Native American Imagery Research Articles

“It’s still Cleveland baseball”

In the summer of 2021, Cleveland’s Major League Baseball franchise announced the rebranding of the club’s nickname from the decades-long controversial “Indians” to the” Guardians.” The long-standing use of Native American imagery in sport has long been the source of contention, and for this reason, the Cleveland Guardians have continually been in the public eye prior to their rebrand. This article examines both the organization’s rebranding efforts and media coverage surrounding the team’s new identity. Guided by the theory of framing, this study applies themes of sports rebranding to analyze the team’s announcement video and sequentially deploys an inductive approach to identify the media frames present following the rebranding. Three sports rebrand frames were identified from the Cleveland Guardians’ announcement: regional pride, nostalgia, and rebirth. The media response looked at 79 articles and found two higher-order frames - broader movements and branding commentary – with six subcategories. In total, these frames indicated that rebranding efforts sought to center the new identity around the city of Cleveland while deemphasizing damages from the use of derogatory racial Native American imagery. The media response also shows that the rebrand is contextualized through broader movements and is politically contentious. Future directions of framing theory in sports rebranding and the discourse around the use and removal of racial imagery in sports is discussed.

Incivility and Washington’s NFL Franchise: Exploring Uncivil Discourse in Sports Blog Comment Sections

The current study sought to explore the prevalence of uncivil discourse surrounding the Washington NFL team’s removal of offensive Native American imagery and later rebranding as the Washington Commanders. The study employed a quantitative content analysis to assess comment sections of news stories on a sports blog between 2014 and 2022. In addition to uncivil discourse, contextual elements such as popularity, reciprocity, and directionality of incivility were also examined. Dovetailing with existing research, roughly one quarter of all comments featured an element of uncivil discourse, with derogatory slurs toward Native Americans being particularly common. Additionally, contextual elements served important roles in the facilitation of incivility. Taken together, the results point to some of the antisocial behavior that can occur in seemingly innocuous online spaces that often reflect broader social and political turmoil related to Native American imagery in sport.

Perspectives on Native American Imagery from Students at a Premiere Tribal University

Haskell Indian Nations University is the sole 4-year intertribal university in America and their athletics department is called The Fightin’ Indians. Their logo and name seem to contradict most of the research describing the negative impacts of Native imagery. Interviews were conducted with current students at Haskell University to understand their feelings towards Native imagery overall. When exploring the usage of Native imagery by Haskell it was apparent the students felt as an all-Native institution there was a sense of ownership to utilize the imagery but were aware it misrepresented some Native people. The students also discussed how their imagery may influence outsiders’ perspectives. This study helps us understand a unique situation and should lead to future research around Native American imagery in sport.

Myles Brand: A Leader Deeply Committed to Diversity, Inclusiveness, and Social Justice

Myles Brand: A Leader Deeply Committed to Diversity, Inclusiveness, and Social Justice
 Myles Brand will probably always best be remembered as the Indiana University president who fired legendary basketball coach Bobby Knight. It is unfortunate since Brand, as a scholar, president of two major universities, and Executive Director of the NCAA, accomplished a great many things on behalf of students and as an enthusiastic proponent of the educational value of intercollegiate athletics and sport more generally. At all times and in everything he did, Brand exhibited as a leader a deep commitment to diversity, inclusiveness, and social justice. It was especially noticeable and on full display during his time as Executive Director of the NCAA, a position he held from 2002 until his untimely death from cancer in 2009. As this essay illustrates, Brand’s commitment to diversity, inclusiveness, and social justice was made clear through the academic reform movement he helped initiate and in fights to eliminate Native American mascots and other disparaging images, secure more head coaching positions for Blacks, and maintain original Title IX guidelines that had allowed women increasing opportunities to participate in highly competitive athletics. Although not always successful in these efforts, especially in seeing more Blacks hired as head coaches, Brand was largely effective in leading the effort to implement academic reform measures, rid sport of insulting Native American imagery, and guard against those who were

Converging Interests, Unequal Benefits? Tribal Critical Race Theory and Miami University’s Myaamia Heritage Logo

Miami University has used Native American imagery to promote itself since its founding. In 1929, Miami teams began using the racist term Redsk*ns. In 1996–1997, they changed the name to RedHawks. Despite the strengthening relationship between the university and the tribe, the racist mascot imagery remained visible in the university community. In 2017–2018, the university returned to Native American imagery by unveiling a new “Heritage Logo” to represent a commitment to restoring the Myaamia language and culture. In this paper, the authors used tribal critical race theory to analyze how the Heritage Logo represents a point of interest convergence, where symbols of the tribe signal acceptance and recognition of the Myaamia people, while institutional racism and the possessive investment of whiteness are left ignored and unaddressed.

The over-consumption of Native American imagery and the ongoing results for contemporary reality

This paper originally served as a complement to the 123 slides of contemporary Native American images, shown as a looping slideshow at the Contemporary Indigenous Realities conference held at the University of Montenegro in the summer of 2015. These popular images have patterns that include primitivism, savagery, sex objectification, buffoons, anachronisms, and stereotypes. The prevalence of these images can be found in commercialism, sports, movies and television, literature and magazines, toys, the military, and endless entertainment celebrities dressed as Native Americans for fun (not roles). This paper examines the “cause and effect” of this phenomenon that is ubiquitous worldwide. The misinformation, lies, stereotypes, and myths about Native Americans have resulted in an image, held by both Natives and non-Natives, that is archaic at best and psychologically harmful at worst. This (mis)perception of indigenous peoples has become American schema due to pervasive and myth borne legacy. Numerous scholars over the last century have measured the effects of related oppressive societal qualities, always with the results harming the psyche of those so poorly portrayed.

Alumni Perceptions of a University’s Decision to Remove Native American Imagery From Its Athletic Program

One of the more contentious issues North American athletic organizations face is how to deal with Native American imagery that is associated with their sports teams. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has, in recent years, banned member organizations from using and displaying Native American nicknames and mascots at postseason events, with a few exceptions. This has led to protests, especially by alumni, at some schools. This case study examines how alumni at one university perceive and experience the removal of a Native American team nickname from the University’s athletic program. Fourteen semistructured qualitative interviews were conducted with alumni from Miami University representing one of three cohorts: those who graduated by 1993 (before the removal of the nickname was discussed or implemented), those who graduated between 1993 and 2000 (during the time the nickname was removed), and those who graduated after 2000 (after the change was implemented). Borrowing from the narrative inquiry approach, thematic analysis was utilized. Two major themes that arose irrespective of cohort are presented and discussed.

Deciphering Kokopelli: Masculinity in Commodified Appropriations of Native American Imagery

Kokopelli “the hump-backed fluteplayer” has become an icon of the Southwest as well as a metonym for the region's Native American cultures. Guided by the trope of the primitive, this essay analyzes contemporary Kokopelli imagery as a projection of Euro-American masculinist fantasies and as a contemporary commodity form, the cipher. Kokopelli imagery models a virile and promiscuous heterosexual masculinity while erasing its anatomical signs. It articulates intersections of gender, race, and culture that simultaneously highlight and obscure primitive masculinity and racial difference, enabling the use of Native American culture and spirituality to (re)vitalize Euro-American masculinity and promote (neo)colonial appropriations.

The Fancy Dance of Racializing Discourse

In the United States, the Euro-American practice of using stereotypical Native American imagery and dancing in association with athletic mascots continues despite vigorous protest. This suggests that American Indians occupy a different semiotic space than other U.S. minorities who are no longer subject to such explicit racializing representations. This article asks how and why non–Native Americans endow Indian mascots with significance. Analysis of the discursive formations associated with one such local practice—the dancing Indianmascot at the University of Illinois known as Chief Illiniwek—suggests that the dominant “race-making” population, who are themascot’s ardent supporters, create and passionately defend a “White public space” in which any contemporaryNativeAmerican presence is positioned as disorderly. This article seeks to advance the understanding of how racializing discourses create the cultural logic that stigmatizes and stereotypes (in this case) American Indian people.

"Ce n'est pas le Pérou," or, the Failure of Authenticity: Marginal Cosmopolitans at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855

Previous articleNext article No AccessFront Lines/Border Posts"Ce n'est pas le Pérou," or, the Failure of Authenticity: Marginal Cosmopolitans at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855Natalia MajlufNatalia Majluf Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Critical Inquiry Volume 23, Number 4Summer, 1997 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/448857 Views: 15Total views on this site Citations: 12Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1997 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Raquel Flecha Vega Olga Albizu’s Lyrical Abstraction and the Borders of the Canvas, Arts 12, no.11 (Jan 2023): 20.https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12010020Giulia Murace Diálogos rioplatenses. Buenos Aires, Montevideo y la creación de una academia moderna a comienzos del siglo XX, Arte, Individuo y Sociedad Avance en línea (Feb 2023): 1–18.https://doi.org/10.5209/aris.84954Jan Eijking Whose Power is Knowledge?, Global Intellectual History (Dec 2022): 1–9.https://doi.org/10.1080/23801883.2022.2132177Natalia Majluf Time and Place, (Oct 2021): 489–503.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118475430.ch31Matthew Himley The future lies beneath: Mineral science, resource-making, and the (de)differentiation of the Peruvian underground, Political Geography 87 (May 2021): 102373.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102373M. Elizabeth Boone “Ibero-American participation, world exhibitions, and the long nineteenth century: a historiographical overview”, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 26, no.33 (Nov 2020): 213–234.https://doi.org/10.1080/14701847.2020.1851907Maya Jiménez A Cosmopolitan Ambition: La Regeneración and the French Academic Nude in 19 th -Century Colombia, H-ART. Revista de historia, teoría y crítica de arte , no.77 (Jul 2020): 159–176.https://doi.org/10.25025/hart07.2020.09Sven Schuster, Laura Alejandra Buenaventura Gómez Imaginando la “tercera civilización de América”: Colombia en las exposiciones internacionales del IV Centenario (1892-1893), Historia Crítica , no.7575 (Jan 2020): 25–47.https://doi.org/10.7440/histcrit75.2020.02Joanna Crow Photographic Encounters: Martín Chambi, Indigeneity and Chile–Peru Relations in the Early Twentieth Century, Journal of Latin American Studies 51, no.11 (Jul 2018): 31–58.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022216X18000342Margueritte Murphy Commodity aesthetics: The industrial exhibitions of Paris, 1834—1844, reviewed, Journal of European Studies 40, no.11 (Mar 2010): 23–38.https://doi.org/10.1177/0047244109353971Margueritte Murphy The Critic as Cosmopolite: Baudelaire’s International Sensibility and the Transformation of Viewer Subjectivity, (Jan 2008): 25–41.https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230583498_2Miles Ogborn The relations between geography and history: work in historical geography in 1997, Progress in Human Geography 23, no.11 (Mar 1999): 97–108.https://doi.org/10.1191/030913299672557598