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Colleges Face Limits on Native-American Team Names
Written by Nancy Steinbach
31 August 2005
 

I’m Barbara Klein with the VOA Special English Education Report.

Most American students are back in school by early September and, if they play fall sports, back in action.

This Saturday, for example, the Panthers of the University of Pittsburgh will open their football season -- American football.  They will play the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.

The Panthers have someone dressed like a big cat to help lead the crowds.  At Notre Dame, the mascot is a little creature of Irish imagination, a leprechaun.

Team names and mascots play a part in school spirit.  But a committee of the national organization that governs college sports recently approved a new policy.  It bars the use of hostile nicknames, mascots and images related to racial or ethnic groups during the championship season. 

More than one thousand schools are in the National Collegiate Athletic Association.  The decision affected eighteen schools with nicknames or mascots representing American Indians.  The N.C.A.A. president says the schools found that some people could be offended. 

Several teams are the Indians or Braves.  Carthage College in Wisconsin has the Redmen.  Southeastern Oklahoma State University has the Savages. 

 
FSU Seminoles
Also on the list are the Seminoles of Florida State University.  The university president argued that the name honors the Seminole Indians of Florida.  He noted that the tribe has supported the name for years. 

The new policy goes into effect in February.  Florida State, however, will not have to follow it.  Last week the university won an appeal.  Appeals by other schools will be considered case-by-case. 

The University of North Dakota is home of the Fighting Sioux.  Its president also says the name is meant to honor, not insult, Native Americans.  He questions why the Fighting Irish are not on the list.

An official of the N.C.A.A. says, "This is not an exercise in political correctness."  She says over four years of study went into the new policy.  She says the aim is to make sure championship events are free of images and names that different groups see as hurtful. 

Yet no one can agree how many Native Americans are offended.  Findings conflict.  Some mental health experts, however, say such names and images harm Native American children.

Similar disputes face professional teams, like football's Washington Redskins.

This VOA Special English Education Report was written by Nancy Steinbach.  Our reports are online at voaspecialenglish.com.  I’m Barbara Klein.

Early Country Music: Cowboys Told About Their Lives in Song
Written by Harold Braverman
31 August 2005
 

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Announcer:  THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a program in Special English.

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Here is Kay Gallant with our program.

Narrator:  Last week, we talked about the growth of the cattle industry. This industry started in Texas during the eighteen seventies.  With its growth came a new kind of worker -- the man who watched and took care of the cattle. These men who watched the cows and rode with them as they moved across the wild lands were often young. Just boys. And so they were called "cowboys. "

People all over the world have seen all sorts of films about the cowboy. And he is often shown in television shows. But the real life of the cowboy is not often shown. His work has been hard, and his life lonely and full of danger.

The cowboy has told his own story in many songs and ballads. Hundreds of these have come from cowboys whose names are not known. They just sang these songs as they rode on the saddles of their horses across the cattle lands. Or, as they sat at their campfires at night.

They sang about the things that were close to them. Horses and cows and danger and death. Often, they sang about the long ride to the cattle markets where the cows were sold for beef, as in this song called, "Git Along Ltle Dogie."

Dogie is another name for a young cow, especially one which wanders away from the herd. The song tells how the young cowboy keeps driving the dogies forward. He feels sorry for them, because they will soon be sold for meat. But that's their hard luck, not his. And he keeps pushing them on while he sings.

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One of the most famous of cowboy ballads is this one, called "The Chisholm Trail."

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Day and night, the horse was at the cowboy's side. A cowboy was as proud of his horse as he was of his skill in riding him. There is this feeling in the song "I Ride An Old Paint."  A paint, or pinto, is a horse of three or more different colors.

(MUSIC)

The cattle herds were driven a very long way to the cattle markets and had to be kept and watched on the open trail for many weeks. And the trail took the cowboys over rough country in all kinds of weather. The wild prairie lands were not friendly to men or animals. It was a lonely land. And the howling of wolves and winds at night made it more so.

Across this strange land, no man in the early days of the west knew just where death was waiting for him. A listener hears the mournful feeling cowboys had for the prairie in this song called, "The Dying Cowboy."

He does not want to be buried out in these wild lands -- in the lone prairie -- as the song says. Still, the dying cowboy does not get his wish. There is no choice. He can be buried only in the lone prairie in a narrow grave six by three. . . Six feet deep and three feet wide.

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Announcer:  You have been listening to the Special English program, THE MAKING OF A NATION. Your narrator was Kay Gallant.  

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