Tom Garza, Dec. 4, 2003

Some thoughts about the 'Chief'

It's autumn here again in central Illinois, and to many people in this community, that means it's time for football. There is a palpable sense of excitement and anticipation that runs throughout the twin cities at this time of year, and as surely as brightly colored leaves start to fall and cover the lawns, Orange and Blue become the fashionable colors to wear, and images of Chief Illiniwek begin to turn up everywhere you look.

I was born in the city of Champaign, in 1956, and spent all of my formative years here in the long shadow of the University of Illinois. Consequently I have never known a time when Chief Illiniwek wasn't the personification, or the 'face', of the U of I and it's sports teams. In my youth I associated such things as the wearing of Eagle feathers, moccasins and 'war paint', with sports, like football and basketball, every bit as much as I did with the natives I saw portrayed in the so called 'Cowboys and Indians' movies that I'd watched as a boy. The symbolism of these items and the culture that they represented -- whether described in books, portrayed by actors on the screen, or parodied by a cheerleader in a football stadium -- were equally remote to me, and didn't represent anything that I connected to the present, or to any actual living human beings at all. They all collectively belonged to a fascinating, colorful, but also irretrievably distant past.

When I look at the controversy about the Chief from this perspective, it's not difficult for me to see why there are still so many people who simply don't understand why anyone would have a problem with him. Viewed in this way, the Chief is indeed a pleasing and attractive figure, and a far cry from the sort of images that generally come to mind when one pictures offensive racial stereotypes. We suppose such things to be intentionally, or at best only thoughtlessly demeaning. The image of a wild-eyed brown man with a beard and turban, waving a bomb in one hand and the Qur'an in the other would be one, certainly, or a grinning, capering caricature in black-face from a minstrel show is another without a doubt, but Chief Illiniwek? How is he offensive?

Leaving aside for a moment the extremely questionable taste of using a young white man dressed in, let's call it 'red-face', to portray a Native American elder, the truth is that taken entirely by himself, out of context, Chief Illiniwek is not especially offensive. Standing alone and stripped of his associations, the symbol of the Chief is merely a generic caricature drawn from history. He has no discernable personality of his own, although he is typically portrayed as the living embodiment of a broad set of admirable qualities.

The following quote, taken from a randomly selected website entitled 'Save the Chief'*, articulates this latter point of view. Its states:

"The tradition of Chief Illiniwek is a link to the past. He is filled with qualities that a person of any background can relate to: goodness, strength, bravery, truthfulness, courage, and dignity."

This seems to say that these people see the Chief as a living symbol of a time when the world was different than it is now. Through him, and the emotions his performance engenders, we are to be brought back in touch with good, old fashioned positive virtues, and simple, straightforward values that have been all but lost in the complexity of modern life. By embracing this symbol we can, perhaps, rekindle a desire to emulate these lofty ideals, and become better men and women in the process.

That has a very nice sound to it, and from what I've read on the subject, this sort of soft-focused, idealized view of the Chief is just about ubiquitous. Such lists of virtues are very common in pro-chief materials, yet nowhere in this, or in any of the other literature that I've read, does anyone mention just why they think that the Chief in particular is so well suited to portray these qualities, or what it is about his performance or mien that evokes such reverence. It's simply taken as an obvious fact that this is so, and that this connection between a generic Native American image, like the Chief, and the above listed qualities, doesn't require any further elucidation whatsoever. The unspoken assumption seems to be that: Indian chief, equals dignity and courage. Period. And since this is the case, then why not celebrate that fact, and how can we be insulting Native Americans by doing so? Indians have reverence for their chiefs, so what's wrong with non-Indians feeling the same way?

The difficulty in answering questions such as these is that it is the underlying assumptions behind them, and not the questions themselves, that actually need to be addressed.

One would be correct in saying that an Indian chief is a person of respect and dignity within his community, and to those raised in such a society, a chief does represent noble virtues, and is often a revered figure. But these emotions are based on experience, on familiarity, and on understanding, and this genuine reverence is precisely why many people have a problem with Chief Illinwek being used as a symbol for the university and it's sports teams.

To begin to understand this feeling, consider, if you will, the following question: why would the university create a fictitious character from a poorly understood and alien culture to represent them, when there are a whole host of well known and comfortably familiar icons from the dominant western European historical tradition to choose from? Wouldn't such a figure -- an actual living or historical figure from within 'ones own family' so to speak -- be more suitable, and easier to connect with for the majority of white students and alumni? Surely there are many heroic characters whose deeds - whether apocryphal or real - engender a suitable set of positive virtues and qualities inspiring enough to propel a sports team to victory, or give the student body a focal point to rally around. Why, in other words, don't we ever see a heroic Abe Lincoln simulacrum dancing around the field and whipping the crowd into a frenzy with his long, nimble legs, and characteristic stovepipe hat? Or how about a 'Fighting Pope'? Wouldn't the crowd be thrilled to see this fiery pontiff cross himself while simultaneously doing aerial splits, or feel renewed hope when he leaps to his feet during a tense moment in the game and excommunicates the entire opposing team with one sweeping, and dramatic gesture?

If these examples strike you as ludicrous, it's because they are. Such spectacles would be risible and more than a little embarrassing. This is because these figures have personalities and embody qualities that actually are revered and honored by the majority of students and fans, and to see a familiar and respected religious leader, or a much beloved president behaving in such a way would strip them of their dignity, and make them, and through them their respective offices, seem both comical and foolish.

Yet this is exactly what the Chief does to the image of a real Indian chief during his half-time performance, or when his image appears on everything from coffee mugs to seat warmers. And yet somehow his ignominy is perfectly acceptable to a surprising number of people who would generally characterize themselves as both open, and fair-minded. There are a variety of reasons for this, but mainly I believe that it is because all of the reverence and respect that is supposedly inspired by, and directed towards the Chief, is actually drawn from, and felt for the university itself, and the team he represents. His image can be used in any fashion that is convenient or profitable, because he isn't 'one of us' and we are therefore not tainted by what he does. He also isn't particularly connected to the university itself either, he's just figurehead for it. He is simply a trademark, and a symbol. The Chief himself has no real personality and inspires nothing except perhaps admiration for the physical prowess of the person who portrays him when he performs his rousing and supposedly 'authentic' war dance. He is only a symbol, not of Native Americans, or for Native Americans, but of some sort of wishful and mythological 'Indian-ness'. He is used as a logo for the college, a totem for the sports team, and even for such things as a means of evoking a wistful yearning for lost youth, or as a comfortable and familiar reminder of the memories of happy, carefree college days buried deep in the hearts of aging alumni.

But what we need to be clear about here, is the fact that the Chief only works for you as a symbol for such things if you are aware of, and at least on some level accept, the racial stereotype that views Native Americans as somehow inherently brave, noble and dignified. Otherwise, in a state and a school that have no current, sizable native population, there is literally nothing to connect a generic Indian chief to this university or it's sports teams. You can of course look to regional history to create such a connection, as another website** I visited has done, wherein the chief is described (rather ironically I think), as: "...a proud symbol of the State's land grant university." Yet one treads on rather shaky ground in doing so, because you can't mention this without reminding people of the question; who in fact granted this land to the university, and by what right did they do so? Certainly not the very natives that the chief is supposed to honor, their lands, this very land I'm standing on right now, was taken from them, often by force, and it seems to me to only add insult to injury to in effect point out that: 'We stole your land and in many cases your very lives. We've done our best to crush your culture, and we've broken treaty after treaty with you...but hey, at least we still think of you fondly whenever we play football'. Such is the message received when Natives see the Chief because it is the all too familiar reality of the Native American experience, their connection to the land, and by extension, the university that exists upon it today.

Consider this, if an advertising firm were to start up an ad campaign using an African American man named David in order to represent something like say, 'natural rhythm', or a Jewish woman named Sarah, to symbolize the benefits of thriftiness and financial acumen, most of us would wince at the obvious insensitivity of the thing, and there are very few who would be surprised to hear it labeled as tasteless and offensive. Yet these are both admirable qualities, and it oughtn't to be considered demeaning to be associated with them. But what is demeaning about these particular connections, is that it is dehumanizing to a person to have their individuality taken away from them, and to instead have a generic personality imposed upon them simply because of their racial characteristics. When you make it a point to associate these two people with such well known stereotypical attributes, they cease in your mind to be individuals named David or Sarah, and become simply 'A Black' and 'A Jew', along with all the other trappings and baggage that long years of racism have added to those labels.

Yes, 'racism'. It's an ugly word. When we hear it we tend to think of hatred, exclusion and repression, but these are only the sharp, jagged edges of the thing. The primary ingredients of racism, the comparatively neutral substances that comprise the majority of it's frightening bulk, are the ignorance, the unwarranted assumptions, the preconceived notions and sweeping generalizations that people make every day about others who differ from them physically or culturally. It is the steady erosion that comes from ignorance, rather than the bitter, cutting bite of hatred, that causes the greatest damage in the long run I believe. The latter can, if we're not absolutely callous to it, cause us to instinctively recoil, recognizing it for what it is, while the former slowly lulls even the most broad minded among us into a tolerant complacency.

Since the controversy over the Chief began, the university has changed a few things in order to address the offensiveness of the officially sanctioned uses of the Chief but not, I think, because they completely or collectively recognize the racism inherent in his use, but rather to calm things down and hopefully make the problem go away. In the long run however, no matter how limited his exposure, the fact that his role remains that of a symbol, a mascot, or a trademark, is in and of itself demeaning. The Chief portrays Native Americans as one dimensional cartoons, and no matter how high the pedestal upon which he's placed, how many wonderful characteristics are attached to his name, or how honored his treatment, he's still -- and by extension so are his putative relatives -- a caricature. By using this cardboard cut-out of an Indian in such a public way, the university drowns out the attempts of real natives to express their genuine humanity, and to show their real, true dignity. It says, in effect, 'as far as Indians go, we prefer our version', and real Native Americans must continue by personal example to live down, or live up to, or simply try to ignore a stereotype that is more powerfully financed and omnipresent than the quiet examples of their everyday lives can ever hope to compete with. The sad part of it is, it should be completely unnecessary.

It is difficult enough to know who you are, without having to first stop being someone that you never were to begin with.

*http://www2.ic.edu/cochran/ClassPages/208Sp02/Daum/daum-index.html
**http://members.tripod.com/~RFester/chiefilliniwek.html

Tom Garza, via the web.