Kill off the Indians?(NCAA bans the use of native American nicknames and mascots )

The NCAA announced in August that during postseason tournaments it will ban the use of 18 Native American nicknames and mascots it considers "hostile or abusive." Starting on February 1, 2006, college teams with Indian mascots will also not be allowed to host postseason events. This could signal the death knell for many rich school traditions.

Chief Illiniwek, figurehead of the University of Illinois' Fighting Illini, is perhaps our nation's most beleaguered mascot. Praised by supporters as a brave and positive symbol, the Chief is called a racist stereotype by critics. Jesse Jackson called for his demise in 1990. Activist groups have been organizing annual campus protests against Chief Illiniwek since 1989 (a 2004 sit-in lasted 33 hours). The issue has sparked lawsuits, and has influenced university appointments and student and local political elections.

University defenders have emphasized that Illiniwek is a noble 80-year university tradition. He appears only at half time at home football and basketball games, dressed in buckskins and ceremonial headdress, performing an elaborate and physically demanding Indian dance like those performed at Indian powwows. But more than a dozen colleges have recently capitulated to censorious pressures and changed their Indian names, and the tide does not seem likely to turn. The Fighting Illini, the Florida State Seminoles, and the North Dakota Fighting Sioux are likely to be the final hold-outs.

Descendants of Vikings, Yankees, 49ers, Sooners, Orangemen, Spartans, Knights, Padres, Rangers, and Mariners are expected to show a sense of humor when they are adopted as lucky charms. Indians generally also have a sense of humor--in one recent poll, 90 percent of Native Americans did not object to the term Redskins--but lefty ideologues are humorless. They have anointed Indians with permanent victim status and taught them to be perpetually aggrieved. No romance or pleasure in Indian history is allowed.

In 1995, members of the Peoria tribe, the only direct descendants of the Illini, gave their approval of Chief Illiniwek. Then perennial lecturing by agitators took its toll. In 2000, the Peoria tribe passed a resolution requesting that the university cease using the Chief.

When I attended ...