There Are No Girls on the Internet - Native People Are #NotYourMascot

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

Why is Washington DC's professional football team changing their offensive name? In part because of people like Jacqueline Keeler, who helped create the #NotYourMascot movement.Go to Pollen Nation's Facebook page to check out Jacqueline's podcast: https://www.pollennationmagazine.com/Follow Jacqueline on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jfkeeler?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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844-844-I-Hart. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHart Women's Sports. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises. of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was hungry. You just understood. That's how personal it got.

Wow. Then after that game seven, Mark keep coming to. He's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Mark's Indigenous People's Day, a day to honor and commemorate Native people and an opportunity to re-examine having a national holiday celebrating Christopher Columbus, a murderer. It's catching on with seven states officially celebrating Indigenous People's Day and more commemorating the day via proclamations. And it's really representative of how a shift in cultural

attitudes can lead to meaningful widespread cultural shift, which brings me to my city's football team name. For as long as I could be a shift, for as long as I could. remember, Washington, D.C.'s professional football team has been a slur, and native activists have been trying to do something about it for years. Dan Snyder, the owner of Washington, D.C.'s professional football team, announced the team would be changing their name earlier this summer. But don't give Snyder too much credit for doing the right thing. It was only after pressure from corporate and political interests banned by years of work by activists that he did anything at all. And we can't talk about the name change without also talking about it.

out those native activists. Their brilliance, their labor, and their ability to imagine that things could be different. In 2014, Jacqueline Keeler created the Not Your Mascot movement on social media to take action against what she calls Native masquetry in sports and all indigenous cultural misappropriations. My name is Jacqueline Keeler, and I am a journalist based on of Portland, Oregon. So what was your upbringing like? Well, I am Native American and both of my parents are in. enrolled in different tribes. My father is Yankton Sioux from South Dakota, and my mother is Navajo from

Arizona. And they actually met in Cleveland, Ohio, through relocation. And Cleveland, Ohio was a relocation center. And there were a number of these around the country, and they were established, starting in the 1950s and going into the 1970s to there was a Congress passed a bill called termination, which was to terminate tribes politically and then to relocate the population to these relocation centers. It sounds quite Arwellian, but they did create a lot of activism. I mean, concentrating, the relocation program was for young people between the ages of 18 and 30, and it basically created these large populations of native young people, and they got busy,

you know, organizing. And I know in Cleveland, that's where the whole fight against Chief Wahoo started. And also the fight with about Columbus Day as well. And so that's the community I was born into an urban, young native community that was really starting to organize and address issues and was also multi-tribal. So what kind of impact would that have on you? When you're part of a family that's an outsider family that has a different history and a different perspective to accepted history. you're constantly as a child being challenged and constantly being fed and taught a critique of society. And I think I described how I did a piece about Thanksgiving a number of years back

and about how my grandmother, my mother, before she even sent me to kindergarten, was, you know, sat down and told me, you're going to hear things about Indian people that aren't true. You know your own family. You know who they are. you know and I mean like things that you're going to hear the Indians are drunks and losers and all this stuff but you know you know your aunts and uncles have gone to college you know that these things are not true you know that it's sort of you're prepped before you go and then you're also told I was told at that age at five the history of the taking of the land and it's it's sort of I described it in one of the pieces I wrote it sort of it takes the wind out of you as even as a five-year-old until until and puts you immediately sort of at odds with America because you feel enraged even as a small child, you know, and you feel like you want to correct that wrong. And so I think being raised in a native family really articulates that for you. Yeah, that kind of foundational grounding of

this is who you are, this is who you come from. This is our culture. You don't have to, You might hear things that aren't true, but you still have that grounding. I feel like family can really be the thing that gives you that. And also this is who they are, Jamie. This is who they really are. Right. And I think that makes you, you know, that outsider perspective makes you cautious, makes you skeptical.

You know, I make, even as a five-year-old, it makes you go, huh, okay. My mom, when I was like in first grade, she was like, don't sing land of the pilgrims pride, sing land of the Indians pride. Yeah, that's something, you know, like when you're a little kid, you're going, you know, to your music class and you have to suddenly sing something different than what all the other kids are singing. And you know you have to because your mom told you to do it. You know what I mean? And it's like, so I'm saying it really softly, but I wasn't going to, you know,

disobey my mother on that line. So I was just like, but, you know, it's, you know, it's one thing to have these internments. family discussions, and it's another thing to act on them when you're the minority, when you're the only Indian kid in your school, and you're learning and being taught things. In a sense, you almost feel like even as a small child, you're being sent in there as a spy, like as someone who is going to collect information who is existing in this other place and coming back. And someday you and your family are going to do something with all that information. Jacqueline went to college at Dartmouth in New Hampshire,

which according to its charter was originally started as a school to educate Native students in the ways of English life. Today, the school's unofficial mascot may be keggy the keg, but back when she was going there, they were called the Indians. So what was the first time the issue of mascots really hit home for you? So it wasn't until I went to college that the mascot issue really came on my radar. And that was I went to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. And we actually, the native students who were incoming freshmen were, freshman week, were given like extra classes on meeting with other native alumni, older alumni.

And basically given the story about the Indian mascot. Dartmouth used to be the Dartmouth Indians. And they had this, you know, a warrior mascot, more of a sort of an eastern woodlands looking mascot. And Dartmouth was originally founded as an Indian school, right? And actually my husband's ancestor, Chief Joseph Brandt and his other grandfather, William Johnson, they both were young Mohawk boys who attended Dartmouth before the Revolutionary War. It was actually, Dartmouth is located in New Hampshire because the founder, L.Azer-Wilock, wanted to place it in a place where it would be accessible to the...

Iroquois Confederacy in upstate New York where they could come and bring their children to be educated. And he wasn't interested in the Indians in Connecticut, who actually one of his students was a Samakam, was a minister. And he was the one who raised the, I think about 2,000 pounds of silver to start the college. He went on a speaking tour in Scotland. And but he didn't want to, His white mentor did not want to help the Indians in Connecticut because he thought they were not real Indians enough for him. But they were becoming too, you know, Christian to, you know, he wanted to go for the more sexy, wild, you know, and powerful Iroquois Confederacy. So that's why Dartmouth is even in New Hampshire. Back when Jacqueline was in college, the issue kind of came down to native students feeling really uncomfortable by the mascot.

and white students just really not getting it. One of the things I did with the support of the alumni was to basically drive up in a truck on a freshman week and just throw out free T-shirts, Darmouth T-shirts with the Dartmouth Indian on them to the freshman class. And my roommate wore hers. She was a white woman from Massachusetts, Irish-American. And that was when I first realized how hard this issue was. to me it was obvious. It was wrong.

You know? Right. And then she, with her actually, um, the, just by circumstance, two Navajo students were on either side of our, our shared dorm room. They had singles. And,

and so, uh, so she was surrounded by basically three Navajos. And we were all trying to tell her like, you know, this is not great. And she just literally could not comprehend. Like, it was impossible for her to comprehend the issue.

And I was all like, and she says, well, it's just a free Dartmouth t-shirt. That's all, you know, and you know how expensive they are, you know, and stuff. And I'm all like, oh, God, you know, this is like nothing I've encountered before. Like the level, their inability to comprehend the issue was profound, you know. And it's at moments like that where you realize your own experiences and where you're coming from is so different, you know, so different. And you just never realized until that moment.

Okay, so flash forward to 2013. How did the Not Your Mascot hashtag come to be? Yeah, so eradicating offensive native mascotry, which we created the hashtag Not Your Mascot and trended it in 2014 during the Super Bowl. And it was started by Native parents from across the country. And we met online on Twitter, mostly. And we found it hard to sort of organize via Twitter. So we set up a Facebook group.

And so EOMM, you can see, is still a Facebook group. It's sort of a private Facebook group because we found that we kept getting sort of trolled by white mascot supporters. So we had to make it private. But yeah, we organized through that and we started creating doing what we called Twitter storms. This was in the fall of 2013. And we were primarily using the hashtag change the mascot, right, or change the name. And suddenly, right, we, we, we, we, we. found that the mascot had been sort of, I don't know, it was being used, and this sounds really

strange, but it was being used by Twitter accounts selling land, real estate in India in the country of India. What? Yeah. So all our tweets were getting buried by these thousands of tweets advertising real estate in India. Yeah. And we really were very suspicious.

We thought it was, we thought it was Dan Snyder, the owner of the water. Washington NFL team. I mean, I wouldn't put it in a... Hiring all, you know, these sorts of troll farms and stuff. Pretty early, you know, usage of it. I think at that time they were still being called. What was it? I can't remember.

But yeah, so we were very suspicious. So we realized we were going into the Super Bowl without a hashtag, right? Without a usable one. And so, I mean, even with all of us, like, putting together the organizing the Native community, both in the United States and Canada, to really tweet our hearts out to try to get this notice to this issue. You know, it really wasn't, we were still getting buried, right? And so, so we thought about it. And she was my friend. She's Cherokee. She came up with, she came up with

the name, not your mascot, right? Which has been used before. I think you can find signs, people using that, you know, back in the 60s and 70s. But we were the first ones to really create a hashtag. And we checked. We did the whole like, yeah, because people later tried to claim, you know, the kind of infighting that happens when there was a successful hashtag, you know. And so we had to do the research. But we kept it secret.

And so we just felt like we liked it. I like it better than change the name, change the mascot because what appealed to me was that it was a taking back. Right. And we are taking this back and we are taking back who we are owning it, right? And so we kept it pretty secret. We basically, we all looked at who our most high profile Twitter followers were at that time. I mean, for some reason, Chuck D was following me. And so we made a list of them all, you know, and we basically contacted them personally. and we told them that we were going to be launching this hashtag, and we were going to do a test run Saturday before,

the night before the Super Bowl, and would they help us and share it with their followers? I think in 2004, January, 2014, I think Twitter was a more innocent place than some way. It is now, several years later. And then we did it again on Sunday. And so that was how we started that. And it was really just not a necessity.

that we created that hashtag. But I've been really happy with how it's grown and been used. I can imagine social media was probably pretty helpful for having this all come together. We were able to utilize Native people on the ground. And the amazing thing about social media was that it really allowed us to organize at a level that we had not been able to do before. The Native community was very dispersed. The majority of the Native people live off the reservation and they live as minorities

amongst minorities, like sometimes the only, like me, the only native kid in your school, so we live quite isolated from each other. And so social media was a great, an amazing boon to helping us organize more effectively and more rapidly. And so when Dad Snyder started that foundation, the original Americans foundation, and I was going around giving money to tribes try to buy support for his mascot. He was flying all over the country in his private plane. And he was doing it very secretively. And so because we were connected with native people across the country, we were able to get people sending us tips and sending us all kinds of things. And we actually used that to, you know, I had some contacts in the media.

And we used that to put stories out about what he was doing. And we basically made him the story. I think if you watch the 2014, he made all these missteps. And the issue around his mascot started. become more of a referendum on him personally. Forbes's Monty Burke noted that the name change issue was made much worse by the fact that people just really did not like Dan Snyder. The original America's foundation, Snyder's paid PR effort to stop conversations about the

name change, was pretty embarrassing. He famously refused to meet with native activists about the name change, and he told USA Today, we'll never change the name. It's that simple. Never. You can use all caps. But after the United States. protests surrounding the deaths of unarmed black people this summer, Dan Snyder pretty much could

not ignore the fact that the climate was changing. And for the first time, the team faced significant financial pressure in addition to protests from activists. A group of investors asked major sponsors like Pepsi and FedEx to pressure him to change the name. Then FedEx Field, the stadium right outside of D.C. and Maryland, where the Washington football team plays, joined the chorus too. Nike pulled Washington football team swag from their website. And in July, the team finally announced they'd be reviewing the name. So how does it feel to know that they're finally dropping this slur from this team name? You know, does it feel like a win for your community?

How are you feeling about it? You know, I didn't feel like we had won. I felt like we had not won the issue. Once again, the lack of understanding, lackability. I felt like we did not actually win the issue. The issue was tabled, right? And what won the issue was Black Lives Matter. And that's what I write about, basically.

And, you know, this has been true before, I would say, I remember asking my uncle, Vine Deloria, Jr., he's a well-known native historian. He wrote, Custer died for your sins, and God is Red. And I remember asking, was like, what started the Red Power Movement, Jimmy, in the 70s? And he was like, he looked at me, like, I was like, what's wrong with you? And he's like, well, it was a civil rights movement. How can you not know this? You know, the, you know, the black power movement, you know, spawn the red power movement, you know.

And I think that's, you know, what my mother always told me was like, the way she, this sounds kind of weird, but the way she described it was like that the black community were like our older brothers. I mean, that they helped us and looked out for us and that they were more familiar and more knowledgeable about white society and had to maneuver in it. And so they were often really. helpful. Do I mean? Yeah, I love that. Yeah, that was her way of understanding it. With the

Not Your Mascot thing, I really feel like it was Black Lives Matter and, you know, of course, you know, the price paid by the black community and, you know, folks like Rihanna Taylor and and George Floyd, all of those things that made it possible. I mean, it made, create an atmosphere that made this no longer acceptable, you know, starting with the Confederate Statute. and then questioning other folks and suddenly it made the arguments we are making made them undeniable

and that's what forced his hand. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an Acapella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard,

you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open to change. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged.

One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Human me! I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined.

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This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines.

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Life throws hurdles big and small. The question is, how do you conquer them? On hurdle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going. From the WNBA standout Kate Martin and rising hockey star Layla Edwards. If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that.

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Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHart Women's Sports. And we're back. Our country has a fascination with pretending to be native and appropriating native culture without really giving it much thought. And even worse, when native culture is presumed to be up for the taking, some will take it a step further and just pretend to be native themselves. This summer, science researcher Beth Ann McLaughlin admitted to being behind the Twitter account of a bisexual Hopi professor who didn't really exist. Longtime listeners of Tangotti might remember that we mentioned McLaughlin briefly in the episode featuring Ottawa Umboya and MIT. As the recipient of MIT's disobedience award, McLaughlin used this native persona for years, building up legit influence on social media.

And in 2015, Andrea Smith, a prominent academic at the University of California, California and Riverside, was accused of misrepresenting herself as Cherokee. And all of this happens while actual Native women in their work and contributions go overlooked. I did a whole series of podcasts at Pollination magazine. You can see them on our Facebook page that goes through the Pretendian issue. And Pretend is, I guess, I don't know if I invented this term, but I do have to explain it, but pretend Indian. Pretendian.

I think my parents' generation called the Wanabis, the Wanabi tribe, the wannabe tribe. And so it's, yeah, I think it's a real issue. Of course, a lot of people know about the issue of Cherokees, what they go through with fraud. I think the Cherokee Nation at one point tried to count the number of fake Cherokee tribes, and they got to over 400, right? And so it's quite extensive. It's astounding. I would have to say, and this is my theory,

and I go into this in my, I did the podcast on structural fixes to pretendianism. Because there are so many pretendians, it's like whack-a-mole. I would say as high as one in three people in some official capacity, whether as heads of Native American Studies departments or, you know, artists or, you know, writers,

authors are fraughts, they're fake Indians. It's really that high, you know. I mean, as a journalist, I really kept stumbling upon this. You know, I'd be interviewing someone and then later find out that they were fake, you know. What's that like for you? It's, it makes our identity or reality like a hall of mirrors, you know. It's so, I mean, it's everything, gaslighting, you know, colonialism. taking all of that stuff, all white privilege, you know, all rolled up into one, right?

And so it's very frustrating. And of course, we have, you know, folks who are, you know, who are people of color, but they are, they choose, they would prefer to be native, do I mean? And so we have a lot, I think Adam Beach recently, he's a native actor, First Nations actor from Canada. He's been a lot of Hollywood roles. You know, he recently called out. an actress who is Chinese and white.

In addition to actors pretending to be native, non-native writers and directors try to tell native stories on TV. And it just comes off as really inauthentic. When you see, when someone is obviously a fraud, you know, and the way it's being presented is kind of like, oh, that's not how we, it's like very stereotypical. You know, you hear the flute music, ooh, you know, it's all this kind of stuff. It's super annoying. And we really need Navajo show.

We need Native American showrunners and writers who are in control of everything. You know, bringing actors or directors in at the last minute when everything is said and done is not enough of a fix. It does speak to this larger issue of people who pretend to be native, which is so common that it's almost a cliche at this point. I cover several cases of pretendianism and I get contacted almost every day by Native people. And what really clued me into was when I was, I would call like a Native academic, you know, for a quote or a comment on a story completely unrelated to ethnic fraud. And they would, after we'd have the interview, they'd be like, you know, by the way, I was wondering if you could cover this story. We're having a problem.

My university is hiring a pretendian, you know, someone who has no native ancestry at all who just claims to be native. And he's going to be my boss. It's just like, I mean, once they become your boss or, you know, your thesis. advisor, you know, what can you do? They're basically being, you're basically being babysat by a white fraudster over what you can say about native issues. And it's like you can't really like, well, yeah, what can you do? It's like, you can't really be like, listen, I know you're a fraud. Like, you have so few, you probably have so few avenues to sort it out. Yeah, I mean, I, in 2015, it really came out in the native community that, that this woman named Andrea Smith, who is a

Native American Studies Professor at the University of California, Riverside, right? I think she runs the department there. She was probably the most famous Native woman at the time in the early aughts for a book she wrote called Conquest, which was all about, you know, colonization and the violence against indigenous women. And it turned out she was a complete fraud. She was not Cherokee at all. And a bunch of Cherokee scholars got together and wrote a group.

group letter and published it in Indian country today and demanding that she stopped, you know, and she hasn't. She's still doing it. So did she own up to it? Or was she just like, I am Cherokee. I don't care what y'all say. She sort of, you know, the thing is that they don't have to answer to us. They have to, the only people they answer to are white people who don't know anything, right, and who are afraid to enter the issue, right? Because, but they're taking advantage of genocide and yet they get their, they build space through genocide, right? And so basically, you know, saying, well, you know, there's no paperwork because, you know, my ancestors hit out and everything.

And they have all these arguments, but, you know, she actually hired the leading, the Cherokee Nation's official genealogist, David Cornselk, to do her genealogy. In the early 1990, or I think of the 1990s, she hired him to do her mother's side. I couldn't find anything. Any links to the Cherokee Nation all? Who are, by the way, one of the most documented people in the world. Like Cherokee people always tell me that historians and genealogists tell me they're the most documented people second only to royalty. So if you can't find a tie, there is none, basically.

And I think the L.A. Times has done a really good series of articles. One in, I guess, December of last year, which looked at fake tribes in California. that's another place, of course, you know, with the gold rush and everything, those tribes were decimated. The genocide was quite extensive. And now there's all these fake Chumash tribes popping up. And then also they did a study before that. They did an article where they found that there was fake Cherokee tribes taken in over $350 million in federal set-asides. Even after it was revealed they were fake, they still were receiving that money.

And it's so harmful. It's, you know, it's where there's money, people will do this. And so the issue of masquetry I see is on the spectrum of pretendingism. It's all of a piece. When we turn already traditionally underrepresented people into mascots, it doesn't just end at the sports arena. Offensive representations of native people rooted in harmful stereotypes are dehumanizing. And actual native people are left to deal with the consequences.

There was a study done by the Kellogg Foundation in 2018, I think it came out. And what they found, they done a bunch of focus groups. It was started in 2017, 2019. And they found that the issue of masquetry was very hard. I came up with the term masquetry to sort of take it away from the mascot, which can be sort of prosaic and handsome, and to masquetry, which describes all the things they do with that, right? all the red face and all that, you know, wearing the Pocahottie outfits and the, you know,

the headdresses and, you know, debasing our culture, right, for their own enjoyment. And what they found was that only 30% of people they had in these focus groups understood the issue of mascots. And so they found that with Standing Rock, you know, they had also that's oversea. 70% understood and agreed with the issue of sovereignty and the importance of Standing Rock. So you can see that Stanley Rock was an issue that white people could understand, right, and have compassion for. But mascots, they can't understand, you know. And also they found that whether white folks they were focused grouping only thought that native people were 60% human, like that we were, yeah, that we weren't fully human.

like 40% animalistic. And so all of these stereotypes feed into that. And so, but my solution is actually, I think, I see this as a structural problem. And I actually think it has to do with the fuzziness of our political identity, which is purposeful. It's a purposeful result of U.S. policy for, you know, hundreds of years. I often tell people, you know, if you don't speak your language or, you know, You know, you can't enroll. It's probably not your fault.

It's, you know, this is the result of policy, official U.S. policy by, you know, the most powerful country in the world, basically. And which is to make us disappear. And, of course, it's political because it's tied to our claims to the land as nations, as preexisting nations, to the United States. And so it's these claims to the land that are the threat that we represent. as a people. And so I think that the solution is really strengthening our political reality. And so we have tribes now that are recognized by the federal government. We have tribes that are not recognized.

We have a lot of fake tribes, right? But what I suggest is actually creating a federal indigenous government that could be counter to the U.S. government and would represent a, you know, all the tribes and would then be the body that would recognize tribes that would allow them to join indigenous peoples and not only the United States but Canada and contiguous land areas as well. And so I think that by doing that we will be politically much more visible things, which makes us more and more real, more and more present in the moment.

When you are colonized, these are the things that go. You know, these are the things you can't protect your language, your children, you know, your everything, your land base, all these things because your borders are, what I see is our identity is incredibly fuzzy around the edges. It's very permeable. So it's very easy for them to take it, you know, for them to claim it, to take it. And so this is this is why I feel that a much more, a much stronger strengthened political reality is the answer. Because once we are politically real, then it's much harder for them to work in these fuzzy spaces created by colonization.

Part of creating a reality where native people are more politically real is also creating a world where people don't feel like native culture is just up for the taking, as identities or as offensive mascots. And it's not a tribute or a compliment to use someone else's culture in this way, especially when actual native people are so often underfunded, underrepresented, and unsupported. And it's not complimentary. It's not, it's not even benign. It's aggressive, right? Especially when you see the way that they attack actual native people to hold their space, right? And so like with this Andrea Smith, you know, after she was really publicly revealed in the native community in 2015, you know, just in 2018, I think 2018, all year long, her students kept messaging me and native students, mostly Navajo women. And they were like, you know, we're sitting in this classroom, we can't say anything. We know she's a fake.

You know, she tries to talk to us and buddy up to us and we're just like, but I need her recommendation to get into this graduate program. Do you mean? It's just, and then there's suddenly all these things that you can't talk about because you have to get the okay of the pretendian who is protecting their space. And so it's very corrosive. And also it's a taking. I mean, we are, I think, the poorest group in the United States.

We have the lowest income levels. And to take jobs from us that could support a native family, even folks because people send money home to the reservation, you know, it's a big taking from really the most impoverished people in the country. White privilege means that white people pretending to be us is far more attractive to white people who are in this power decision-making places to, because it feeds all their ideas about us. They know how to perform the idea in a way that appeals to white people.

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a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group.

The yard herds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle age, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smygel and friends on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me! I need some jokes to make me seem funny.

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Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered. Sports Slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them.

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Edwards. If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like, it didn't make sense in my brain. It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't ever feel like you don't feel like you don't feel like you don't feel on. Don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs Gabby Thomas and Katie Ladeke. The ability to show a gold medal to someone and have their face light up and smile, that means the world to me. And that's what motivates me to win more gold medals. At our level, at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world, Like, I can do anything.

I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning. It's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Let's get right back into it. So I live in D.C. where so many of us are embarrassed by the fact that this slur was associated with our city. But what do you say to people who were like, oh,

It's just a mascot. What's the big deal? Or worse, say it's actually trying to honor your heritage. You know, what do you say to these people? I think that for white people, often they will bring up the Viking mascot. And what I tell them is that it's not as pervasive. It's not the only way that white men are seen, which is true for native people, right? You know, I tell them, like, imagine.

imagine that you live in a world where the only time you see a white man is as a Viking and as a mascot. And so what would you say the first time you meet a white man? You'd be like, where's your long boat? Where's your helmet with the horns on it? Because this is your assumption. So you never saw a white man, you know, running for president. You never saw a white man, you know, on TV anchoring the news. ever saw a white man saving the world in a Hollywood movie, you know, you ever saw a white

family on TV just, you know, in a sitcom, you know, you walk into a bookstore and maybe two of the books are written from the perspective of a contemporary white man, jamming out of the thousands of books, you know, then it would be the same thing. But see, they don't live in that world, you know, where they're marginalized to that extent. And so, so, so, So I try to put people in a different perspective of where they stand because I think that, you know, there's the only way they can grasp the issue. The main thing is how it impacts Native youth. I think that's a very real measure.

And the research done, particularly by a Tulalup tribal member, she did a lot of research. How is her name? Stephanie, forgetting her name right now. But she did a lot of research at Stanford on the mascot issue. And what she was she basically tested native youth. She tested their self-esteem, their ability to imagine what they wanted to do and think whether they thought they could achieve it. There's a term for that.

I can't remember right now. Stephanie Freiberg, that's her name. And then she exposed them to the mascot. And what she found in this was that it overwhelmingly reduced the self-esteem of native youth once they were exposed to a native mascot. And strikingly enough that the native youth who claimed to be okay with native mascots, their self-esteem plummeted the most. And also what plummeted was their ability to imagine themselves being able to achieve their dreams. And it's this, I think, you know, the realization that you're not regarded as fully human by society, it makes you like less engaged. Do you mean unless you no longer believe you can achieve certain things, right?

And Native youth are by every measure the most vulnerable. And the price of the American dream is paid, you know, by people of color and by Native youth. and to engage in this thing just for entertainment value, and that native youth should have to pay the price is pretty horrific. In one of your pieces that I read about Not Your Mascot, you said that you and the other Native parents who were behind this campaign were really doing it because you wanted to leave a better life for your children. So my question is, what are your hopes for the next generation of Native little ones like your own?

Yeah, it's interesting. My son wants to be a filmmaker. And yeah, and, you know, he's actually not that interested in doing things about native things. He just wants to write as a writer. He wants to just, you know, be a filmmaker and just make films without having to think too much about or having to... See, one of the things is I don't want us to have to perform our identity either. Do I mean? I think a lot of times people will meet native people and be like, well, you don't seem Indian enough to me.

like a random white person. You know, you're not the kind of Indian I think an Indian should be. And so there's a sense that everyone's an authority on being Indian and they can tell an Indian when they see one, right? And this notion that then it does, you know, impact Native people. They feel, you know, you'll see Native people who are, I think that seeking out of our culture is really important and that it needs to be something that we have access to.

But I think it needs to happen at a structural level. to be sort of flow naturally, like our language acquisition. You know, when you're colonized, it's disrupted. But when you have strong political boundaries, then it grows. I think a lot of times as being able to perform our culture is treated as a litmus test to our, to our authenticity. And that is very harmful to native people. It's, you know, and of course, if they don't speak their language or it's not their fault, right?

it's a, it's, you know, systemic, you know, colonial policies, hundreds of years of policies that brought that about. And, and so, uh, so what I really fight for is not only the, the elimination of, uh, the eradication of these negative, uh, stereotypes, but also the need to have to perform our identity to other people's, you know, desires. And, um, I just, I just want I want Native people just to be able to be themselves. So, yeah, I just want us to be free of all of that and for people to be free to be themselves and to focus on things that are meaningful to them.

And I want the culture, the language, everything, to flow of its own accord, right, not to have to be something forced or performative. So that's when I'm fighting for me my kids. Jacqueline fights for a world where Native kids like hers feel secure in their culture and their identities. A world where they don't feel like they need to perform their nativeness in order to feel whole. And a world where they don't have to watch non-native people perform it either. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi?

You can reach us at hello at tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangooty.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Taray Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd.

If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman

help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Life is full of hurdles.

So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything.

Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHart Women's Sports. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs.

We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moment. If we didn't talk ever again, I was funny. You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Marquis come in, he's like, you know, I love you, dog. You know, it's all love.

This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone, it's Ryder Strong, and Will Ferrell from PodMeets World. And now the PodMeets Twirled podcast. We're two men who were completely clueless to reality TV, and we're gearing up for the season finale of Survivor. I know we annoyed a lot of our listeners by our severe lack of survivor knowledge.

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