“Oneida Nation Council Turtle Clan representative Clint Hill, however,
said the description of the seal’s portrayal did not seem patently
offensive, although he had not seen it in person.
The Oneidas typically had good relationships with area settlers, he
said, and “Indian wrestling,” in which opponents place their feet
together and use only one arm to try to throw the other person, is a
common game among friends.
“With the so-called Indian wrestling, you just knocked the person off
balance,” he said. “We used to do it all the time as kids.”
If anything, Hill said, he would want the image changed to more
accurately portray the wrestling style and to show the proper headdress
for the Indian in the image.”
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Sarah Sunshine Manning wasn’t asked, but she offered her opinion anyway:
Considering that changing the seal will be up for vote in Whitesboro on Monday and also considering that many residents of Whitesboro continue to defend the seal, I wanted to offer you all an indigenous perspective of the controversy, my perspective, as a Native American woman, mother, educator, and citizen of this country. . . .
At first glance, this is what Whitesboro, New York, looks like: a white supremacist town. For one, your name is, Whitesboro, after all. And secondly, a white man is subduing an Indian, the original occupant of this land that was ultimately, near annihilated.
I know, I know. White is the last name of founder. But the combination of all of the different elements on the seal, together, evoke a soup of emotions among outsiders looking in, conjuring up discomfort, defensiveness, and even pain. Images matter, and your image is harmful.
Considering that Native Americans went from being 100-percent of the population pre-contact, to roughly 1-percent of the U.S. population today, your historical seal of a white man subduing an Indian highlights the reality of indigenous genocide, while twisting the knife of domination and colonization into the fresh wounds of the indigenous population still living today.
And friendly historical context or not, it definitely did not end up friendly. . . You did win the theoretical and metaphorical wrestling match for our lands, and our fate, was genocide. Please stop glorifying it with your image. Unintentional or not, this is the sort of emotion your seal evokes. Seeing this portrayal, it feels as though we are being kicked while we are still down, in pain, and suffering. All contexts aside, images matter.
Read more at Manning: Open Letter to the Village of Whitesboro, New York - ICTMN.com
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So you’d have voted to keep it like the rest of them then? Or would you have voted to change it?
Because they voted to keep it…and honestly even without the choking bit the whole ‘white guy defeating/fighting a Native American’ should raise your eyebrows when we’ve got that whole ‘we murdered tons of them and took their land’ bit hanging over our heads…you know…historical context and stuff.
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Whitesboro: That’s some good “Trump Country” right there!
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Keep the concept, improve the art. So I guess vote to change.
Yeah - but its not depicting anyone murdering anyone. Nor did they murder anyone when founding the town (AFAIK).
Bah. Symbolism this. Symbolism that.
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Makes you wonder what the 74% who voted not to were thinking, doesn’t it?
Do you really think ‘murder’ is the threshold for an appropriate town logo that appears on public buildings and such?
I’d think the standard should be quite a bit higher, even ‘having a white and a non-white person fighting each other’ or ‘having the non-white person losing’ seem like they’re pretty darn dicey. Having a nifty story (allegedly) behind the image really doesn’t help IMHO.
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Bad taste and/or ignorance on what good illustration is.
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Is it offensive because it is people wrestling/fighting? Or offensive because it depicts two different races wrestling/fighting? Or is it offensive because the non-white person appears to be losing?
Because I can think of a half dozen different combinations of this and I bet no one would have much of a problem with. So far no one has been able to articulate WHY this one version is so much more offensive - other than white people did bad things to non-white people so any depiction of it is bad. Which makes no sense because white people killed a ton of other white people too and no one care if you depict that.
Oh come now. But if you see it in the context of the nonlocalized narrative of European Genocide of the natives of this continent, the message becomes staggeringly clear. No one should have to understand the history of Whitesboro to interpret the seal-- the traditional use of seals to highlight hyperlocalized cultures induces cognitive violence on those individuals who prefer not to pay attention to such minutia.
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Can we use ‘tactless and inappropriate for a formal government edifice’ instead of ‘offensive’?
I mean, I get the offensive bit, but some people obviously are drawing a pretty firm line there that not everyone is agreeing with.
So, it’s tactless and inappropriate for a formal government edifice to have
- combat between an individual representing a majority and another representing a minority in which the history of the interactions is very negative for the minority.
- Interactions in which an individual representing a majority is ‘defeating’ a member of a minority under the same circumstances.
- Anything that a reasonable person could find representationally horrifying.
Is that better?
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Not sure I agree with you entirely, but I get your point and at least partially agree with it.
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This would mean the end for many many European coats of arms showing torture instruments : )
Molsheim is a good example:
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Well, then you combine that with ‘you could have a logo that’s COOL’ and 'Nobody cared about this story until they started defending this thing and ‘people are bringing it up and it DOES kind of look weird’
It’s not so much that any one element is overpowering on their own, but in combination it’s really weird that people are clinging to it you can kind of see why the ‘racism’ bit is coming up. I don’t agree with that strong a conjecture, but think the whole doubling down thing is really kind of dumb and uncool.
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It’s a crime against art, if you ask me. My eyes hurt from looking at it.
But I will bet twelve zuleks against a bent quatloo that the reason it was kept was because the Internet’s self-righteous shouting put the townspeople’s backs up…
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And House Bolton is right out.
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That’s not really the sort of horrifying I was referring to. I was more thinking things that are oppressive. But holy crap yes I’d change that.
Also: European.
And also also: I should have added 'and somebody has said ‘holy shit!’ to. 
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The first is merely contentious, the second is useless rhetoric. But I do agree with your initial thought:
Easiest solution. Out of 157 people in the village, certainly one of them can knock up something better than that silly flag.
I am pretty sure the ballots did not ask residents if they “support racism” or if they want to bring back slavery, or if they hate Native Americans. There are also people who oppose removing statues of Thomas Jefferson. Those people are not all racists either. Some people just do not want to comply with the fad of destroying everything that might offend the hypersensitive. Others might just be pushing back against being told what to do by people whom they perceive as urban know-it-alls. I agree that the seal looks stupid and poorly drawn to me. Anachronistic, as well. But the people who are at the cutting edge of the move to ban everything that could possibly offend anyone are never going to be satisfied. It is the nature of such people to always make more demands.
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No, sorry - the image is not ‘harmful.’
The harm arises when people leap to unwarranted conclusions based on nothing but their own ignorance and prejudice and unjustified assumptions. Those people are responsible for their own pain.
The world is not responsible for your emotional reaction to things you don’t understand.
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Assuming you even believe the context:
White dared not risk being brow beaten by an Indian nor did he want to be called a coward. In early manhood, he had been a wrestler, but of late felt he was out of practice. He felt conscious of personal strength and he concluded that even should he be thrown, that would be the lesser of two evils in the eyes of the Oneida Indians than to acquire the reputation of cowardice by declining. He accepted the challenge, took hold of the Indian and by a fortunate trip, succeeded almost instantly in throwing him. As he saw him falling, in order to prevent another challenge, he fell upon the Indian for an instant and it was some moments before he could rise. When the Indian finally rose, he shrugged his shoulders and was said to have muttered “UGH”, you good fellow too much"
Frankly I think that story reads more like an episode of that Davy Crockett TV series from the 1950s than an unbiased presentation of historical fact.
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