"Trivia question: what do you call a person who fights tooth and nail for a symbol that symbolizes nothing? Answer: a terribly confused person.

Next Dance will be hosted this Saturday by Students for Chief Illiniwek in a vain attempt to keep the Chief tradition alive. The issue and its attendant arguments should have been resolved and forgotten ages ago, but the issue appears to still have relevance.

The arguments between the anti-Chief and pro-Chief crowds are typically predictable. Those against the Chief claim that the Chief is racist and degrading, or, if not that, at the very least ridiculous, embarrassing, and unnecessary. Those for the Chief usually mumble some vague words about tradition, political correctness (minority opinion? Gasp! Radical left-wing intellectual nut-jobs? Why should I listen?), or, occasionally, the astounding position that the Chief in fact honors the annihilated/removed Illiniwek tribe.

I’ll avoid going into too much depth on anti-Chief arguments. The Chief might be “hostile and abusive” (scare quotes in honor of the clever argument tactics of many a pro-Chief debater), but that’s not my point. Of course, also, neither the dance, a Boy Scout riff on plains Indian dancing with jumping splits thrown in for kicks and giggles, nor the costume, a Sioux outfit, have anything to do with the long-since departed Illiniwek tribe, but never mind that. And never mind that the Peoria Tribe of Oklahoma, the closest descendants of the Illiniwek Tribe, openly disapproved of Chief Illiniwek in 2000 and 2005. Or that the UI Native American house and campus Native American organizations denounced the Chief.

What’s really fascinating is that, despite all this, we should have kept the Chief around because it’s a rich, sacred symbol. But, of what exactly?"

Get the Story:
Charles Tabb: The Chief: the empty symbol (The Daily Illini 10/22)

Also Today:
Some wish to revive Chief, others seek mascot search (The Daily Illini 10/25)