Native American Shares Personal Mascot Experience

Paul Steinbach Headshot
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Though the stage was small and the performance run brief, Richie Plass has carried the pain of being a former Native American mascot for the past 52 years. Asked to dress in borrowed costume pieces — from a headdress down to made-in-Japan moccasins — and lead the Shawano (Wis.) High School basketball team onto the court as a student in 1968, Plass reluctantly complied, but it wasn't until he accompanied the "Indians" (now "Hawks") on a road trip that things got ugly. Today, Plass, a member of the Menominee and Stockbridge/Munsee tribes, appears at high schools, colleges, businesses and educational conferences across the country to tell his story, even showing up repeatedly at school board meetings in towns still clinging to their Native American marketing. In January, the Wisconsin Association of School Boards rejected the type of ban instituted in Washington, Oregon and Maine, and one Connecticut school's board of education voted in January to revert back to "Redmen" after changing to "Red Hawks" only last October. AB senior editor Paul Steinbach asked Plass to share his unique perspective on an issue that seemingly won't go away.

What happened when you took your high school mascot routine on the road?
We get down there, I come out of the locker room, and the whole gymnasium stood up and started to laugh. I kind of freaked, so I walked over and stood by the bleachers. Then they started to do that war cry thing from the old movies, you know? So I kind of backed up. Then they started yelling things at me, so I backed up some more. Little kids were coming up trying to grab stuff, and then I backed up some more. And then I specifically remember paper cups, orange peels, banana peels being thrown at me. I backed way up and that's when the guys on the top row started spitting on me. And then I ran into the locker room. Here come the coach and the principal. Of course, I'm pretty upset and I'm crying. "I said, 'I told that was going to happen. So I'm not going to do it anymore.' " That was the winter of 1968. I made my first public speech in the summer of 1969, and I've been advancing it ever since. And I can say with confidence that what I went through 52 years ago, my grandchildren and other children are still going through the same thing. To my opinion, even more so.

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