Charlene Teeters Native American Activist Charlene Teeters speaks at Colby College about civil rights for her people. (Photo Greg Foster)

"It is a very hostile environment for Native people," Charlene Teeters of the Spokane nation of Washington state told a gathering of Colby College students and alumni Saturday at the Ralph J. Bunch Symposium of lectures.

"Ignorance out there is our biggest enemy."

Unbeknown to the conveners of the symposium, Teeters' visit to Maine from the West Coast was a timely one, in light of the current controversy in Wiscasset and other places in the state over mascots and logos Native people say are demeaning and racist.

"Why don't they honor any other peoples?" Teeters asked, following her moving presentation of the Native Americans' plight, referring to using "Redskins" as a mascot.

Referring to an unwillingness on some people's part to let go of what she calls derogatory names and images, she said, "It is a platform for people to act out their ignorance."

"Redskins refers to a time when people would make money killing Native Americans," she said. People could make money on body parts and among other atrocities, make pelts out of their skin.

Teeters, a mother, artist and teacher, doesn't fit the stereotype of an activist. Nothing could have been further from her mind when she decided to get her degree several years ago at the University of Illinois. There she encountered some events that greatly offended her and her two teenage children.

Her children felt shamed and deeply hurt by the antics of a costumed Chief Illiniwek, the traditional mascot for the school during a University of Illinois football game. At a subsequent game she wore a placard saying: "Indians are not mascots. They are human beings."

For that simple act she received physical attacks. From that point on, her life changed irrevocably. Hate crimes became a common occurrence for her and her children from unpleasant phone calls to numerous other forms of harassment.

That has not diminished her perseverance to continue her fight to end the use of Native American mascots and logos in order to raise the dignity and self-worth of her people.

"They are prisons of image and inside there is someone we know," Teeters said. She tried to show how such things which are seemingly innocuous and not intended to be insulting are actually a subtle, or not so subtle, form of genocide.

"It dehumanizes a people and our ancestors' graves are marred,'' she said. Indian mascots contribute to the negative self-images young people have of themselves and their Native culture. "We have the highest teen suicide rate in the country," she said.

Teeters described the firing of fire department employees who, in a parade in New York City, blackened their faces, wore Afro wigs and threw watermelons into the crowd. Mayor Guiliano dismissed them for what he termed a racist act.

"Every day somewhere there are people reddening their faces and it goes unnoticed," she said. "Why can't they see it for what it is."

In public schools today, she said the truth is not being told about the history of Native Americans and that she terms a "process of cultural genocide."

"There are many, many heroes among our people but you won't see it written in the history books."

To have a so-called noble image of an Indian for the school puts them in the past and focuses upon only one or two attributes, she said. Equally offensive to her and to many of her people are the New Agers fascination of them as some kind of super-spiritual beings.

"People play with things that are central to our identity," she said. She referred to eagle feathers as an example which are considered sacred because they are given only as a distinctive honor to someone. Some people never receive one in a lifetime.

A simple thing like using feathers is thus a tradition Native Americans treasure, and they would like to have others honor their traditions as they honor the traditions of other groups of people, she said.

"Distortions are all around us. As long as a dominant culture is allowed to define culture, the Indian will never be as a full-fledged human being."