Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

30° Evanston, IL
Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Native American speaker calls for greater cultural awareness

The struggle for Native American rights began the minute Christopher Columbus landed on San Salvador more than 500 years ago.

“We were the victims of the most destructive and awesome crimes against humanity,” said Vernon Bellecourt, president of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media and an activist for the American Indian Movement.

AIM has fought for sports teams to change mascots the group deems derogatory. Bellecourt has been active in campaigns against mascots, including Chief Illiniwek at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, the Florida State University Seminoles, the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians.

Although the word “Indians” is not an insult in itself, it becomes derogatory when it is “attached to a grinning, idiotic, buck-toothed logo,” Bellecourt told 50 students and community members in Swift Hall Tuesday. His 90-minute speech was sponsored by Mayfest and Students for Environmental and Ecological Development.

The intolerance toward Native Americans also permeates the U.S. justice system, Bellecourt said.

Leonard Peltier is a Native American who is serving two life sentences for the 1975 murder of two FBI agents on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. But AIM believes the government framed Peltier, whose only hope for freedom is clemency from the president.

Bellecourt has run into opposition from law enforcement during his struggle for Native American rights. In 1991, he and three other protesters were forcibly removed from the Dixon Mounds Museum, where they were trying to rebury Native American skeletons that were on display.

Those skeletons are just one example of sacred Native American burial grounds being excavated without understanding the importance of burial in the culture, Bellecourt said.

This disrespect stems from ignorance on the part of Americans, he said.

“The biggest problem in America is that most Americans don’t know who they are,” said Bellecourt, who is concerned that immigrants to the United States are learning an “incorrect history” that does not include the struggles of Native Americans.

Because of this ignorance, Americans do not understand the traditions of Native Americans, Bellecourt said.

To re-educate all Americans about history, AIM works to promote Native American culture in what Bellecourt calls a cultural Dark Ages in the United States.

“We’ve sparked a major cultural and spiritual renaissance in our people,” Bellecourt said.

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Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881
Native American speaker calls for greater cultural awareness