The one thing which should be obvious to all in reading the comments in this colloqium is that Indian/Native Americans who have commented on the issue do so with great passion. It is very difficult for non-Indians to truly understand why this is the case.

Although I first visited a reservation in the late 1950s, and became acquainted with many urban Indians beginning in the early 1960s, one must have many experiences to understand the unspoken as well as the spoken in people's statements. One event in the late 1960s,taught me, unequivocally, a great lesson.

While traveling on the Papago reservation, I barely made out a pickup in a huge ditch on the other side of the road. When I stopped, I found three generations of women and children of one family. The grandmother was dead and everyone else was injured, some very severely. My wife, a registered nurse, stayed with the people, using our first aid kit and blankets to do what she could, while I sped back to a trading post 10 or 15 miles down the road, which seemed to sell mostly gas and Indian basketry. Arriving at the store, I told the two women I found that there had been a bad accident, and that the Arizona state patrol and an ambulance should be called. They were shocked, and made the calls, asking me for all the details. As soon as they found out that the family was Indian, they quit speaking to me. Many, many things I had been told by Indian friends and acquaintances finally made sense to me.

It is far too simple to attribute such things to "racism," "classism," and so on. But the fact of the matter is that Native Americans, especially, have faced what at least one person in this debate has called "dehumanization" of a recurring kind.

To me the question, then, is not really whether this dehumanization should be ended, but how. The solution which the Indians commentators seem to suggest is basically ideological-- change the symbols, and the ideology will change. Indeed, about matters in general, and not specifically Indian affairs, I have been told by more than one nationally prominent political figure that "when you get people saying the words, it becomes more and more difficult for them to back away from their words." Possibly. But if the material and economic circumstances are changed the ideology will follow, I think. And in pressing for ideological commitments, it is an easy thing to alienate important segments of the polity which must be won over if truly significant changes are to be made in Native American material and economic affairs (the alienated include such people as die-hard alumni who love existing mascots, and are also voters).

The incredible thing about this debate, however, is the apparent inability of people to understand that questions of "morality" are more than ideology, but very, very structural. One of the great concerns of "the American founders" was the question of the position of minorities within a republic, as seen especially in Federalist Paper No. 10. The advocacy of "sovereignty" of "Indian nations," for example, with the simultaneous demands for Indian equality within the usual meaning of that term for other citizens, is what lurks behind such things as the "simple" issue of mascots. Most Americans who know something of the real plight of the majority of Indians know, too, of Yugoslavia, and many other recent examples of "ethnic successions" from a state. This is why, quite, clearly, national debate seems to be in order. But with the simplifying of issues, so clearly seen in The Chronicle's phrasing of the question for this debate, it does not seem likely that any meaningful discussion of the truly important issues are likely to emerge in the near future. For Native Americans, things are only likely to get worse, unless the frame of the discussion is shifted.

-- Melburn D. Thurman, (posted 3/23, 4:25 p.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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