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Chief Illiniwek Essay, Research Paper

The Struggle for Chief Illiniwek

Imagine going to a University of Illinois sporting event and not seeing Chief

Illiniwek perform at half time. This may soon be the case. Many Native Americans feel

that the symbol of Chief Illiniwek portrays a racist stereotype, but because Chief Illiniwek

represents the pride for athletics, as well as respect for the University of Illinois itself, he

should not be dismissed as mascot and swapped with some common, unoriginal

replacement. The dismissal of the chief would be an outrage.

The tradition of Chief Illiniwek was started on October 30, 1926, during a football

game against the University of Pennsylvania(Beckham 1). Also according to Beckham,

Lester Leutweiler, who portrayed the first Chief Illiniwek, was chosen because he had

studied Native American dance and leather work as a boy scout. Leutweiler made the first

Chief Illiniwek custom and created the first dance(1). Of all the students that have

portrayed Chief Illiniwek, only one was a female. The second student who portrayed

Chief Illiniwek was Webber Borchers. Borchers was the first student who portrayed the

chief to wear an authentic Native American outfit. He traveled to a South Dakota

reservation, where he stayed for a couple months, and an elderly Native American woman

and her apprentice hand crafted the outfit for him.

On September 25, 1982, Sioux Chief Frank Fools Crow traveled to the University

of Illinois with fellow Sioux elders Anthony Whirlwind Horse and Joe American

Horse(Welker 1). Chief Frank Fools Crow was considered the greatest Native American

spiritual leader of the nineteenth century. During half time ceremony, Chief Fools Crow

gave the University of Illinois the regalia that are currently worn by Chief Illiniwek(Welker

1). The regalia were Chief Fools Crow’s own, which was handcrafted by his wife. Many

say Chief Fools Crow was proud to present the University of Illinois with the gift because

his work and his wife’s would be shared and be seen by many.

“The power and the ways are given to us to be passed on to others. To think

anything else is pure selfishness. We get more by giving them away, and if we do not give

them away, we lose them,” the highly respected Chief Fools Crow once stated(Welker 1).

Sadly enough, Chief Fools Crow passed away in 1989(Smith 1). The dance Chief

Illiniwek performs is a pow wow dance, which is a way of meeting together, to join in

dancing, singing, visiting, renewing old friendships, and making new ones. As stated on

http://www.geocities.com, Chief Illiniwek’s dance is a type of Oglala-Lakota Sioux dance

called Fancy dance, which is celebratory in nature, has no religious, war, or ceremonial

significance. The origin of pow wow is believed to be the societies of the Poncha and

other Southern Plains tribes(1). These dances may have had different meaning in the past,

but today they are social dances. Although dance styles and content have changed, their

meaning and importance has not. The dance consists of two main parts, the downfield

dance and the solo dance. The Chief performs the dance with the Marching Illini during

what is called the Three in One. The Three in One consists of three traditional University

of Illinois songs; “Pride of the Illini”, “March of the Illini”, “Hail to the Orange”(Beckham

1). This celebrated tradition has been performed at the conclusion of every half time show

in Memorial Stadium for nearly seventy-five years.

On October 16, 1998 Charlene Teters, founder of anti-chief movement, spoke at

the University YMCA(Chavez 1). The majority of those who attended were white males

and Latinos. She was one of three Native American students recruited to the University

of Illinois, to pursue her bachelor’s in art, from the Art Institute of Native

Americans(”Sculpture” 1). She is the Senior Editor for Indian Artist Magazine and is a

Spokane Indian. She discovered that the campus was insensitive to Native American

students. She found degrading images of the Chief; such as a bar that is called Home of

the Drinking Illini that has a picture of a falling intoxicated Indian, toilet paper with the

Chief’s face on every sheet, and a door mat with the Chief’s face on it which was worn out.

The reason Teters started the anti-Chief movement was for her kids. She did not

say in what year, but she took her two kids to a basketball game and during the half time

show she noticed her kids slouch into their chair like they wanted to disappear. What they

saw was the Chief, which they had always been taught to hold in high honor, making a

fool of himself and thus embarrassing Native Americans. At the following home game

Teters, by herself, decided to protest and she was treated without any respect. People spit

on her, kicked her, and the media tried to ridicule her(Chavez 1). All this backfired and

she won the support that she needed to start and continue to fight against the Chief. She

has described how and why she and many others feel that the Illiniwek type of activities,

symbols, logos, regalia, mascots, and many inauthenticities are blows to Indian pride and

self-esteem since they constitute non-respect of important rituals.

Team nicknames and mascots are surprisingly controversial issues, but it is rarely

hard to figure out the right answer. Eisenberg states that to detractors, he is “MC

Hammer meets

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