This past week, a New York Times article came out about the Land O’Lakes company removing the Native American woman from the front of their products. I was unaware of this — apparently they started the change in February and plan to roll out the rest of their products without the Native American woman over the course of the year.
They will be replacing her with imagery of lakes, fields and other farmer-related imagery in order to reflect the farmers who contribute to their products.
This image of the Native American woman has been on their packaging for almost a century now. While Land O’Lakes has made no official statement about why they removed her picture from their products, I consider it a step in the right direction.
I hope that this shows other companies and sports teams that they can still be successful without using another culture as their mascot or costume. The American Psychological Association has recommended that all Native American mascots and symbols be immediately retired because they have a negative impact on self-esteem for Native American children.
This should be reason enough to find other mascots; appropriating another culture into a funny costume is not flattering or at all respectful to that culture. It is demeaning to see yourself dressed up in sacred and spiritual headdresses and outfits, represented as a mascot.
Arianne Eason, assistant professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley said, “The results highlight the importance of considering the unique and multifaceted aspects of identity, particularly when seeking to understand Native people’s attitudes and experiences.”
It is never okay to dress up as another race or culture; that is a person’s identity and not some fun costume you get to wear on Halloween for a few hours. It is one thing to take part in a culture correctly by understanding it and respectfully practicing it, but to dress up as a marginalized group that we continue to mistreat and let suffer is incredibly offensive.
If you still cannot see what is wrong with Native American mascots and costumes, you should read up more on Native American history. To sum it up, when European settlers first arrived there were over 10 million Natives living here. Their estimated population in 1900 was under 300,000. Many of them were killed by diseases brought over, but many were also killed in an intentional genocide.
The Holocaust museum outlines the major points of this genocide: “In the late 1800’s, blankets from smallpox patients were distributed to Native Americans in order to spread [the] disease. There were several wars, and violence was encouraged. For example, European settlers were paid for each Penobscot person they killed. In the 19th century, 4,000 Cherokee people died on the Trail of Tears, a forced march from the southern U.S. to Oklahoma. In the 20th century, civil rights violations were common, and discrimination continues to this day.”
So not only is it wrong to dress up as a race or culture because it is harmful to the identity of those people, but it is also incredibly disrespectful to dress up as victims of genocide caused by this country’s colonizers. Would you dress up as a Holocaust survivor? Would you look a Native American person in the eye and tell them their centuries of culture and sacred rituals are all but a costume to you?
We continue to marginalize Native Americans. This was clear when we wanted to build the Dakota Access Pipeline through sacred grounds that we had forced them onto in the first place. We wanted to continue corrupting the little stolen land we left them with.
How can we use them as costumes and mascots while we continue the centuries of harm and racism against them? It is the smaller acts such as dressing up as a Native person that makes us more comfortable with the larger acts, such as bulldozing through sacred grounds.
That is why it is so important to start small and eliminate the need to use them as our mascots and costumes so we can deal with the bigger problems. They are humans that deserve to be treated with respect and that responsibility rests with every company, sports team and individual.
Once again Meredith…..well done!!