Suzan Harjo’s fight for Native rights began as early as the second grade, when she debated the true details of the battle of Little Bighorn with her teacher and was thrown out a window and into a rosebush. Harjo recounted this experience, for which the teacher was not punished, as well as her lifetime of activism for Native American people, in a lecture held in Haldeman Hall on Monday afternoon.
“It’s hard to find a piece of Native American legislation that doesn’t have her fingerprints on it,” Native American studies department chair Bruce Duthu said in his introduction of her.
Harjo said she was invited to the College by Duthu in order to talk to different groups of his students. Her talk focused on the issue of using Native Americans as mascots, detailing the history of the usage of such imagery and the current legal fight to eliminate this occurrence.
The use of Native Americans as mascots is an insult to everything actual Natives know and to everything they are, Harjo said.
The first school to retire a native mascot was University of Oklahoma in 1970, Harjo said. The mascot, known as “Little Red,” was retired due to increasing demonstrations by progressive student groups and the fact that eventually, no actual Native people were willing to play the role, Harjo said.
Though the retirement of Little Red was a positive, Harjo said the mascot’s existence has since been largely erased from the University of Oklahoma’s history. While the retirement of the mascot was a good step, it is also valuable for an institution to look back upon such mistakes as learning opportunities, she said.
“That’s always a positive message, I think, but a lot of institutions feel that it may shake the institution if you confess error,” Harjo said.
Several other institutions officially retired their Native mascots relatively soon after, Harjo said, with Stanford University and Dartmouth retiring the “Indians” in 1972 and 1974, respectively, and Syracuse University retiring the “Saltine Warrior” in 1978.
Collectively, Native activist efforts have eliminated over 2,000 native mascots, Harjo said, though they have about 900 more to go.
“We’ve already won the societal contest on this issue,” Harjo said.
Society is largely on the side of Native Americans, Harjo said, citing commentators Charles Krauthammer and Bob Costas as significant mainstream supporters of the movement.
Harjo also added historical context — as part of civilization regulations for Natives passed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States criminalized certain traditional dances for Native Americans, even on their own reservations, she said.
“The only people who were dancing as Indians were white guys during sports events on college campuses,” Harjo said.
The use of Natives as mascots was not an honor or a statement but a harmful assumption, Harjo said. Using Native people as mascots alongside actual animals served as an example of how society viewed Natives as subhuman and closer to animals than people, Harjo explained.
Native people were also featured in the Chicago and St. Louis World’s Fairs in 1893 and 1904, respectively, as examples of “less developed” people and entertainment for white spectators, she said.
Though thousands of institutions have retired their Native mascots, Harjo also detailed her ongoing legal battles with professional sports teams, like the Washington Redskins.
She cited that the owner of the Redskins -— Daniel Snyder — attempts to justify keeping the name by bringing forward individual Native people to testify in support of the mascot.
“Even if he comes up with 100,000 individual Indians, it’s not the same as every single national organization saying, ‘Get rid of these racist mascots,’” Harjo said.
The impetus behind academic institutions retiring their mascots was those institutions’ focus on student health and safety, she said, particularly concerns over how a mascot may affect groups of students and whether it will cause a confrontation. Professional sports organizations, however, are motivated by money and profit, Harjo said, which has made the process more difficult.
This issue has significant implications for a wide variety of students, Harjo said in an interview after the lecture. The repercussions of such lawsuits on trademarks and trademark registration are significant points of learning for economics students, because her current case is the first to call for a cancellation of an existing trademark, Harjo said.
“Everyone thought before the case that you could only object to new registrations,” Harjo said. “They didn’t know that you could attempt to cancel them.”
Harjo went on to say that the mascot issue had implications for those focusing on history, law, anthropology and communications as it is a “gateway issue” for understanding centuries of Native American history.
“Dartmouth has a rich history in this area, and I bet a lot of people don’t realize it,” Harjo said.
Brooke Hadley ’18, secretary of Native Americans at Dartmouth, said she came to the talk because she thinks Harjo is an influential figure in the Native American community and wanted to hear her opinions. Hadley also said she is considering pursuing a Native American studies minor or major, which made the talk especially relevant.
Helen Thomas ’18, one of NAD’s social chairs, said she had a personal connection to the topic — Thomas, a Sioux, hails from the same town as the University of North Dakota, which recently retired the Fighting Sioux as its mascot.
“This is a personal topic for me and something I had to go explaining my entire life why it’s offensive and defending myself as a Native person in a non-Native community with a Native mascot,” Thomas said.
Hadley added Harjo had just received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, rendering the talk particularly relevant.
Thomas said she was impressed by the talk, especially by how Harjo integrated the use of Native mascots with cultural context. Hadley said Harjo’s hierarchy explanation, which detailed how American society viewed Native Americans as subhuman, was particularly impressive.
