They are coming for the chop too

[BigRedChief]

The Kansas City Chiefs’ racist “Arrowhead Chop” has flown under the radar. Not anymore. The Kansas City Chiefs’ chant isn’t a tribute to people like me. It’s racist.

Rest of original post

Spoiler!

A self-described lifelong Kansas City Chiefs fan once asked me the meaning of the words that are sung as the crowd performs the “Arrowhead Chop” at Chiefs games, the beloved fan chant made up of a series of literal “oh oh oh”s.

“They don’t mean anything,” I told him, disgusted and annoyed.

“Really, nothing at all?”

My face got hot and I could feel my heart beating fast in my chest. “Nothing,” I repeated.

This is just one example of the uncomfortable situations I deal with as an Acoma Pueblo woman living in the Kansas City area.

This year, my city’s NFL football team, the Chiefs, will be playing San Francisco in the Super Bowl. It has been a 50-year wait for the team, and from the looks of it, they are the favorite to win. Unfortunately, that also means the Arrowhead Chop will be broadcast on millions of screens across the nation, along with fans in headdresses and all that comes with having a team that has a Native American mascot. For years, the national conversation around offensive team mascots that stereotype Native American culture has focused on the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians, while Kansas City’s Chiefs flew under the radar.

Not anymore.

As an educator at Haskell Indian Nations University — the only four-year university for federally-recognized Native tribes — I have done many presentations on the misconceptions about Native American people and the terrible stereotypes that are reinforced by sport mascots like the Chiefs. And every single time it is traumatic to go over the massacres, racism, and genocide carried out against the people indigenous to this country. It is also getting exhausting.

This is the unsanitized truth about American history you probably weren’t taught in school alongside stories of the “noble savage” or fables about peaceful dinners between Natives and Pilgrims on Thanksgiving: European settlers mercilessly raided and killed our people. My own people, the Acoma, Haaku, were attacked by Spanish conquistadors seeking retaliation for an earlier fight that resulted in the deaths of 12 conquistadors. As punishment, they took the right foot of men over the age of 25. They stole many of our women and sold them off as slaves in Mexico. This is not the only massacre rarely taught in schools. There were many California tribes that were decimated due to the gold rush of the mid-1800s. The San Francisco football team, the 49ers, is a direct reference to this period of history.

Today, erasure and oppression of Natives only continues. The movement of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, #MMIW, has been going on for years, but the media mostly ignored it until the killing of pregnant Savanna Grey Wind and the taking of her baby in North Dakota in 2017. Meanwhile, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has reported murder as the third leading cause of death for American Indian Women and Alaskan Natives between the ages of 10-24. In 2016, according to an Urban Indian Health Institute report, there were 5,712 cases of missing American Indian and Alaskan Native women. Of that total, only 116 were logged into the Department of Justice database.

Then there is the fact that Native Americans are killed in police encounters at a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Where is that story being told?

The historical traumas Native Americans face have manifested through loss of our people and the loss of our land. And while we have been told by dominant society to “get over it” and to assimilate, all we Native people want to do is remember and honor those who gave their lives so we could be here. We don’t need to be reminded that general American society is so disinterested in, and disrespectful of, our culture that they choose to perform nonsense chants, while costumed in our clothes, to minimize our entire race into a goofy caricature for sport.

Too many people don’t care about Native Americans unless they can use our likeness for their companies, cars, or costumes. Many people don’t see the Native headdress unless they are at KC or Washington football games, Halloween parties, or music festivals.

So many of the images used in the Kansas City games — the arrowhead, which is specifically Native American; the horse called “War Paint” they prance around the field before the game; the beating drums; and that tomahawk chop — are used in disrespectful and often bastardized contexts. For example, Native people respect the drum, and that drum is never used in the presence of alcohol. War Paint is used to mark our horses and warriors to protect them. Using our cultural ways to “pump up” your team is disrespectful and racist.

I met a man a couple of months ago in Lawrence, Kansas, who was a member of the Boy Scouts of America’s Tribe of Mic-o-Say, whose members dress up as Native Americans and do powwow dances. The Mic-o-Say are based in Missouri and eastern Kansas and state their mission is “to make ethical choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Scout Law.” The group was founded by H. Roe Bartle, a white man whose Scout moniker “Chief Lone Bear” gave the Kansas City football team its name.

The man I spoke to was also a military veteran. He refused to believe that his dressing up as a Native American is cultural appropriation, instead saying the clothing and dances “honor” Native Americans by continuing their traditions.

I asked him how he feels about people who pretend to be veterans when they are not. That is what the Native headdress equates to: Chiefs went to battle and earned it, much like the medals military veterans earn. But he refused to see the correlation.

It saddens me that the city I work in continues to celebrate the racist “tomahawk chop.” I have heard it at concerts, in commercials for grocery stores. I love Kansas City, especially its diversity. I also worry that this tradition will find another audience of young people who perpetuate it without realizing what it is doing to erase the Native Americans living here.

As part of my classes teaching mass communication, we talk not just about the true history of Native Americans and the impact of stereotypes, but also how we can fix this. Educating students about Native people needs to be a priority in school systems nationwide; educators need to emphasize the real, unsanitized history of how Indigenous people were treated and the problems associated with demeaning stereotypes. Native people need to be included in larger conversations as actual people, not just as entertainment during sports games.

I only hope people will understand this is not about being “politically correct.” It is about understanding and respecting the horrible history our ancestors were subjected to and the policies enacted by the US government to erase our Native identity.

Maybe it is time to start a new tradition of treating all people, including Native Americans, as human beings.

This essay is adapted from commentary in the The Kansas City Star and on KansasCity.com.

Rhonda LeValdo teaches media communications at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas.

https://www.vox.com/first-person/202...fs-kansas-city


KC Star:
https://www.kansascity.com/sports/sp...244153762.html


Kansas City Magazine:
https://www.kansascitymag.com/is-the...s-who-you-ask/

Twitter has its own hashtag
https://mobile.twitter.com/chopisracist

NY Times: Stop the Chop
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/s...hawk-chop.html

[bdj23]

Originally Posted by Bowser

I'll be honest - I didn't see that one coming.

Why not? White guilt is at an all time high.

[mr. tegu]

Originally Posted by TribalElder

https://www.kctv5.com/news/us_world_...4a08e3d56.html

Cherokee chief: Time for Jeep to end use of tribe's name

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. (AP) — It is time for Jeep to stop using the Cherokee Nation's name on its Cherokee and Grand Cherokee SUVs, the chief of the Oklahoma-based tribe said.

Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr. said in a statement first reported by Car & Driver magazine that he believes corporations and sports teams should stop using Native American names, images and mascots as nicknames or on their products.

“I’m sure this comes from a place that is well-intended, but it does not honor us by having our name plastered on the side of a car," Hoskin said.

Kristin Starnes, a spokeswoman for Jeep’s parent company, Amsterdam-based Stellantis, said in a statement that the vehicle name was carefully selected “and nurtured over the years to honor and celebrate Native American people for their nobility, prowess and pride." She didn't say whether the company was considering renaming the vehicles and didn't immediately reply to an email requesting that information.



can we please go back to a time before everyone was upset about stupid shit

Looks like someone’s organization needs an influx of cash.

[Bowser]

Originally Posted by 007

Yes you did. We all knew that was coming.

Originally Posted by BDj23

Why not? White guilt is at an all time high.

Maybe I should have said "coming this quickly".

Orwell was a modern day prophet.

[vonBobo]

Originally Posted by dlphg9

Hell if I were Native American I think I'd find it cool as hell that my heritage and culture was being associated with best team in the NFL.

You would be honored to have the race of people that murdered your race, stole all your land, and left your race to rot in despair, to have your misinterpreted and misappropriated culture plasted onto sports teams?

You are a dumb ****.
If you weren't part of the race that got murdered then just shut your dumb ****ing mouth.

[mr. tegu]

Native Americans were notoriously peaceful and never fought wars with other tribes, plundered their resources, or their destroyed cultures.

[TambaBerry]

Originally Posted by vonBobo

You would be honored to have the race of people that murdered your race, stole all your land, and left your race to rot in despair, to have your misinterpreted and misappropriated culture plasted onto sports teams?

You are a dumb ****.
If you weren't part of the race that got murdered then just shut your dumb ****ing mouth.

Lol

[Hammock Parties]

If only we had left the poor indians alone, they would have built a bustling metropolis on top of every wigwam.

[TomBarndtsTwin]

Originally Posted by vonBobo

You would be honored to have the race of people that murdered your race, stole all your land, and left your race to rot in despair, to have your misinterpreted and misappropriated culture plasted onto sports teams?

You are a dumb ****.
If you weren't part of the race that got murdered then just shut your dumb ****ing mouth.

Funny how they never cared about it till modern day ‘woke culture’ came along. NOW everyone gives a shit, all of a sudden.

It’s almost like all these suddenly offended ‘groups’ are being disingenuous now due to financial/political reasons . . . . . .

[vonBobo]

Originally Posted by TomBarndtsTwin

Funny how they never cared about it till modern day ‘woke culture’ came along. NOW everyone gives a shit, all of a sudden.

It’s almost like all these suddenly offended ‘groups’ are being disingenuous now due to financial/political reasons . . . . . .

Racist sports teams have been getting shit since the 70's. 50 years of racist names and you think this is a modern problem?

Ignorance is a choice, not an excuse.

[Deberg_1990]

The Kansas City football club sounds legit

[Hammock Parties]

vonBobo = douche Broncos fan

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by TomBarndtsTwin

Funny how they never cared about it till modern day ‘woke culture’ came along. NOW everyone gives a shit, all of a sudden.

It’s almost like all these suddenly offended ‘groups’ are being disingenuous now due to financial/political reasons . . . . . .

Nah.

1971-72: A group of D.C. reporters at a variety of outlets including The Washington Post, Washington Daily News and Washington Star become the first prominent advocates against the name. Wrote Paul Kaplan of the Washington Star, “Some think of the symbols as monuments to their strength and manhood. Others disagree, bitterly denouncing the derogation of their heritage, an ignorance of their culture and an unabashed commercialism in the sense that Indian names and heroes are exploited with no recompense whatsoever for our native Americans.”

https://www.nbcsports.com/washington...ute-over-years

As much as people love to name call and stereotype people they don't agree with into Boomer and woke and whatever to make themselves feel better about themselves... people don't change all that much.

Give people Twitter 50 or 80 or 100 years ago and give all the Karens and wokeness of the time a platform, and I have a feeling we'd look at those generations much differently once you not only gave every idiot out there a voice, but a way to bring their idiocy together, put pressure on other idiots, and create idiotic change.

Likewise, if we currently had relatively few ways to know what was happening on the other end of the country, much less the other side of the world.... and didn't have a camera handy to shame all the Karens or catch all the asshole cops, etc; it would go largely unnoticed, just like I"m sure it did decades ago.

[FloridaMan88]

So a massive caravan of Chiefs fans showing up to Arrowhead next fall in Jeep Cherokees while decked out in full injun headgear/warpaint and doing the chop would be wrong?

[displacedinMN]

My theory:

Why do we get so offended by everything?

We don't have enough to do. With everything so automated, easy to do and with immediate gratification. We have too much time for brains to focus on things that they do not need to.

My parents and grandparents did not get offended by everything. They were more focused on survival. Feed animals, make a living, make a little money, wash dishes and clothes. Maintain a farm, house, kids. You know-that whole depression stuff.

I am sure they did not think "I am offended because my syrup has a black woman on it."


of course it took them 2 days to hear about Pearl Harbor.

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by displacedinMN

My theory:

Why do we get so offended by everything?

We don't have enough to do. With everything so automated, easy to do and with immediate gratification. We have too much time for brains to focus on things that they do not need to.

My parents and grandparents did not get offended by everything. They were more focused on survival. Feed animals, make a living, make a little money, wash dishes and clothes. Maintain a farm, house, kids. You know-that whole depression stuff.

I am sure they did not think "I am offended because my syrup has a black woman on it."


of course it took them 2 days to hear about Pearl Harbor.

Idle hands are the devil's playthings.

Even if we don't have a work ethic, or have one with no outlet for it, we have an impulse to feel productive.

Asserting offense on the behalf of others, or alternatively feeling offense from the actions of others, fulfills that impulse.

You didn't build a shed or fix an appliance, but you found something 'wrong' in the world and gave voice to displeasure.

You were a productive person for the benefit of mankind.

But the thing is anyone can do what you did, they just have to commit to fomenting discord.

But you don't think it through. You don't think comprehensively.