Cheap Political Stunt, Or Good P.R. ?

[Bro. Curtis]

Six members of the Chippewa Cree business council that governs the tribe agreed to meet with USA TODAY Sports this week. They sat in their chairs in council chambers and told about the tribe’s dealings with the Original Americans Foundation, which they said is sensitive to preserving tribal culture.

“Our tribe is the poorest in Montana,” council member Gerald Small said, “but we are the richest in culture.”

Vice chairman Ted Whitford said the Chippewa Cree received a letter from Don Wetzel Sr. that told how his father, the late Walter “Blackie” Wetzel, a leader of the Blackfeet Nation, designed the Indian head logo of the Washington team. The letter, addressed to tribal chairman Morsette, says Snyder “has been awakened to our issues” and “wants to partner with Tribes to honor our history and culture, and to help us improve our Tribal Communities.” (The letter does not mention that Bill Wetzel, Blackie’s grandson and Don’s nephew, vehemently opposes the team name and wants it changed.)

“So let us not forget that an American Indian from the State of Montana created that logo,” says the letter, which calls opposition to the Washington team name “political propaganda from organizations and persons who have the time and money to pursue reform agendas such as removing our likeness and skin color from team names and logos, while many of our communities continue to suffer every day!


http://www.greatfallstribune.com/st...ins-donate-playground-montana-tribe/13427701/

 

[JamesL]

Along these lines.....a while back there was a thread about some recent proposals for resolution at the SBC annual meeting.
http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?p=2110503&highlight=backward+indians#post2110503


One of them contained this:

Be it further resolved that the Southern Baptist Convention view the mascot of the Washington “Redskins” as racist and disrespectful

My response was this:

So what? If that's the sentiment, then the convention can refrain from propping up a racist mascot to represent it (us).

But who really considers it racist anyway? A bunch of backward Indians?

And before anyone hurls an insult at me for that one, I am Indian. My grandfather was on the rolls of an Indian tribe (Blackfoot/Blackfeet). My father would have been, except that it was more acceptable to be white back in the 30s and 40s, so his mother wouldn't do it. She kept him off the Indian rolls and enrolled him in school as a white.

I get sick and tired of my fellow tomahawk swingers wanting to have their cake and eat it too. They want to keep their isolated patches of land so that they can run high-profit casinos, have tax-free everything, houses for $1.00 and get monthly payments for going to school...

then engage in stirring up just enough dust to make everybody else think they're downtrodden and humiliated - All the while laughing their way to the bank.

And believe me. I am intimately acquainted with some of this, as some of my own family engages in it.

My brother's ex-wife is a Creek Indian and remarried a fellow Creek Indian; and they are both on the rolls. They bought a house for $1.00, get cost of living subsidies out the wazoo, and my nephew gets paid $980.00 per month for going to school - over and above the free tuition and books. One grand a month, just for spending cash because he's supposedly been mistreated. Baloney

And that is what is at the heart of sentiments like this. They get unsuspecting idiots on their pitiful bandwagon of outcry so they can get paid. Nothing more, nothing less.

I was not aware that one from my own tribe designed the logo for the Redskins. Kind of cool, as my family lineage goes to Montana, where there are still a considerable number bearing our name.

However, I'm skeptical of anything those money grubbing vultures are doing. I don't consider it a political stunt at all. Whether they are publicly agreeing or crying for change, it's a financial stunt if anything.

I recently found out from my sister that there is a push for reform, to make current Blackfeet Indians who are NOT on the rolls to become eligible to be. This would make me eligible, where I have been ineligible since before I was born.

But they can have their oil, and their casinos, and whatever else they've bilked the American public out of. These stunts from Indians are almost certainly nothing but a maneuver to continue to portray us as beaten down, victimized, hapless, helpless. A huge guilt trip.

And it seems that nothing says "I'm sorry" better than money

 

[Bro. Curtis]

Thanx for the response. I never met my grandfather, he died on a reservation up in Quebec. He was a wife-beatin' drunk, so I never was introduced to my Native Canadian family members. I don't have any desire to seek benefits, and I don't even know the name of his tribe, though I could find out easily.