GUEST’S PERSPECTIVE BY JACQUELINE KEELER Navajo'Yankton Dakota Sioux Sometimes people claim there are “more important things” in fadian Country than the mascotting of Native people. These folks can run the gamut from hardcore Redsk'n supporters from team owner Dan Snyder who famously told USA Today in 2013, “Well never change the name. Its that simple, NEVER. You can use caps,” to Native people for whom this racism is ‘This despite the fener other ase poe pin the United ‘States has already rid themselves of the urge of mascotry 40 during the Civ Rights movement. For me, this argument really promotes an acceptable level of racism for Native people that is greater than that any other ethnic group ‘must endure. This higher bar of racism is ‘matched only by the higher rates of suicide, ‘murder and rape of Native people - higher than the any other ethnic group in the United States. ‘Wilma Mankiller, former principal chief ‘ofthe Cherokee Nation - andan inspiration to me as a leader and as a woman ~ said it best when she told an audience at a CSU Sonoma lecture in 2008, “The lack a accurate information about Native leaves a void, which is often stereotypes that sometimes mare Native people and sometimes vlify Native people, and I think a few misinformed people apparently believe tribal people still live and dress as they did 300 years ago” ‘The reason these stereotypes matter on the “more important issues” is because they feed into misconceptions about Native people that can lead to wrong conclusions about what is best for us on the policy level. These wrong-headed ideas are held by politicians and encouraged by the ‘American electorate and creates U:S. policy that threatens our sovereignty, reduces ing for needed programs, schools, housing and health care, And when held by ‘Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts can lead tothe theftofour children as witnessed in 2013 in the case of Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, when he repeatedly questioned the blood quantum of the child in question as negligible despite repeated reminders by Justice Sotomayor that the Cherokee Nation does not use blood quantum to determine citizenship. These questions revealed his state of mind regarding who he thought was “Indian” and who was not bbased on stereotypes, not law. ‘This ignorance on who we are even feeds anti-sovereignty groups. When I reported ‘on the Baby Veronica case I found that ‘many of the anti-Indian Child Welfare ‘Act groups also had a long-standing ties, with this political movement and with former Sen. Slade Gorton (R-WA), who ‘was a leading voice in the 1990s for the termination of tribal sovereignty “for their ‘own good.” ‘Our status as citizens of sovereign nations that pre-existed the United ‘States and continue to exist is completely ‘obscured by the mascotry and this leaves Americans unable to comprehend what tribes are doing as nations. Mankiller touched on this a bit in her lecture, “The dozens of anti-sovereignty groups who argue that tribal people should not have ‘special rights’ fail to understand tribal people sacrificed billions of acres of land and millions of lives to retain our right to self-governance” ‘And Native youth? With three times the rate of suicide of all other youth in this country? Studies show that after being exposed to Native mascots their self esteem plummets even if they say they Sovereignty vs. Stereotype are OK with Native mascots. Meanwhile, studies also find that exposure to Native mascots actually increases non-Natives selfesteem. This shows that this form of “entertainment” is shown to be not harmless at all, but constitutes a real taking. from the most vulnerable tion in the ‘country. As real as the theft of land, culture, language and of our children. And that it is done for profit, Snyder's Washington, D.C, NFL franchise is valued at $1.8 billion dollars, and in our children’s schools is ‘completely unconscionable. “The idea of ‘context is everything” Mankiller said, “basically grew out my belief that even after hundreds of years of living in our former towns and villages too few Americans know much about our history, culture or our contemporary ives and Boues, And ir my belie hat is almost impossible to understand the challenges tribal people face in the 2Ist century without placing those issues within a cultural and historical context” ‘The “more important issues” argument is a trap that misses this larger context Mankiller eluded to. This. blindness endangers us as a people and cannot be passed on to the next generation, some as young as 6 years old who could live well into the next century. We need to fully ‘comprehend the damage these stereotypes do and the ways in which they make Native people unreal and invisible today. Jacqueline Keeler is a writer living in Portland, Ore, and is a founder of EONMorg (Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry). She has been published in Salon.com, Indian Country Today and the Nation. She is finishing her frst novel “Leaving the Glittering World” set in the shadow of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State during the discovery of Kennewick Man.