Illinois Still on the Offensive

By Mike Wise
Saturday, January 27, 2007

On Facebook, the popular, student-driven social Web forum, a University of Illinois undergraduate began a group late last year called "If They Get Rid of the Chief I'm Becoming a Racist."

These were two students' postings on the site, aimed specifically at an American Indian woman who wants the school to stop using a caricature of her culture as its mascot.

"What they don't realize is that there never was a racist problem before," wrote one, "but now I hate redskins and hope all those drunk, casino owning bums die."

"Apparently the leader of this movement is of Sioux descent," another student wrote. "Which means what, you ask? The Sioux indians are the ones that killed off the Illini indians, so she's just trying to finish what her ancestors started. I say we throw a tomohowk into her face."

One hundred and ten students joined the online group, which supports Chief Illiniwek. Since the 1920s, the Chief has been portrayed by a white kid in war paint and headdress, who solemnly dances at halftime of Illinois football and men's basketball games. At Illinois, dressing up and playing Indian is called tradition.

The woman opposed to the caricature hasn't slept much the past few months and still is awaiting the outcome of a university investigation into the Web forum, which may lead to at least one student's expulsion from school.

"Part of me is stuck in the idea that some crazy person is out there who intends me physical harm," she said by telephone. Requesting anonymity for personal-safety reasons, she added: "The other part of me knows I've probably been operating in a very dangerous climate for a long time and I'm just now admitting it. I mean, there are 110 people signed up. I play these psychological games with myself every day just to get to class and walk on campus."

Crazy, no? We get all lathered up because college football does not have a playoff system. We produce talk shows about gender equity. We want our student athletes paid, as if that will somehow right another NCAA wrong.

Yet when we come across the most serious and offensive issue on campus -- a hurtful reminder to a people of their grave mistreatment, a blatant misappropriation of their religious and spiritual practices -- we go into denial. A woman is physically threatened by a Neanderthal kid and we want to rail about the BCS again.

Eliminating the Chief won't suddenly make the Champaign-Urbana campus a utopia for diversity; this is a school where a fraternity recently held a taco-and-tequila night in which kids dressed up as Mexican gardeners and pregnant mothers all in the name of good, Greek society fun.

But the discourse and debate has distilled a university's responsibility in the matter. By refusing to retire the mascot, at some level the university's Board of Trustees tacitly condones the backlash on campus. Part of the message it sends students is that it's okay for them to feel persecuted for their belief in racial stereotyping. The subtext in keeping the Chief amounts to a code of acceptance.

Let's be clear: You can't use one ethnicity as a symbol and at the same time expect every student to be treated in an equal manner.

The good news is that enough critical mass has formed to have the fake Indian eradicated.

Since the NCAA ruled last year that the university could not host postseason events as long as it uses the Chief, calling it a "hostile and abusive" mascot, Illinois has had to send two of its playoff teams packing. And with this year's men's basketball team possibly headed to the NIT, which awards home sites to profitable schools, the athletic department could be out thousands of dollars in postseason cash -- cash that pays for non-revenue-generating sports. When you can't host championship events, it also makes it that much harder to attract the best kids and coaches.

Keeping a white kid in war paint around used to be just insensitive. Now it's costing Illinois money and its reputation.

The student newspaper called for the Chief's retirement last week. And the Oglala Sioux Nation recently requested the return of regalia sold to the school 25 years ago.

Most observers believe the Board of Trustees will in the next three months finally give the Chief his gold watch after 80 years of service.

"The board has no backbone," said John Gadau, a Champaign lawyer and member of the Honor the Chief Society who has spent thousands of dollars to retain the mascot. "The rumor is, they've already got another name picked out for Illinois. We'll be the Spineless Chickens."

Gadau represents the other side of the debate. I figured I would call him because Rep. Tim Johnson and former speaker Dennis Hastert, two Illinois Republicans who supported a bill that would keep the NCAA out of the Illini's business, are no longer in position to advance the measure now that Democrats have a majority in Congress. Another supporter, Illinois House Republican leader Tom Cross, has taken down a Save-the-Chief petition on his Web site.

I asked Gadau how he felt about the Oglala Sioux tribe requesting the regalia be returned.

"If you want to get into cliches, the first thing that comes to my mind is Indian giver," Gadau actually said. "We bought it. It's ours."

Gadau added: "The real problem we have in Illinois is we don't have a tribe to buy off. Other tribes killed off the Illini. Look at Florida State. They buy the Seminoles off and it's okay for a white kid to throw a flaming spear in the ground."

He's right about that. The hypocrisy on this issue prevents an across-the-board abolition of Indian mascots. You buy one tribe's silence, and it's okay to reject the claims of insensitivity by another.

Still, Chief Illiniwek will be dead soon, and that will be a historic moment. For people such as Charlene Teters, who started holding up a handmade placard outside the football stadium that read, "American Indians are people, not mascots," some 20 years ago at Illinois. And for people such as Genevieve Tenoso, still an Illinois student and the great-great granddaughter of Sitting Bull, whom I met three years ago while researching a story on the Chief.

Tenoso told me then about running into a group of students demonstrating on behalf of the chief under the banner, "The Illini Nation."

"I think I said, 'Look, now they've got their own tribe.' And a guy told me if I didn't shut up he was going to pop me in the lip."

You hear a seventh-generation descendant of the legendary Hunkpapa leader tell you that story, and you think about all the degradation their ancestors have suffered, and it makes you want to pop that kid in the lip.