Please, if you can do anything to help, do so. I know NHLchirps has partnered with cutting edge phone cases to help raise money for the team and their families. all proceeds go to Humboldt. the link can be found on NHLchirps’ twitter and Instagram, I have also provided it here. They provide cases for most phones, both Samsung and iphones.
Listen im super white so i dont really feel confident talking too much about this since i dont know what racism is like. But native americans and the whole history about the us is touchy as Hell, mostly because its an ongoing thing, STILL. They never had any form of justice and then people go around using names like Washington redskins and Cleveland indians etc, making it ’cool’ and i guess whitewashing it – without recognizing any of the history or issues in place. If anyone wants to go off please do because im really not educated enough in this subject (im not even american)
I AM american, but also a White, so if anyone feels like I’m talking out of place here on Native issues pls let me know!!
The logo itself is Racist and not just “insensitive” because to use a human being (especially a Native person in their ceremonial clothing) as a logo is to dehumanize them. Essentially you’re turning a real life group of people into a mascot, a THING, and disrespecting not only them but their culture and traditions.
In the US especially this is a Big Problem, as the disrespect for Native People has been a huge problem for as long as we white people have been here stealing land that wasn’t ours and being huge dicks to people who were here first. And there has never been any sort of move by the government or by white people in general to fix any of the shit we fucked up in the years since we arrived. (And no Reservations don’t count, you can’t take a People from their land, shove them all into a tiny percentage of what they once had, offer no resources or help, and call it a day)
Anyway the Blkhwks logo is racist as hell, and no person, Native or otherwise, should be dehumanized and used as a mascot or logo for any White People thing.
As a Native American, I’m going to agree with the above and also add: using us in these caricature forms also promotes prejudice and stereotyping that is incredibly harmful to us as a people.
Basically, the B-Hawks, R*dskins, Indi*ns, can all get fucked with their racist logos (and names, for the latter two). There are other alternatives, and ignoring our protests about it only further proves that they don’t actually understand OR care about the problem.
Also to add, but Indi*ns fans don’t just have the logo. They dress up as the logo.
The Br*ves do a tomahawk chop motions to a made up native sounding chant. It’s really gross.
I was gonna say to be fair I hadn’t seen H*wks fans do this but I literally just googled it. Oh also I should say, I didn’t have to google like “h*wks fans being racist” this literally just came up when I googled h*wks fans.
The problem is we’re not just taking the logos and using them as gross racist caricatures, which is pretty nasty in and of itself, but we’re also taking and belittling all of these aspects as a part of sports culture to cheer on teams, and that’s pretty disgusting too. Like there are literally people up there in red face to support their team, and we are using significant items like the tomahawk or a headdress to dress up to support the team.
Anyways yeah the entire logo thing is concretely connected to a massive amount of anti-native racism in sports.
There are two bones in your lower leg. One’s big and buff and one’s pretty wimpy. When you walk, that big tibia takes ~80% of your weight of impact, and the fibula only has to take the remaining 20%.
But skaters place their weight differently over their feet. In principle a hockey player has 100% of their weight shifted forward onto their tibia.
You can actually see the implications of this in practice. If you break your fibula, 20% of the weight-bearing is gone, and you won’t really be able to walk. But a hockey player who cracks their fibula can and will keep skating almost without noticing something’s wrong. This happens pretty damn often when they block shots. You’ll see them skate easily over to get checked out, step up onto the hallway floor, and then suddenly slump over, with medical staff helping them limp off down the hallway.
I hear people saying, “oh, guess he’s fine!” when hockey players get up and appear to be skating okay: nah. And when a player wants to return to the ice: they may genuinely feel better skating but be too injured to walk.
And over time, if you’re in the weight-bearing position for skating more often than walking, and are skating from a young age, yes, that affects the shape of your weight-bearing bones and external appearance of your legs and feet. I don’t have a survey on hockey players’ shapely ankles compared to the normal population in front of me at the moment, but every single skater I see could be identified by their ankles
I thought this was going to be someone condescendingly explaining hockey to me but this is so informative and well written and I trust you with all my bones now.
Steel Phoenix Studios 