[Music] so I'm happy to share my perspective on mascots for me the bottom line I think we should just do away with human mascots period they're on a spectrum and some are worse than others Redskins obviously there's a history and although there are competing explanations of where that term came from at least one of the dominant theories is that it came from a bounty placed on Native people and scalping them for bounty leaving them with a the two most common defenses I hear about using Native mascots are that hey we think natives are really cool warriors like Spartans and Trojans and things like that and so we're honoring them and the other is I found a native person who said it doesn't bother them at all so you should hush so first of all remember that the hometown fans when they put on full war paint and chicken feather headdresses and things like that are these guys honoring or are they just kind of plan Halloween and I would say that most of the time they're just playing Halloween even something like an eagle feather which has spiritual significance in most tribes is an important sacred item a bird that flies higher than all others a way to honor somebody it used to be that each eagle feather was earned with a military deed or other great deed for the people having that kind of turned into Sheol or appropriated misrepresented whether it's a Victoria's Secret model or a mascot for a sports team often rubs people the wrong way somehow we need to have ethics around this and many other issues at the center of our national sports culture because a lot of young people look up to our professional athletes and the teams they play for and by putting racially divisive things at the center of our national pastime you are teaching people to appropriate not to listen to marginalized groups and to be offensive with regard to finding a native person who says it doesn't bother them they're out there but I don't know if you listen to country music there's a Gretchen Wilson song redneck woman I'm a redneck woman I know high-class broad does that mean I get to call every white woman I meet redneck woman and if somebody's offended say you have no right to be offended because Gretchen Wilson loves that label so if you can find a native person who says doesn't bother me that doesn't mean you can ignore all the people who say it does and most Native people say it does over 100 tribes have passed resolutions formally repudiating the use of native imagery and mascots for sport teams the National Congress of American Indians which represents all of the federally recognized tribes has passed a formal resolution repudiating the use of native imagery and mascots and so it's important that we get the multiple perspectives the ways we do that is with education conversations recruiting and developing a diverse workforce that has men and women people from all kinds of racial backgrounds and groups and we can all learn from each other there are a lot of different ways that we can do this we have to listen