a Minnesota News Council Forum
November 20, 2001

On November 20 the News Council co-sponsored another public forum on racism in sports and media, specifically addressing objections by American Indians to the use of their religious rituals and symbols by sports teams as nicknames, logos, mascots and entertainment.

The goal of the forum was to ask why sports teams and news organizations continue to use Indian names and traditions when so many Indians find the use offensive.

The most flagrant examples cited were the Washington Redskins pro football team, the Cleveland Indians baseball club (whose mascot is the bucktooth-grinning Chief Wahoo) and the Atlanta Braves’ chant, the Tomahawk Chop.

The forum produced a consensus that no team, or news outlet, would even consider publicizing such imagined teams as the San Francisco Orientals, the Chicago Blacks, the Kansas City Caucasians or the New Jersey Jews. Indians are the only racial or ethnic group singled out by non-Indians for such exploitation.

One speaker, Charlene Teeters, of the Spokane Nation, an art teacher in Santa Fe, told how she campaigned against her alma mater, the University of Illinois, which uses a white person as the mascot Chief Illiniwek, in feathers and war paint, dancing to a drumbeat at football games. The University would not budge.

"It is very hard for us to be heard in this country," Teeters said. "Get these symbols and burdens out of our way, and we will show you who we are."

The forum was conceived by the National Coalition on Racism in Sports & Media, headed by Vernon Bellecourt. He praised the Star Tribune’s executive editor, Tim McGuire, for having decided, in 1994, no longer to use Indian nicknames for sports teams. Bellecourt said it was hard dealing with the newspaper, but the result has been very gratifying, and he congratulated McGuire for his leadership.

McGuire said his lead wasn’t taken: "Nobody has followed me." He credited the former editor of the Portland Oregonian, Bill Hilliard, with setting the precedent for the ban on Indian nicknames, and said Hilliard’s successor, Sandra Mims Rowe, "has not backed away."

McGuire said he started to change his mind when a Star Tribune assistant managing editor, Steve Ronald, came back from a Native American Journalists seminar in 1993 and said the nickname issue had been a major concern there, and that the newspaper should consider dropping those nicknames.

"We wouldn’t tolerate that stereotyping of any other group," McGuire said. Then McGuire, who has a physical disability, made it personal: "I wouldn’t like a nickname like the Minneapolis Cripples, Grand Forks Gimps or St. Paul Shorties."

He said many people assumed the Star Tribune’s ban on Indian nicknames meant the paper was consumed by political correctness. "I’ve always hated that term," he said. "I prefer sensitivity. If you walk in another person’s shoes you get to the point of sensitivity."

McGuire said 218 people cancelled subscriptions, more than had ever done so in response to any other story in his 22 years as a manager at the paper. Many who criticized the newspaper, and the Indian protesters, say that a news organization should reflect reality, and the Washington Redskins are the Washington Redskins. McGuire said his paper was reflecting the reality of the sensitivity that had recently led 50 of the 67 schools with Indian nicknames in Minnesota to drop them.

McGuire relished the fact that, during the 1991 World Series, when the Twins played Atlanta, the Star Tribune’s baseball writer, Howard Sinker, had a story on Page One every day, but never used Atlanta’s nickname Braves. No one called to complain, maybe no one even noticed.

"Other decent editors who continue to use Indian nicknames don’t hesitate to decide not to use ‘the F word,’ bad names some people call other people, and names of rape victims," McGuire said. Little will change, though, he said, as long as sports and media organizations have an economic interest in holding on to Indian nicknames:

"The fact that the will of so many Native Americans has been ignored hurts."

The forum’s master of ceremonies, WCCO’s Don Shelby, said that McGuire was wrong to say he had no followers: "Since you made that moral choice, I’ve never used those words on TV or radio again."