Newsletter 69: Chief Illiniwek

I’ve decided to start putting some of the best newsletter essays here on Medium, so more people can read them. You’re still better off just subscribing. This one’s from August 2017, about my humble alma mater’s former “mascot.” With college sports season about to begin again, it seemed a good time to reiterate this.

On Thursday night, word leaked that the University of Illinois was retiring its “War Chant” musical cue, used by the Illini Marching Band to fire up Illini students and fans — particularly when the opponent in a football game is facing a third down — for as long as anyone can remember.

If you don’t know the “War Chant,” you can hear it here on Spotify, or watch it here. The song obviously has its foundation in the history of Illini athletics using Native American imagery and “symbols” to promote their athletic program, and it’s essentially Illinois’ version of the Atlanta Braves’ Tomahawk Chop. In college, back when none of us knew anything, we simply called it “the Indian song.” My friend Ali even came up with lyrics. “This is … the Indian song … there are no words to the Indian song.”

When I was a kid, this song always got me fired up for Illini sports, the same way that the dance that Chief Illiniwek, the Illini mascot who was banned more than a decade ago, always did. I loved those things when I was young because I didn’t know any better. Being young means only knowing your own perspective and that of those directly around you; it is, in the purest sense of the word, a privilege. The thing about growing up and growing older is that you are supposed to learn that you are not the only person in the world, that just because you believe something doesn’t necessarily make it true, that the planet is a lot larger and contains a lot more people with a lot wider spectrum of perspectives than you have.

To me, this was what college was for. I came to college loving Chief Illiniwek and the War Chant, and I left thinking both of them had to go. I’ve written about the exact moment I stopped supporting Chief Illiniwek before; I’ll reprint the relevant passage here:

One day I and a few other…