The mascot issue also goes to the efficacy of the Sioux people. Can they get control over that aspect of their identity or not? To get this control would be a significant victory, in my opinion, for the advancement of the human dignity of the Sioux people and for human rights in general. Now, it won’t immediately improve their health, wealth, literacy rate, or living conditions, but it will effect their attitude and sense of efficacy, and the sense of efficacy is likely to be important to their long term success. Perhaps this is what the Sioux leaders realize that others may not.

The use of the Sioux mascot now, against their will, symbolizes an inability of the Sioux to effect a change, and that symbolism is relatively widespread since the mascot is seen and proliferated over a wide area. If the Sioux can prevail on this issue maybe they are more likely to prevail on others, but as long as this mascot is "in their face," it seems apparent that success on other issues may be less likely. I think the Sioux themselves ought to be the ones to determine the relative importance of this issue. If you don’t accept this concept you are in the awkward position of supporting their "humanization" while saying, "their priorities don't matter, we know better." Isn't that an example what you are against?

Perhaps there are those individuals whose public image are trivialities to them, but I don’t know of any such people. Perhaps there are people who think it would be a trifle to place a major degree of the control over the use of their public identity into the hands of a group of people who are unsympathetic to them, but I don’t know anyone like that either. For a group of people (the Sioux ARE a group of people) the desire to control their public image is natural, and in my view it is a big issue not a trivial one, especially since this image influences the self image of their children and families, and how they get treated by people they don't personally know. Now, I do know that there are people who don't care about anyone else's public image, only their own -- but I think there should be more caring.

If the Sioux's desire to control the use of their public image is misguided or trivial, it implies that the Jewish Anti-Defamation League is also wasting their time on trivialities. You know a lot of ethic groups, corporations, public figures, and politicians, must also be wasting their time on trivial matters by trying to control the use of their public image. Of course I don’t think such efforts are trivial.

Mr. Thurman said that "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)." When I read that, it was, as Yogi said, "Deja vu all over again." This is virtually the same thing I used to hear in the 60s, that people would say in arguing why Martin Luther King should stop leading demonstrations in the South. They would say that all those protests and demonstrations just alienate the important, awesome and powerful people they're trying to influence. The problem, of course, was that the awesome and powerful people will not change unless they are pressured or persuaded somehow. Why should they when the current situation is of their own design? When there was no pressure, no protest, people used to defend segregation by saying that the lack of protest just went to prove that things were just fine the way they were. So if there is protest people won’t change because they resent protest, but the lack of protest shows they don't have to change because everything is fine the way it is. I think you just have to stand up for what is right and take your chances that the powers-that-be will re-examine their positions, and change.

-- Bernard Schuster, Owner, Find Your Online Graduate School, (posted 3/28, 4:08 p.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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