Charlene Teters (born April 25, 1952,

Spokane, Washington Spokane ( ) is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south of the Cana ...

) is a Native American artist, educator, and lecturer.Mai, Uyen
"Culture Infused" Art Exhibit Presented by Cal Poly Pomona's La Bounty Chair of Interdisciplinary Applied Knowledge.
''California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.'' 8 Nov 2005 (retrieved 15 May 2009) Her paintings and art installations have been featured in over 21 major exhibitions, commissions, and collections. She is a member of the

Spokane Tribe The Spokan or Spokane people are a Native American Plateau tribe who inhabit the eastern portion of present-day Washington state and parts of northern Idaho in the United States of America. The current Spokane Indian Reservation is located in ...

,Installation Art: Charlene Teters.
''Rhythms of the Globe.'' (retrieved 15 May 2009) and her Spokane name is Slum Tah.Hirschfelder, Arlene B. ''Native Heritage: Personal Accounts by American Indians, 1790 to the Present.'' Madison:

University of Wisconsin Press The University of Wisconsin Press (sometimes abbreviated as UW Press) is a non-profit university press publishing peer-reviewed books and journals. It publishes work by scholars from the global academic community; works of fiction, memoir and p ...

, 2008: xiv. . She was born and raised in Spokane, Washington, near the Spokane Indian Reservation.

Education and activism

She has been active in opposing the use of Native American

mascot A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fi ...

s and other imagery in sports since 1989. She is a founding board member of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media (NCRSM). Beginning in 1984, she attended the

Institute of American Indian Arts The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed in the historic S ...

(IAIA), in Santa Fe, New Mexico, graduating in 1986 with an Associate of Fine Arts in painting. She then attended the

College of Santa Fe Santa Fe University of Art and Design (SFUAD) was a private, for-profit art school in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The university was built from the non-profit College of Santa Fe (CSF), a Catholic facility founded as St. Michael's College in 1859, an ...

(now

Santa Fe University of Art and Design Santa Fe University of Art and Design (SFUAD) was a private, for-profit art school in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The university was built from the non-profit College of Santa Fe (CSF), a Catholic facility founded as St. Michael's College in 1859, and ...

), graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting in 1988. In 1988, she began graduate studies at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

's Department of Art and Design, eventually graduating with a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting. In 1989, she reacted strongly to the performance of a pseudo-Native American dance by a European American student portraying "

Chief Illiniwek Chief Illiniwek was the mascot of the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign (UIUC), associated with the university's intercollegiate athletic programs, from October 30, 1926, to February 21, 2007. Chief Illiniwek was portrayed by a student t ...

" at a university

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

game and soon after began to protest silently outside athletic events while holding a small sign reading "Indians are human beings." Her actions and those of other Native American students at the University of Illinois, such as

Marcus Amerman Marcus Amerman is a Choctaw bead artist, glass artist, painter, fashion designer, and performance artist, living in Idaho. He is known for his highly realistic beadwork portraits. Background Marcus Amerman was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1959 bu ...

, led to a strong upswing in efforts to eliminate Native American imagery in school, university, and university athletics throughout the United States and a film (''In Whose Honor'' by Jay Rosenstein) was produced on the subject. Teters also holds an honorary doctorate in fine art from

Mitchell College Mitchell College is a private college in New London, Connecticut. In Fall 2020 it had an enrollment of 572 students and a faculty of 68. Admission rate was 70%. The college offers associate and bachelor's degrees in fourteen subjects. Academ ...

New London, Connecticut New London is a seaport city and a port of entry on the northeast coast of the United States, located at the mouth of the Thames River in New London County, Connecticut. It was one of the world's three busiest whaling ports for several decade ...

. On October 10, 1997 she was honored as "Person of the Week" by

Peter Jennings Peter Charles Archibald Ewart Jennings (July 29, 1938August 7, 2005) was a Canadian-born American television journalist who served as the sole anchor of ''ABC World News Tonight'' from 1983 until his death from lung cancer in 2005. He dropped o ...

on the ''

ABC World News Tonight ''ABC World News Tonight'' (titled ''ABC World News Tonight with David Muir'' for its weeknight broadcasts since September 2014) is the flagship daily evening television news program of ABC News, the news division of the American Broadcasting ...

'' program, for her commitment to her work and her people. In the mid-1990s Teters served as Senior Editor of ''Native Artist Magazine''. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She retired from the Institute of American Indian Arts in September 2020, having served as Professor of Studio Art, Department Chair of Studio Arts, and then Academic Dean for Arts and Cultural Studies since 2015. From 2005 through 2007, she has also served as Hugh O. LaBounty Endowed Chair of Interdisciplinary Knowledge at

California State Polytechnic University California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona, CPP, or Cal Poly"Cal Poly" may also refer to California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo in San Luis Obispo. See the ''name'' section of this article for more infor ...

Pomona, California Pomona is a city in Los Angeles County, California. Pomona is located in the Pomona Valley, between the Inland Empire and the San Gabriel Valley. At the 2020 census, the city's population was 151,713. The main campus of California State Pol ...

. Teters was the first artist-in-residence at the American Museum of Natural History in

New York City, New York New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media

The National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media (NCRSM) was formed in October 1991 at the

Augsburg College Augsburg University is a private university in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It was founded in 1869 as a Norwegian-American Lutheran seminary known as Augsburg Seminarium. Today, the u ...

meeting of American Indian dignitaries and activists in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was created to fight the powerful influence of major media who choose to promote messages of Native American oppression. Holding demonstrations and marches outside numerous sports stadiums across America, the NCRSM has influenced the education effort on

racial stereotyping An ethnic stereotype, racial stereotype or cultural stereotype involves part of a system of beliefs about typical characteristics of members of a given ethnic group, their status, societal and cultural norms. A national stereotype, or nation ...

and made it a household discussion topic. Components of major media which form public and government opinion include: film, video, sports entertainment, educational institutions, publications, news organizations, television, cable, satellite, internet, retail practices and merchandising, marketing, and radio.National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media
/ref> At the creation of the NCRSM, the board of directors consisted of eleven directors including Teters as vice-president and senior editor,

Clyde Bellecourt Clyde Howard Bellecourt (May 8, 1936 – January 11, 2022) was a Native American civil rights organizer. His Ojibwe name is ''Nee-gon-we-way-we-dun'', which means "Thunder Before the Storm". He founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) in Minn ...

as the national director and the late

Vernon Bellecourt Vernon Bellecourt (WaBun-Inini) (October 17, 1931 – October 13, 2007) was a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe (located in Minnesota), a Native American rights activist, and a leader in the American Indian Movement (AIM). In the Ojibwe la ...

as the former president and national representative for the NCRSM. Their mission was and still is rooted in the belief that the use of Indian and indigenous people as athletic mascots is dehumanizing to the Native American race as it perpetuates negative connotations and inaccurate stereotypes. The ultimate goal of the NCRSM is to remove the "desecration" of their spiritual practices that use feathers, paints, dances, music and instruments in the incorrect context. Finally, the NCRSM wants to discontinue the use of the indigenous person mascots in schools because they feel it is promoting the wrong ideals and images of the Native American people and inaccurately portraying history to the youth of America.

Sports teams deemed offensive

Charlene Teters and the NCRSM have listed the following schools and teams on their home page to get certain universities and institutions in America to realize that the use of indigenous people is wrong as mascots. *Anderson High School "Redskins", Cincinnati, Ohio *Atlanta "Braves", Georgia *Cleveland "Indians" Chief "Wahoo", Ohio *Florida State University "Seminoles", Florida (have been given permission from the tribe) *Marquette "Redmen" and "Redettes", Michigan *Salmon High School "Savages", Idaho *University of North Dakota "Fighting Sioux", North Dakota *Washington "Redskins", Washington, DCKranz, Cindy
No-mascot decision stands.
''Cincinnati Enquirer.'' 19 August 2003 (retrieved 15 May 2009)

Quote

"Often, people think about Native Americans as we were envisioned at the turn of the century. If we're not walking around in buckskin and fringe, mimicking the stereotype in dress and art form, we're not seen as real. Native Americans are here, and we are contemporary people, yet we are very much informed and connected to our history."

Footnotes

References

*King, C. Richard, and Charles Fruehling Springwood, eds. (2001). ''Team Spirits: The Native American Mascots Controversy''. Foreword by Vine Deloria Jr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. *Spindel, Carol (2002). ''Dancing at Halftime: Sports and the Controversy Over American Indian Mascots''. Updated edition, with a new afterword. New York: New York University Press.

Films

*
In Whose Honor?
' (1997). Written and produced by Jay Rosenstein. Ho-ho-kus, New Jersey: New Day Films.

External links

Charlene Teters official site
* ttp://www.iaia.edu/museum/vision-project/artists/charlene-teters/ Charlene Teters Vision Project, Michelle McGeough {{DEFAULTSORT:Teters, Charlene 1952 births Living people Native American academics Native American women academics American women academics Native American activists Native American curators Native American painters Native American writers Writers from Spokane, Washington Santa Fe University of Art and Design alumni University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign School of Art and Design alumni Institute of American Indian Arts alumni Institute of American Indian Arts faculty American women painters Spokane people Native American women artists 21st-century American women artists American women curators American curators 20th-century Native American women 20th-century Native Americans 21st-century Native American women 21st-century Native Americans