U. of Illinois Decides to Banish Chief Illiniwek, Expecting to Return to NCAA's Good Graces
Chronicle of Higher Education 2/19/07
Illinois's Board of Trustees announced last week that it had decided to discontinue the 81-year-old tradition, ending a long-simmering dispute that had splintered the campus and led the NCAA to ban Illini teams from playing host to postseason sporting events.
The chief will perform for the last time at a men's basketball game on Wednesday, the team's last home game this season, the university announced on Friday.
After the chief's last dance, Illinois will be removed from the NCAA's list of institutions barred from playing host to or participating in postseason events because of mascots the association deems offensive to American Indians, Bernard W. Franklin, an NCAA senior vice president, said in a letter faxed to the university on Thursday.
Following a dispute that dates back nearly 20 years, and that featured appeals to the courts, Congress, and the NCAA, Illinois officials seem relieved to put the chapter on the chief behind them.
"While people differed on their opinions of the chief, the overwhelming majority of those voices put their love for the university ahead of their opinion on the chief," said Lawrence C. Eppley, chairman of the university's board, in a written statement. "Now we have the responsibility to work together to maintain other great traditions that will unite our community for decades to come."
The mascot will not perform at any future university-sponsored athletics events, but the chief's image could live on. In another written statement, the university said it was reviewing trademark laws to decide what to do with the trademark rights to the chief's name and logo.
Last year, news reports suggested that a group of some 30 alumni who had performed as the chief would assume control of the tradition, presumably promoting the chief's appearance off the playing field (The Chronicle, September 1, 2006).
Wanda S. Pillow, director of the university's Native American House and a professor of educational policy studies, called the trustees' decision "a significant moment," according to an article published on Saturday in the Chicago Tribune. But for students of American Indian heritage, Ms. Pillow said, retiring the mascot is just "the first step of many steps." University officials "haven't yet addressed what this means for the logos or for how Chief Illiniwek will be talked about," she said.
Nor does retiring the mascot resolve "campus-climate issues," according to a statement on the Native American House's Web site. Officials there call on the university to return regalia used by the mascot to the Oglala Sioux tribe. They also pledge to continue working with campus administrators and others to confront "misinformation and miseducation about indigenous peoples, histories, and cultures."