Student Forum takes advantage of Washington to wrestle with political system

UMSM steering committee members prepare the altar for worship during Thursday’s opening worship. GBHEM photo by Vicki Brown.

By Vicki Brown*

Some 438 students, campus ministers, and young adult seminarians scattered across the nation’s capital during Student Forum 2008 to learn how they could use their voices to fight for just public policies.

From a panel on the racism of mascots held at the National Museum of the American Indian to an Anacostia River boat tour that was part of a trip that focused on the environment, the students met with lobbyists, legislative aides, United Methodist agency officials, and a tenants’ group that works for equitable housing.

Students attending the May 22-25 annual leadership development event for United Methodist college students said the 11 immersion trips were eye-opening. The event is sponsored by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry and organized by the United Methodist Student Movement. Campus ministers attended an immersion trip that covered several aspects of engaging student leaders in change.

“I didn’t even know what the terms that are used for mascots really meant,” said Heather Haauk, who attended the panel discussion about the legal efforts to cancel the trademark registration of the Washington Redskins National Football League team. The panelists told the students that the word redskin refers to the red blood on the skins or scalps collected by bounty hunters, not skin color.

Suzan Shown Harjo of the Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee tribe, who was one of the plaintiffs in the original lawsuit against the Washington football team, said the stereotypes fostered by mascots are the “prism within which all our rights are seen.”

“These images are doing emotional violence to our people. We are not going to be at all polite about it,” she said, adding that more than two-thirds of the Native American mascots have been eliminated in American sports. “There are about 900 left, but there were over 3,000 when we started this work.”

She was joined by Jeanne Eagle Bull-Oxendine, an Oglala Lakota and mother of two who described her family’s efforts to get the Fort Belvoir Elementary to enforce a dress code that prohibits wearing of anything that psychologically harasses students. They want that ban applied to Redskins apparel.

“My son came home in tears wanting to know why his teacher wore a Washington Redskins shirt to an assembly that was supposed to teach students about respecting each other,’’ Bull-Oxendine said.

The original lawsuit, in which Harjo was a plaintiff, argued that the Redskins trademark was disparaging to Native Americans and that the registration should be cancelled under the Lanham Act, a law that prohibits trademarks that bring a group into contempt or dispute. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board agreed, District Court for D.C. overturned on several grounds, including that the plaintiffs waited too long to file. The court found all but one of the petitioners could have brought suit in 1967 or shortly thereafter when the trademark was filed.

So the petition was refiled in 2006 with Native American plaintiffs who are all 18 to 24 years old, including Marcus Briggs-Cloud, a Miccosukee of Maskoke Nation. Briggs-Cloud, who is a member of the United Methodist Student Movement Steering Committee which organizes Student Forum, joined the panel at the museum.

Briggs-Cloud said he is a high school counselor in Oklahoma and has seen the effect stereotypes have on his students.

“They walk around without confidence in themselves. They don’t know the language, they don’t know the culture. My kids don’t want to be Indian because they see these stereotypes: John Wayne targets, smoke shop Indians, and football mascots,’’ Briggs-Cloud said.

Students who attended the panel, which was followed by a private tour of the National Museum of the American Indian, said they now see this as a serious issue.

“For me, it wasn’t something I thought about, but hearing the speakers talking about how they felt and why they were offended was really important,” said Shari E. Damaris-McKee. But she and Eric Jergensen, both Washington State students, said they would definitely report on what they learned to their campus ministries and to other students.

Jergensen said he knew The United Methodist Church recommended conferences not be held in cities where there is a Native American sports mascot, and said he appreciated the panel confronting the issue head-on and using the event to teach students about why the issue is important.

The Rev. Meg Lassiat, director of Student Ministries, Vocation, and Enlistment of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, said Harjo and other prominent people made an effort to take part in the immersion trips because they felt strongly about speaking to young leaders of the church.

“We wanted to take advantage of the location to provide a different kind of leadership development experience and the work of others in the United Methodist connection allowed us to do that,” Lassiat said. “We are so grateful to all the church agency staff who put in so much time organizing the trips and working directly with the students.”

Susan Burton, director for seminar design at the General Board of Church and Society, organized the immersion trips, which also included participants from other denominations, as well as agency staff for The United Methodist Church, included Jim Winkler, general secretary of GBCS, and Suanne Ware-Diaz, associate general secretary of the General Commission on Religion and Race. Staff from the Women’s Division, the Board of Global Ministries, Bread for the World, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Children’s Defense Fund, and many more organizations all took part.

“Our hope is that every seminar will lead to some action. We try to encourage critical thinking about how these issues can be resolved,” Burton said. “One of the most exciting things is to see young people use their voices, to equip them with the tools to move deeper, to work on changing the systems.”

The students did take action Sunday morning, writing nearly 200 letters to football team owner Daniel Snyder asking him to change the team’s mascot.

To learn more about UMSM, visit www.umsm.org.

*Brown is associate editor and writer, Office of Interpretation, General Board of Higher Education and Ministry.