Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry, a group of Native parents and their allies from across the country urge Nike Inc. and those attending the N7 Sports Summit for Native athletes being held October 2-5th at Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon to acknowledge and support the grassroots efforts of Native American families to end racism in sports, especially racism against Native Americans displayed by the NFL’s Washington team, the Cleveland Indians, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the Atlanta Braves. It is more important than ever that Nike demonstrate support for Native American families particularly after Nike’s
insulting racial slur-themed birthday party last week for National Basketball Association player Kevin Durant. Nike can no longer continue to ignore American Psychological Association findings and claim to support and include Native Americans as people, rather than marketable images or consumers from which they make a profit. Michael A Friedman, PhD., stated
in a 2013 article:
“The effects of systematic prejudice and discrimination against Native Americans can be best illustrated in that Native American/Alaska Natives have among the highest suicide rates in the country. The rate of suicide among Native Americans has risen 65% in the past decade alone. The acknowledgement of the catastrophic effects of prejudice on the Native American population prompted the American Psychological Association in 2005 to strongly urge the banning of all Native American mascots for sports teams.”
While Native Americans face many challenges, this issue and it’s correlation to suicide is at the national forefront and must be addressed. It cannot be ignored for any “bigger issue”. Toby Vanlandingham, Yurok blogger and EONM Executive Committee member:
“The bigger fish to fry argument is a narrow-minded deflection from the fact that Indian Country is tackling all our issues at once, we can multi-task just like our non-Native counterparts. Do any of you bigger fish theorists actually do anything other than complain about how Natives across the country have managed to unify and operate on a level never seen before in Indian Country? Now, imagine what we are going to be able to do with this experience and knowledge going forward, as individual tribes our voices are small, but unified as one our voices get heard. If you are not insulted by the slur or mascots in general, fine, there are many more Natives who are, don’t belittle them and shoot them down, be supportive, isn’t that what we are supposed to do?”
Nike Inc. has demonstrated that part of what they want Native American families to do is trade in their identity for inclusion because they want to sell a culturally marketable shoe or other merchandise to Native Americans and yet, still sell “Chief Wahoo”, Tomahawk chop, FSU, Chiefs, and Washington team gear for profit as well. We may be consumers, but our culture has been a mass marketing commodity for far too long and is an exploitation that is doing measurable harm to the self worth of Native children. Nike must support Native Americans speaking out about Native Mascotry in sports otherwise it looks like all the good N7 is wanting to do is more about bribery than empowerment. That form of bribery is nothing new and looks much like Dan Snyder’s Original Americans Foundation.
Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry's Nike World Headquarters protest in April.