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From Diverse Online

Current News
Illinois Retires American Indian Mascot
By Associated Press
Mar 14, 2007, 07:48

URBANA Ill.

The University of Illinois swept aside the last vestiges of Chief
Illiniwek on Tuesday, voting to retire the mascot's name, regalia and
image.

 

The school will continue to call its sports teams the Fighting Illini
under the resolution. Chancellor Richard Herman is to decide how and
when Chief Illiniwek's name and image will stop being used and licensed
to apparel makers and others. 

 

Activists and some American Indians have long complained the chief is
demeaning. Backers defend him as an honorable tradition.

 

The school decided in February to end performances of the chief, leading
the NCAA to lift sanctions that had barred Illinois from hosting
postseason sports since 2005. The NCAA had deemed Illiniwek portrayed
since 1926 by buckskin-clad students who danced at home football and
basketball games and other sports events an offensive use of American
Indian imagery.

 

Trustee David Dorris offered the only dissent Tuesday among the 10
voting members.

 

"When you look at Chief Illiniwek and you see hate, shamefulness and
embarrassment, perhaps you should sit down and consider where those
feelings come from," he said before the vote.

 

Board chairman Lawrence Eppley voted for the resolution, but said he
agreed with Dorris' assessment that the chief had been a proud tradition
for many years.

 

"Certainly my vote is not intended to dishonor anybody's memories, or to
deny the fact that it's been a great tradition," Eppley said.

 

The board Tuesday also took the unusual step of ratifying the February
decision. The earlier decision came without a vote from the board, which
Eppley has said wasn't needed. Nonetheless, board spokesman Thomas Hardy
said voting now could blunt any legal action claiming there should have
been a vote.

 

A state lawmaker asked the Attorney General's office whether making the
decision without a vote was legal.

 

Board members also voted down Dorris' resolution that would have
directed the university to join a lawsuit filed by the last two students
to portray the chief. The suit asks a judge to determine whether the
NCAA could sanction Illinois over the mascot.

 

Board member Robert Sperling told Dorris his resolution would only
postpone the inevitable.

 

"The time has come," he said. "(The chief) bothered a whole lot of
people for a long time."

 

Graduate student Genevieve Tenoso, a Lakota Sioux, told the board before
the vote that by not doing away with the chief sooner, they helped
create an atmosphere in which she sometimes didn't feel safe.

 

"I haven't had one single day on this campus when something didn't
remind me of the Indian you prefer me to be rather than the living,
breathing native person that I am," she said.

 

--Associated Press 

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