Damage Control at Dartmouth
Anti-American Indian incidents at the Ivy League college create unease for Native students.
By Mark Anthony Rolo
American Indian students at Dartmouth College may be enjoying their winter break more than other students after experiencing a semester marred by what many say was an onslaught of racist attacks against the school’s Native community.
Prior to the homecoming game against the College of the Holy Cross, one fraternity sold T-shirts featuring Holy Cross’ mascot performing a sex act on an American Indian representing Dartmouth. On Columbus Day, a Native drumming group’s performance was crashed by fraternity pledges. And on Dec. 29, the Dartmouth hockey team hosts the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux, whose nickname has angered American Indians because the National Collegiate Athletic Association has deemed it “hostile and abusive.”
One incident caught the attention of the national media and led to an anti-hate rally attended by more than 500 faculty, students and administrators. In the Nov. 28 issue of the independent, conservative student paper, The Dartmouth Review, a caricature of an American Indian warrior waving a scalp appeared on the cover alongside the headline “The Natives Are Getting Restless.” A week later, the paper called the cover a mistake, adding that the image distracted readers from the point of the article, which charged American Indian leaders with overplaying the race card throughout the fall term.
Dartmouth boasts that it has one of the best Native American studies programs in the country. Stanford University has modeled its program after Dartmouth’s. The college leads all Ivy League schools with 160 American Indian students enrolled, making up 3 percent of its total student body. That percentage is also considerably higher than those found at most non-tribal higher education institutions nationwide.
The incidents at Dartmouth this semester have some American Indian students on campus wondering why they are being targeted, especially since the institution was founded specifically to education American Indians. But according to Heid Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe and a 1986 Dartmouth graduate, the college has struggled against anti-Native sentiment since it abolished its American Indian mascot in the 1970s. With each generation of students, there remains a core group who resent the loss of the mascot. In the past, The Dartmouth Review has resurrected the mascot to use on their Web site and on T-shirts.
