Quote:
Originally Posted by t206fix
Why is it the Indian name that gets you this riled up? Something as trivial as the name of a baseball club? Were you this upset when the Devil Rays changed their name? Hmm, something about that Indian name... See, if the Notre Dame Fightin' Irish changed their name tomorrow, most people wouldn't give a damn. They'd say sweet, the Fightin' Devil Rays... and life would go on.
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I'm not riled up. I am in my home, bored, watching yet another group of people playing victim. As I said above, if we're talking about the mascot/logo of Wahoo Sam, smiling with the big teeth, I would liken that to blackface and agree it is insulting. Here in MN we have the Vikings, and many people here, including me, are Scandinavian. But the logo and mascot aren't deemed offensive: the logo is a dignified looking guy with blonde hair, and the mascot is a guy who dresses up in a Viking outfit at games. So it isn't seen as demeaning to anyone.
So we agree the caricatures are objectionable. What I don't find objectionable is the word, and concept, of Indians as the name of a team.
Many cities, lakes, rivers are named after Indian words. American Indians are an important part of this country's culture and history, both recorded and pre- Columbus (in other words, pre- written history.) Many Indians in MN have famously gotten along quite well with European settlers, particularly the Ojibwe. In fact, their wars were against other Indians. This, from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe
Through their friendship with the French traders (coureurs des bois and voyageurs), the Ojibwe gained guns, began to use European goods, and began to dominate their traditional enemies, the Lakota and Fox to their west and south. They drove the Sioux from the Upper Mississippi region to the area of the present-day Dakotas, and forced the Fox down from northern Wisconsin. The latter allied with the Sauk for protection...
The Ojibwe were part of a long-term alliance with the Anishinaabe Odawa and Potawatomi peoples, called the Council of Three Fires. They fought against the Iroquois Confederacy, based mainly to the southeast of the Great Lakes in present-day New York, and the Sioux to the west. The Ojibwa stopped the Iroquois advance into their territory near Lake Superior in 1662. Then they formed an alliance with other tribes such as the Huron and the Odawa who had been displaced by the Iroquois invasion. Together they launched a massive counterattack against the Iroquois and drove them out of Michigan and southern Ontario until they were forced to flee back to their original homeland in upstate New York. At the same time the Iroquois were subjected to attacks by the French. This was the beginning of the end of the Iroquois Confederacy as they were put on the defensive. The Ojibwe expanded eastward, taking over the lands along the eastern shores of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.
In 1745, they adopted guns from the British in order to repel the Dakota people in the Lake Superior area, pushing them to the south and west. In the 1680s the Ojibwa defeated the Iroquois who dispersed their Huron allies and trading partners. This victory allowed them a "golden age" in which they ruled uncontested in southern Ontario......
When Indians claim victimhood because European settlers "took their land," my question is, who did the Indians take their land from?