workbench, gathering dust. It takes a good half hour to get the charge onto the platform and to maneuver the platform, which has now this wonky wheel and tends to steer us all over the place, to the steps, and then up the steps, through the kitchen and dining room to Dig’s spot on the near side of the Christmas tree. ‘‘Sugar,’’ Mom says to the charge, ‘‘I need you sit in the chair.’’ Dad and I again exchange looks. Dad: ‘‘Better to let the boy stand, Honey.’’ Mom: ‘‘He always sits in the chair at Christmas.’’ Mom, to Charge, pointing at chair: ‘‘Sit.’’ The charge does not seem to register the tip. Mom, to Charge: ‘‘Do as you’re told!’’ Dad: ‘‘Honey. Give the boy a rest.’’ Mom: ‘‘I’m trying!’’ Dad: ‘‘Maybe he should sit this Christmas out.’’ Mom: ‘‘I wish he would!’’ Dad moves to the charge, touches it. ‘‘Son, I got you something,’’ and he picks a little box out of his pocket. Mom’s expression is one of abject terror. Her next question hangs like a perfectly situated ornament: ‘‘Why won’t he sit?’’ Dad has wrapped the gift. He holds it out to the charge, but thinks better of that, and begins himself to unwrap it from a neat, taped edge. There is the tear of the paper. The box is white. Dad lifts off the lid and pulls from its depths one small black wheel fresh from the hardware store, complete with baggie of screws and fixtures taped on for attaching. 14. You may as well go ahead and write over the rest, too. Think of it like moving dolls about a dollhouse. It is that simple, and cliche´. Stick your hand in through the roof. Here, to begin, are the players: Mom, Dad, Me, Him, the girlfriend, the recruiter, the Lieutenant, the drill sergeants, the officers at Basic, the airport attendants including skycap, the fellow

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passengers on the planes and in the lines at the airport, the fellow countrymen in the platoon, the someones in the pool, Sweet Caroline the gun, the staff at the Holiday Inn, here and there a nurse, and the fathoms of others you might know and I don’t that were inevitably involved. Set changes: home, Boot Camp – that is, Camp LeJeune in North Carolina, the Sports Cafe´, Paris Island, Lambert-St. Louis International Airport (outside and inside line areas for check-in, as well as the security area, as well as, although perhaps I am stretching things here – one or another of the gate areas), the Holiday Inn lobby and a guest room, the barber shop, the dentist’s office, the hardware store, and Limbo, although I could not specify precisely where that is, so you can take full liberty with the description of that. Props: swimming pool, rope, one or more uniforms pressed and hung, one dove, a handful of windows, a Christmas tree, planks from the hardware store as well as five or more rotatable wheels, several power tools, a pot of hair wax, a hair dryer, one dog (or two or three if you need to change them in and out depending on their moods and energy, like they did with Lassie), an airport, a chandelier, a hunting knife, some beers, a couple of hash browns for effect, the Marine recruitment binder, the bush and the cigarette, a UPS truck, and several artichokes with skimming butter. Sample opening character line, to get your central tension going as nearly as possible to the start of your story: ‘‘‘It’s just that he needs a baseball cap, is why they called.’’’ Now if you want, you could tantalize your reader still further by following that with an incriminating observation from the narrator, like this: ‘‘I could tell he was lying by the way he scratched his head.’’ It is not much to go on, is it? Tell me about it. And how there is no end to speak of to the permutations and combinations, as they say, one could knot. 15. Epilogue I The charge is parked in a corner of the master bedroom and used for sundry things. Although at first, the charge moves in at Mom’s behest by Dad on the reinforced platform for company’s sake – for one night she awoke from a dream so real and animate, so before her – she commanded the charge’s bedside presence. But after the images from that nightmare subsided (she reported having found herself boxed and in medias res shipping to she knew not where; the view from inside the box was black, but she could hear and feel the UPS truck coughing along about her), she stopped talking to

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the charge as much when she would be fixing her hair in the morning, as well as touching it lightly when she would walk by. The last she had always done out of habit. Rather, she starts using the charge for utilitarian purposes: a thing on which to drape her scarves and belts, or a knob on which to hang the bridge group’s coats. 16. Epilogue II So it was, the charge serving in the way that it could as her stowing thing, until one day our family dog comes shooting into the room doing circles, the way it does when it got spooked by the vacuum cleaner, which Mom has just started up. The dog runs smack into the base of the charge and the charge starts to wobble on its base. It is clear to Mom that any way the charge falls, someone – or some thing – is mincemeat. The charge, for its part, wobbles to what must be the physical extreme it could without falling – to this extent I would even say it wobbles sagely (when this story is recounted to me, I am rather impressed that it catches itself. It is perhaps learning discipline after all. And I am happy to take this incident as a sign of its care, and of its goodwill). But that is all Mom needs to banish the charge first to the garage, where it lasts only a few days, for that is where she parks her Subaru wagon polished and shone that she likes to keep out of dents’ way – and then to the backyard, ‘‘where it can’t hurt anybody or anything.’’ 17. Epilogue III So it was furthermore, dismounted from the platform and stuck there in the middle of the yard, a queer obelisk for the neighbors to speculate and kvetch about. And it seems to me it sits there for a good long while. When I would come home from school then, I would feel sorry for the charge, all but forgotten and left to the northwest Pennsylvania drifts: knee deep in leaves, or snow, or muck, or weeds, because in no particular season did Dad get close enough to its base to keep it tidily shorn. Long it sits there, gathering, however, just when this seems like its sad and only fate – like the charge’s heyday will certainly have been its trips into town when Mom was still a believer – the Commissioner comes down from his house on the hill and wants to know whether it would be alright if we moved the charge to Soldier’s Field downtown, where the kids go on weekends with balloons tied on their wrists to count local military heroes. ‘‘His courage and bravery needs displayin’,’’ he says. ‘‘Needs raised overhead and held to God to show what’s dooty.’’

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Mom, who from the couch I watch, has the look she gets with telemarketers. ‘‘What’s good,’’ the Commissioner says, and stomps on the mat. 18. Epilogue IV The charge moves to the park. Mounting bolts are installed in the base of the charge in case we ever see fit to move it, or take it back. The charge is then hefted up onto the concrete foundation by a very short crane, the bolts screwed into the mounting nuts in the foundation. This is standard practice. Towering like it does, I take the charge to be happy. For it can see the river from here and the Oakland Cemetery up on the hill there and the hospital’s helipad. Summer times, there will be canoers happening by with coolers of things, and dogs; winters, the banks freezing, the ice chunks unhitching to float downriver. In a matter of days, the charge serves as a popular perch for birds – scores of them – who seem across your visits to become themselves possessive of the charge, and to multiply. But when you come close enough (come) to touch the charge, to feel this end in your hand, (come!) the birds, as nature has them, lift and scatter. One low, gray, dissipating cloud.

PLAYING WITH OIL: PUTTING PERFORMATIVITY AT THE CENTER OF OIL CIVILIZATION$ Daniel Lord ABSTRACT This performance piece works against a conception of oil as a dead resource to be managed and ultimately used up. Writing historical references into a play/performance puts oil into motion, reminding us of the dynamic struggle to ‘‘discover’’ it in the nineteenth century. This play shows that oil was not so easily digested into modern, industrial life. New rules, norms, and practices came into being that helped early oil users cope with such a messy and explosive substance. Perhaps this oil story will contribute to our collective re-thinking about the many ways we perform oil everyday.

Narrator: I am oiled. I am oiled because my white, European ancestors metabolized oil into their everyday habits. They experimented, they tried out new ideas, and eventually they began to use oil in very particular and peculiar ways. I have inherited my oil self from them.

$

This piece was originally co-performed in Norman K. Denzin’s graduate course in Advanced Interpretive Methods. Twelve different readers were assigned roles in the performance, and the readers were encouraged to ‘‘take on’’ the voices of their historical characters.


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Narrator (Epiphanic memory): Not far from my campus flat, I sat across from the laundry machines contemplating the final words of ‘‘The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight.’’ Speaker 1 (Thom Hartmann): Thousands of years ago plants captured some of the sun’s energy. Beneath the earth’s surface, rock on rock turned organic matter into coal, gas, and oil. Sometimes these carbon deposits stayed trapped in pools under the ground y Until industrial appetites sucked them up. We may be at the doorstep of the last hours of ancient sunlight. (Hartmann, 1999) Narrator: I set the book down next to me. As I sat there with my back to the wall, my mind transported me into the rapidly tumbling clothes dryer across from me. I squeezed through the coin slots and fell into the spinning barrel of warm clothes. I was spinning with my laundry around and around, over and under. The motor moaned with the weight of my damp jeans and cotton shirts. Blasting heat pushed me further. I reversed the flow of electricity and followed the current through the tangle of wires, circuits, and fuses—leaving the laundromat through underground cables. Passing through the university’s sub-transfer station, I was now in the grid. Electric-metal tentacles connected me to the whole of England. From oil flows capitalism as we know it: the birth of the first giant multinationals y cars, air travel, freeways y suburbs, ‘white flight,’ malls, inner-city ghettoization; and the environmental and labor costs that come with access to a huge range of relatively inexpensive consumer goods, most of which contain some product of the petrochemical industry (plastics, artificial fibers, paints, etc.) and depend on the possibility of mass container shipping. (Szeman, 2007, p. 806)

FIRST MOVE: ‘‘WHALE OIL’’ Excerpt from Moby Dick Speaker 1 (Herman Melville): On land, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot. But the whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light. See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps – often but old bottles and vials, though – to the copper cooler at the try-works, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He burns, too, the purest of oil, in its unmanufactured,

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and, therefore, unvitiated state; a fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral contrivances ashore. It is sweet as early grass butter in April. He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its freshness and genuineness, even as the traveler on the prairie hunts up his own supper of game. (Melville, 1981, pp. 392–393)

Early Industrial Whale Hunting, 1821 Speaker 2 (Historian): This was the heyday of whaling, the specialty of New England and the State of New York. Before 1850, whale oil served as an important source of light. (Braudel, 1993, p. 465) Speaker 1 (Owen Chase, first mate of the whaleship Essex): There she blows! The ship was immediately put away, and we ran down in the direction for them. When we had got within half a mile of the place where they were observed, all our boats were lowered down, manned, and we started in pursuit of them. (Chase, 1999, p. 18) Speaker 2 (Historian): New England whaling ships were of good size. Each carried several small boats. When a whale was sighted, one or two boats put out from the ship. (Andrews, 1954, p. 24) Speaker 1 (Chase): I had the harpoon in the second boat; the captain preceded me in the first. When I arrived at the spot where we calculated they were, nothing was at first to be seen. We lay on our oars in anxious expectation of discovering them come up somewhere near us. (Chase, 1999, p. 18) Speaker 2 (Historian): A boat was rowed or sailed close to the whale. As the animal came up to breathe, a hand harpoon was thrown into its body. This was called ‘‘getting fast.’’ The harpoon carried a rope attached to the boat. (Andrews, 1954, p. 24) Speaker 1 (Chase): Presently one rose, and spouted a short distance ahead of my boat; I made all speed towards it, came up with, and struck it; feeling the harpoon in him, he threw himself, in agony, over towards the boat, and, giving a severe blow with his tail, struck the boat near the edge of the water, amidships, and stove a hole in her. (Chase, 1999, p. 18) Speaker 2 (Historian): The sailors called this ‘‘wood to black skin.’’ (Andrews, 1954, p. 25) Speaker 1 (Chase): I immediately took up the boat hatchet, and cut the line, to disengage the boat from the whale, which by this time was running off with great velocity. I succeeded in getting clear of him, with the loss of the harpoon and line; and finding the water pour fast in the boat, I hastily stuffed three or four of our jackets in the hole. (Chase, 1999, p. 18)

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Processing Whale Blubber into Oil Speaker 2 (Historian): The dead whale was towed to the ship where it was ‘‘cut in.’’ That means stripping off the blanket of blubber while the carcass rolled over and over in the water. On deck the blubber was sliced into pieces and boiled in big kettles to ‘‘try out’’ the oil. This was poured into barrels and stored in the hold of the ship. After the blubber was off, the body was left to the sharks. (Andrews, 1954, pp. 25–26)

SECOND MOVE: ‘‘ROCK OIL,’’ PENNSYLVANIA 1859 Speaker 1 (Historian): The story began in the Oil Creek valley with the early discovery of pools and seeps. Oil Creek’s name signified a nuisance to potential farmers. The word petroleum on maps firmly discouraged settlement in this region except as a last resort. (Black, 1998, p. 210) Speaker 2 (William Wright): At either Titusville or Oil City the stranger finds himself in a new world. y This change addresses itself to every sense. The objects which he is too apt to touch, in spite of all precautions, have a greasy, clammy feel. (Wright, 1865, p. 35) Speaker 1 (Historian): In the early days of the oil business of Pennsylvania and West Virginia the wildcatter was a rugged, romantic gambler of the old pioneer stock – as full of fight and courage as the wildcat that he had to chase from the rig on Monday morning when he returned from home. (Adams, 1944, p. 57) Speaker 2 (Wright): His nostrils are assailed by gaseous odors, such as they probably never before inhaled in the open air. Into his ears is continually poured a stream of speech, in a dialect essentially different from that taught in Webster or Worcester. Such phrases as ‘‘surface indications,’’ ‘‘dry territory,’’ ‘‘developed territory,’’ ‘‘oil-smeller,’’ with the names of a dozen implements unknown to the outside world, all uttered with earnestness and volubility, at once set his half-bewildered wits at work in quest of their meaning. He tastes petroleum and salt water, of course, to satisfy his curiosity or acquire information of their qualities. Then he sees – what does he not see, in the line of novelties? – tall derricks and huge tanks standing on side-walks or in gardens; engines running and walking-beams moving sedately up and down in the midst of what remain of the original forests; drilling apparatus at work; immense flat-boats or rafts floating down-stream with the current, or drawn upward by three or four horses abreast, plunging along the bed of the creek or river. (Wright, 1865, pp. 35–36) Speaker 1 (Historian): The name ‘‘wildcatter’’ originated from these circumstances, for very often a wildcat would be found around a rig if it had been abandoned a few days. (Adams, 1944, p. 57)

On Getting Oil Out of the Woods Speaker 1 (Samuel W. Tait Jr.): Acute judgment was needed in even the starting of an oil carrying flatboat down the rising waters, for if one got going too soon it might easily

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run aground, be swung broadside to those coming after it, and be ground to splinters. y Once a workman stumbled over an oar, knocked a lighted lantern into the oil of a bulk boat, and started a fire that filled the Allegheny at Oil City with almost a hundred burning craft, one of which floated as far as Franklin and set the bridge there afire. y The roads might often be a sea of mud so unfathomable that a horse would be swallowed by a particularly deep hole, the teamsters might be veritable sadists in the way they abused their animals, which were frequently hairless from the oily slime through which they were lashed. Nevertheless by 1862 over six thousand teams were hauling barrels of oil, usually six to a wagon, from the creek to the three railroad points. (Tait, 1946, pp. 31–32)

THIRD MOVE: ‘‘RAILROAD TRAVEL,’’ FIRST IMPRESSIONS Speaker 1 (Francis J. Lieber): The least exciting of all traveling, it seems to me, is decidedly locomotion by steam on rail-road. The traveler, whose train of ideas is always influenced by the manner in which he proceeds, thinks in a steam car of nothing else but the place of his destination, for the very reason that he is moving so quickly. Pent up in a narrow space, rolling along on an even plain which seldom offers any objects of curiosity, and which, when it does, you pass by with such rapidity, that your attention is never fixed; together with a number of people who have all the same object in view, and think like you of nothing else, but when they shall arrive at the journey’s end – thus situated, you find nothing to entertain or divert you, except now and then a spark flying into the window of the car. y There is no common conversation, no rondo laugh, nothing but a dead calm, interrupted from time to time, only by some passenger pulling out his watch and uttering a sound of impatience y (Lieber 1834, quoted in Schivelbusch, 1977, pp. 58–59) Speaker 2 (Victor Hugo): The flowers by the side of the road are no longer flowers but flecks, or rather streaks, of red or white; there are no longer any points, everything becomes a streak; the grain fields are great shocks of yellow hair; fields of alfalfa, long green tresses; the towns, the steeples, and the trees perform a crazy mingling dance on the horizon; from time to time, a shadow, a shape, a spectre appears and disappears with lighting speed behind the window: it’s a railway guard. (Hugo 1837, quoted in Schivelbusch, 1977, pp. 55–56)

FOURTH MOVE: ‘‘GAS’’ Narrator: Years ago I learned to climb like a monkey over trailers of lawn equipment, dragging the banana-like gas nozzle and hose with me to fill all of the mowers, cans, and small engines with gasoline. Then I would fill the dump truck pulling the trailer. I yanked the gas nozzle and hose around with me, stepping over wheels and rakes and balancing myself on the metal sides to the trailer. This process always made me feel unsafe. It required care to avoid spilling any gasoline on oneself: it was never easy to get the smell off. Care at the pump did not matter in the end, since operating mowers and trimmers

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required close proximity with exhaust fumes – fumes that would embed themselves into hair, skin and clothes. To this day, those smells follow me to the gasoline pump, and I hesitate before removing the filler nozzle from the side of the car. I tap the last drops from the tip and slowly move the nozzle back into its receptacle. Gusts of wind increase the risk that a few drops of gas could be sprayed onto my body. Speaker 1 (M.W. Ridley, Secretary of State): All due precautions shall be taken for the prevention of accidents by fire or explosion. y No leakage, whether of liquid or vapor, can take place. (Ridley, 1896) Speaker 2 (Historical figure): Gas lighting in the inner cities y permeates and contaminates the subsoil with sulphur and ammonia. It pollutes water in wells and cisterns, and from leaks in the mains it escapes into the air. y Gas makes all excavation work potentially dangerous, as under certain circumstances gas can create conditions that promote the development of fevers, gangrenous rashes and a particularly virulent strain of smallpox. (Bertulus 1853, quoted in Schivelbusch, 1995, p. 40) Speaker 3 (Historical figure): In almost all confirmed cases the accident happened at night while the victim was asleep. y If everyone would follow the rule of never sleeping in a room in which gas can be smelled, then we would hear little of gas poisoning. (Schilling 1879, quoted in Schivelbusch, 1995, p. 39)

FIFTH MOVE: ‘‘HORSELESS CARRIAGES’’ Speaker 1 (Cholly Knickerbocker): I went yesterday and rode in a horseless carriage. It is in that first sensation that you get your novelty. It is as though you were being served with a ‘‘high ball,’’ without the ball. There is a sense of incompleteness about it. You seemed to be sitting on the end of a huge pushcart, propelled by an invisible force and guided by a hidden hand. (Knickerbocker, 1897, p. 15) Speaker 2 (Francis Trevelyan): It gives the occupant a hopeless sensation of being perpetually shot through a chute, with the pleasing possibility of being utilized as a battering ram in a collision with a cable car or a runaway team. (Trevelyan, 1897, p. 15) Speaker 1 (Cholly Knickerbocker): There is a seeming brazenness to the whole performance. (Knickerbocker, 1897, p. 15) Speaker 3 (Cleveland resident): Citizens are beginning to complain of the excessive speed at which motor carriages run. The sensations attending the operation of a motor carriage are so strangely exhilarating, and the sense of reserve power so great, that it is hard for the driver of the motor to restrain himself, and keep the every day job of the horse in mind. (The Horseless Age, July 1898, p. 4) Speaker 4 (Boston Park Commissioner): It is impossible to tell when one of these carriages will rush up, and if a horse becomes frightened the results may be very serious. (The Horseless Age, March 1899, p. 7)

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Speaker 3 (Cleveland resident): There is particular danger in dashing around corners, an error which the motorman is likely to commit because his vehicle is lower and easier controlled than the horse vehicle. (The Horseless Age, July 1898, p. 4)

Speaker 5 (Boston citizen): If the engineer of the road roller notices that a horse is taking fright at his machine he should, if possible, stop it, prevent the escape of steam, if he can, and do all in his power to prevent a runaway. (The Horseless Age, March 1899, p. 6)

Speaker 6 (New York city resident): The horse belongs in the country. It is there, and there only, that poetry may be associated with him. In the city he is a nuisance and an object of pity, a menace to the public health, and a dumb servant compelled to work under conditions not natural to him, and to which he cannot properly adjust himself. (The Horseless Age, January 1899, p. 7)

Speaker 7 (G. Herbert Condict): The modern Rip Van Winkle goes to sleep for much less than twenty years, and when he awakes what does he behold? The streets of the city are clean, no rails cut up the smooth surface, no horse or any other beast is here; they are prohibited within the city limits. The pedestrian wends his quiet way along the sidewalks elevated to the second story and bridges over the street, while below the agile electric darts at good speed back and forth on its noiseless, easy-riding pneumatic tires, carrying all manner of humanity and its goods and chattels, and delivering them, not at the curbstone, but at the doorstep. The ‘‘living creature’’ has departed, but his ‘‘spirit is in the wheels.’’ The elevated train, the cable and the trolley car have disappeared, but far below the surface glides the electrical local and express in light and well-ventilated subways. The streets, made wider by the absence of sidewalks on the same level, allow a free movement of vehicular traffic, and the second-story stores are free from the dirt and turmoil now so overpowering. (Condict, 1899, p. 14)

Speaker 8 (Editor, Report from Germany): A remarkable law just enacted by the city fathers of Stuttgart, Germany issued a decree banishing all horse trucks and wagons from the city streets. Stuttgart may be considered the starting point of the modern motor vehicle movement, and it is fitting that she should take this great stride in advance of contemporary civilization. (The Horseless Age, January 1899, p. 9)

Speaker 9 (Editor, Report from France): The work of introducing motor vehicles in new countries where railroads do not exist and where the traffic would not as yet justify the construction of a railroad has begun in France by the shipment to a part of Senegal, Africa, of two petroleum wagons, which are to be used in establishing the first regular mechanical transportation route in that country. The result has been so encouraging that other vehicles, steam or petroleum, are being sent to different parts of the African continent to develop its resources and pave the way for railroads. There are portions of our own vast continent where motor vehicles are sadly needed to open up communication were railroads are not feasible and where horses cannot be maintained. (The Horseless Age, December 1898, p. 7)

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CONCLUSION: ‘‘LEAVING ENGLAND’’ Narrator: It was eight-o-clock in the morning and it was time to leave for the airport. I knocked on Patrick’s door. My big black suitcase and boxed-up bicycle sat behind me in the small common area of our flat. To my left were four flights of stairs I would need to descend to the main square on the quad. Though the box-up bicycle was more awkward to move, it was the suitcase I could not lift by myself. Later, at the airport, I found out I had overloaded the bag and would need to remove 20 kilograms or so to ‘‘even get the bag on the plane.’’ It was over the maximum allowable weight. All of those new sociology books and papers were heavy. Patrick opened the door, ‘‘Ready to go?’’ ‘‘Yes, the taxi should be here soon.’’ We wheeled the suitcase over to the landing at the top of the staircase, and we both reached down to grab a handle. ‘‘Ugh.’’ We gave each other a look, eyes bulging a bit, this is going to be harder than we thought. Slowly, step by step, we descended. On the third landing, my right arm cramped up, so we stopped for a second. Sweat beaded on our foreheads. I shifted hands, and we descended the last flight. With a lurch, we set the suitcase down, and headed back for the boxed-up bicycle. A few minutes later, Patrick and I shook hands and said goodbye. It was too early in the morning for goodbyes. Soon, a yellow and red Skoda hatchback pulled-up to where I was standing. The taxi driver opened the rear doors and folded down the seats, exposing an opening big enough to fit my bicycle box and suitcase. The box slid into the back. We both grabbed an end of the suitcase and lifted it on top of the box. ‘‘Thanks!’’ I said. ‘‘No problem.’’ The car seat welcomed me as I closed the passenger door behind me. I sighed – partly to release the strain from my wobbly arms, but partly because the taxi whooshed away from the curb. It was comforting to be in a car again. The air-filled rubber tires smoothed over the grit of the asphalt pavement, and the upholstered car seat absorbed vibrations entirely different than my bicycle seat. As we turned south onto the A6, the car’s windshield framed a passing view of the grassy, green campus grounds. The sigh, in retrospect, symbolizes my own relationship with automobile time and space. Its rhythms comfort me. Nowadays, it seems oil performs backstage, largely unnoticed. One-hundred years ago, oil in various forms, was ‘‘in-play.’’ To put it ‘‘in-play’’ again, is why I wrote this co-performance.

REFERENCES Adams, H. H. (1944). Doodlebugs and doodlebuggers. California Folklore Quarterly, 3(1), 53–58. Andrews, R. C. (1954). All about whales. New York: Random House. Black, B. (1998). Oil creek as industrial apparatus: Re-creating the industrial process through the landscape of Pennsylvania’s oil boom. Environmental History, 3(2), 210–229. Braudel, F. (1993). A history of civilizations. New York: Penguin Books. Chase, O. (c1821). Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex. New York: The Lyons Press. Condict, G.H. (1899). The motor vehicle in commercial operation. The Horseless Age, March, pp. 14–15. Hartmann, T. (1999). The last hours of ancient sunlight: Waking up to personal and global transformation. New York: Harmony Books.

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Knickerbocker, C. (1897). A chappie and a horseman try the new horseless carriage. The Horseless Age, March, pp. 15–16. Melville, H. (c1851). Moby-dick. New York: Bantam Books. Newspaper editorial. (1899). Barred out of Boston’s parks. The Horseless Age, March, p. 6. Newspaper editorial. (1898). Hasten slowly. The Horseless Age, July, p. 4. Newspaper editorial. (1899). Horses for country, cabs for town. The Horseless Age, January, p. 7. Newspaper editorial. (1898). The motor the advance guard of civilization. The Horseless Age, December, p. 7. Newspaper editorial. (1899). Motor carriages excluded from Boston parks between 10:30 A.M. and 9 P.M. The Horseless Age, March, p. 7. Newspaper editorial. (1899). Stuttgart takes the initiative. The Horseless Age, January, p. 9. Ridley, M. W. (1896). Locomotives on highways. The Horseless Age, November, pp. 15–21. Schivelbusch, W. (1995). Disenchanted night: The industrialization of light in the nineteenth century. Berkeley: The University of California Press. Schivelbusch, W. (1977). The railway journey: The industrialization of time and space in the 19th century. Berkeley: The University of California Press. Szeman, I. (2007). Oil, futurity, and the anticipation of disaster. South Atlantic Quarterly, 106(4), 805–823. Tait, S. W., Jr. (1946). The wildcatters: An informal history of oil-hunting in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Trevelyan, F. (1897). A chappie and a horseman try the new horseless carriage. The Horseless Age, March, pp. 15–16. Wright, W. (1865). The oil regions of Pennsylvania. New York: Harper & Brothers.

LIFELONG EDUCATION AND DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP$ John M. Johnson don’t gain the world and lose your soul, wisdom is better than silver or gold. Bob Marley, Exodus

Education is of critical importance for living a meaningful life today. Education does not begin in school, and it does not end in school. Many important educational lessons begin in the home, arguably in the womb, where a mother’s love and caring is communicated to the fetus even before birth. The human species has the longest dependency, so it is to be expected that young children learn much of importance in the home. When this early education builds a strong foundation, then formal schooling continues to build on this. When there are profound deficiencies in neonatal or early child care, formal schooling is greatly disadvantaged in its educational mission; the Romanian orphan children from Nicolea Ceausescu’s regime illustrate this. Literacy is increasingly essential as a survival skill in our globalized world, but much more is needed for social, ethical, and cultural competence today. Critical reasoning and analytical thinking, knowledge of classic and contemporary texts and sources, sophisticated scientific skills, knowledge of humanistic values and world religions, investigative skills needed to evaluate textual or electronic data, methodological skills for interdisciplinary inquiry, $

Mentor Excellence Award Lecture, Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, San Francisco, August, 2009.


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an awareness of our environmental impact, a critical awareness of mass media and bureaucratic propaganda (Altheide & Johnson, 1980), these skills and many others are increasingly demanded by our complex global culture and political economy. These skills are commonly associated with a college or university education. Although it is true that the beginnings of these skills may be traced to a college or university course, their mastery requires a long and progressive development. An individual may earn a ‘‘degree’’ or some sort of certification from an institution of higher education, but this may or may not be related to the competencies of an educated person. Formal schooling and higher degrees are not like vaccinations which inoculate the individual against a lifetime of ignorance; rather, being an educated person requires a lifetime commitment and sustained dedication. All Americans know the difference between ‘‘getting a degree’’ and ‘‘getting an education.’’ Americans have traditionally supported education and especially higher education, which explains why there are over 3,000 colleges, universities, and other institutions of higher education in America. Obtaining an education plays a central role in American myths about social mobility, bettering oneself, and pursuing opportunities for the so-called American Dream. For well over 300 years in America, school systems were highly decentralized, at all levels, from preschool to graduate school. From funding formulas to all manner of programmatic and curricular issues, decisions and responsibility were exercised at the lowest possible levels of social organization. The American situation could not have been more different than the Soviet model of party and centralized control. American educational and creative successes were legendary for many years, but today there is a long and steady deterioration of education at all levels because of centralization, bureaucratization, and politicization. Today most of the brightest students ‘‘make out’’ by ‘‘gaming the system,’’ completing the bureaucratic requirements and getting their degrees to enter the job market and get on with their lives. Many are smart enough to figure out what they have to do to ‘‘get by,’’ and ‘‘get their degree,’’ while simultaneously pursuing their non-bureaucratic educations with friends, romantic partners, alcohol, drugs, gambling, and other forms of entertainment. (Many learned these skills from the bureaucratized professoriate, most of whom have become veteran gamers of organizational metrics themselves.) One should not be at all surprised to learn that many of these bright people eventually learn that they were shortchanged by their early bureaucratic processing, and years or decades later they return in large numbers to consume educational courses, materials, and new technologies of edutainment, from traditional and nontraditional sources. America now has many ‘‘baby-boomers’’ (individuals

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born between 1946 and 1955) who are ‘‘retiring’’ from their occupational employment to ‘‘go back to college.’’ Claims and assertions about the ‘‘crisis’’ situation in American higher education have been pervasive during my five decades of involvement. Since the 1958 ‘‘Sputnik crisis,’’ a small library of books have argued its fatal flaws. Paul Goodman’s book said that American education punishes creativity and promotes a ‘‘bureaucratization of the spirit,’’ Carl Rogers said the system does not lead to any significant learning, John Holt’s sharp critique said the system is fear-based, and Jerome Bruner’s book asserted the system does not develop intelligence. Norbert Weiner’s book said that the U.S. educational system educates for obsolescence, John Gardner’s book said it does not educate in the true meaning of the word, and Marshall McLuhan’s transdisciplinary tome opines that its unexamined technology carries unwitting students away from reality. Edgar Friedenberg’s wellreceived book asserted that our educational system punishes creativity and furthermore advances a ‘‘creeping Eichmannism.’’ Harold Shane argued that the subrosa curriculum prepares students for ‘‘future shock,’’ and Jonathon Kozol’s elegantly written books document the system’s ill effects on the poor and disadvantaged. Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner’s well-known book alleged that U.S. schools consistently perform as anti-democratic ‘‘training centers.’’ More recently classicist Page Smith provocatively argued that the current system ‘‘kills the spirit’’ of students, an argument also carried forward in another book by David Purpel. Roger Kimball avers that 1960s political activists are now ‘‘tenured radicals,’’ whereas Darryl Glass and Barbara Hernnstein Smith argue that the curriculum wars are hopelessly politicized. Bruce Wilshire’s book says that the cult of professionalism produces massive alienation. Conservative Harold Bloom ironically became a popular culture celebrity with his book (and other subsequent marketing products), which claimed that American higher education had entirely failed democracy, fellow traveler Bill Bennett said much the same while hawking his values products line; at the other end of the political spectrum, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn gained significant followings documenting the profound ethnocentrism, myopia, illusions, and prevarications of American education, history, law, and policy. How is it best to consider this ongoing crisis? Is the situation so vastly complex that all these works of high scholarship represent the proverbial blind men touching the different parts of the elephant? Or is the decay and decline so advanced that the current structure is little more than a vast Potemkin village, waiting to crumble once the Czar’s entourage passes?

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Becoming an educated person is difficult. It requires a sustained commitment over time, commonly decades. It requires a curiosity to return to those classic texts one may have first read in school and to cultivate their meanings for a matured vision and understanding. (Have you ever heard an educated person claim that they understood Plato, Acquinas, Dante, Mencius, Dickenson, Hegel, Shakespeare, Kant, Tagore, Balzac, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Sappho, Hughes, or Dostoevsky on the first reading?) It requires putting into one’s everyday practice the lessons and directions of a cultivated person, learning to see and treat others with an equiminity, magnanimity, and generosity they deserve as common family members in our great chain of being. It requires long struggles with foreign language acquisition, and studying the complexities and nuances of cultural meanings. It involves a softening of the heart, but a hardening of one’s resolves to become a better observer. It requires the painful confrontation with our violent histories, and an unbiased evaluation of the complicity of our institutional leaders in this continued violence and injustice. It involves assessing our culture and its members against their own values and ideals and without being cynical a commitment to ‘‘follow the money’’ from its source to its destination. It involves honing and fine-tuning our abilities to discern the pervasive cultural ‘‘bullshit,’’ the title of Princeton moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s artful treatise (Frankfurt, 2005). It involves self-reflection and contemplation, a passion to bring together our human intellectual inheritance with our individual, mundane existence. In the end it is the struggle with Tolstoy’s question: ‘‘What shall we do and how shall we live?’’ Becoming an educated person can bring great rewards, which far surpass those of material gain. It can bring the joys of progressive understanding and insight about our complicated, mysterious world, of feeling illuminated and awakened to new visions and unimagined possibilities, the excitement of discovering new bodies of knowledge that have expanded so greatly in recent decades. It can awaken a new spirit of human rights and world citizenship, and a willingness to join with others in the work for achieving greater peace and justice. It can ignite that spark of transcendent purpose, which then illuminates the dark shadows of human suffering, travail, pain, and loss that stalk every human life until its inevitable demise. Universities and other institutions of higher education are of essential importance for inspiring this light of transcendent purpose. In times of economic difficulty, it is common to reduce the discussion about higher education to its role in preparing students for specialized labor markets, to limit the focus to utilitarian cost–benefit analyses of the contributions of higher education to gross national production, however, measured by some

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quantified factoid. But this is not the heart of a university education. The heart of a university education is to begin to prepare students to become active democratic citizens, to prepare them to become active agents in their futures. The goal or purpose of education is to allow the individual to continue their education. The objective is to inspire and engage the individual in a lifelong project of growth and development. The educational process has no goal outside of itself. It is its own end. It seeks to produce norms and practices that make democracy a way of life. This message is hardly new; the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey said as much in his book Democracy and Education, published in the early years of the last century. Sheldon Wolin has updated this message for our postmodern times (Wolin, 2008). Wolin shares Dewey’s faith in the potential and capacity of all human beings for intelligent self-reflection and informed judgment, in the promise for all peoples to determine their own destinies. This process of empowerment is inherently and inescapably political, not in the narrow sense of forming a person’s ‘‘voting behavior,’’ not in the narrow sense of influencing them to become a partisan on some limited policy or party position, but in the much greater sense of introducing them to the values, norms, practices, procedures, and civilities of participating in and thus producing a democratic culture. In his classic essay ‘‘Science as a Vocation,’’ Max Weber said that, when speaking in a political meeting about democracy, all individuals (scientists or not) have an obligation to speak out and take a stand on the immediate issue at hand, but he additionally opined that in the classroom this was not appropriate, and one should ‘‘let the facts speak for themselves’’ (Weber, 1946). But this is a limited view, according to Alvin Gouldner, and represents Weber’s attempt to adjudicate the tensions between two vital Western traditions, between reason and faith, between knowledge and feeling, between classicism and romanticism, between the head and the heart (Gouldner, 1962). Today we know only too well that ‘‘facts’’ do not ‘‘speak for themselves,’’ and the claim that they do so conceals and promotes a very narrow technocratic perspective. The goal of a classroom teacher is to make the connections and linkages between the perspectives and the facts they define and organize, all for the purpose of discerning the relevance of these factual realities to some larger conception of the public good. Scholars and teachers and citizens cannot be uninvolved or neutral with respect to human suffering. Grasping one’s relationship to human suffering is to define what it means to be human today; to take responsibility or not take responsibility for one’s actions (Bauman & Tester, 2001). As neoliberal ideology and market fundamentalism have gained ascendancy in recent decades, the institutions of higher education no longer feel

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comfortable promoting democratic ideals and ambiguous abstractions such as the public good. Instead, the needs and demands of the financial contributors define their preferences, and the institutions of higher education increasingly assimilate the influences of Big Government, Big Corporations, Big Military, Big Education, Big Sport, and the seemingly inexhaustible deep pockets of Big Pharma. As state and federal contributions to institutions of higher education are cut, then universities increasingly turn to corporate and military sources. In times of budgetary cuts, the humanities, fine arts, and the ‘‘soft’’ sciences have a more difficult time justifying themselves in terms of specifying their specific contributions to the preparation of the workforce, which reveals a view of higher education that conflates it with technical training rather than the traditional, humanistic view of education. The exclusive use of market rationality to assess the contributions of universities and other institutions of higher education has a potentially corrosive and destructive effect. This moment of history requires profound questioning about the nature and direction of social and political reality. So few of the 6.5 billion people on our planet are highly educated that it is incumbent for students and teachers and scholars and citizens to join together, to join the vast human conversation about our common intellectual inheritance (Fuller, 1990), to rethink and chart new directions for the betterment of generations yet to come.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to David Altheide, Lonnie Athens, Sokai Geoffrey Barrett, Norman Denzin, Jack Douglas, Andy Fontana, Joe Kotarba, Marie Provine, and Marjorie Zatz for providing comments.

REFERENCES Altheide, D. L., & Johnson, J. M. (1980). Bureaucratic propaganda. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Bauman, Z., & Tester, K. (2001). Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman. Malden: Polity Press. Frankfurt, H. G. (2005). Bullshit. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fuller, T. (1990). The voice of liberal learning: Michael Oakeshott on education. New Haven: Yale University Press. Gouldner, A. W. (1962). Anti-Minotaur: The myth of a value-free sociology. Social Problems, 9, 199–213. Weber, M. (1946). Science as a vocation. In: H. H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills (Eds), From Max Weber: Essays in sociology (pp. 138–156). New York: Oxford University Press. Wolin, S. S. (2008). Democracy incorporated: Managed democracy and the specter of inverted totalitarianism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 34

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Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 30 (Studies in Symbolic Interaction)

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 26 (Studies in Symbolic Interaction)

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 25

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 31

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 33

Symbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies

Advances in Catalysis, Volume 34

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Grantville Gazette Volume 34

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Advances in Heterocyclic Chemistry, Volume 34

Advances in Protein Chemistry, Volume 34

Microbial Imaging, Volume 34 (Methods in Microbiology)

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 34

Advances in Marine Biology, Volume 34

Current Topics in Developmental Biology, Volume 34

Progress in Medicinal Chemistry, Volume 34

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 34

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 29 (Studies in Symbolic Interaction)

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 30 (Studies in Symbolic Interaction)

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 26 (Studies in Symbolic Interaction)

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 25

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 31

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 33

Symbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies

Advances in Catalysis, Volume 34

Advances in Chromatography, Volume 34

Progress in Optics, Volume 34

Advances in Immunology Volume 34

Advances in Computers, Volume 34

Advances in Parasitology Volume 34

Advances in Catalysis, Volume 34

Advances in Agronomy, Volume 34

Narrative Interaction (Studies in Narrativity)

Grantville Gazette Volume 34

Grantville Gazette Volume 34

Laughter in Interaction (Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics)

Advances in Applied Mechanics, Volume 34

Advances in Applied Microbiology, Volume 34

Advances in Heterocyclic Chemistry, Volume 34

Advances in Protein Chemistry, Volume 34

Microbial Imaging, Volume 34 (Methods in Microbiology)

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 34

Advances in Marine Biology, Volume 34

Current Topics in Developmental Biology, Volume 34

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