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.

I have personally experienced through my children some of the hurts that have befallen them because of this mascot. My daughter, when she first came down here a year before I arrived, called me all upset when one of her professors, an older history professor told her, told all of the students, that he didn't understand why Native Americans wanted to be called Native Americans, because he was Native American because he was born here. She said she felt like sinking down into her seat and didn't want to go back to class.

When I said maybe I should come down and speak to someone, she said, oh no, dad, please don't do that. She didn't go back to class, because she found that she could get the notes through a note service.

But she felt very humiliated and she is actually a suburban child. But she knows her grandmother, she knows my side of the family and she was extremely embarrassed and hurt by this whole thing. One of my other sons was at the Yankee Ridge School which celebrates itself for the international makeup and has a famous international night. One of the teachers used a book during a slow time in class that allowed other kids to say when the Indians were mentioned in this book to go whoo, whoo, whoo. He was terribly embarrassed, it took him two days to come to us and talk to us. We went up there, she couldn't understand. This is a theme that I have noticed when I talk to people about how I feel about it and how it affects children is that they don't understand why it would hurt anybody.

People will say to me, I never understood until I talked to you and now I do and I can't explain to myself or to anyone else why I didn't know this from the beginning. And when I saw that chief for the first time dancing, I just -- I could not believe and I still cannot believe that anyone would think this is an honorable thing to do. It is wrong on the face of it. I don't know what the excuse is. And I have heard it many, many times about tradition, et cetera. But there are so many wrong traditions in the world.

My oldest son was in driver's ed at Urbana High when the driver's ed teacher, a former football player saw something that sparked him to talk about why he thought the Chief should be kept and was talking to the other student in the car. We were incensed. The guy should be watching the road, watching my son. My son became very upset, felt he had to defend his view of getting rid of the Chief. These are small, tiny things. These affect my children, all three of them.

My wife, who taught at University primary, at the beginning of the year, every fall she would have to tell these gifted children, that no, they didn't learn about real Indians last weekend when they went to the football game. That this is a white young man dancing around in a costume.

So I say to people, listen to people like Jay Rosenstein, listen to Fred Hoxie, listen to Brenda Farnell, when I heard those people and I know them, they spoke very eloquently about the things that needed to be done philosophically. I am saying to you as a Native American person, father of children whom I love, child of Native American people, that this is wrong. You need to retire the Chief. Thank you.

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