Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting
Directed by Aviva Kempner and Ben West
Unrated
Runtime: 94 minutes
In select theaters starting March 31

by Daniel Pecoraro, Staff Writer

I’ll say it right from the jump: I really, really can’t stand the Atlanta Braves. 

I don’t get how they’ve been owned by conglomerates or conglomerate-adjacent groups for going on for longer than I’ve been alive, and they still don’t have the good sense or decency to change their mascot, remove Native American imagery, and end the “tomahawk chop.” This even after Washington’s gridiron football team and Cleveland’s baseball team, after decades of activism, changed their names and identities.

Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting is a thoughtful representation of this juncture in American culture: how far we’ve come, and how far we have to go. It is a well-made document hailing the life and work of three generations of activism concerning mascoting, in particular writer and activist Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne/Hodulgee/Muscogee). Footage of Harjo (in oral history interviews for the film, recordings of her WBAI radio show Seeing Red, and footage of her appearances on Oprah and other talk programs in the 1980s and ‘90s) ties the film together and marks the passage of time and the eras of the movement.

The first act of the film is a fairly rote but (especially for those who don’t have a master’s in history) a useful refresher on 500 years of war, genocide, and trauma in American Indian history. Interviews with scholars such as Philip Deloria (Dakota/Standing Rock Sioux) and James Riding In (Pawnee) complement a slew of Ken Burns-effect imagery during most of this section. But even I learned a thing or two early on, such as the stunning history of bounties on American Indians’ heads and body parts during the California Gold Rush as related by Marshall McKay (Former Tribal Chairman of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation). 

The second and third parts of the film are even more eye-opening, and where the documentary finds another gear from “replacement-level history doc” to something special. A history of Native American imagery in film takes us from the Westerns of early Hollywood, to Betty Boop and Bugs Bunny, to Dances With Wolves (dir. Kevin Costner, 1990), Smoke Signals (dir. Chris Eyre, 1998), and Reservation Dogs. The film makes clear that the misinformation—and disinformation—of American Indian cultures, history, diversity, or even their continued existence has been long-lasting, all-encompassing, and that this compounded trauma and discrimination. (For further reading on this, I highly recommend the Smithsonian’s exhibit Americans.)

Over this same period, we see the history of organized sports (at the same period as the beginning of Jim Crow, which I never fully thought about), and with it, the earliest days of Native American imagery used as mascots. This is clearest, and most damaging, when it comes to football. Deloria and others are quick to note that Indian mascoting in football is an avatar and outlet of violence. Co-directors Aviva Kempner and Ben West deftly show the early history of this period—headed, unsurprisingly, by the now-Washington Commanders and their segregationist owner George Preston Marshall, and flanked by Kansas City’s gridiron gang nicknamed after a former mayor who founded a fake Indian tribe for the Boy Scouts (yeah, really). 

But even more critically, Kempner and West depict the eras of activism to bring change, and shows some of the rich history of Native American athletes like Olympic gold medalists Billy Mills (Oglala Dakota), Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox), and G-Leaguer and activist Bronson Koenig (Ho-Chunk). The film does well to clearly explain the legal battles over trademarks and Kempner and West skillfully curate video from protests and counter protests at Atlanta’s various stadia, Cleveland’s Jacobs Field, FedExField in Landover, and Super Bowls over the years. (The number of white dudes in headdresses and redface at Cleveland’s opening days is astounding.) Yet I would have liked a more thorough depiction of American Indians in sports today, either showing young amateurs in the footsteps of Keepers of the Game (dir. Judd Ehrlich, 2016) or in pro sports today beyond Koenig and a few contemporary montages. A look beyond the US would have been useful, perhaps to Canada with the changing of the Edmonton CFL team’s name, or even Sweden, where the hockey club Frölunda recently rid itself of an American Indian logo.

Overall, though, Kempner and West show a movement’s push, from the pro teams, to the Seminole and Ute nations having agency over their names used at state universities, to the hundreds of schools across the country who have changed mascot names (either voluntarily or by changes to the law). The story, of course, continues: Atlanta, Kansas City, and Chicago are still home to teams on varying parts of the “racist” end of the spectrum. Imagining the Indian does an excellent job noting how Indian mascoting has led to stereotyping and, inturn, legitimization of violence, lower self esteem, depression and anxiety, and further discrimination against other groups. But hopefully the message that gets taken from this film is the one from Professor Joely Proudfit (Luiseño/Payomkowishum): “If I say it hurts, then it hurts.”