ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how one can account for the persistence of teams of Indians, Redskins, Braves, Warriors, and Chiefs in the United States, even after several decades of protest and litigation. It examines why have racist representations of Native Americans proven to be more resistant to critique than those depicting other racial and ethnic groups. The chapter also shows how Native Americans are consigned to an allegorical form of cultural citizenship that might be called the mascot slot. Tony Auth's 1997 cartoon, 'Can You Imagine?' is more blatant, demonstrating the semiotics of racist stereotyping shared by blackface, war propaganda, and advertising. The use of pseudo-Indian sports mascots, logos, and rituals are just the normalized performances and activities, ones that exclude contemporary Native Americans from full participatory citizenship by treating them as signs rather than as speakers, as caricatures rather than as agents, as commodities rather than as citizens.
