Native Women Score Wins over Demeaning Images

[niyad]

Native Women Score Wins over Demeaning Images

"I have nieces and nephews that play sports," says Johnnie Jae, who helps lead social media efforts via the Twitter hashtag #NotYourMascot. "They shouldn't have to contend with Native mascots or see rival teams and fans mocking who they are as indigenous people."


Suzan Shown Harjo has been fighting to get sports team names and mascots that exploit Native American imagery dropped.



TULSA, Okla. (WOMENSENEWS)--For Native American women such as Johnnie Jae, the push is on to banish mascots and other demeaning imagery of Native people. Jae and others will be supporting Native American parents later this month in Oklahoma as they try to uphold a recent decision by the Oklahoma City Public Schools Board to drop the Redskins mascot at one of the high schools. The Oklahoma City school district is the latest to ban the mascot. In California, a lawmaker recently proposed legislation that would force four schools in the state to drop the mascot.

These moves come on the heels of a June decision of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office canceling the trademark of the Washington, D.C., Redskins, a member of the National Football League, saying the term redskins was disparaging to Native Americans.

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Jae sees a connection between the dire statistics about violence against women in her community and the mascots issue. And fighting one issue is a way of fighting another; she sees the struggles as intertwined.
"All the issues that we face in our Native communities are interrelated to the dehumanization of Native people that has occurred through the misappropriation [of] our identities and imagery," said Jae, who is Otoe-Missouria and Choctaw.

Statistics for violence against Native American women are grim: 1-in-3 report being raped in their lifetime, according to the Department of Justice; overall, 1-in-6 Native American women in the U.S. has reported being a victim of rape or attempted rape. Native American women are also 2.5 times more likely to suffer sexual assault compared to all other U.S. women. And 67 percent of Native American women say their perpetrator was a non-Native American man, according to one U.S. Department of Justice-funded report.

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http://womensenews.org/story/in-the-courts/150106/native-women-score-wins-over-demeaning-images