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Today’s blacklisted American: American Indians force the removal of an American Indian from Marquette University’s school seal

Marquette's old and new seals, compared
Marquette’s old seal (l) compared with its replacement

The new dark age of silencing: Because the official seal of Marquette University, in use since 1881, showed the university’s namesake standing in a canoe being rowed by an American Indian, local Indian activists demanded the seal be revised, claiming the seal was “disrespectful to Indigenous people.”

Their campaign succeeded. On March 3, 2022 Marquette University announced that it had removed entirely any image of either Father Jacques Marquette, or the American Indian who helped him in his exploration of the Mississippi River. The image to the right shows the seal, before and after.

The original image was allegedly based on an 1869 painting by Wilhelm Lamprecht titled “Pere Marquette and the Indians,” which depicted Marquette consulting with Native Americans as he worked his way down the Mississippi River. Marquette is standing in his canoe and pointing at the river as he talks with another Native American man. His Native American guide is sitting in the canoe with his back to the viewer.

Activist groups, however, took issue with how the painting was cropped for the seal, as it appears Marquette is telling the guide where to go.

The university’s explanation for the seal’s change might seem rational, but in truth it is all a rationalization, a fear-based attempt to placate the most radical, ignorant, and race-focused members of its community. Rather than celebrate the courageous explorer whom the university is named, the university choose to wipe him out, along with the local people who helped him in his initial explorations.

This last point is the story’s biggest irony. The Indian activists cut off their nose to spite their face. While their public claims made it sound like they simply wished to shift the depiction so that it showed the Indians guiding Marquette instead of implying the other way around, what they really wanted was to get rid Marquette entirely, because he was white. They probably did not expect the university to also get rid of the Indian.

No matter. For a university to bow to this kind of stupid campaign, and thus dumb down its heritage, illustrates once again how we are rushing headlong into a dark age of ignorance and foolishness. No one was really insulted by the old seal. The demand to change it was simply a power play by some groups to gain control of the university’s culture, and in the process devalue it significantly. The university, which should stand for intellectual honesty instead of the race-based rewriting of history, bowed to this power play, and thus debased itself.

A footnote: I generally avoid the politically correct and woke term “native American” when referring to the American Indian. It is unclear, distorts the plain meaning of the words, and insulting to every other person not of American Indian descent, including myself, who was born in American. I am a native American, as were my parents, even though their parents fled Czarist Russia.

The term is also inherently wrong, as it somehow implies that today’s Indian tribes were the first natives, when in truth they had supplanted others who had supplanted others who had supplanted others, as has always been the case in the history of all human migration and tribal cultures. To claim that these tribes should be given a special place above all others is intellectually dishonest.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

11 comments

  • Alton

    Then is it time for them to change their name to say………. Obama University . ?

  • Skunk Bucket

    It’s been almost 400 years since my namesake landed on these shores. How long DOES it take before a people can be considered “native”? We all started out in exactly the same spot (and it wasn’t here in the Western Hemisphere.) Everything else is just a matter of timing.

  • Kenneth Franks

    Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.

  • Chris

    I answer all requests for race with either: will not reply (governments and others should not ask about race at all) or Native American, because I am – literally – I was born here.

  • Mike a

    Disagree with you on this one Bob.

    I find it fascinating that people have conflated all these issues that existed here in this country well before covid and “woke” became the new buzzwords.

    The fact is that certain segments of our society have NEVER been ok with the representation their culture has received.

    Is it that hard to put yourself in their perspective and ponder how they might not like seeing teams named the Redskins or Indians?

    People outraged at Marquette changing their stupid flag or people getting upset because their fav team from Cleveland no longer has Chief Wahoo as their mascot, are the real oversensitive emotionally driven extremists. Imagine being outraged that a baseball team changed its name?

    Get over yourselves people, direct your passion to more worthwhile endeavors.

  • I actually like the new Seal. Notice that they got some Latin (European language), and, the Name of God into the new ‘PC’ emblem: so maybe not such a bad tradeoff.

  • Cotour

    Mike a:

    Look at all this from a more objective middle ground.

    While there may be some minority of people who may be upset (?) with how a sports team portrays themselves. You cannot please everyone. It is your more acquiescent reaction to the “Everything in America is evil and racist and must be razed and reformulated in a *NEW* and *BETTER* way that we on the extreme politically correct Left who have created and drive this new “Politically correct” / “Woke” agenda will be dictating how it will be reformulated.

    Why? Because they are more better than you and me and the Founders of America, who were white. This is the New World Order agenda that you are playing into through your justification.

    So, while there may be some obscure but genuine segment of society that take some kind of offence to these sports team identities, I suspect that there are many more that have conveniently based on their Democrat Socialist political agenda that have talked themselves into some degree of “Righteous” outrage or upset regarding such things it’s what underlies it all that is the real issue.

    Once everyone who is “Outraged” or “Upset” regarding such things is satisfied where exactly are we all? This is but a component of the “Fundamentally changing America” agenda that is essential for the Democrat Socialists to do just that. Is that the country you want to live in?

    You cannot ever satisfy everyone, and anyone who tries to do so goes nowhere and is nothing. Respect, yes. But pandering for political manipulation purposes? NEVER!

    And just like the Joe Biden administration where we have an installed president who reacts and basically gives commentary about what he sees going on in front of him without anything to say about it. As opposed to acting with a clear American interests’ vision and agenda that guides him.

    Perspective? Yes, perspective. But attempt to see the entire enchilada and what is being attempted.

    And I understand that there will be change in America, but as we are all witness to in these Democrat Socialist agendas are weak, perverted and are death to all concerned.

    You see how much respect President Putin has for what he clearly sees going on in American politics today, right?

  • Cotour

    And here is a prime example of my point:

    Actor Sam Elliot, western movie icon does not like the movie “The Power Of The Dog”

    https://dailycaller.com/2022/03/09/two-guys-shaming-sam-elliott-take-another-look-benedict-cumberbatch-kodi-smit-mcphee/

    Sam Elliot comments on the new movie “The Power Of The Dog “Was a piece of “Dog excrement”.

    Elliot: the movie is a “piece of ****,” and that the cast were “running around in chaps and no shirts. There’s all these allusions of homosexuality throughout the ***king movie,” when asked for his opinion on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast.

    And the “Woke” response to Mr. Elliot?

    “Smit-McPhee told Variety that he had “nothing” to say about Elliott’s comments, but he totally did. Smit-McPhee, who has 34 acting credits to Elliott’s 105, said, “because I’m a mature being and I’m passionate about what I do, and I don’t really give energy to anything outside of that,” before adding, “Good luck to him.”

    And Mr. Cumberbuns response to Mr. Elliot:

    “Cumberbatch said Elliott’s review was a sign of “toxic masculinity.” (Insert eye-roll here). What’s better is how he chose to define “toxic masculinity.”

    “I think we are to teach our sons to be feminists, if we’re to teach equality, if we’re to understand what poisons the well in men, [and] creates toxic masculinity, we need to understand and look at the hood of characters like Phil Burbank to see what their struggle is and why that’s there in the first place because otherwise it will just keep repeating itself,” Cumberbatch said, according to Consequence Film.”.

    Do you get my point? Doesn’t mean we cannot have both, but when the one through “Political correctness” and some degree of asserted morality through politics and law attempts to tell everyone what they must think say and do, or else.

    That is too much, they have as they say, “Jumped the shark”.

    And they will pay for their unreasonable overreach.

  • Cotour

    A little bit more:

    Its silly, but after all, isn’t it all in the long run silly.

    https://youtu.be/Uhc4Um_CVxE

    With putting up with and plugging into this political correctness in the end everyone dies. This silliness is only possible to be culturally fooled around with because America has been soooo successful and in that success, in that cushion there is existential danger.

    It’s just how the universe rewards such stupid, idealistic, unrealistic self-indulgent thinking. And it does not mean that there must be just one way of doing things or living, not at all.

    But when it comes to life and existence in the real world let’s not allow silly to dominate.

  • Cotour

    This guy gets it:

    LIBS: “Straight Men Cuddle and Kiss” Me: “No” https://youtu.be/eITMuKIQTC0

    The Left want to convince everyone, redefine what a man is and what men do.

    And its not about you or me, its about what the Left, the Democrat Socialists, the promoter of CRT, those who despise the founding of our country are now teaching and attempting to teach the young people in schools in order to “Fundamentally change America”.

    Accent on Mental.

  • Nabi

    They’re waaaay ahead of you in the Woke department in Canada. In British Columbia for example, Indian ‘science’ is now mandated integral to many government supported programs. In order to graduate from public school students will soon be required to pass a course in Indian ‘history’. Since said ‘history’ has been rigorously distorted and whitewashed by Woke initiatives there’s little doubt the lessons are going to be darkly amusing–‘white man only do bad!’– to anybody who knows anything about aboriginal ‘history’. Canadians are already so far gone most would be terrified to make a burp.

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