They are coming for the chop too

[BigRedChief]

The Kansas City Chiefs’ racist “Arrowhead Chop” has flown under the radar. Not anymore. The Kansas City Chiefs’ chant isn’t a tribute to people like me. It’s racist.

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Spoiler!

A self-described lifelong Kansas City Chiefs fan once asked me the meaning of the words that are sung as the crowd performs the “Arrowhead Chop” at Chiefs games, the beloved fan chant made up of a series of literal “oh oh oh”s.

“They don’t mean anything,” I told him, disgusted and annoyed.

“Really, nothing at all?”

My face got hot and I could feel my heart beating fast in my chest. “Nothing,” I repeated.

This is just one example of the uncomfortable situations I deal with as an Acoma Pueblo woman living in the Kansas City area.

This year, my city’s NFL football team, the Chiefs, will be playing San Francisco in the Super Bowl. It has been a 50-year wait for the team, and from the looks of it, they are the favorite to win. Unfortunately, that also means the Arrowhead Chop will be broadcast on millions of screens across the nation, along with fans in headdresses and all that comes with having a team that has a Native American mascot. For years, the national conversation around offensive team mascots that stereotype Native American culture has focused on the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians, while Kansas City’s Chiefs flew under the radar.

Not anymore.

As an educator at Haskell Indian Nations University — the only four-year university for federally-recognized Native tribes — I have done many presentations on the misconceptions about Native American people and the terrible stereotypes that are reinforced by sport mascots like the Chiefs. And every single time it is traumatic to go over the massacres, racism, and genocide carried out against the people indigenous to this country. It is also getting exhausting.

This is the unsanitized truth about American history you probably weren’t taught in school alongside stories of the “noble savage” or fables about peaceful dinners between Natives and Pilgrims on Thanksgiving: European settlers mercilessly raided and killed our people. My own people, the Acoma, Haaku, were attacked by Spanish conquistadors seeking retaliation for an earlier fight that resulted in the deaths of 12 conquistadors. As punishment, they took the right foot of men over the age of 25. They stole many of our women and sold them off as slaves in Mexico. This is not the only massacre rarely taught in schools. There were many California tribes that were decimated due to the gold rush of the mid-1800s. The San Francisco football team, the 49ers, is a direct reference to this period of history.

Today, erasure and oppression of Natives only continues. The movement of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, #MMIW, has been going on for years, but the media mostly ignored it until the killing of pregnant Savanna Grey Wind and the taking of her baby in North Dakota in 2017. Meanwhile, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has reported murder as the third leading cause of death for American Indian Women and Alaskan Natives between the ages of 10-24. In 2016, according to an Urban Indian Health Institute report, there were 5,712 cases of missing American Indian and Alaskan Native women. Of that total, only 116 were logged into the Department of Justice database.

Then there is the fact that Native Americans are killed in police encounters at a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Where is that story being told?

The historical traumas Native Americans face have manifested through loss of our people and the loss of our land. And while we have been told by dominant society to “get over it” and to assimilate, all we Native people want to do is remember and honor those who gave their lives so we could be here. We don’t need to be reminded that general American society is so disinterested in, and disrespectful of, our culture that they choose to perform nonsense chants, while costumed in our clothes, to minimize our entire race into a goofy caricature for sport.

Too many people don’t care about Native Americans unless they can use our likeness for their companies, cars, or costumes. Many people don’t see the Native headdress unless they are at KC or Washington football games, Halloween parties, or music festivals.

So many of the images used in the Kansas City games — the arrowhead, which is specifically Native American; the horse called “War Paint” they prance around the field before the game; the beating drums; and that tomahawk chop — are used in disrespectful and often bastardized contexts. For example, Native people respect the drum, and that drum is never used in the presence of alcohol. War Paint is used to mark our horses and warriors to protect them. Using our cultural ways to “pump up” your team is disrespectful and racist.

I met a man a couple of months ago in Lawrence, Kansas, who was a member of the Boy Scouts of America’s Tribe of Mic-o-Say, whose members dress up as Native Americans and do powwow dances. The Mic-o-Say are based in Missouri and eastern Kansas and state their mission is “to make ethical choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Scout Law.” The group was founded by H. Roe Bartle, a white man whose Scout moniker “Chief Lone Bear” gave the Kansas City football team its name.

The man I spoke to was also a military veteran. He refused to believe that his dressing up as a Native American is cultural appropriation, instead saying the clothing and dances “honor” Native Americans by continuing their traditions.

I asked him how he feels about people who pretend to be veterans when they are not. That is what the Native headdress equates to: Chiefs went to battle and earned it, much like the medals military veterans earn. But he refused to see the correlation.

It saddens me that the city I work in continues to celebrate the racist “tomahawk chop.” I have heard it at concerts, in commercials for grocery stores. I love Kansas City, especially its diversity. I also worry that this tradition will find another audience of young people who perpetuate it without realizing what it is doing to erase the Native Americans living here.

As part of my classes teaching mass communication, we talk not just about the true history of Native Americans and the impact of stereotypes, but also how we can fix this. Educating students about Native people needs to be a priority in school systems nationwide; educators need to emphasize the real, unsanitized history of how Indigenous people were treated and the problems associated with demeaning stereotypes. Native people need to be included in larger conversations as actual people, not just as entertainment during sports games.

I only hope people will understand this is not about being “politically correct.” It is about understanding and respecting the horrible history our ancestors were subjected to and the policies enacted by the US government to erase our Native identity.

Maybe it is time to start a new tradition of treating all people, including Native Americans, as human beings.

This essay is adapted from commentary in the The Kansas City Star and on KansasCity.com.

Rhonda LeValdo teaches media communications at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas.

https://www.vox.com/first-person/202...fs-kansas-city


KC Star:
https://www.kansascity.com/sports/sp...244153762.html


Kansas City Magazine:
https://www.kansascitymag.com/is-the...s-who-you-ask/

Twitter has its own hashtag
https://mobile.twitter.com/chopisracist

NY Times: Stop the Chop
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/s...hawk-chop.html

[duncan_idaho]

Originally Posted by Wisconsin_Chief

That's the thing, have you heard of any Native American groups speaking out against our name? I sure haven't. I did in the Redskins situation and also regarding the Cleveland Indians and their ridiculous logo, but nothing about the Chiefs, unless I've missed it.

All I've seen is a bunch of virtue signaling white people with too much time on their hands rambling about something nobody else is offended by, trying to ruin something people love to make themselves feel like they're making a difference, when in reality they are doing absolutely nothing good for the world and never will.

The group that was there on Oct 12 included some members of area Native American tribes. That's the only time I recall it recently.

The Chiefs have the benefit of not having a mascot as blatantly racists as Cleveland's Chief Wahoo, or as blatantly appropriating a sacred piece of Native Culture as the University of Illinois' Chief Illiniwek (which featured a headress modeled after the ones worn by Sioux chieftains).

I think they can continue to head off calls for a name change by being careful and thoughtful about traditions.

I get that some people love the chop. They're likely the same people that love doing the wave. I find both silly and played out and refuse to participate in either one, though. So it's hard for me to look at that the same way.

[Wisconsin_Chief]

Originally Posted by duncan_idaho

I get that some people love the chop. They're likely the same people that love doing the wave. I find both silly and played out and refuse to participate in either one, though. So it's hard for me to look at that the same way.

If the chop has to go, so be it. I don't know that they'll ever be able to pull it off, though. The Braves tried to get people to stop a few years ago and failed miserably.

Unless they are going to threaten to actively throw people out of the game, it's going to be really difficult to end it completely.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by tyecopeland

They asked people to do it with a closed fist instead of an open hand.

Not trying to be dense but what exactly would this accomplish?

[Mecca]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Not trying to be dense but what exactly would this accomplish?

You can punch the person in front of you in the back of the head without any accountability.

[Wisconsin_Chief]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Not trying to be dense but what exactly would this accomplish?

Absolutely nothing, just like this entire movement.

[duncan_idaho]

Originally Posted by Wisconsin_Chief

If the chop has to go, so be it. I don't know that they'll ever be able to pull it off, though. The Braves tried to get people to stop a few years ago and failed miserably.

Unless they are going to threaten to actively throw people out of the game, it's going to be really difficult to end it completely.

It's like the headress thing. Or the kickoff song.

Stop playing the song/music that accompanies it. Key is the org just doesn't support it in a public way that can be called out.

[displacedinMN]

Originally Posted by Lzen

Women vanishing? What's that all about?

I have a former coworker who is now a state rep. She is part NA. She talked and has passed legislation to look into the disappearance of young women from tribes in Minnesota. It is never really talked about here, because they are so far away from the cities and news here does not cover that far.

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/tex...sion_year=2018

[Mr_Tomahawk]

Good luck telling Arrowhead to stop...

[Grim]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Not trying to be dense but what exactly would this accomplish?

They were asking fans to emulate the beating of a drum as opposed to a "tomahawk chop".

[ThyKingdomCome15]

If the chop got banned and the stadium did it anyway, it would become a protest. Just letting it go causes a lot less drama.

[KCUnited]

The telecasts show the crowd doing the chop.

I'm indifferent to it but wonder how big of a ticket item it really is when its clearly being televised.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by Mr_Tomahawk

Good luck telling Arrowhead to stop...

Yeah, it's one thing for the organization to state they don't want fans to do it. But 80,000 drunk passionate fans are gonna cheer how they want. It'll happen even if they don't provide the stadium music that normally accompanies it.

[ThyKingdomCome15]

Originally Posted by KCChiefsFan88

It’s insulting to watch the Washington Commies… bring back the Redskins… it was a great name.

Washington Commies, that's perfect lol. It reflects the situation to a T.

[duncan_idaho]

Originally Posted by Fish

Yeah, it's one thing for the organization to state they don't want fans to do it. But 80,000 drunk passionate fans are gonna cheer how they want. It'll happen even if they don't provide the stadium music that normally accompanies it.

And that's fine, I think.

The organization gets a little cover this way. But maybe they don't feel it is necessary.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Grim

They were asking fans to emulate the beating of a drum as opposed to a "tomahawk chop".

Yeah, that seems...silly. I mean the motion is the same, the "chant" (which is probably the most offensive part) is the same. Seems like they're focused on simulated violence or something, which again, is silly.