 |
U.I. Dialogue narratives |
RetireTheChief
The following is the transcript of a Foellinger balcony narrative from April 14, 2000. It is an unedited excerpt from the original Chief dialogue document.
MR. ROBERT DUNN: As I said, my name is Robert Dunn. I am a senior at Urbana High School and I have been involved in the movement for the last three years. For the last, since I became involved and became aware of this at the high school, I have received numerous harassment, threats of violence towards me just because of my stance and I believe this is directly because of the University's symbol.When people have friends who are native, you have kids coming up going "hey yaw, hey yaw, hey" and then afterwards they ask, why did you do that, and they said we are honoring you. That is not honor.
I mean, if you want to honor native Americans, you live up to the treaties that you signed with them. And I know that is all the way back from the 1800s, but those treaties still exist today. And if you want to honor them, you know, include them into mainstream society. But let them, let native people still have their religion, you know, stop mocking them for entertainment and then using honor as an excuse for your own personal entertainment.
And you know, this stuff about the Peoria tribe, the Peoria tribe just passed a resolution, I don't know if anyone has seen it yet, but they just passed a resolution against Chief Illiniwek and they apologized because when Channel 15 came to them, which is our local NBC affiliate, came to them, decided that they did not know anything about Chief Illiniwek back in '95 and had they known, they would have gone against it. And so they feel really used by what the University has done by using their misquotes and misrepresentation of what they said.
And so, the only way to repay Native Americans is to get rid of this mascot and build a native culture house and native studies department and start recruiting native students, faculty and staff. That is the only way, so please, the Board of Trustees, this University needs to wake up, this Hollywood, this ridiculous Hollywood stuff needs to go. This isn't the 1920s anymore, that's when the Chief came around.
Also, what was back then in the 1920s was a little black symbol and if you look in your old past year books, you can see fraternities putting on black face and having little minstrel shows. And so that's another thing you have to look where this came from. This came from a racist environment and it still is.
So in conclusion I have to say retire this mascot, that is the only way that justice can be served. Thank you.
See the U.I. Dialogue on Chief Illiniwek page for more transcripts and information.