Native People Are #NotYourMascot

Published Oct 14, 2020, 5:31 AM

Why is Washington DC's professional football team changing their offensive name? In part because of people like Jacqueline Keeler, who helped create the #NotYourMascot movement.


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There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production of My Heart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Tod and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. This week marked Indigenous People's Day, a data honor and commemorate Native people and an opportunity to re examine having a national holiday celebrating Christopher Columbus, a murderer. It's catching on, with seven states officially celebrating Indigenous People's Day and more commemorating the day via proclamations, and it's really representative of how a shift in cultural attitudes can lead to meaningful, widespread cultural shift. Which brings me to my city's football team name. For as long as I can remember, Washington d c S professional football team has been a slur and Native activists have been trying to do something about it for years. Dan Snyder, the owner of Washington d c S professional football team, announced the team would be changing their name earlier this summer. But don't give Snyder too much credit for doing the right thing. It was only after pressure from corporate and political interests fanned by years of work by activists, that he did anything at all. And we can't talk about the name change without also talking about those Native activists. They're brilliance, their labor and their ability to imagine that things could be different in Jacqueline Keeler created the Not Your Mascot movement on social media to take action against what she calls Native mascutry in sports and all Indigenous cultural misappropriations. My name is Jacqueline Keeler and I am a journalist based out of Portland, Oregon. So what was your upbringing like? Um, Well, I I am naive American and both of my parents are enrolled in different tribes. My father is yankedin Sue Um from South Dakota and my mother is now a hope from Arizona. And and they actually met in Cleveland, Ohio through relocation. And Cleveland, Ohio was a relocation center. Um. And there were a number of these around the country, and they were established starting the nineteen fifties and going into nineteen seventies. Uh too, there was a Congress passed a bill called Termination which was to terminate tribes politically and and to relocate the population to these relocation centers. Sounds quite are really and but but they did create a lot of activism. I mean concentrating. Uh The relocation program was for young people between the ages of eighteen and thirty, and it basically created these large populations of Native young people and they got busy organizing. And I know in Cleveland, that's where the whole fight against Chief wah Who started, and and also the fight with about Columbus Day as well, and so, uh so that's the community I was born into, um an urban young Native community that was we're really starting to organize and address issues and was also a multi h tribal So what kind of impact did that have on you? When you're part of a family that's an outsider family that has a different history and a different perspective to accepted history, you're constantly as a child being challenged and and and constantly being fed and taught or critique of society. And I think I described how I did a piece about Thanksgiving a number of years back and about how my grandma, my mother, before she even sent me to kindergarten, was you know, sat down and told me, you're you're going to hear things about Indian people that aren't true. You know your own family, you know who they are, and you know and I mean, like things that you're gonna hear the Indians are drunks and losers and all this stuff. But you know, you know your your aunt's and uncles have gone to college. You know that these things are not true. You know that, you know. It's sort of you're you're you're prepped before you go. And then you're also told I was told at that age, at five, the history of the taking of the land, and it's it's sort of I described it in one of the pieces I wrote. It sort of takes the wind dotty as even as a five year old, until it puts you immediately um sort of at odds with America because you feel enraged even as a small child, you know uh, and you feel like you want to correct that wrong. And and so I think being raised in a native family really articulates that for you. Yeah, that kind of foundational grounding of this is who you are, this is where you come from, this is this is our culture. You don't have to you might hear things that you aren't true, but you still have that grounding. I feel like family can really be the thing that gives you that. And also, this is who they are, Jaman, this is who they really are right, and I think that's uh that makes you, um, you know that outside er perspective makes you cautious, makes you skeptical. Uh, you know, it makes even as a five year old, it makes you go huh Okay. My mom when I was like in first grade, she was she was like, don't seeing land of the pilgrims pride? Seeing land of the Indians pride? Yeah, that's something you like with your little kid. You're going, you know, to your music class and you have to suddenly saying something different than when all the other kids are singing, and you know you have to because your mom talked to you know what I mean? And uh, and it's like saying it really softly. But I wasn't going to, you know, disobey my mother on that line. So I was just like, but you know, it was it's you know, it's it's one thing to have these internal family discussions and it's another thing to act um on them when you're the minority, when you're like the only Indian kid in your school and um, and you're learning and being taught things you're but you're in a sense you almost feel like even as a small child, you're being sent in there as a spy, like as a as someone who is going to collect information, who is existing in this other place and and coming back and it's some day you and your family are going to do something with all of that information. Jacquelin went to college at Dartmouth in New Hampshire, which, according to its charter, was originally started as a school to educate Native students in the ways of English life. Today, the school's unofficial mascot maybe Keggy the Keg, but back when she was going there, they were called the Indians. So what was the first time the issue of mascots really hit home for you? So it was until I went to college at the mascot issue really came on my radar. And that was I went to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and we actually, uh, the Native students who were incomings freshmen were freshman week, were given like extra classes on meeting with other Native alumni, older alumni and um and basically given the story about the Indian mascot. Darmouth used to be the Dartmouth Indians and they had this, uh, you know, warrior mascot, more of a sort of Eastern Woodlands looking mascot. And UH and Darmouth was originally founded as as an Indian school right and actually my husband's ancestor, Chief Joseph Bratt, and his other grandfather, William Johnson, they both were young Mohawk boys who attended UH Darmouth before the Revolutionary War. And it was actually Darmouth is located in New Hampshire because the founder, Elda's and Whelock, wanted to place it in a place where it would be accessible to the Iroquois Confederacy in upstate New York, where they could come and and bring their children to be educated. And he wasn't interested in the Indians in Connecticut who who actually one of his students was a Satsumakam was a minister and he was the one who raised the um I think about two thousand pounds of silver to start the college. He went on a speaking tour in Scotland and Uh, but he didn't wanted he didn't want his white mentor did not want to help the Indians in Connecticut because he thought they were not real Indians enough for him, that they were becoming to you know, Christian too. You know, he wanted to go for the more sexy, wild you know, and powerful Iroquois confederacy. So that's why Darmouth is even in New Hampshire. Back when Jaqueline was in college, the issue kind of came down to Native students feeling really uncomfortable by the mascot and white students just really not getting it. One of the things they did, with the support of the alumni, was to basically drive up in a truck freshman week and just throw out free T shirts Darma T shirts with the Darmouth Indian on them to the freshman class. And my roommate wore hers. She was a white, a white woman from uh, Massachusetts, Irish American, and it was that was when I first realized how hard this issue was. Like to me, it was obvious, it was wrong, you know, right, And then she went her actually, uh the just by circumstance to NABA. Host students were on either side of our our our shared dorm room. They had singles and and so so she was surrounded by basically three Navajos and we're all trying to tell her, like, you know, this is not great, and she just literally could not comprehend, like it was impossible for her to comprehend the issue. And I was all like and she says, well, it's just a free Darma T shirt, that's all, you know, and you know how expensive they are, you know and stuff. And I'm all like, oh god, you know, this is like nothing I've encountered before. Like the level their inability to comprehend the issue was was profound, you know. And uh, and it's at moments like that where you realize your own experiences and where you're coming from is so different, you know, so different, and uh, you just never realized until that moment. Okay, so flash forward, how did they not your math got hashtag come to be? Yeah? So, uh eradicating offensive native maske at tree, which we say, Uh, we created the hashtag not your Mascot and trended it in two thousand fourteen during the Super Bowl and uh. It was started by Native parents from across the country and we met online on Twitter mostly, and uh, we found it hard to sort of organize via Twitter, so we set up a Facebook group and so Eon m you can see it's still a Facebook group, it's it's a private it's sort of a private Facebook group because we found that we kept getting sort of trolled by Matt White mascot supporters, so we had to make it private. Um but uh but yeah, we organized through that and we started creating, um doing what we called Twitter storms. This was in the follow two thousand thirteen, and we were primarily using the hashtag change the mascot, right or change the name, and suddenly right we we uh, we found that that are the mascot had been sort of I don't know it was being used. This sounds really strange, but it was being used by uh by Twitter accounts selling land real estate in India, in the country of India. Hood. Yeah, so all our tweets were getting buried by these thousands of tweets advertising real estate in India. Yeah, and we really were very suspicious. We thought it was um, we thought it was Dan Sidner, the owner of the Washington NFL team. I mean, I wouldn't ye hiring all you know, these sorts of troll farms and stuff pretty early, you know, usage of it. I think at that time they are still being called them. What was it? I can't but yeah, so, uh so we were very suspicious. So we we realized we were going into the Super Bowl without a hashtag, right, without a usable one, and and so I mean even with all of us like putting together the organizing the Native community both in the United States and Canada to really tweet our hearts out to try to get this notice uh to this issue. Uh you know it really it wasn't we were still getting buried, right and so um so we thought about it, and she was my friend, she's Cherokee. Um she came up with h She came up with the name not the not your mascot, right, which has been used before. I think you could find signs people using that, you know, back in the sixties and seventies. But we, uh, we were the first ones to really create a hashtag and we checked. We did the whole like we yeah, because people later tried to claim you know that kind of in fighting that happens when there was a successful hashtag, you know, and uh so we had to do the research, but we uh we kept it secret and so we uh we just felt like we liked it. I like it better than change the name, change the mascot, because what appealed to me was that it was a taking back right and we are taking this back and we were taking back who we are and owning it, right, and uh, and so, uh, we kept it pretty secret. We they sickly. Uh. We we all looked at who our most high profile Twitter followers were at that time. I mean, for some reason check d was following me, and so we just we made a list of them all, you know, and and we basically contacted them personally and we told them that we were going to be launching this hashtag and we were going to do a test run Saturday before the night before the Super Bowl, and would they help us and share with their followers. And I think in two thousand four, two thousand four January two thousand fourteen, I think Twitter was a more innocent place and somewhere is now several years later. And then we did it again on Sunday and and so that was how we started that. And it was really just s necessity that we created that hashtag. But I've been really happy with how it's grown and been used. And I could imagine social media was probably pretty helpful for having this all come together. We were able to utilize native people on the ground, and the amazing thing about social media was that it really it allowed us to organize and at a level that we had not been able to do. Before, native community was very dispersed. Uh. Most of the majority of the Native people live off the reservation, and they are like live as minorities and amongst minorities, like sometimes the only like me, the only Native kid in your school. Everything. So we live quite isolated from each other and uh. And so social media was a great, an amazing boon to helping us organize more effectively and more rapidly. And uh. And so when Dad's sider started that foundation, the Original Americans Foundation, and I was going around giving money to tribes try to buy support for his mascot. He was flying all over the country and his private plane, and he was doing it very secretively. And so we because we were connected with Native people across the country, we were able to get people sending us tips and sending us all kinds of things and uh. And we actually use that to uh, you know, I had some contacts in the media, uh and um, and we use that to put stories out about what he was doing. And we basically made him the story. I think if you watched the two thousand and fourteen he made all these missteps and well, send the issue around his mascot started to come more of a referendum on him personally. Forbes is Monty Burke noted that the name change issue was made much worse by the fact that people just really did not like Dan Snyder the Original America's Foundation. Snyder's paid PR effort to stop conversations about the name change was pretty embarrassing. He famously refused to meet with Native activists about the name change, and he told USA Today, We'll never change the name. It's that simple. Never. You can use all caps. But after the protests around in the desks of unarmed black people this summer, Dan Snyder pretty much could not ignore the fact that the climate was changing, and for the first time, the team faced significant financial pressure. In addition to protests from activists, a group of investors asked major sponsors like Pepsi and FedEx to pressure him to change the name. Then FedEx Field, the stadium right outside of d C in Maryland, where the Washington football team plays, joined the chorus too. Nike pulled Washington Football team swag from their website, and in July, the team finally announced they'd be reviewing the name. So how does that field don't know that they're finally dropping this slur from this team name. You know, does it feel like a win for your community? How are you feeling about it? You know, I didn't feel like we had won. I felt like we had we had not one the issue once again, the lack of understanding, lackability. I felt like we did not actually win the issue. The issue was tabled, right, and what won the issue was black lives matter. And that's what I write about basically. And you know this is this has been true before. I would say. I remember asking, uh, my uncle Vindaloria Jr. He's a well known um Native historian. He wrote, Custer died for your sins and God has read. And I never askeding was like, what started the Red Power movement, Jim mean in the seventies, And he was like he looked at me like I was like, what's wrong with you? And he's like, well, it was a civil rights movement, Like you not know this, you know, the you know, the you know, uh, you know, the black power movement you know spawned the Red Power movement, you know, And and I think that's you know, what my mother always told me was like the way she sounds kind of weird, but the way she discarded it was like that the black community were like our our our older brothers, Jim mean that they that they helped us and looked out for us, and that they were more familiar and more knowledgeable about white society and had to maneuver in it, and and so they were often really helpful. I mean, yeah, I love that. Yeah, that was her way of understanding it with not your mascot thing. I really feel like it was black lives matter, and um, you know, of course, you know the price paid by the black community, and you know, folks like Brianna Taylor and and uh and George Floyd, all of those things that made it possible, I mean, may create an atmosphere that made this no longer acceptable, you know, starting with the Confederate statues and then questioning other folks and suddenly it made the arguments we are making made them undeniable. And that's what forests can. Let's take a quick break and we're back. Our country has a fascination with pretending to be native and appropriating native culture without really giving it much thought. And even worse, when native culture is presumed to be up for the taking, someone's taken a step further and just pretend to be Native themselves. This summer, science researcher Beth and McLaughlin admitted to being behind the Twitter account of a bisexual Hopie professor who didn't really exist. Long time listeners of Tangoti might remember that we mentioned McLaughlin brief Fleet in the episode featuring Ottawa Umboya and m I t as the recipient of m I Teeth Disobedience Award. McGlaughlin used this Native persona for years, building up legit influence on social media and in Andreas Smith, a prominent academic at the University of California and Riverside, was accused of misrepresenting herself as Cherokee. And all of this happens while actual Native women in their work and contributions go overlooked. I did a whole series of podcasts on at poll Nation magazine on the are you can see them on our Facebook page that that goes through the pretending issue and pretend is I guess. I don't know if I invented this term, but it's I do have to explain it, but it pretend Indian pretending. I think my parents generation called the wannabes the Wabi tribe. I want to be a tribe and uh so I got that and uh and uh so it's um but yeah, I think it the real issue. And of course a lot of people know about the issue of Cherokees, what they go through with with fraud. I think the Cherokee Nation at one point tried to count the number of fake Cherokee tribes and they got to over four hundred, right, and uh so it's quite extensive. It's astounding, I would have to say, and this is my theory, and I go into this and my I did the podcast on structural fixes to Pretendianism. Because there are so many pretendients. It's like whack a mole. I would say, as high as one in three people in some official capacity, whether as heads of Native American studies departments or you know, uh, you know artists or you know, writers, authors are are are frauds. They're fake Indians. It's it's really that high, you know. It's it's I mean, I as journalists, I really kept stumbling upon this, you know, I'd beat interviewing someone and then uh and then later find out that they were a fake. You know what's that like for you? It's it makes our it makes our identity, our reality, like a hall of mirrors. You know. It's so, I mean, it's it's everything gaslighting, you know, colonialism, taking all of that stuff, all white privilege, you know, all rolled up into one right, and uh so it's it's very frustrating. And of course we have uh, you know folks who are um you know, who are people of color, but they are they too they would prefer to be native j I mean, And so we have a lot I think. I'm Adam Beach recently, he's a Native actor, First Nations actor from Canada. He's spent a lot of Hollywood roles. Uh you know, he recently called out an actress who is Chinese and white. In addition to actors pretending to be Native, non native writers and directors try to tell Native stories on TV, and it just comes off as a really inauthentic when you see when someone is obviously a fraud, you know, and uh our wait and the way so we presented is kind of like, oh, that's not how we It's like very stereotypical. You know. You hear the flute music, you know, it's all this kind of stuff. It's super annoying and we really need to have a hot show. We need Native American showrunners, rend writers who are in control of the of everything, you know, bringing actors or directors in at the last minute when everything is said done, uh is not enough of a fix. It does speak to this larger issue of people who pretend to be Native, which is so common that it's almost a cliche at this point. I cover several cases of pretendianism, and I get contacted almost every day by Native people. And what really cluded me into was when I was I would call like a native academic, uh, you know, for a quote or a comment on a story completely unrelated to ethnic fraud and uh, and they would after we'd have the have the you know interview, they'd be like, you know, by the way, I was wondering if you could cover this story. We're having a problem. My university is hiring a pretendion. Uh, you know, so new as no native ancestry it all, who just claims to be Native and and he's gonna be my boss. It's just like I mean, once they become your boss or you know, your your your thesis advisor, you know, what can you do. They're they're basically being you're basically babies at by a white fraud ster over what you can say about Native issues. And that's it's like you can't really like, well, yeah, what can you do. It's like you can't really be like, listen, I know you're a fraud like you have so few probably have so few avenues to sort it out. Yeah, I mean I uh. In two thousand and fifteen, it really came out in the Native community that that this woman named Andrea Smith, who was a Native American studies professor at the University of California Riverside, right. I think she runs the department there. She was she was probably the most famous Native woman at the time and in the early aughts for a book she wrote called Conquest, which is all about you know, colonization and uh, the violence against Indigenous women and uh. And turned out she was a complete fraud. She was not Cherokee at all, and and a bunch of Cherokee scholars got to gather and wrote a group letter and published it in Indian Country Today and demanding that she stopped. You know, and she hasn't. She's still doing it. So did she own up to it or was she just like I am Cherokee, I don't care what y'all say, she's sort of you know, the thing is that they don't have to answer to us. They have to that the only people they answer to our white people who don't know anything, right who and who are afraid to enter the the the issue right because but they're taking advantage of genocide, and yet they get there. They build space through genocide, right and and so basically you know, saying, well, you know there's no paperwork because you know, my ancestors hit out and everything and and uh and they have all these arguments. But you know, she actually hired the reading the Cherokee Nations official geneologist David Korn's silk to do her genealogy in the Night Team early nineteen or fake in the nineteen nineties. She hired him to do her her mother's side couldn't fight anything any links to the Cherokee Nation at all. Who who are, by the way, one of those documented people in the world, Like Cherokee people always tell me, the historians, enginealogists tell me they're they're the most documented people, second only to royalty. So if you can't find a tie, there is none, basically, and I think the l A. Times has done a really good series of articles. Uh, one in uh I guess December of last year, which looked at fake tribes in California. That's another place of course. Uh, you know, with the gold Rush and everything, those tribes were decimated, that genocide was quite extensive. And now there's all these fake to mass tribes popping up. And then also they did a study before that, Uh, they did an article where they they found that there was fake Cherokee tribes had taken in over three d and fifteen million dollars in federal set asides. Even after they was revealed they were fake, they still were receiving that money. And it's so harmful and it's you know, it's uh, where there's money, people will do this. And so the issue of masket Tree, I see it is on the spectrum of pretendianism. It's all of a piece. When we turn already traditionally underrepresented people into mascots. It doesn't just end at the sports arena. Offensive representations of Native people rooted in harmful stereotypes are to humanizing, and actual Native people are left to deal with the consequences. There was a study done by the Calogg Foundation in two thousand eighteen I think it came out and uh. And what they found they've done a bunch of focus groups. Smith was starting to go seventeen and uh, and they found that the issue of masket tree was very hard. I came with the term masket try to sort of take it away from the mascot, which can be sort of prosaic and handsome, and to mask a tree, which which described all the things they do with that, right, all the red face and all you know, wearing the Polca hattie outfits and and the uh you know, the headdresses and you know, debasing our culture right for their own enjoyment. And what they found was that only thirty of people they've had in these focus groups understood the issue of mascots and uh. So they and they they found that with standing rock, uh you know, they had also, uh that's over sev understood and agree with the issue of sovereignty and the importance of standing rock. So you can see that standy rock was an issue that white people could understand, right and have compassion for. But mascots they can't understand, you know. And uh and also they found they they found out whether white folks they were focused grouping only thought that Native people were six key percent human like, that we were yeah, that we weren't fully human like animalistic, and so all of these stereotypes feed into that and uh So, but my solution is, actually, I think I see this as a structural problem and uh and uh I actually think it has to do with the fuzziness of our political identity, which is purposeful. It's a purposeful result of US policy for you know, hundreds of years. I often tell people, you know, if you don't speak your language, or you know, you can't roll, it's probably not your it's not your fault, it's you know that this is the result of uh of policy, official US policy by you know, the most powerful country in the world, basically, and which is to make us disappear. And of course it's political because it's tied to our claims to the land as nations, as pre existing nations to the United States. And so it's these claims in the land that are the threat that we represent as a people. And so so I think that the solution is really strengthening our political reality. And uh So, we have tribes now that are recognized by the federal government. We have tribes that are not recognized. We have a lot of fake tribes, right. And but what I suggest is actually creating a federal indigenous government that could be counter to the US government and would represent a you know, all the tribes and would then be the body that would recognize tribes that would allow them to join indigenous peoples and uh, not only the United States, but Canada and contiguous land areas as well. And uh and so I think that by doing that, we will be politically much more visible things, which makes us more and more real, more and more present in the in the moment when you are colonized, these are the things that go. You know, these are the things you can't protect, your language, your children, you know, uh, your everything, your land base, all these things because your borders are are when I see as our identity is incredibly fuzzy around the edges, it's very permeable, so it's very easy for them to take it, you know, for them to claim it, to take it. And uh. And so this is this is why I feel that a much more, a much stronger strengthened political reality it is the answer, because once we are politically real, then it's much harder for them to to to work in these fuzzy spaces created by colonization. Part of creating a reality where Native people are more politically real, it's also creating a world where people don't feel like Native culture is just up for the taking as identities or as offensive mascots. And it's not a tribute or a compliment to use someone else's culture in this way, especially when actual Native people are so often underfunded, underrepresented, and unsupported. And it's not complimentary, it's not it's not even benign. It's aggressive, right, especially when you're seeing the way that they attack actual Native people to hold their space, right. And uh so, like with this Andrea Smith, uh you know, after she was really publicly revealed in the Native community in two thousand fifteen, you know, just a cup in two thousand eighteen, all year long at her students kept messaging me and Native students, mostly Avaha women, and they were like, you know, we're sitting in this classroom. We can't say anything. We know she's a fake. You know, she tries to talk to us and buddy up to us, and we're dislike, but I need her recommendation to get into this graduate program. Do I mean? It's just and then there's suddenly all these things that you can't talk about because you have to get the okay of the pretending and who's protecting their space and so it's it's very corrosive and uh. And it also it's a taking. I mean, we are I think the poorest community a group in the yeah, I states, we are how the lowest income levels. Uh. And to take jobs from us that could support a Native family and and they even folks because people send money home to the reservation. You know, it's a big taking from really the most impoverished people in the in the country. White privilege means that white people pretending to be us is far more attractive to white people who are in power decision making places to Uh. It's because it feeds all their ideas about us. They know how to perform the idea any way that appeals to white people. More after this quick break, let's get right back into it. So I live in d C, where so many of us are embarrassed by the fact that this slur was associated with our city. But what do you say to people who were like, Oh, it's just a mascot, what's the big deal? Or we're say it's actually trying to honor your heritage. You know, what do you say to these people? I think that for white people, often they will bring up the Viking mascot. And what I tell them is that it's not as pervasive. It's not the only way that white men are seen, which is true for Native people, right. Uh, you know, I I tell them, like, imagine, imagine that you live in a world where the only time you see a white man is as a Viking and as a mascot. And and so what would be that what would you say the first time you meet a white man? You'd be like, where's your long boat? Where's your helmet with the horns on it? Because this is your assumption. Alsa, you never saw a white man, you know, uh, you know, uh running for president. You never saw a white man, you know, on TV anchoring the news. You never saw a white man saving the world in a Hollywood movie. You ever saw white family on TV? Just you know, in a sitcom. You know, you know, if you walk into a bookstore and um, maybe two of the books are written from the perspective of a contemporary white man gaming out of the thousands of books, you know, then then then it would be the same thing. But see, they don't live in that world, you know, where they're marginalized to that extent and so so so it's so you know, usually I try to put people on a different perspective of where they stand because I think that, you know, uh, there's the only way they can grasp the issue or the main thing is what it how it impacts need of youth. I think that's a very real measure. And uh. The research done particularly by a too Lalip tribal member, she uh, she did a lot of research. Um what's her name, Stephanie um for her name right now, but but she uh, she did a lot of research at Stanford on the mascot issue. And what she was she basically tested Native youth. She tested their self esteem, their ability to imagine what they wanted to do. And I think whether they thought they could achieve it. There's a term for them. I can't remember now, but um Sephany Freiberg cuts her name and uh and she uh and then she she exposed them to the mascot, right and what she found and this was that that it uh, it overwhelmingly reduced the self esteem of Native youth once they were exposed to a Native mascot. And and and strikingly enough that the Native youth who claimed to be okay with Native mascots, their self esteem plummeted the most. And also what plummeted was their ability to imagine themselves being able to achieve their dreams. And it says this, It says, I think you know, the realization that you're not regarded as fully human by society, it makes you like less engaged to me unless and you no longer believe you can achieve certain things right and and nay of youth are by every measure the most vulnerable. And and the price the American dream is paid, um, you know, by people of color and by Native youth. And to to engage in this thing just for entertainment value is uh. And and that that Native you should have to pay the price is pretty horrific. In one of your pieces that I read about not your Mascot, you said that you and the other Native parents who were behind this campaign were really doing it because you wanted to leave a better life for your children. So my question is what are your hopes for the next generation of Native little ones like your own? Yeah, it's interesting, Oh, my son wants to be a filmmaker. And yeah, and and you know he's he's actually not that interested in doing things that about native things. He just wants to to write as a writer. He wants to just be a filmmaker and just make films without having to think too much about or having to see. One of the things is I don't want us to have to perform our identity either. So I mean, I think a lot of times people will meet Native people and be like, well, you don't seem Indian enough to me, right, like a random white person. I mean, you know, you're not the kind of Indian I think in Indian should be. And uh, and so there's a sense that everyone's an authority and being Indian and they can tell an Indian when they see one, right, And and this notion that then it does you know, an impact native people they feel. You know, you'll see Native people who are I think the seeking out of our culture is really important and and that it needs to be something that we we have access to. But I think it needs to happen at a structural level. It needs to be sort of flow naturally, like our language acquisition. You know, when you're colonized it's disrupted. But when you have political strong political boundaries, then it grows. I think a lot of times as being able to perform our culture is treated as a litmus test to our to our authenticity, and that is very harmful to native people. It's um, you know, and of course these are if they don't speak their language or it's not their own fault, right, it's it's it's you know, systemic you know, colonial policies, hundreds of years of policies that brought them about and um and so uh so what I really fight for is not only the the elimination of the eradication of these negative stereotypes, but also they need to have to perform our identity to other people's you know, desires, and um, I just I just want, I want maybe people just to be able to be themselves. So yeah, I just want us to be free of all of that and for people to be free to be themselves and to focus on things that are meaningful to them. And I want the culture, the language, everything to float, um of its own accord right, not to have to be some forced or performative. Um. So that's that's when I'm finding through from my kids Jacklin fights for a world where Native kids like hers feel secure in their culture and their identities, a world where they don't feel like they need to perform their nativeness in order to feel whole, and a world where they don't have to watch non native people performed. Either got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, you can reach us at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangodi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod. It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Tod. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from I heeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I have been him whip and then I have to in

There Are No Girls on the Internet

Marginalized voices have always been at the forefront of the internet, yet our stories often go over 
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