Mascot issue is about repression

To the editor:

I am ashamed to have read in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Southeast Missouri State University has become a laughingstock over our drive for a new mascot. The issue is far larger than a mascot that many people see as a tribute to Native Americans. Ignorance is not bliss.

Glenn T. Morris of the Colorado American Indian Movement states: "If people are genuinely interested in honoring Indians, try getting your government to live up to the more than 400 treaties it signed with our nations. ... Try stopping the ongoing theft of Indian water and other natural resources. Try reversing your colonial process that relegates us to the most impoverished, polluted and desperate conditions in this country. ... Try understanding that the mascot issue is only the tip of a very huge problem of continuing racism against American Indians. Then maybe your 'honors' will mean something. Until then, it's just so much superficial, hypocritical puffery. People should remember that an honor isn't born when it parts the honorer's lips, it is born when it is accepted in the honoree's ear."

This mascot issue is not an issue of honor versus dishonor. It is an issue of colonialism and repression.

Please, do your research and find answers from credible sources, not Speak Out columns.

I recommend the book "Indians Are Us?" by Ward Churchill. Then you start to see the full and complete picture.

DANE LINCOLN

Cape Girardeau