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6 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
7 AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
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9 BOARD OF TRUSTEES
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11 SPECIAL DIALOGUE INTAKE SESSION
12 CHIEF ILLINIWEK
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14 TRANSCRIPT OF NARRATIVES TAPED
15 IN THE FOELLINGER BALCONY
16 APRIL 14, 2000
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1 SPEAKER: Page
2 Robert Dunn 4
Nancy Deters 6
3 Tom Bassett 6
4 Cathy Harper 10
Chris Drew 12
5 Desere Untoob 14
6 Noble Glaudell 16
Nancy Henne 18
7 Mark Butcher 19
8 Matt Tittle 20
Lori Kingery 24
9 Leonard Malatere 26
10 Yvonne Murry 30
Diana Stimpel 30
11 Daniel Green 32
12 Nora Lloyd 34
Frank P. Johnson 36
13 Eli Suzukovich 38
14 April Pierce 38
Weylin Webster Williams 39
15 Janet Tucker 42
16 Ronald Jordan 43
Bob Craft 46
17 Carl Kron 46
18 Stephanie Cord 49
Jacqueline French 51
19 Paul Youth 52
20 Susan Weaver 54
Frank Krasnowski 56
21 Gwen Carr 57
22 Anuj Parikh 60
Sherry Naanes 63
23 Bryan Thalhammer 66
24 Matthew Pyles 67
Ronald Black 69
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1 Arvin Gee 71
Dean Cook 71
2 Lindsay Robinson 75
3 Nick Guroff 78
Anni-Fridsantos 80
4 Frank Trechsel 80
5 Durango Mendoza 84
Danielle Osler 87
6 Jennifer Putnam 90
7 Diana Regina Stimpel 92
Felicia Graves 95
8 Megan Bang 98
9 Dianne Pinderhughes 100
Matt Harsh 103
10 David Anderson 107
11 Cassandra Kegler 108
Kateri Garcia 109
12 Tamara Daniel 110
13 Chad Daniel 111
Meg Miner 114
14 Kimberly Krinach 115
15 Umeeta Sadarangani 117
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1 MR. ROBERT DUNN: As I said, my name is
2 Robert Dunn. I am a senior at Urbana High School
3 and I have been involved in the movement for the
4 last three years. For the last, since I became
5 involved and became aware of this at the high
6 school, I have received numerous harassment,
7 threats of violence towards me just because of my
8 stance and I believe this is directly because of
9 the University's symbol.
10 When people have friends who are native,
11 you have kids coming up going "hey yaw, hey yaw,
12 hey" and then afterwards they ask, why did you do
13 that, and they said we are honoring you. That is
14 not honor.
15 I mean, if you want to honor native
16 Americans, you live up to the treaties that you
17 signed with them. And I know that is all the way
18 back from the 1800s, but those treaties still
19 exist today. And if you want to honor them, you
20 know, include them into mainstream society. But
21 let them, let native people still have their
22 religion, you know, stop mocking them for
23 entertainment and then using honor as an excuse
24 for your own personal entertainment.
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1 And you know, this stuff about the
2 Peoria tribe, the Peoria tribe just passed a
3 resolution, I don't know if anyone has seen it
4 yet, but they just passed a resolution against
5 Chief Illiniwek and they apologized because when
6 Channel 15 came to them, which is our local NBC
7 affiliate, came to them, decided that they did not
8 know anything about Chief Illiniwek back in '95
9 and had they known, they would have gone against
10 it. And so they feel really used by what the
11 University has done by using their misquotes and
12 misrepresentation of what they said.
13 And so, the only way to repay Native
14 Americans is to get rid of this mascot and build a
15 native culture house and native studies department
16 and start recruiting native students, faculty and
17 staff. That is the only way, so please, the Board
18 of Trustees, this University needs to wake up,
19 this Hollywood, this ridiculous Hollywood stuff
20 needs to go. This isn't the 1920s anymore, that's
21 when the Chief came around.
22 Also, what was back then in the 1920s
23 was a little black symbol and if you look in your
24 old past year books, you can see fraternities
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1 putting on black face and having little minstrel
2 shows. And so that's another thing you have to
3 look where this came from. This came from a
4 racist environment and it still is.
5 So in conclusion I have to say retire
6 this mascot, that is the only way that justice can
7 be served. Thank you.
8 MS. NANCY DETERS: My name is Nancy
9 Deters, I have been interested in this because of
10 my kids, five of out of six of them have gone to
11 school here. And after I read all the good stuff
12 and all the heavy duty stuff, what comes down to
13 me is that if you have respect for another person,
14 you don't have to love them or like them, but if
15 you have respect and you are doing something that
16 hurts them and they tell you that and they ask you
17 to stop, then you stop. It's that simple. It has
18 nothing to do with your intentions, you can have
19 the best intentions in the world. If it hurts,
20 you stop it. Thank you.
21 MR. TOM BASSETT: Tom Bassett, the title
22 of my presentation is "How Chief Illiniwek
23 Undermines Undergraduate Education at the
24 University of Illinois."
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1 My name is Professor Tom Bassett. I
2 teach one of the largest undergraduate classes at
3 the University in the College of Liberal Arts and
4 Sciences, Geography 101, the Geography of
5 Developing Countries.
6 Each semester, this class has enrollment
7 of 500 students. The class fulfills the
8 nonwestern culture requirement of the University.
9 One of the reasons that students are required to
10 take such a class is that the University believes
11 it's important that students are exposed to
12 diversity of cultures that are different from
13 their own.
14 It is part of our larger mission in
15 preparing students to enter the wider world in a
16 way they can act responsibly and intelligently,
17 and I hope, with a sense of social justice as
18 citizens of an increasing global economy and
19 society. This is a challenge.
20 Most of the students in geography 101
21 come to the University with very little
22 understanding of the world outside of Chicago
23 suburbs. The fourth week of classes I regularly
24 conduct what I call a third world awareness
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1 exercise. Students are asked to write down five
2 words or expressions that capture the essence of
3 the developing world. They are then asked to
4 write five explanations of why the third world is
5 the way they described it.
6 More than 90 percent of the responses
7 usually depict the people in places of Africa,
8 Latin America and southern Asia in negative terms.
9 Corruption, famine, war, natural disasters,
10 poverty, overpopulation and so on.
11 In discussion sections, we talk about
12 the origins of these negative impressions.
13 Students invariably point to the media and its
14 tendency to portray these distant lands in
15 sensational terms as a way of getting the reader's
16 attention.
17 My goal in conducting this exercise is
18 for students to recognize that they have a biased
19 view of the nonwestern world. The repeated focus
20 on disasters, tragedies and suffering creates
21 negative stereotypes of nonwestern peoples which
22 prevents American students from seeing the
23 positive aspects of third world cultures.
24 In short, one of the challenges I face,
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1 and one which I greatly enjoy, is to make students
2 come to terms with their ethnocentric views of
3 nonwestern peoples and to see that their
4 perspective is just one of many ways of living in
5 this world.
6 The presence of Chief Illiniwek on
7 campus undermines my pedagogical objective of
8 challenging stereotypes and making students come
9 to terms with their ethnocentric views. Although
10 many students view Chief Illiniwek in positive
11 terms, he is nonetheless a stereotype that hinders
12 our understanding of American Indian history and
13 culture.
14 The Chief's lineage is directly tied to
15 Buffalo Bill's wild west shows, the Boy Scouts and
16 Hollywood westerns. These are notoriously biased
17 views of Native Americans that are inappropriate
18 in a university setting. Dressing up and playing
19 Indian for half-time entertainment is greatly
20 disrespectful to Native Americans. Imagine a
21 South African sporting event in which an Africana
22 dresses up as a Sulu chief and dances at half-time
23 to the cheers of a white audience. We would
24 consider such behavior shameful in the context of
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1 the history of colonization, displacement and
2 apartheid in that country.
3 Yet, we do it here on the campus of the
4 University of Illinois. Our government wave of
5 systematic campaign of Indian removal and forced
6 migration to make way for nonnative settlers, some
7 would call it ethnic cleansing today. Today we
8 engage in the culturally insensitive act of having
9 Anglo students masquerade as American Indians at
10 our sporting events.
11 The contradiction between the
12 University's mission of increasing student
13 awareness of the diversity of places, peoples and
14 cultures in today's society and the perpetuation
15 of stereotypes that demean native peoples should
16 be apparent to one and all.
17 Unfortunately, this is not the case.
18 The only appropriate solution to this
19 contradiction is to retire Chief Illiniwek and
20 create a new mascot and symbol that is befitting a
21 first rate educational institution that purports
22 to value diversity and respect for other cultures.
23 Thank you.
24 MS. CATHY HARPER: I am a member of
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1 this community, I am not directly affiliated with
2 the University at all. I have lived here for 20
3 years. I will probably live here until the day I
4 die. My husband and I are raising three children
5 in this community and it's important to me as a
6 member of this community to not have the Chief as
7 a representative of the University. My kids are
8 involved in sports and we go to sport tournaments
9 and meets in a lot of surrounding communities, a
10 couple of these schools have an Indian mascot as
11 their school, high school representative.
12 I have noticed that at these meets there
13 are hundreds of people walking across mats with a
14 Native American's face on the floor. I remember
15 reading about Charlene Teters doing an art exhibit
16 where she had a mat with the U of I chief and she
17 had a mat with Abe Lincoln, everybody walked
18 around Abe Lincoln's face, but everybody proceeded
19 to walk across the Native American representative
20 symbol face on the mat.
21 And I think that is emblematic of the
22 damage that happens to people's consciousness
23 about other people, people are just trying to get
24 in the door, they weren't trying to be
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1 disrespectful to another person, but in walking on
2 the mat as a matter of course as a matter of fact
3 sort of thing, it communicates to themselves and
4 other people, mainly Native American people that
5 they, that they can be walked on and not
6 respected. So, I thought that was illustrative of
7 what my concern is and I wanted to share it, since
8 I had an opportunity to do it on camera.
9 MR. CHRIS DREW: Chris Drew, and I am
10 here to speak here for the Uptown Multi-cultural
11 Art Center and artists who asked me to bring a
12 message to the University. The first, Lydia
13 Tripone, for too long a period of time, history
14 has not looked favorably upon the Native American.
15 We had misplaced our trust and we are still paying
16 the price for that mistake, stereotypes throughout
17 the ages, we have unfortunately become an
18 endearing symbol of all that is primitive, behind
19 the times and savage.
20 Our values and beliefs have taken center
21 stage for your ridicule, your flagrant remarks and
22 your total lack of regard for our ways of life as
23 exemplified by your mascot. We respect our elders
24 and honor their place in our lives, the value of
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1 life and cherish it in all forms. You will find
2 very few Native Americans behind bars. We
3 understand the importance of what we do and the
4 profound importance it will have on our children
5 and our children's children.
6 Most people today value only one life
7 form, theirs, and they will walk over anyone who
8 gets in the way to their goal.
9 That begs the question, who is the real
10 primitive person, the savage? When you come to
11 this country with no knowledge of the terrain, who
12 helped you back on your feet. Without us you
13 would never have made it. This is the things you
14 give us. We are human beings who demand respect
15 and not your current form of half-time
16 entertainment.
17 Carlos Cortez. Having usurped the land
18 of the original inhabitants, along with 300 years
19 of genocide, you insult the memory of our elders
20 by making mascots of them. Even Hitler did not do
21 that, congratulations. Carlos Cortez, Coyote's
22 Song.
23 And Robert Waupauhee. Your people
24 constantly use the phrase, we are doing this to
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1 honor you. If that is a true statement, then we
2 ask you, honor our wish and please stop. Our
3 community art center will publicize the struggle
4 to help bring this institution of higher learning
5 to a higher standard of human decency, one that
6 rises above racism. And anybody who has interest
7 can check out our web site at art-teez.org. We do
8 the art of the tee shirt. You can see us on the
9 web. Thank you.
10 MS. DESERE UNTOOB: My name is Desere
11 Untoob and my opinion about the symbol of the
12 Chief Illiniwek symbol is that I really honestly
13 believe that it's a racist symbol. This movement,
14 the Native American movement against racist
15 mascots reminds me of the civil rights movement in
16 the sixties. The Native American people are the
17 last -- minorities in this country are all
18 struggling at this time. But the Native American
19 people are the last, most struggling minority and
20 the most invisible minority in this country.
21 I am an alumni of the University of
22 Illinois and I consider that a privilege to have
23 had a very good education at this University and I
24 believe that one part of my education is, has
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1 been, has given me knowledge to understand that
2 Chief Illiniwek is a racist symbol. I understand
3 that it's difficult for people to see how it is
4 because we are so trained to understand it
5 differently.
6 But if you really look at the
7 implications of this symbol, it's really obviously
8 racist. I have become friends with a lot of