It seems that the question is not whether students receive compensation but how much. I have recently taken a human relations class at St. Cloud State University. In this class, we have discussed how the status quo of our government and other institutions have been glorified and have manipulated the people of this country. One particular area of concern is the problem of stereotypes placed on Native Americans by the use of mascots. In this letter, I will briefly explain to you how stereotypes of Native Americans, through mascots, create problems in our schools, in non-Indian people's views of Indians, and why we need the NCAA as well as other institutions such as high schools and professional sports teams to ban these mascots altogether.
Mascots create poor attitudes among Indian students.
They have the highest dropout rates, highest suicide rates and a lack of motivation that can be traced in great part to the feelings of disgrace and humiliation that Indians suffer from their continual confrontations with negative stereotypical thinking about them from non-Indian students. This phenomenon is not unrelated to the mascots and nicknames put on them. Stereotypical views of Native Americans have been placed on them since we can remember. Indians have been looked at as being wild savages who scalp white people. That kind of attitude is exploited throughout most of our history books in our schools.