Can Colleges and Tribes Build Relationships by Retiring Native Mascots?

The New York Times has reported that about 1,900 athletics teams in the United States, including many at higher education institutions, still carry derogatory or racist Native American names. At a time when those institutions and their sports teams are being asked to reconsider their Native mascot -- or, better yet, have decided to remove them on their own accord -- Miami University is an example of how this hard decision can actually serve as an opportunity to create or strengthen relationships between colleges and Tribal Nations.

Until 1996, Miami University was among the institutions that used a derogatory term for our athletics mascot. We understand the challenges that come with changing an identity that has stood for decades and was engrained in the experiences of thousands of students, but true leaders know that doing what is right is not always easy. Over the past five decades, Miami University and the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma have forged a partnership which rests on a foundation of personal openness and trust, we have been able to create a relationship that is not only mutually beneficial, but also one in which each of us feels as though we are getting the better end of the deal. This relationship is authentic to the institutional principles upon which the university was founded and representative of the values that both the Tribe and the university look to uphold.

Both of us who wrote this essay grew up in an era when racist mascots went unquestioned and had been normalized by society. "Indians" were the mascot for Doug's high school as well as the professional baseball team in Cleveland near Greg's hometown. When then Chief of the Miami Tribe Forest Olds visited Miami University in 1972, launching a nearly 50-year relationship, university officials asked for the Tribe's permission to continue using its mascot. Tribal leaders agreed.

Yet as the relationship between the two entities grew, the Tribe formally requested, in 1996, that the university change the name. The Miami University Board of Trustees voted to change our mascot to "Swoop" the RedHawk out of respect for the sovereignty of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and in recognition of the ties we had worked hard to forge nearly 25 years earlier.

The process was not seamless. The university received significant pushback from our alumni, but the decision to change was, unquestionably, the right one. Removing the name and mascot provided an opportunity for the relationship to expand into new areas not previously explored.

In 2001, the university and the Tribe collaborated to launch the Myaamia Project to advance the Miami Tribe's language and cultural revitalization effort, ultimately deepening our partnership in learning. This new initiative was in direct response to decades of national policy and historical events that significantly impeded the ability of the Miami Tribe to preserve is most precious resource, its language and culture. The project began with one employee and has since evolved to the Myaamia Center, which today employs 16 dedicated staff including its executive director, Daryl Baldwin, who received a MacArthur Fellow "Genius" grant for his research and leadership in revitalizing the Myaamia language.