When I graduated, when my uncle graduated a generation earlier and when my grandfather graduated from OHHS back around the first quarter of the 20th century, we were the Ottawa Hills Indians.  Big, awesome Indian Chief for a mascot and excessive use of the bass drum during football half-time shows and pep rallies but there was no face painting, no feathered-head-dresses worn on the sidelines, no yalping and slapping hands against open mouths like in the old movies.  The mascot wasn't a big red faced goof like the Cleveland Indians in Major League Baseball.  It was a respectful, awesome representation of a noble looking Chief.  

Five or six years ago, though, someone got a bee in their bonnet and decided that an Indian shouldn't be any team's mascot.  Now, granted, no one complains about mascots like the "Raiders" or the "Rebels" or the "Buccaneers" or the "Lakers" or the "Cowboys" any of the other mascots based on people, but "Indians" was just too offensive to Native Americans.  Or something.

These days the team mascot is a Bengal tiger.  The Ottawa Hills Bengals.  Blech.  Doesn't work for me, but I digress.  If someone thinks the term "Indian" is offensive I suppose that's his or her beef.  

The story out of the east side of the state this morning is a little less easy to justify.  The Ivory Tower reports that Wyandotte Roosevelt's marching band, the "Marching Chiefs" and the only Michigan band invited to perform at Barack Obama's inaugural in two weeks, is going to do a bit of self censoring to hide their own "Indian" mascot.

Patches will be sewn over the Indian logos on the band uniform sleeves and the band's Marching Chiefs banner will be retired for the day.

The band is covering up for the day in response to a letter from Harvey Gunderson, president of Religious Americans Against Indian Nicknames and Logos, who protested the nickname of The Chiefs.

No word on whether or not Gunderson sent himself a letter protesting his use of the very un-PC term "Indian."  I think the proper phraseology these days is "Native American," Harvey.  It is unclear whether the letter was sent to the school or to the inaugural committee.  In other words, they're going to sew some patches on their sleeves but we don't know if its because of some hypocrite named Harvey or because the Obama folks went into PC overdrive.  

Either way, the band director tells the fish-wrap that they just don't want to bring any negative publicity to the inaugural.  Aww, how sweet of him.  I know that when I see a respectful, noble representation of regional icons (the mascot is named after Chief Walks-in-the-Water from the Wyandot tribe of Huron Indians) I immediately think "uh-oh, negative publicity."

Read on...