"Change starts when someone sees the next step." Native Americans are trying to take that next step. For the past 100 years Americans have stolen their sacred names and used them for mascots of high school, college, and professional sports teams. The National Education Association is one of the first to step to the plate by passing, Article I-41, which advises use of Prejudicial Terms and Symbols "The National Education Association deplores prejudice based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, age, disability, size, marital status, or economic status and rejects the use of names, symbols, caricatures, emblems, logos, and mascots that promote such prejudice. (92,94)" By having these practices they believe the rights of Native Americans are protected. Native American Mascots in sports need to change to protect and uphold the rights that are granted to them from the constitution. If we started all over before any names were made and altered these names towards other races how would people react? Lets take the Cleveland Indians for example. What would happen if we had used the Jews, Blacks or Chinese as this political cartoon suggests. Every race involved would have been in an uproar when the caricature came out. They would feel that their constitutional rights were being ignored. But, when "Chief Wahoo of the Cleveland Indians, runs about drunkenly at baseball games"1 they feel that it is ok to disregards the Indian name, heritage, and ritual. Taking in the psychological considerations for the Native Americans "dehumanization, as the word implies, is a psychological process that reduces a person or group to a sub-human level. One way in which this process is deployed is by suggesting the subject of the dehumanization is like an animal. Because animals of various types and "Indians" related mascots are those most frequently used, it can be observed that this practice places Native Peoples on a par with wild ...
