Printer Friendly Version Countering the Assault of Indian Mascots in School By Dr. Cornel Pewewardy With another school year upon classroom teachers comes the reality and challenge of educating a multicultural society. Teaching multiculturally requires examining sensitive issues and topics. It requires looking at historical and contemporary events from a multicultural perspective. Multicultural teaching encourages students to investigate institutional racism, classism, and sexism and how societal institutions have served different populations in discriminatory ways. Educators can help students examine their own biases and stereotypes related to different cultural groups.
Teachers have a professional responsibility to eliminate racism in all aspects of school life.
Accordingly, teachers should not ignore multicultural issues in school. Instead, they should become one of those teachable moments in which issues are confronted and discussed. Accurate information can begin to displace the myths that many hold about others. The purpose of this paper is to examine one of the most obvious forms of racism in schools the usage of Indian mascots in school-related activities and events. Moreover, this paper discusses who created stereotypical Indian mascots, how our society reinforces and accepts those stereotypes, how negative stereotypes have affected the relationship between Native Americans and the rest of society, and finally provides solutions how we can eliminate these mascots from schools.