The nonsense of Native American sports imagery: Reclaiming a past that never was. International Review for the Sociology of Sport

Abstract The pejorative use of Aboriginal imagery in professional and amateur sport has been criticized by Native Americans, public activists and academics from various disciplinary back-grounds. They have campaigned successfully to convince sport organizations to rid themselves of such slanderous signification. While sensitive to these activist and academic strategies such perspec-tives do not seriously take into account that many First Nations peoples and sport teams in Canada display these images in a variety of ways. The proliferation of these images in First Nations contexts motivated me to examine the issue of Native American sport imagery further, in particular how their use by First Nations peoples may problematize standard oppositional discourse that dominates academic literature on the subject. Through my interaction with these context specific uses of such imagery, I have come to formulate a reading that encourages the proliferation of these images, a call for their saturation in the sport and fashion industry. It is only then that their signifying potential of a reality that never was can be erased, giving way to new systems of meanings. Key words • ethnography • hockey • hyperreal • logos • mascots • Native American/First Nation In the past 20 years there have been concerted scholarly and public activist efforts to exorcise Native American imagery from the professional and amateu