The game program contains 28 mini-bios of Lakewood Mayfair High players. One question asked of all was, "What do you enjoy most about football?"

Eleven answered, in some form, "Hitting."

Ibrahim Atalla said, "The violence and when we score."

Danny Baker said, "Smashing people."

Jonathan Mercado said, "The feeling you get when you just flat-back someone."

And Kenneth Sutton II said, "Hitting, hitting and more hitting." [1]

School Panel Puts Off Vote On Mascot

February 10, 2006

By JESSE LEAVENWORTH, Courant Staff Writer

CANTON — Canton High School students papered school walls and windows Thursday with copies of their current "Dancing Warrior" mascot, expressing disappointment with a proposed new image they say waters down the school's fighting spirit.

The board of education, which has been wrestling with the issue for seven months, had planned to vote on whether to accept the latest warrior image Thursday night. But several board members said they either would not approve the image or were not ready to vote, and some Canton High students told the board they felt left out of the process of choosing a symbol that represents them.

In the end, the board decided to gather more information from students, who are to meet in a schoolwide assembly and focus groups.

The current angry-eyed warrior wears a full headdress and wields a hatchet. The proposed new symbol for the school's sports teams is a much more realistic representation of a Connecticut Indian, but he holds no weapon in his extended hands. Many students found that the image failed to convey the necessary fighting spirit, Kyle Martin, student representative to the school board, said outside the meeting. Students were especially unimpressed with the proposed warrior's stance, Martin said.

"It's not something you could use to intimidate," he said.

POINTS WEST
A Sick Game That Celebrates Savagery

By STEVE LOPEZ, Times Staff Writer

My future as a professional football player got derailed one day in tryouts for my high school team.

It wasn't the heat that did me in, although it was as hot as hell's hinges. And it wasn't the stink, although you could faint from the smell of sweat-soaked pads and polyester jerseys.

What pushed me over the edge was our coach. We were in the middle of a blocking drill when he blew up, screaming like a lunatic until his eyes looked like they might pop out of his head. We were blocking like sissies, he foamed. Then he went up to a chain-link fence and exploded into it over and over again, head first, until his face was a bloody mess. When he turned to us, glaring with a madness that filled his every fiber, he said, "That's how you block, gentlemen."

When I quit, it wasn't because I was surprised that the coach was a psychopath. It was because I wasn't surprised.

Football is savage and dangerous, and it celebrates and markets those qualities without apology. It's a game for bullies and sociopaths, the more violent and eccentric the better. And they all go into it accepting pain, paralysis and worse, as part of the bargain. That's what a man does, because he's a man, even if it means he stands a good chance of limping away from the game crippled and maimed, his bell rung so many times he couldn't tie his shoes even if he could find them.

Unlike baseball and its press-pass-carrying bad poets society, football has never tried to pass itself off as a metaphor for life. Football, from the football perspective, is much bigger than that. It is the immovable object, the irresistible force. It views itself as modern-day siege warfare, combat and conquest, run by too many coaches and administrators who have read Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and view themselves as caretakers of a sacred gladiator tradition handed down from the great armies of antiquity.

[W]hen the local high school football team named "the Braves," or "the Chiefs," or "the Indians," charges onto the field behind a mascot bearing the name "Chief Yoyo" or "the fighting Apache," the fans in the stands are not "honoring" Indians, they are really celebrating the American myth that says these brave, savage warriors were overcome only by white American tenacity, skill, and courage.

When read through the lens of an American Indian-centered history, so-called "Chief" Illiniwek is a tragic hero, a defeated "warrior" and spiritual guide who offers a cathartic reproof of his ancestors' past injustices. Huddleston's chief is an example of imperialist nostalgia, a widespread tactic used by colonial powers like Australia, Canada, the United States, and New Zealand to cover up domination and transform those responsible for the oppression of indigenous peoples (including American Indians) to act as innocent bystanders.

The strong attachment students feel for their mascots or nicknames is not instinctual; it is 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 didn't 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 can't hold up our end of the argument. It's like the modern teenager who looks at the Aunt Jemima syrup bottle, sees a positive depiction of a smiling African-American grandmother, and says, "What's the problem? It's so positive."

The problem isn't 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, you get 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.

"Yeah but what really galls me," he continued, "is that a bunch of these schools are just trying to honor Native Americans. They're just trying to pay respect to the spirit of the Indians. It's like nothing we can do is ever enough for those people."

Aside from how calling indigenous folks "those people" jibes with a true desire to honor them (let alone his claim to be one at some remove), this particular nugget—offered by far more than just one drunk guy at a Nashville bar—has always struck me as especially vile.

If schools wanted to honor first nations people, after all, they could do it in any number of more meaningful ways. They could establish Native American studies programs and fund them adequately. They could step up their recruitment of Indian students, staff and faculty, rather than retreating from such efforts in the face of misplaced backlash to affirmative action. They could strip the names off of buildings on their campuses that pay tribute to those who participated in the butchering of Native peoples. Here in Nashville that process could begin by renaming, without delay, any building named after Andrew Jackson, of which there are several.

Perhaps most importantly, we could begin by telling the truth about what was done to the indigenous of this land, rather than trying to paper over that truth, minimize the horror, and, once again, change the subject. You know the kind of people I'm speaking of: the ones who refuse to label the elimination of over ninety-five percent of the native peoples of the Americas "genocide."

Carty: Indian mascot schools should look in mirror

Sunday, August 7, 2005
BY JIM CARTY
News Sports Columnist

Can't they see the obvious? The Chippewas, Seminoles, Fighting Illini and Savages of college sports are all just honoring those tribes or their area's Indian heritage.

Without Southeastern Oklahoma State athletics working to change its image, what hope do the Savages have of being seen in a positive light? Everywhere you look in the media, it's Savages attacking the wagon train or Savages scalping settlers.
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When white kids wearing Indian costumes -- often pointedly described as authentic Indian costumes on school Web sites, because, you know, that's a whole lot different from your average Halloween Tonto getup -- well, when those white kids dance at halftime of Illinois games or charge on to the field on a horse before a Florida State football game, they're spreading the message that ...

Well, there's a message in there, trust me.

Fred Hayes Jr., a former Mayfair player who is a chiropractor and oversees the team's medical needs, said parents, players and coaches all need to be more vigilant about responding to players' head injuries, no matter how minor they might seem.

"I think parents don't realize the impact of those ... they are brain injuries," Hayes said. "It's not just, 'My kid got his bell rung.' No, your kid got his brain impacted against the inside of his skull."

Hayes added, "I think you can compare it to driving down the road at 25 mph and jumping out and tackling a mailbox."

Football players were struck in the head 30 to 50 times per game and regularly endured blows similar to those experienced in car crashes, according to a Virginia Tech study that fitted players' helmets with the same kinds of sensors that trigger auto air bags.