For as long as I have been a student at Iowa State, the buzzwords for this campus have been “diversity” and “multiculturalism.” And, for the most part, the Daily has tried to represent the opinions of minority students.

Yet, as I read the Tuesday, Sept. 23 issue of the Daily, I found the headline “Powwow for the Indian tribe” in the sports section. Call me naive, but I read it to find out when and where the powwow would be held. Silly me – it was about baseball.

I cannot begin to express how saddened I was to find out that we (the Native American students) still don’t seem to matter much on this campus. Saddened, but not at all surprised.

With only 70-some “American Indian or Alaskan Native” students on this campus, we are certainly easy to ignore. I am (reasonably) sure that the author did not intend to be offensive when he wrote the article, but racism takes many forms.

Insensitivity to racial issues is (to me) even more frightening than pure, outright racial hatred. Hatred is going out of style, and the vast majority of ISU students would say “Yes, it is wrong to hate someone because of his or her race.” But how many of those same students read that article and this letter and thought “she really needs to lighten up?”

I am not even going to object to the racist naming of sports teams (I could go on for pages about that). But calling a trip to the playoffs a “powwow” completely trivializes an important part of our culture. I assume that the author of this article has never even attended a powwow.

Perhaps he should. I don’t think that he would be so quick to make such a pointless analogy after seeing what a powwow is really like.

Kelly J. Welch

Junior

Genetics