#NotYourTigerLily, Even for Young Kids. ESPECIALLY Because It’s Young Kids.
My wife’s words bled with disappointment. “We’re not going to be able to do it,” she said over the phone.
“It” was the newest dance routine choreographed for my four-year-old daughter’s ballet and tap class. The dance teachers were basing the annual winter recital on the story of Peter Pan, and my daughter’s class was assigned the role of the Tiger Lillies, based on the Tiger Lily character from the J. M. Barrie works.
My wife went on to describe the piece. The dance steps required the girls to hunch over and stomp their feet while turning in a circle. The routine featured a children’s song recorded perhaps in the late 1950s or early 1960s, sung by a woman with a Mary Martin-esque voice. The lyrics included:
I’m a little Indian
I do big boy dance for you
I’m a little Indian
This Navajo always know right step to do
A horrible, mouth-patting faux war cry punctuated the song.
My wife and I both sighed. As if these elements of the piece weren’t bad enough, we feared as well for what the costumes would ultimately look like. There was no question; we couldn’t let our daughter participate in the piece. We respectfully, yet firmly expressed our conviction to the dance teacher and withdrew our daughter from the class. How our little girl would be disappointed! But our home became a place of fruitful conversations with both of our daughters about what we were choosing to do and why. And fortunately, we found another dance class that worked well for our four year old.
The use of faux Indian imagery and labels to represent Native Americans didn’t much disturb me, I’m sad to say, until I was in my mid-twenties. But it burst into my consciousness via an ESPN The Magazine article that described the effort to strip the Washington football team of its trademark rights. In response, I wrote to the editor, circa April 2000:
As a Chinese American, I can imagine how disturbed I would be if the Washington franchise were known as the Yellowskins, or if the team that played at Jacobs Field were called the Cleveland Chinese and had some squinty-eyed Fu Manchu character on its baseball caps. This is not just a concern for Native Americans. It is a concern for all Americans.
As time went on, I also began to realize that then-recent events in the Balkans had characteristics similar to what the American government did to native peoples. The Trail of Tears and other forced relocations to reservations? Ethnic cleansing. Wars against American Indians? Genocide.
For it to have taken so long for me to awaken to the incredible pain and suffering of Native Americans, I am truly sorry. If you, kind reader, have native heritage or ancestry, I sincerely ask your forgiveness.
I will do my best to be a thoughtful ally, if you will have me. One thing I do want to try is to begin sending tweets to free agents who are mentioned in possible moves to Washington and to Washington’s future draft picks. I’ll ask them to please not sign with the team, but to take their talents, well, elsewhere. Athletes are so concerned with their personal brand these days, that if we can make it so odious to them to be associated with the Washington franchise, they will sign with rivals. Mr. Snyder may not mind financial losses, given his personal wealth. But if Mr. Snyder’s team can’t attract good players, they will lose more games. And my hunch is that he will mind more losing seasons.
And perhaps that will help persuade him to finally lose the name.