Chief Illiniwek
Are you anti-Chief or pro-Chief? Before I
answered that question I decided to
educate myself on the topic and saw this
research paper as the perfect
opportunity. What I wanted to know was when was
the Chief Illiniwek introduce,
what the deal is with the dance, and who and
why did this anti-Chief movement
start. The tradition of Chief Illiniwek was
started on October 30, 1926, during
a football game against the University of
Pennslyvania. Raymond Dvorak, who was
the Marching Illini director of the
time, chose the person, Lester Leutweiler,
who portrayed the first Chief
Illiniwek. Lester Leutweiler, a Caucasian, was
chosen because he had studied
Native American dance and leather work as a Boy
Scout. Leutweiler made
the first Chief Illiniwek custom and created the first
dance. Another
University of Illinois student who was dressed up as the
University of
Pennsylvania Quaker joined Lester, in the first dance. During
the
performance, both came out on the field together. After they each puffed
on a
peace pipe briefly, Lester performed the dance for the first time.
(Beckham 3).
Since Lester Leutweiler, there have been 33 students to
portray Chief Illiniwek,
one of which was a female student. (Beckham 8). The
second student who portrayed
Chief Illiniwek was Webber Borchers.
Borchers was the first student, who
portrayed Chief Illiniwek, to wear an
authentic Native American outfit. He
traveled to a South Dakota reservation,
where he stayed for a couple months, and
an elderly Native American woman and
her apprentice handcrafted the outfit for
him. On September 25, 1982, Sioux
Chief Frank Fools Crow traveled to the
University of Illinois with fellow
Sioux elders Anthony Whirlwind Horse and Joe
American Horse. (Chief
Illiniwek 5) Chief Frank Fools Crow was considered the
greatest Native
American spiritual leader of the 19th century.
(http://www.chief.uiuc.edu/FoolsCrow/frank.htm).
During halftime
ceremony, Chief Fools Crow gave the University of Illinois the
regalia that
are currently worn by Chief Illiniwek. (Chief Illiniwek). The
regalia were
Chief Fools Crow’s own, which was handcrafted by his wife. Many
say Chief
Fools Crow was proud to present the University of Illinois with the
gift
because his work and his wife’s would be shared and be seen by many.
"The
power and the ways are given to us to be passed on to others. To
think
anything else is pure selfishness. We get more by giving them away, and
if we do
not give them away, we lose them."-Fools Crow
(http://www.chief.uiuc.edu/FoolsCrow/frank.htm).
Sadly enough Chief Frank
Fools Crow passed away in 1989. The dance Chief
Illiniwek performs during
halftime is a pow-wow dance, which is a way of meeting
together, to join in
dancing, singing, visiting, renewing old friendships and
making new ones.
(Deleary and Dashner 4). More specifically Chief Illiniwek is a
type of
Oglala-Lakota Sioux dance called Fancy dance, which is celebratory in
nature,
has no religious, war or ceremonial significance. (Tice 14). The origin
of
Pow Wow (fancy dance) is believed to be the societies of the Poncha and
other
Southern Plains tribes. These dances may have had different meaning
in the past
but today they are social dances. Although dance styles and
content have
changed, their meaning and importance has not. (Deleary and
Dashner 4). The
dance consists of two main parts, the downfield dance and the
solo dance. The
Chief performs the dance with the Marching Illini during
what is called the
Three in One. The Three in One consists of three
traditional University of
Illinois songs; "Pride of the Illini", "March
of the Illini",
and "Hail to the Orange". This celebrated tradition has been
performed
at the conclusion of every halftime show in Memorial Stadium for
nearly 75
years. (http://www.chief.uiuc.edu/tradition/performance/dance.htm).
The
performance begins as the band gathers in the center of the field.
Marching
toward the north endzone in block band formation, band members sing
"Pride
of the Illini" as thousands of onlookers clap in rhythm to the cadence
of
the snare drum. As the Marching Illini nears the North endzone, the
Chief
appears, bursts through the block band, and dances downfield toward the
South
endzone. After the Chief reaches the south endzone, he returns to the
center of
the field for the Alma Mater. During the downfield portion of the
dance, the
Marching Illini, which has been marching in block band
formation towards the
North endzone, performs a difficult countermarch
maneuver and marches back
towards the center of the field spelling "ILLINI".
As the band
finishes spelling "ILLINI", the Chief returns to the center of
the
field. The downfield portion of the dance is now complete.
(http://www.chief.uiuc.edu/tradition/performance/dance.htm).
On October
16,1998 I heard Charlene Teters, founder of anti-Chief movement,
speak at the
University YMCA. The majority of those who intended were white
males and
Latinos. She was one of three Native American students recruited to
the
University of Illinois, to pursue her bachelor’s degree in art, from
the
Art Institute of Native American. She is the mother of two children,
a wife,
Senior Editor for Indian Artist Magazine and a Spokane Indian.
When she first
arrived to the University of Illinois, she and the other two
Native Americans
recruited walked around campus. What she, along with the
other two students,
discovered was that the campus was insensitive to Native
American students. They
found degrading images of the Chief; such as a bar,
which was called home of the
Drinking Illini, with a falling intoxicated
Indian, toilet paper with the
Chief’s face on every sheet, and a door mat
with the Chief’s face on it
which was worn out. But at the time they had no
support system to protest
against the issue. The reason she started the
anti-Chief movement was for her
kids. She did not say in what year, but she
took her two kids to a basketball
game and during the halftime show she
noticed her kids slouch into their chair
like they wanted to disappear. What
they saw was the Chief, which they had
always been taught to hold in high
honor, making a fool of himself and thus
embarrassing Native Americans. At
the following home game she, by herself,
decided to protest and she was
treated without any respect. People spit on her,
kicked her, and the media
tried to ridicule her. All this backfired and she won
support that she needed
to start and continue to fight against the Chief.
Attractive, articulate
and eloquent Ms. Teters is very often on-camera,
describing lucidly how and
why she and many others feel that the Illiniwek type
of activities, symbols,
logos, regalia, mascots --plus many inauthenticities--are
blows to Indian
pride and self-esteem since they constitute non-respect of
important rituals.
(http://fantasia.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~jayr/NG.HTML). Another way
she protests
against Chief Illiniwek is through her art and educating other
about the
cons- of Chief Illiniwek. The most interesting form of her protest
was
through her art. For example, she has drawn a caricature of Abraham
Lincoln,
which completely ridicules him, but she calls it a symbol of pride
honoring him"since we are in the Land of Lincoln." So basically she uses it as
a
comparison to the way the anti-Chief supporters view the Chief.