GATHERING A LIST OF STEREOTYPES
A number of people on the NativeNet maillists are working together to
compile a list of stereotyped products, logos, mascots, and possibly place
names that exploit Native American peoples. We would like your help in
adding to, adjusting, focusing, or correcting information that we've gathered
so far, and would welcome your comments. If you'd like to respond, you can
send your post to the NatChat maillist at <natchat@gnosys.svle.ma.us> or
to Jim Postema at <postema@cobber.cord.edu>.
POSTING PROCEDURES
Since the list is rather long, I'll be sending it in a separate posting.
What I'd like to do here is explain the procedure I'll follow from here on
out with this list. Because it is growing, I think I'll have to start
breaking it up into categories like "sports mascots" or "commercial logos"
and post chunks of it separately, after this. That way, too, we can focus
on certain kinds of stereotypes--I know, for example, that there are a lot
of colleges and universities that use N.A. mascots that we haven't included,
mainly because we haven't yet focused on that kind of category specifically.
So in the future, I'll try to gather information in these categories with
separate postings.
Gary Trujillo has said that it may be possible to put this list in
an accessible database somehow, but he doesn't have time to do that. If
someone else has the time and know-how to set up something along these lines,
that would be great.
[ I think I said that I don't have time at the moment to set up and maintain
the database. However, if others want to handle the maintenance, I may be
able to set things up so that you can create and maintain it all. --Gary ]
GOALS FOR THE LIST
Eventually, I think we will try to publish this list in Native American
publications and in national newspapers and journals. To focus our efforts,
I think that at some point we should try to come up with the 10 or 20 most
noxious stereotypes that we find, and publicly label these as exploitative,
racist, and derogatory.
I'm think that before we do that, however, it might be interesting to
try to send some kind of group letter to each organization that uses a
stereotype for gain, stating our position, asking what their reasons are for
using the stereotype, and asking for a response in the form of a promise of
some kind to cease spreading that stereotype. If a company or school
surprises us by agreeing to stop their logo or stereotyped product, that's
great. If not, they'll have fair warning that we'll be giving them some
bad publicity.
It would be good, then, if we could get as many people as possible to
agree to put their names on such letters. So if you want to support this
project, send me a message. I'll post the list of supporters occasionally
to give people a chance to add their names.
IMMEDIATE FUTURE
We're starting finals in a week here, and I have *lots* of papers to
grade (something I'm avoiding now by doing this posting :-) so I thought
I would send out this explanation posting, followed by the list itself.
I may not have time to respond directly to each person who wants to add
info or add their names to the list, but I will save your messages and get
to them when I can, the first week of May.
And, of course, feel free to discuss this list as much as you want on
this maillist, or to send me any advice that you have on how to go about
this.
Thanks--
Jim Postema
postema@cobber.cord.edu
[ I would hope that contributions from folks in Canada would also be
welcome in this list, since the American and Canadian cultures have
so much in common, and produce similar attitudes about the aboriginal
peoples of both countries. The NativeNet lists have been established,
among other reasons, to help demonstrate the common problems faced by
the indigenous peoples of various parts of the world. In this case,
however, I suspect that limiting the survey to North America would be
best, since stereotypes are very much a product of specific cultures,
and cross-cultural comparisons across a broad range of cultures is not
the primary purpose of this exercise. I am pleased, BTW, to note that
Jim has included the "Edmonton Eskimos" the Quebec TV Doritos ad, and
Toronto's "Apache Burgers" in his list. --Gary ]