When people call Native-American sports mascots an honor to the chiefs they portray, Michael Haney can only cringe.
“The feathers on Chief Illiniwek are a sacred thing to my people,” said Haney, a Native-American civil rights activist. “Each feather is earned one by one through acts of courage or compassion. A whole headdress signifies a lifetime of servitude to our people.”
Wearing two long salt-and-pepper braids and rose-tinted glasses, Haney, a Seminole and Lakota Sioux Indian, spoke to about 40 people in Harris Hall Monday night about racism in Native-American sports images and about raising awareness of native issues.
“Mascots make fun of and degrade my religion, something I hold very sacred,” Haney said. “I contend that my faith should be protected. Religious symbols are protected by the First Amendment. They have for so long taken my religion and trivialized it, and they don’t even realize it.”
Haney is executive director of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media, a member of the Grand Governing Council of the American Indian Movement and he is involved with drafting the U.N. policy for indigenous people.
On April 14, Haney visited the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to participate in a dialogue about eliminating the school’s mascot, Chief Illiniwek.
In April, the Peoria tribe asked UI to “cease and desist in using Chief Illiniwek as a mascot,” Haney said.
“We really struck a nerve with the university,” Haney said. “I really feel for people who don’t understand why it’s so important to us. I want to believe everyone who tells me they’re not racist when they think they’re honoring us.”
Acceptance of violence against Native Americans is perpetuated by and linked to mascot images, Haney said. A report issued by the justice department last year stated that the majority of violent crimes are intraracial, but 80 percent of crimes against native peoples were committed by people from a different race.
“Why is that?” Haney said. “You can commit crimes against native people without fear of retribution. The people that commit these crimes know that the police put crimes against our people at the bottom of the list. There’s a mindset that bothers me. Hate crimes are committed against the native peoples in the fieldhouse of UI. If it’s OK to commit a hate crime inside these institutions, it’s easy to commit a violent crime against them.”
As a representative of Chief Blackhawk’s tribe, Haney said he is also attempting to work with the owners of the National Hockey League’s Chicago Blackhawks.
“Blackhawk was a famous and compassionate chief whom this militia hunted down until they killed him and his people,” Haney said.
During the next legislative session, Haney said he will be involved with introducing amendments to make use of human images illegal, effectively abolishing Native-American caricatures.
“It’s time that we used the laws that protect the rest of Americans to protect native culture,” he said.
Haney also advocated school-system changes to increase education of and about natives.
“We have youth in the Chicago area that need help in the public schools,” he said. “We have a big community here, about 20,000 around Chicago. That’s huge.”
Universities should offer more native-focused courses taught by Native-American instructors, Haney said.
“We’re living in two worlds, so to speak,” he said. “We send our kids to school to learn how to compete and survive. We’re not bows and arrows anymore. We have a brain drain. It’s hard for us to pay our youth (on the reservations).”
Haney said it is important that Native-American youth come back to the reservations after receiving an education to carry on traditions and increase their unity and strength.
“We’re no longer the weak nations that let you run us out of our homes 150 years ago,” Haney said. “We’re stronger now than we ever have been in our history. We’re telling the state of Illinois that all the scared Indians are dead. We’re the generation that’s going to handle this issue and make a change.”
Weinberg sophomore Kara Demsey said she learned about legal problems facing Native Americans that many people do not realize.
“We have the Blackhawks if we wanted to get involved in the mascot issues,” she said. “It has a lot of larger implications in being aware of the racism.”
