NCAA rejects Illinois' appeal of mascot ban

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2221165



Associated Press
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Illinois lost its appeal of the ban on the university mascot Friday and will remain on a list of schools prohibited from hosting NCAA postseason events after February.

The NCAA will allow Illinois to keep its "Illini" and "Fighting Illini" nicknames. The university contended those nicknames derived from the name of the state.

The governing body, however, said Chief Illiniwek remains a "hostile and abusive" image of American Indians. The mascot is a student dressed in buckskins and headdress who dances at halftimes of home football, basketball and volleyball games. The tradition began in 1926.

The NCAA says "Fighting Illini" can stay, but Chief Illinwek must go or Illinois will be penalized.

"The NCAA staff review committee found no new information relative to the mascot known as Chief Illiniwek or the logo mark used by some athletics teams that depicts a Native American in feathered headdress, to remove the university from the list," said Bernard Franklin, the NCAA's senior vice president for governance and membership.

The photograph looks pretty stereotypical.

Still, if there are any Illini left, has anyone bothered to ask them?

The Seminole Nation saved FSU's bacon. Could some band of Native Americans do the same for IU?

Early French estimates of the Illini population vary considerably because the different bands were constantly moving in and out of the large villages. Father Gabriel Dreuillettes in 1658 (written in Montreal) listed 20,000 Illini with 60 villages, but a few years later, Father Dablon at Sault Ste. Marie gave them only 2,000 and five villages. Marquette (1674) and Hennepin (1682), who actually visited them, both said there were 9,000, but neither included the Michigamea and Chepoussa bands in Arkansas. The best answer seems to be somewhere around 12,000. However, few would disagree that their population loss afterwards was dramatic. By the conclusion of the Beaver Wars in 1701, only 6,000 Illini and five of the original tribes remained. Epidemic and war continued their terrible toll, and the French in 1736 counted only 2,500. After neighboring tribes nearly destroyed them in 1769, the Illini were less than 1,800, only of whom 600 survived. Their number continued to fall: 480 in 1778; 250 in 1800; and 84 in 1854 when the remnants merged with the Wea and Piankashaw to become the United Peoria, Kaskaskia, Wea, and Piankashaw. The 1910 census listed the combined tribe at 128, but by 1937 the Peoria had grown to 370. Current enrollment is nearly 2,000.

http://www.tolatsga.org/ill.html

would be the "successors in interest." If IU is that interested in hanging on to its mascot, it would seem prudent to go, hat (and check)in hand, to them for their blessing.