Embracing the Indian

JONESBORO, Ark. -- Arkansas State University does more than pay lip service to its Indian nickname. The school has its Indian family -- three students who dress up as a Plains Indian princess, Indian chief and brave. Campus buildings are named for Indian tribes.

The school's Division I football team plays in Indian Stadium. The athletics department has an Indian headdress logo, which is also depicted on university T-shirts sold in the campus bookstore.

On academic signs around campus, Arkansas State has a school logo that features a torch but no depiction of an Indian. School officials admit that subtlety is lost on most students and members of the general public who identify with the Indian and not the torch.

This year's yearbook celebrated "Indian pride."

There's even a marble statue of an Indian chief, affectionately nicknamed "Clyde" after the Clyde Spence Monument Co. of Jonesboro, from which the Indian -- sculpted in Italy -- was purchased. The school's Student Government Association paid $1,200 for the statue in 1958.

Before 1970, Arkansas State University freshmen wore beanies and had to tip their caps when they walked past the statue. In March of this year, the half-ton statue was moved into the lobby of the new student union.

While Southeast Missouri State University publicly wrestles over whether to abandon its Indian nickname and find a new mascot -- an issue the board of regents could decide June 25 -- there's a more muted call for change at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.

The Arkansas city of over 55,000, a three-hour drive from Cape Girardeau, is home to a university with an enrollment of 10,600.

While both Southeast and Arkansas State sports teams are nicknamed the Indians, the "Indian" symbolism is more visible at Arkansas State, whose sports teams have used the nickname for 73 years. But Southeast administrators haven't allowed students to dress up as Indian mascots since 1985, and Indian logos aren't allowed on university T-shirts.

The tradition of the "Indian family" waned at ASU, too, in the 1980s. The school had a "Runnin' Joe" Indian logo in the late 1980s, a cartoon-type character with a tomahawk in his hand. It was an updated version of the "Jumpin' Joe" Indian logo the school had for about 30 years.

The university scrapped the Runnin' Joe logo in 1994 in response to criticism that it was offensive to American Indians.

Pride for the "Indian" runs deep with Jonesboro banker John Phillips, who as a student in the 1970s dressed up as the Indian brave at ASU football and basketball games. Phillips helped resurrect the Indian family tradition in 1996 and now serves as an adviser to the students who don those costumes and stand by the teepee at sporting events.

"Students realized we didn't have a mascot," he said. "They wanted it back."

Phillips said the Indian family wears costumes reflecting the clothing once worn by Plains Indians but not a specific tribe.

The Indian culture can be respectfully portrayed by a school mascot, said Phillips, who dismisses the criticism of those who argue that schools should do away with all Indian mascots.

"If you do it right and you do it respectfully, Native Americans will not say a word about it," he said.

Last summer, ASU unveiled a new "spirit character" called "Red." The cartoon-like character's costume bears no resemblance to American Indians. School officials said "Red" -- who bears some resemblance to Barney, the popular dinosaur character from children's television, colored in red and with a crop of red and black hair that stands straight up on his sculpted head -- was designed largely to entertain children who attend campus sporting events, not to replace the Indian nickname and mascot.

Ironically, Southeast Missouri State University replaced its Indian chief and princess mascots in the late 1980s with a "Big Red" mascot. Big Red had an oversized head and was so unpopular it was soon dropped. Southeast hasn't had a mascot for more than a decade.

Community support

In Jonesboro, a community of sprawling factories and one-way downtown streets, there's public support for keeping the Indian nickname and mascots.

"I find very little outcry to change the name or mascot, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact we have always tried to honor the Native American heritage of the region," said Henry Jones, president of the Jonesboro Regional Chamber of Commerce and a graduate of ASU.

But as is the case at Southeast, faculty have called for ASU to retire its Indian nickname and mascots.

Bill Maynard, a history professor at Arkansas State, said it's insulting for the school to have students dress up as Indians and put on war paint. "It is childish in the extreme," he said.

Arkansas settlers didn't treat the Indian kindly, he said. "White people killed off the Indians, and the ones they didn't kill they drove away," Maynard said.

Bill Rowe, an art professor and president of the ASU Faculty Senate, said the Indian mascot perpetuates an offensive stereotype. "It is no different than a black man holding a lantern on your lawn," he said.

The Faculty Senate voted unanimously last year to recommend the school retire the Indian nickname and mascot.

But school president Dr. Les Wyatt refused to present the recommendation to the university's board of trustees.

Wyatt said he didn't bring the issue to the board because board members told him that they opposed the idea.

The alumni group and the school's Indian Club athletics boosters didn't want to make a change either, Wyatt said. Students leaders were "ambivalent" about it, he said.

Students like Tessa Nelson, a junior from Newport, Ark., are proud to be "Indians." Nelson dresses up as the Indian princess for football and basketball games.

Nelson said it is all done in good taste. The students have to behave with respect toward Indian culture. There's a long list of do's and don'ts. For example, students selected for the "Indian family" can't chew gum or wear any jewelry while in costume.

"For the most part, I think students enjoy the mascot," she said, adding that it helps promote school spirit.

Some students, however, object to students dressing up as Indians.

Graduate student Robin Stuntz wrote to the campus newspaper that such antics are offensive. "Seeing a group of Caucasians smeared in bronzer and fringed leather garb is tantamount to a halftime, black-face cabaret show, which I'm sure the university would never dare consider," Stuntz wrote.

Critics argue that it is particularly offensive to use the word "Indian" because it was coined by early explorers. But Wyatt said "Indian" is such a part of the nation's culture that a new museum being built in Washington, D.C., will be called the Museum of the American Indian.

"I just think it is such a part of the national lore and culture that it is going to be hard to make a compelling case that the term is in itself disrespectful," Wyatt said.

Proponents of the move to scrap the Indian nickname at Southeast suggest that the National Collegiate Athletic Association eventually will force its member colleges and universities to abandon all use of Indian nicknames and mascots. Wyatt disagrees.

While the NCAA's gender and diversity subcommittee has urged the action, Wyatt said the NCAA's top administrative board hasn't made such a demand. The NCAA executive committee last August refused to approve a total ban, according to the NCAA's official Web site.

"It is a dead issue," he said, adding that he doesn't believe the University of Illinois and Florida State University -- two schools in major athletics conferences -- will scrap their Indian nicknames and mascots.

"I think it becomes a matter of institutional choice or preference," he said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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