Mascot Promises Not Kept
My perceptions of American Indians were fed early by stories my father told of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce warriors, including a tribal perspective. But until my grandfather died this year, I had no idea I had threads of Indian ancestry. My grandmother was raised on the Uintah Ouray Reservation in Utah and attended the white schools. She couldn’t be more than one-quarter Indian but when she found out I had been writing for an Indian publication, she felt free to be who she is.
She spoke to me in the Ute language. She just beamed as she recalled for me her life on the reservation, but now she becomes silent if anyone else is nearby.
I don’t pretend to know what American Indians felt as Europeans attempted to purge them of their heritage. And I may never fully understand what my grandmother felt as she sat amidst other white students, forbidden to speak her own grandmother’s given name. My aboriginal ancestry did not penetrate the color of my skin or change my European upbringing. I bridged the cultural cavern of distrust through empathy.
For nearly 90 years, the Colville School District has had numerous opportunities to build understanding, to educate and to bond generations. The schools implied they would use the American Indian mascot to bring understanding to the community, but they broke that promise.
While Editor Chris Peck wrote on Sept. 28 that eradicating the mascot would be ironic and wrong, what’s truly ironic is that European ancestors would erect mascots to honor the very qualities they simultaneously sought to destroy.
How can white students properly honor what they don’t understand?
Ignorance feeds racial and cultural division and its impacts ripple far beyond school sports. Intercultural communication won’t erase the lines that divide, but it can build understanding by providing diverse perspectives.
How wrong that public schools continue to suppress cultural education in the name of European pride. How arrogant to believe that Europeans are somehow better equipped to preserve legacies which American Indian descendants have carried for more than 8,000 years.
Our perceptions begin early in life and are based on information we receive inside and outside the home. We all have a responsibility in seeing that public education seeks to respect cultural diversity.
MEMO: Your Turn is a feature of the Wednesday and Saturday Opinion pages. To submit a Your Turn column for consideration, contact Rebecca Nappi at 459-5496 or Doug Floyd at 459-5466 or write Your Turn, The Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210-1615.