Category: Finnish Perspectives on Contemporary Native America (Page 2 of 2)

Introduction

The Washington R*dskins are a professional American football team based in the Washington metropolitan area (headquarters in Virginia). The team competes in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) East division.

Native American individuals, tribes, and organizations have been questioning the use of the name and image of the team for decades and it has been part of a larger controversy. Already in the 1940s the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) created a campaign that aimed at eliminating negative stereotyping of Native American people in the media. Over time, the campaign began to focus on Indian names and mascots in sports.

The question is not a simple one—it has many different aspects, including the historical construction of Indian identity, the persistence of stereotypes, deep societal divisions over race, the relationship between “free speech” and “hate speech,” and the legal protection of registered trademarks.

Reasons for the controversy

The Washington team name, logo, and mascot represent the Native Americans in a deeply negative way and recreate societal divisions and prejudices. Indeed, the name is a dictionary defined racial slur. According to the NCAI, teams with mascots such as the R*dskins and the Braves perpetuate negative stereotypes of Native American people, and demean Native traditions and rituals.

In 2013, the NCAI issued a new report summarizing opposition to Indian mascots and team names generally, and the Washington R*dskins in particular. However, the name and logo of the Cleveland Indians baseball team has received criticism as well.

The Washington team was born in an era when racism and bigotry were accepted by the dominant culture, and the founder of the team, George Preston Marshall, was an infamous segregationists who openly supported the ban of African American players in the NFL. He was the very last team owner to permit an African American player on his team, but he did so only under the threat of sanctions by the federal government. Marshall’s racist beliefs drew support from the American Nazi Party, and he even went so far as to stipulate in his last will and testament that his foundation would not distribute any resources to schools or programs that promoted the intermingling of children from different races.

Nonetheless, “Indian” sports brands such as the R*dskins have grown to become multi-million dollar franchises and the name controversy also raises the question of legal protection of trademarks (and whether the team name presents hate speech or racist commentary and therefore should be a registered trademark for that matter).

According to the NCAI, the “Indian” sports mascots, logos, and symbols promote harm and intolerance and have very real consequences for Native people. Rather than honoring Native peoples, the caricatures and stereotypes that are represented by the logos are harmful and perpetuate negative stereotypes of America’s first peoples. According to NCAI, this contributes to a disregard for the personhood of Native peoples. The NCAI states that derogatory “Indian” sports mascots have serious psychological, social and cultural consequences for Native Americans, especially Native youth, who face a higher risk of hate crimes than other groups in the society.

The dispute is deeply important to many Native American groups, who have sought for decades to revoke federal protection of the “R*dskins” trademark and to force the team to change the name altogether. In 2014, the U.S. Patent Office ruled that the R-word is “disparaging to Native Americans” and therefore not entitled to taxpayer-financed copyright protections. In 2013, even president Obama urged the team to change its name. The name has been criticized by a prominent NFL player Champ Bailey as being a similar insult to the Native Americans as the N-word is to African Americans.

Nevertheless, nothing in federal law prevents Pro-Football Inc. or the teams from continuing to use the offensive names. The Patent and Trademark Office rejected the application to trademark the name because it is “immoral, deceptive or scandalous” — only to see the appeals court state that the part of the 1946 Lanham Act, which regulates trademarks, violates the First Amendment’s protections of free speech. The R*dskins asked the Supreme Court to hear the case and the court stated that “rejecting trademarks that disparage others violates the First Amendment.”

Conclusion

Even though the topic has been on the agenda of the NCAI for decades, it has become prominent in the wider discussion only in the recent years. Even though late, it is about time it is discussed by the politicians and the court system and not just activists alone. The continued use of this language invokes stereotypes that reproduce and strengthen societal divisions.

In May 2017, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said it well while drawing national praise for removing a set of Confederate monuments from his city. In his speech justifying the move Landrieu said: “History cannot be changed (and) cannot be moved like a statue,” but getting rid of those monuments was one way to try to begin a healing process.

In early September 2017, the Cherokee Nation accepted a U.S. District Court ruling on the descendants of Cherokee Freedmen by arguing that they had “all the rights of native Cherokees.” Judge Thomas Hogan ended one chapter in the longstanding controversy concerning the status of the descendants of former slaves, many of whom live among Cherokees. It is now time for Cherokees to resolve internal discrepancies and to strengthen relationships within the nation.

The core issue in the Cherokee Freedmen controversy has always been power relations and the question of who has the right to determine citizenship in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. After the Civil War, the United States ratified a treaty with the Cherokee in which all slaves residing within the Cherokee Nation would be freed, and they would gain full legal status within the Cherokee Nation. The Treaty of 1866 thus guaranteed to some 2,500 slaves freedom and an equal status with those who were Cherokee according to the definition used by the tribe members Cherokees were not eager to accept Freedmen as full members of their tribe, and debates on tribal citizenship and on the interpretation of the treaty have continued to the present day.

For Native American peoples, kinship and blood quantum were, and still are, essential foundations for tribal citizenship. Freedmen, on the other hand, laid claim to citizenship as a treaty right. In 2007, the Cherokee Nation, citing its inherent sovereign power to determine its own citizenship criteria, restricted citizenship to those who could prove their family line through its tribal rolls.

The government of the United States made efforts to support the Cherokee Freedmen. For instance, it blocked federal housing funds from the Cherokee people in 2011, and consequently the tribe returned Cherokee citizenship to more than 2,800 people. Later they were disenrolled from the tribe again, forcing them to join an estimated 40,000 unenrolled descendants of the slaves once owned by Cherokees.

It would appear that the Cherokee Nation has now stepped into a new era in their history. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that old attitudes remain strong among some of its citizens. I would like to suggest that current developments are a positive thing, and I hope that the relationships among and between Cherokee citizens shall improve in the process of time. Citizenship and a sense of belonging are important factors when one constructs his or her identity and attitude towards life.

References:

Champagne, Duane, George P. Horse Capture, and Chandler C. Jackson. 2007. American Indian Nations: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Lanham, Maryland: Altamira Press.

Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr. 1978. The Cherokee Freedmen: From Emancipation to American Citizenship. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

Monet, Jenni. 2017. Linking Arms, Marching Forward: Cherokee Nation Accepts Ruling on Freedmen. In Indian Country Today. Available from https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/native-news/cherokee-nation-accepts-ruling-freedmen/.
Sturm, Circe. 2014. “Race, Sovereignty, and Civil Rights: Understanding the Cherokee Freedmen Controversy.” Cultural Anthropology 29, no. 3: 575–598. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca29.3.07

Belonging and sovereignty – these are central keywords in understanding Native American struggles to assert the right to exist, to assert the right to cultural self-determination, and to assert the right to a self-defined identity and history. The 2010s, however, have seen an exceptional case in which a tribal nation had their right to their identity challenged not by the United States federal government or other Euro-American institution but their own citizens—their friends, neighbors, and tribal council.

The Nooksack are an Indigenous nation residing close to the Canadian border in northwest Washington. The relatively small polity of 2,000 members was thrown into the public eye in 2013 when the tribal council decided that a group of approximately 300 individuals had been erroneously enrolled. According to the council, these members lacked the documents necessary to prove their ancestry as Nooksack Indians “by blood.”

The council concluded that the proper action would be to disenroll the entire extended family that descended from the same foremother, totaling 306 member—a staggering 15% of the tribal nation.

In 2016, the situation took an unexpected turn when the U.S. federal government threatened to intervene in the tribe’s domestic affairs. The council had not, it was argued, organized a new election after four seats had expired. As a result, as of March 2016, the council was not considered legitimate by the federal government. Since the council also wasn’t officially authorized to sign off on contracts and grants, the Nooksack lost tens of millions of dollars of state and federal money. In addition, the federal government announced that if the council failed to organize the election, the government would take over the tribe’s services, including health care and law enforcement.

The controversy has continued to this day. Both sides—the council led by Chairman Bob Kelly and the 306, as the members facing disenrollment are now called—have sought the help of lawyers to advance their respective positions. The controversy culminated in the closing of the Nooksack casino by the federal government in June 2017. It was re-opened in September, though, with a fine of 13 million dollars looming over the council.

It seems this was a deciding factor for the council: the Nooksack are currently preparing for a new, supervised tribal council election which is to be held in November 2017. Based upon posts found on their Facebook page, the 306 are eager to exercise their right to vote, end the disenrollment debate, and reaffirm access to citizenship-based benefits, such as health care.

Some of the members facing the threat of disenrollment have speculated that the question was never about the authenticity of their identity as Nooksack but that it had more to do with political power. The goal, according to them, was to get rid of a notably-sized faction of people opposing Kelly. Some say the tension derives from family matters. The 306 moved back and became citizens ten years after the tribe was federally recognized in 1971. To members who had enrolled earlier, they never belonged.

Nevertheless, the question remains: who has the authority to define tribal citizenship criteria and are there limits to that power?

“It is a human right to have a voice and be heard”

The power of self-representation and the art of Edgar Heap of Birds

Art can be used as a powerful way to assert cultural sovereignty and justice against the one-sided, stagnant (white) American definition of Native Americans. The multi-disciplinary art of Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne and Arapaho) brings past to present by highlighting the colonial history and contemporary realities Native Americans face.

From Public Signs to Public Awareness

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds (b. 1954) is especially known for his art that mimics public signs to highlight the Native American colonial experience, both past and present. The signs contain short writings written by himself, sometimes combined with edited texts from the core of American identity such as the Declaration of Independence. By using text in his prints, public art and drawings, Heap of Birds utilizes the colonialists’ own weapon of written words – once and still used against Native people- to fight back the still existing colonial ways. In so doing, Heap of Birds advocates for Native American self-representation.

You Can’t Define Us – Aesthetic Sovereignty

The use of written English words in Heap of Birds’s art can also be seen as a protest against the way Native American art is defined by the dominant American culture. His art challenges the common conceptions of Native American art as something simple, traditional, and unchanging by making people reflect the multiple meanings his texts bear and by using modern art forms not conventionally associated with Indian art.

Heap of Birds’s work powerfully reflects the ever-changing Native American cultures. Moreover, his art asserts that Native people have the aesthetic sovereignty to determine what Native art is.

A good example of this is the controversy caused by Sam Durant’s sculpture Scaffold, purchased by Minnesota’s Walker Art Museum in 2017. The sculpture recreated a conglomeration of gallows used in government-sanctioned executions, including that of the 38 Dakota men executed in Minnesota in 1862. The local Native American communities condemned the sculpture as insensitive and re-traumatizing. In 1990, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis had commissioned a piece called “Building Minnesota” from Edgar Heap of Birds, honoring the same 38 Dakota men – but without controversy.

The difference is, it’s not and it shouldn’t have been the white man’s story to tell. Heap of Birds’s piece was about honouring, remembering and healing, with the consent of the local tribes. This wasn’t just art, it was part of an on-going Native American history and experience, not yet resolved.

Finding Your Place As a Native Artist

For Native artists it can be difficult to claim the right and power to determine who you are as an artist and how, if at all, you should be categorized. This is not the case with Edgar Heap of Birds, who actively builds a bridge to other American Indian and Indigenous communities and educates non-Native Americans about their misunderstandings of and indifference toward Indigenous people.

If aesthetic sovereignty is taken to mean refusal by Native American artists to utilize ideas and forms of modern Western art, then Edgar Heap of Birds can’t be said to represent it. But, in the sense that Heap of Birds draws upon them to make strong statements about Native experiences in his fight for the right of self-representation, his work clearly reflects the principles of aesthetic sovereignty. As he puts it: “It is a human right to have a voice and be heard.”

Sources:

Artforum: https://www.artforum.com/words/id=68033
Duke University Press: https://www.dukeupress.edu/edgar-heap-of-birds
Homepage of Edgar Heap of Birds:

http://heapofbirds.ou.edu/

http://heapofbirds.ou.edu/Websites/heapofbirds/files/Content/3277368/EHB_Brochure.pdf

http://heapofbirds.ou.edu/Websites/heapofbirds/files/Content/3277368/reading_5.pdf
Hyperallergic: https://hyperallergic.com/385682/in-minnesota-listening-to-native-perspectives-on-memorializing-the-dakota-war/

Emily Carr University of Art + Design:  http://www.ecuad.ca/calendar/edgar-heap-of-birds-genocide-and-democracy-secrets-of-life-and-death
Jstor Daily: https://daily.jstor.org/edgar-heap-of-birds-building-minnesota/

Kathryn W. Shanley, “The Indians America Loves to Love and Read: American Indian Identity and Cultural Appropriation”. American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 675-702 (University of Nebraska Press)
Lippard, Lucy R. ”Moving days” in Marjorie Devon (ed.): “Migrations: New Directionsin Native American Art ” (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006)
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Heap_of_Birds

During the 2017-2018 academic year, I am serving as the Fulbright Bicentennial Chair in American Studies at the University of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland. I am very excited to share with you the perspectives of students enrolled in my graduate seminar on Contemporary Native America (ALKU-p311) during the fall 2017 semester. The topics will cover a great deal of ground on a number if critical and complex issues.