Essay Example on The Native American imagery use for sports has been a controversial Topic

The Native American imagery use for sports has all along been a controversial topic for years now The Washington Redskins which is the United States sports team capital have had lots of pressure to not only to change their name but mascot as well an aspect that Dan Snyder the team s owner denotes will never happen Since the Native American imagery for a sports team has been dishonoring them Amy Stretten argues that it is entirely offensive by establishing credibility using her own personal stories as well as stories of other s a charged writing style and logical facts In the very beginning of the article Stretten establishes that she is a member of the Chickahominy Tribe of Virginia This is why as a Native American she speaks about her own experiences This indeed helps her argument since she is not only giving facts to the reader but she is researching as well as applying these sets of statistics to her life 

The club as it has been indicated in the article is based in Ottawa the capital city of Canada Partly she quotes The players call each other redskins on the field using the n word 524 This quote is effective especially when doing a comparison between the two groups forcing us as readers to realize how offensive the term redskin is to the Native American community Just about everyone knows that the n word is offensive to the black community but not everyone is aware of how insulting the word redskins is to the Native American community and there are sports teams that go by that name Through the use of a personal story that is not her own Stretten shows the reader that this is not just a problem in her own life but lives all around the world thus making the article more persuasive It is not just the personal stories that impact the reader to react emotionally but the author expresses her own emotions anger sadness among others throughout her writing as well This is why she is illustrating the irony behind celebrating the Native people with imagery war honor something that according to her can never happen It is because the Native Community has been cultural exploited for profit 523 Through the tone of the author in the writing the reader can sense that the author is not writing this article in a neutral point of view It reveals that she is angry and feels passionate about what she is writing She is also saddened by the fact that they speak broken English does not mean they deserve what they are going through This makes the reader realize how sports teams depict Native Americans in a degrading and stereotypical way Apart from using emotional appeals the article s argument is effective because the author uses credible sources such as The American Psychology Association and Ian Campeau She uses these sources to back up her facts so that the reader trusts her claims further As far as the well known sources she uses Stretten includes a quote from Ian Campeau Because Stretten realizes that not everybody knows who Campeau is she informs the readers of his connection to the issue before giving his quote saying that he is an Ojibway father and a human rights activist This prepares the reader to take what he has to say very seriously 524 In this regard it is a fact that this article is strongly condemning racial stereotyping cultural appropriation and inaccurate racial portrayals that by all means do not honor breathing people and the living at large