{"id":36382,"date":"2017-08-29T10:04:16","date_gmt":"2017-08-29T14:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=36382"},"modified":"2017-08-29T10:04:17","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T14:04:17","slug":"letter-keep-indians-but-embrace-true-native-americans-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=36382","title":{"rendered":"Letter: Keep ‘Indians’ but embrace true Native Americans’ history"},"content":{"rendered":"

To The Editor,<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Football season is just starting for the Unionville-Chadds Ford Indians. Parents and coaches shout \u201cGo U\u201d to the players. \u00a0Its catchy, but it struck me as odd that “Go Indians\u201d is never heard. \u00a0Asking around it seems parents are shy about the school\u2019s mascot. Reading between the\u00a0\u201clet\u2019s not go there\u201d responses I\u2019ve gotten to the topic led me to believe many feel the term is derogatory or offensive to Native Americans.<\/p>\n

As a newcomer to the area, I have no sentimental attachment to the Unionville \u201cIndians\u201d mascot. If residents are shy about the mascot, then it’s obviously not working for them and they should change it to something more relevant to the area. Unionville is horse country so maybe the Unionville \u201cStallions,” or the Unionville “Show Jumpers\u201d would be better fits!<\/span><\/p>\n

I think renaming the team is potentially more offensive to Native Americans than leaving it as it is. I\u2019m not a native american so I can\u2019t write about how it feels to hear a term, coined by Christopher Columbus, that misidentified two continents of people based on a math error and signaled the end of their culture. But I don\u2019t think the question is whether the term is objectionable or not. The question in my mind is do we leave this objectionable name for a people from whom we can continue to learn, or do we change the school stationary to continue their cultural eradication? All we have left of the people who settled this land are a few random and largely meaningless names of counties, rivers and towns, some of which we mispronounce.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, had a lot of ideas that blossomed into our modern core beliefs (religious tolerance, all persons are created equal, and respect for indigenous people\u2019s rights). Penn signed treaties with the natives, and paid them for their land. \u00a0What Penn didn\u2019t understand is that Native Americans didn\u2019t share his view on property ownership. And what many people don\u2019t understand, even today, is that Native Americans didn\u2019t name their property, or even themselves as Europeans did. I find it more than ironic that native people didn\u2019t identify themselves as part of individualized groups or tribes. They weren\u2019t \u201ctribal\u201d in the way we mean that word today (parochial). They solved the problem of how to politically correctly classify and name themselves and others. Don\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like Columbus, America\u2019s European colonists were great namers and categorizers of what they found. And like Columbus, they got a lot wrong. They named the red breasted thrush they encountered the \u201cRobin,\u201d but the\u00a0Turdus Migratorius is really nothing like the English Robin (Erithacus Rubecula). \u00a0Our Poplar trees (Liriodendron tulipifera) aren\u2019t Poplars (Populus) at all. The wood looks similar, but that\u2019s about the end of their similarities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Europeans tried to fit\u00a0the new and not understood into the old world with which they were more familiar. And they made mistakes.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When French trappers asked about the identity of a neighboring group of natives, the Ojibwe speakers they asked responded\u00a0\u201cNadouessioux\u201d\u00a0meaning\u00a0\u201cenemy,\u201d literally \u201clittle snakes.\u201d The French shortened the name to\u00a0\u201cSioux” and the name stuck. When\u00a0the\u00a0\u201cSioux” people were asked about their identity, they responded\u00a0\u201cLakota,\u201d \u201cDakota,\u201d or\u00a0\u201cNakota\u201d all of which meant \u201cfriend\u201d in different dialects of their language.<\/span><\/p>\n

When\u00a0the Ojibwe speakers weren\u2019t mad at\u00a0their neighbors, they called the\u00a0Sioux \u201cBwaanag\u201d or “people who roast food,\u201d which really isn\u2019t a name at all. It describes something they did or did differently.\u00a0In our area, no native tribe ever called themselves the\u00a0\u201cDelaware.” Europeans named them based on the region they inhabited (named for Lord\u00a0Thomas West, Baron De La Warr). “Lenni Lenapi” is\u00a0Algonquian for\u00a0\u201coriginal man\u201d. When asked who they were, they responded, “we are the original men,” presumably differentiating themselves from the inquisitive newcomers. But this in no way differentiated them from other Native Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n

The point being, the term \u201cIndian\u201d is just as\u00a0incorrect a name for Native Americans as all\u00a0the others including\u00a0the names they use for themselves today. When we talk about Native Americans, we\u2019re\u00a0talking about a continent or two of people as varied and individualized as any population anywhere. They defy definition as much as any of us do. Interestingly, Native Americans have understood this fact for at least 400 years. And perhaps that\u2019s the message we\u00a0should be sharing with our children. There\u2019s no good way to identify a large group of people. In\u00a0the end, the only names that really make sense are\u00a0“Lakota\u201d (friend) or \u201cNadouessioux\u201d (enemy).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On September 17th, we have the opportunity to recognize the 280th anniversary of the \u201cWalking Purchase,\u201d a reminder for how\u00a0important it is to share our values\u00a0with our children. \u00a0After his father\u2019s death, Thomas Penn renounced his father\u2019s Quaker faith, instituted policies\u00a0that sought to restrict religious freedoms, and in 1737 cheated the Lenapi out of what was left of their Delaware river access. \u00a0This\u00a0ended centuries or more of the Lenapi way of life. They spent their summers at the Jersey shore, stockpiling dried clams and oysters for their\u00a0Pennsylvania winter hunting grounds. They transported their\u00a0catch up\u00a0the Delaware river in great dug out canoes. \u00a0The Lenapi left our area peacefully shortly after signing the treaty. Were it not for the names of a few PA counties, rivers, and towns, our children probably wouldn\u2019t know they ever existed.<\/span><\/p>\n

I vote we shout “Go Indians” at football games and teach our children\u00a0about the\u00a0people who lived here before the Europeans arrived. I think we can all recognize that as imperfect\u00a0\u201cIndian” is for this huge and diverse population, forgetting about\u00a0them entirely is far\u00a0more offensive.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Go Indians-! Show some pride in\u00a0the tribe!<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Adam Cherubini<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Chadds Ford<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To The Editor, Football season is just starting for the Unionville-Chadds Ford Indians. Parents and coaches shout \u201cGo U\u201d to the players. \u00a0Its catchy, but it struck me as odd that “Go Indians\u201d is never heard. \u00a0Asking around it seems parents are shy about the school\u2019s mascot. Reading between the\u00a0\u201clet\u2019s not go there\u201d responses I\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[479,32,5890,10318,10317],"class_list":["post-36382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","tag-history","tag-indians","tag-letters-2","tag-mascots","tag-native-americans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36383,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36382\/revisions\/36383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}