Honour Who?
Atlanta Braves,
Names to honour the gladiators of the day, powerful names.
Names to make you picture the Brave First Nation, the powerful Native American, the strong Indian.
Mascots wearing fluorescent yellow, orange, blue, and green feathers in their headdress, leftover acid trip hallucination, or was it the mushrooms?
Dancing wildly, wielding that ever so famous foam-filled tomahawk, a weapon that makes you…well…giggle, just a bit
Dancing, beating its mouth making that familiar sound that draws you back to your childhood, you know the sound, think back to Saturday mornings and the Bugs Bunny show.
The stands come alive.
Thousands and thousands of nerf tomahawks cut the air up and down in unison,
as the tens of thousands of fans for a brief second, relive the fond memories of playing cowboys and Indians in their innocent youth.
Guess which one I always was!!!
Cowboys and Indians, funny the games kids play.
As I look back in vaults in which I keep, catalogue, and categorize my own childhood memories, I wonder…
Funny how I can’t seem to recall the neighbourhood kids playing
Blacks and KKK,
little white caps made from newspaper,
Mom’s best white bed sheets,
knotted up skipping ropes for a noose.
Nope, can’t recall that game at all,
but I do remember kids coming back from K-mart with those
GOD DAMNED fluorescent feathers, guns and hats.
Remember the rolls and rolls of red ticker-tape caps….mmm…mmm…mmm the sweet sulphur scent of our youth.
But I digress.
The sea of fans with their cute toy tomahawks,
and there is always that one person, scratch that…
hundreds of people,
with the fluorescent face paint, that would make a clown jealous,
matching headdress from birds caught just a little too close to the latest nuclear fallout, that somehow instantly are transformed into the almighty brave,
after all,
isn’t that how it worked with the REAL INDIANS?
News flash folks.. don’t tell anyone, but,
that’s all make believe.
Seriously, now this might be hard for you to get through your media, no SOCIETAL, brainwashed melon, but picture it.
How the hell could a Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, or Mohegan walk trough the dense brush wearing a nuclear reactive turkey on their head?
But wait…
There is one nation that looks like the brave, the warrior, the noble savage, of whom you idolize.
He is from the most well known tribe in the
as seen from coast to coast, the tribe that’s known the world over.
This brave you so eagerly honour and strive to be is from the Hollywood Tribe.
Yes, that fictitious character created from the imagination of two popular Americans we all know,
famous “what sells”
and his older, more famous brother, “Let’s keep a race down”
The racial stereotypes these two brothers have perpetrated and perpetuated
have caused a rip in the fabric of time,
in the quilt of culture,
in the identity of…us
I have seen these stereotypes weave their way into the collective culture of my people, my Mi’kmaq Brothers,
Mohegan sisters,
Walula, Tillamook, Coos, and Tututni cousins.
Cultures implanted, borrowed, and shared,
impregnation, assimilation..working just fucking fine.
You want to honour us?
Remove these names from your teams.
Begin to realize, using them,
the Braves, Indians, Redskins,
is no honour..
DISHONOUR!
Forget the
first introduced by the great showman and metal of honour winner
Buffalo Bill Cody.
Back in his day, white folk would dress up as the Hollywood Tribe
and circle the pioneers’ wagons in the show.
Not because that’s how it was, but because
that’s how it HAD to be.
You see… they performed in a ring, horses going round and round.
Amazing how
culutralistic facts, naw..Eurolistic fiction.
White guys, dressing up as Natives, 100 years ago,
interesting how time stands still when you want it to.
So,
next time you stand in line,
tomahawk in one hand,
ticket in the other,
fluorescent face paint with matching headdress,
pounding on you face to make that goddamn sound,
do me a small favour…pound just a little bit harder,
cause you sure as hell are not honouring me.
