UI student aims lens at Indian mascots

MOSCOW, Idaho – When University of Idaho student John Meninick signed up for a racial and ethnic relations class last semester, he didn’t think it would lead him to filmmaking.

But Meninick, 42, a member of the Yakama Nation, is producing a documentary about the hurtful impact he says Indian sports mascots have on Indians around the country.

“This has been a lifetime dream,” Meninick said recently of his effort to let people know how offensive co-opting sacred Indian images can be.

Sociology professor Ginna Babcock recently showed the award-winning 1998 PBS film, “In Whose Honor? American Indian Mascots in Sports.”

Some students said they woke up to the insensitivity of the mascots. Others were angry, especially with the Washington Redskins football team.

“It struck me, as opposed to mascots like braves or chiefs, that (the Redskins) are dealing with the physical, phenotypical appearance,” said 33-year-old anthropology senior Derek Johnson of his long-standing distaste for the Redskins’ mascot.

Others in the class said the issue had slipped under their radar until they saw the film.

Pocatello native Tiffany Echanis said even though members of the Blackfoot tribe tried unsuccessfully to change her high school’s mascot, the Indians, she didn’t understand how tribal members felt.

“I never thought anything of it,” said the 22-year-old secondary education and Spanish senior. “But as soon as I saw (the film) … What bothered me the most is that it didn’t occur to me at all until then.”

Spencer Korn, 22, a justice studies senior from Kellogg, said it was remarkable how the Washington Bullets basketball team could change its name to the Wizards because of the high murder rate in Washington, D.C., while a racially offensive mascot in the same town remains.

“There are no wizards in Washington,” Korn said with a scoff.

Korn also pointed to a part of the film where Spokane Nation member Charlene Teters took her kids to see a University of Illinois basketball game.

But before the teams hit the court, the Illinois mascot – an “Indian” with painted face, buckskin clothing and a full feathered headdress – performed a caricature of a traditional dance.

“She had her kids there,” Korn said, “and here comes this jackass in full regalia.”

Teters and her children were in tears seeing the use of their sacred icons in a mocking manner, Babcock said.

With such an energetic response from his classmates, Meninick decided to pursue a film of his own.

He knows several of the people featured in the PBS film. Using those connections, he and the class set up and filmed a panel discussion on Indian mascots with Teters, now an accomplished artist and activist, as part of the panel.

Other panelists who participated were Wally and Karen Strong, who were in the original film and now work at Yakama Valley Community College; Washington State University comparative ethnic studies professor Richard King, who recently published the book, “Team Spirits,” on the controversy surrounding Indian mascots; and Betty Labbee, a counselor at Yakima Valley Community College who helped lobby to change the school mascot from the Indians to the Yaks.

The panel was filmed in early December. Meninick said he is in discussions with PBS to air the film in May or June.

Meninick said the use of Indian images for mascots is just a lesser version of the abuse Indians have endured ever since Columbus set foot in the new world.

“What I’m doing is opening people’s eyes to what is still being done to our people, only in a different way,” he said. “I thought that was behind us, but we’re still answering it today.”