Indian Mascots

The mascots don't bother me as much as the double-standard. Can you imagine a sports team called the Mexicans? The Jews? If someone suggested it, heads would roll.

It's unsettling to watch someone who is not Native American present their interpretation of a culture they are not a part of for entertainment value. The majority if these mascots throw on some buckskin, beads, war paint and prance around the field and consider that authentic.

Via Baylor Lariat

Jim Thorpe, greatest athlete of all time

Every four years when someone does something remarkable in the Olympics, he suddenly becomes the greatest athlete of all time.

But speaking of history, let’s go back to the time of Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe.

Better known as Jim Thorpe, this [Sac and Fox Indian from Oklahoma] had a pretty impressive resume.

Let’s see … he won gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon during the 1912 Stockholm Games.

As a football player he was a running back, defensive back, kicker and punter for his college team, the Carlisle Indians.

...

He also participated in baseball, basketball, lacrosse and track while in college, excelling at all of them.

He went on to play in the National Football League, earning All-Pro honors one season and being named to the NFL’s All-Decade Team for the 1920s.

Thorpe played two seasons of professional baseball, and even found time to play pro basketball, starring for a barnstorming team made up entirely of [Indians].

Oh yeah, he was also a ballroom dancer. And I don’t mean just some guy who could cut a rug while trying to impress the opposite sex, but one who actually won the 1912 intercollegiate ballroom dancing championship.

By Scott Adamson at Independent Mail.Com (via Indianz.com)

Anti-Gaming Group Pursues Appeal to Supreme Court

My Prediction: The Indians Win

"The Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, also known as the Gun Lake Tribe, has been seeking to establish a reservation since gaining federal recognition in 1998. But a group called Michigan Gambling Opposition tied up the tribe's land-into-trust application with a lawsuit against the Bush administration.

Seizing on the dissenting opinion of one of President Bush's judicial nominees, MichGO is now asking the Supreme Court to invalidate the land-into-trust provisions of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934."

Source: Indianz.com

Federal Judge Recognizes Treaty Rights

I hate to see tribe against tribe in stuff like this.

The Wenatchi Band of Washington has fishing rights at the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery, a federal judge ruled last Tuesday.

The Yakama Nation had won an injunction that prevented the Wenatchi Band from fishing at the hatchery. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in December 2006 lifted the injunction and ordered a trial on the merits.

Source: Indianz.com

Tribes Don't Want Fire Crews in Sacred Sites

I don't know what to think about this. I wish I knew more about fire fighting.

Tribes in northern California don't want fire crews trampling on sacred sites and fishing grounds in the Six Rivers National Forest.

The Karuk Tribe, the Yurok Tribe and the Tolowa Tribe say federal officials should let the 9,400-acre Blue 2 and the 62,000-acre Siskiyou Complex fires burn naturally. They worry that containment fires could ending up causing more damage than necessary.

Source: Indianz.com

AP Story: here.

Forest Service Winning Fight to Make Reclaimed Wastewater Snow on Tribal Sacred Lands

I should probably read the decision before ranting about it but it's over 100 pp. and I don't have time right now. I've been following the case and I find it difficult to believe that it's gone as far as it has.

Why is USFS using reclaimed wastewater to make snow anywhere? This is a sacred place to the Tribes, they don't want reclaimed wastewater sprayed around. That should be the end of it.

Can you imagine going to a church, temple or synagogue and saying: "Hey, we're going to power-wash this place with reclaimed waste water"?

"In Navajo Nation v. US Forest Service, an en banc panel of the court ruled that the U.S. Forest Service did not violate the religious rights of tribes by allowing the use of reclaimed wastewater to make snow in the sacred San Francisco Peaks of Arizona. A three-judge panel had previously ruled in favor of the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe and other tribes in the Southwest that use the site for ceremonies and other purposes."

Source: Indianz.com

Navajo Nation v. US Forest Service

Sherman Alexie on Sonics Trial

I do not follow basketball at all but I'm a big Sherman Alexie fan and I love coverage of his testimony in the Sonics Trial.

Sixty-One Things I Learned During the Sonics Trial

By Sherman Alexie

"4. The sportswriters who hated my testimony or press conference subsequently overwrote their stories in cute attempts to outwrite me. Relax, guys, you ain't ever gonna be better than me. Or I. Or me. Or I. Shoot, I can never remember which pronoun I'm supposed to use."

Source: The Stranger