The following transcript is from the 4/14/00 Chief Illiniwek dialogue "intake session". It is an unedited excerpt from the original U.I. document.

What makes a good symbol? According to the late Victor Turner, one of the great analysts of symbolic thinking of the 20th century, the successful symbol is what he called multivocal, by which he meant that: It speaks in different, but richly evocative and satisfying ways to multiple constituencies; it speaks to multiple ideas and ideologies; and it speaks to events that are either historically verifiable, or that are seen as existing in mythical time outside of historically verifiable time.

The great enduring symbols of human history have had just these properties. For example, the cross speaks effectively to multiple groups of Christian all over the world precisely because it visually summarizes a broad range of ideas that are accepted widely as ideologically relevant, spiritually true and, at least in part, historically accurate, to members of Christian communities around the world.

By contrast, symbols fail when they do not meet any or even all of these criteria and they divide people rather than unite them. The Confederate flag and the swastika both come to mind. It is the same with the Chief.

Like other failed symbols, our school mascot is actively turning off more and more of its observers, not only in our school community, but increasingly beyond our campus and beyond Illinois. Like other failed symbols, the Chief speaks to a narrowly restricted ideology, the vision of Native peoples as a source of entertainment to sports fans. And like other failed symbols, the Chief speaks to a historically and ethnographically inaccurate portrait of the wrong group of Native peoples set in the wrong place and in the wrong time.

Given this triple failure, my own responsibilities as an educator are sorely becoming challenged. When I instruct my students in the properties of symbolism and am asked to put Chief Illiniwek in this conceptual hierarchy, I am obliged to classify it as a failed symbol along with the others, such as the two that I have mentioned.

But I love my University, and it pains me to have to subject its icon to such a bitter analysis. Moreover, as an anthropologist whose prime mission as I see it is to teach responsible understanding of diverse cultural practices across time and space, I find it increasingly difficult to defend my own employment at a university whose Chief symbol presents an image of one cultural group that is ethnographically and historically inaccurate, psychologically offensive and politically divisive. In short, my job in the classroom is being tested by the growing controversy generated by the Chief.

As an educator, I believe my colleagues and I have a moral responsibility to share our scholarly expertise when such expertise is called on. I am honored to have this opportunity as a cultural anthropologist to speak to this troubling issue. You, our Trustees, are charged with the sacred trust of providing not only financial, but also moral leadership in selecting a responsible symbol for our times. I urge you to support the retiring of the Chief as a failed symbol that is an inappropriate, inaccurate and offensive representation of our diverse University community, and to support the search for a new symbol that can far more effectively unite us with another visual image that can convey true pride in our complex history, our changing aspirations and our multiple identities. Thank you.

See the U.I. Dialogue on Chief Illiniwek page for more transcripts and information.