The NCAA and the Native American Mascot Mess...

The NCAA executive council recently decided that 18 schools have nicknames that are hostile and abusive toward Native Americans. That's all a bunch of buzzard feathers. Here's one Indian who believes the NCAA is spending too much time listening to the silly political correctness police. I have an idea that the people who duped the NCAA into believing that Indian mascots are hostile and abusive are all non-Indian. They don't have a clue.

While there may be a few Indians somewhere in the world who feel that Indian mascots are hostile and abusive, I've never met one. I have Native American ancestry, grew up in Oklahoma, attended public schools in a town that is 50% Indian and played basketball for the mighty Hammon Warriors, who have four state championships and two runner-ups to their credit. Whites and Indians in Hammon have always supported the Warriors, who many times were dominated by Indian players. Indians in my hometown are proud of their mascot. I am a pastor of a Native American Baptist Church. Of the five churches I have pastored in my ministry, three have been Indian churches and two were Anglo with an Indian minority. I have never pastored a church that did not have Indian members.

In Oklahoma, a huge number of the schools have Indian mascots. Virtually all of the major all-Indian schools in Oklahoma have Indian mascots. We have the Bacone Warriors in Muskogee, the Sequoyah Indians in Tahlequah, and the Riverside Indians in Anadarko, to name three. Anadarko is proclaimed as Indian City USA. The Anadarko High School mascot is the Warrior. I have no idea what percentage of Oklahoma schools have Indian mascots, but I would guess that roughly 40% of the schools have some form of an Indian mascot. When the NCAA, dubbed by one writer as being the Naturally Clueless and Anal Alliance, finishes with the NCAA schools, look out high schools, they’re coming after you.

My hope is that the white guy General Custers of the NCAA will come out on the losing end of the next Battle of the Little Bighorn. Better yet, may the Florida Seminole, Chief Osceola, drive his spear right through the rear end of the Naturally Clueless and Anal Alliance...