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  • POLL: Do You Love or Loathe the Chicago Blackhawks Logo?

    Yesterday, I posted a video from a Chicago television station wherein a sports anchor implied that the logo for the Chicago Blackhawks does not inspire the “fury” among Aboriginal people that other logos do.

    Well, wouldn’t you know it, non-Aboriginal sports columnist Damien Cox went and recently branded the logo as “racially insensitive.” Judging from the fact that the bulk of the 43 comments flatly reject his criticism — “nauseating,” “pitiful,” “ridiculous politically correct stupidity” — the Toronto Star writer is in the, uh, minority with his views. A lengthier retort to Cox can be found on Hockey Blog in Canada.

    But it appears not all Indians are prepared to give the Blackhawks’ logo a free pass. In the Native American Times, Gwendolyn Wydermyre calls it “a painful reminder of ignorance, hostility, and cultural indifference.”

    And Cherokee blogger Adrienne K., over at the excellent Native Appropriations, writes of her revulsion over one recent example of how even so-called ‘good’ logos easily get framed in dehumanizing ways, after she saw a fan of another hockey team “holding an impaled, severed, Indian head” when they scored against the ‘Hawks. As Adrienne notes:

    That’s one area mascot debates rarely cover — the actions of rival team’s fans and how they affect Native people. When an entire arena is shouting things like “Beat the Indians!” “Scalp the Redskins!” “F*@! the Blackhawks!” Can you imagine how it would feel to be a Native person hearing those things?

    But just who is the Indian head supposed to represent (or, as Wydermyre writes, “desecrate”)? Even defenders of the logo seem to have little idea about the back story behind its visage. The Chicago Sun Times and Chicago Tribune each offer some historical nuggets about the titular Chief Black Hawk and how a facsimile of his face first ended up ‘on ice’ back in 1926.

    In any case, the team’s logo is wildly popular among hockey fans: in fact, it was rated #1 by The Hockey News in 2008. One of the judges described it as “Proud, traditional and iconic.”

    (Less clear is what they made of Chicago’s rink-side mascot, ‘Tommy Hawk‘, available for “birthdays, graduations, wedding receptions, bar and bat Mitzvahs.”)

    And, with the ‘fury’ of Stanley Cup fever in full force — at press time, the Hawks are one win away from taking it all — the only thing left to do is ask what you think of it all. Post your comments and cast your vote below!

    [polldaddy poll=”3314502″]

  • Indigenous Intrudaz Integral to Australia’s Biggest Aboriginal Hip-Hop Fest

    Just came across this catchy video for ‘Everybody Knows’ by Indigenous Intrudaz, which in turn led me to news of the recently-celebrated tenth anniversary of Stylin’ Up, “Australia’s largest indigenous hip hop and R&B event,” according to The Courier-Mail.

    The duo have played at every single festival, an “annual celebration of indigenous music, art and dance that has grown from an audience of 500 to crowds of around 15,000.” Way cool.

    To hear more of the Intrudaz, check out their MySpace and Facebook pages. Meantime, mark your calendars now for May 2011 to be at Stylin’ Up 11.

  • Native American “Fury” and the Chicago Blackhawks

    A story from WLS-TV about how the Chicago Blackhawks logo has supposedly “avoided much fury from Native American groups” — note the absence of irony in the sportscaster’s use of the word ‘fury’ — upset over the use of such ‘Aboriginal’ iconography and nomenclature by sports teams.


    A follow-up post will explore the various contours of the debate about whether Chicago’s Indian head logo is appropriate or disrespectful.

  • War & Trust & the Waiting Game

    Blackfeet Warrior 2010

    It’s always heartening to hear you CAN win a war — especially when the odds are stacked against you.

    And I say this as an individual who is virulently anti-war in the classical sense of the term.  I’m not much for guns and bombs and blood lust.  But I do love the notion that you can fight a wrong without shooting — and right it.

    That’s what the fight has been for Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana.

    Today we can bask in the incipient victory of this stalwart warrior.  ‘Course, she may not fit the profile of the movie version.  She’s a she.  She’s 64.  And she’s an accountant.  She won by arming herself with nothing more than the truth and the proof of that truth.  The truth being the US government’s mismanagement of trust monies owed to about 300-thousand native people. A pot full of money that runs into the billions of dollars.

    The monies owed come from Indian land that was being leased by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs as farmland.  The money from those leases and the development of resources  — timber, oil, crops — on that land was supposed to go into what are known as Individual Indian Money trust accounts.  But it was the non-native people leasing the land who were getting rich.   So Cobell launched a class action lawsuit.  Fourteen years ago. As Cobell was quoted in the Green Bay Press-Gazette:

    If a bank did what the government did, they would have been put in receivership … They were managing money and lands with no background in money management.

    In May, the U-S House of Representatives voted in favour of settling that lawsuit, which means Cobell and her fellow complainants could be in for a $3.4 billion dollar resolution.

    It’s a lot of resolution.  Even though it’s only a sliver of the $47 billion they had been seeking. Bitter medicine being what it is, $3.4 billion is easier to swallow than $47 billion.

    So it may be all over.  Except … there’s one final hurdle.  The US Senate has to enact the legislation by a June 15  July 9 deadline.  It’s been pushed back by virtue of the fact the settlement is attached to a jobs bill which Senate Republicans killed June 24th via filibuster.  When that changed, a rookie Senator decided to wade in and press for a cap on lawyer fees being charged for the 14 years it’s taken to to wrangle the settlement in the first place.  Cobell says if the terms of the legal fees  are tinkered with the whole settlement could fall apart.  

     So once again it’s a waiting game. 

    Now, Elouise Cobell is a patient woman.  She’s had to deal with slurs about how much the lawyers are going to make on the case – from $50 to $100 million is the figure widely cited.  She’s also had to field accusations of playing loose with her own portion of the settlement money.  

    But she hasn’t quit.  Some time back, she issued a statement in the hope the U-S Senate would do the right thing.  The clock keeps ticking.

    [Image via Kelly Gorham / Montana State University]

  • America’s First Warriors: Native Americans and Iraq

    NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” has a great interview with Osage photojournalist Steven Clevenger, author of America’s First Warriors: Native Americans and Iraq.

    Among the topics discussed in the interview, why do Native American people serve in such high numbers for a country that historically treated them so badly?

    Have a listen and check out a sample of the images in the book.