Amie Hammond, a history major, stopped in her tracks yesterday when she saw a table of students near the Ute Brave statue on the Union patio selling T-shirts for the U football game against TCU.
The shirts depicted an American Indian roasting the TCU mascot, a horned toad, over a fire. The American Indian was wearing a headdress and had a big nose.
As a member of the Ute tribe, Hammond said she found the image very offensive.
The Ute tribe, along with other tribes, regards the horned frog as an animal that signifies their elders, Hammond said.
“To see an Indian roasting the frog, I found that offensive,” she said.
Hammond took a picture of the shirt with her phone and sent it to a fellow American Indian student Debra Yazzie, a member of the Navajo Nation and a graduate student in engineering.
Hammond then called Yazzie and told her about the shirts she had seen for sale. Yazzie went to the Union and withdrew cash from an ATM to buy the shirts.
“I wanted to have proof of what they were selling, not just pictures,” Yazzie said.
Yazzie said that as a Navajo, she has been taught to consider a horned frog or toad as her “grandfather.”
“As children we are taught that if we encounter a horned toad, to pick it up, thank it for blessing you with the day, ask it for peace, harmony and balance, and then let it go,” Yazzie said.
She bought all sizes of the shirt from the students, who registered at the Union Reservations Desk under the name Rivalry Tees.
One student, who only identified himself as Zach, a parks, recreation and tourism major, said they had sold about 150 shirts.
Yazzie returned to the table of shirts with another American Indian student and asked the students to stop selling them because they found them offensive.
She explained to them the significance the horned toad had to the Navajo people and other American Indian tribes. The student apologized for offending her, Yazzie said.
This didn’t stop the students from selling the shirts and they moved their efforts to the tailgating lot on Guardsman Way to sell to fans before the game.
While at the Guardsman lot, Hammond and other students, along with Davina Spotted Elk, a sociology student and the project director of the American Indian Teacher Training Program, confronted the students selling the shirts.
“How can you depict Utes this way?” Spotted Elk asked Zach.
“Here is a Ute person,” Spotted Elk said, gesturing to Hammond and the shirt. “Does she look like that?”
Zach said he was not trying to offend anyone and he only used the Ute and the horned frog because they are the respective mascots of Utah and TCU.
Hammond told the students that they would make sort of formal complaint to the U regarding the shirts. She said she would like to see some disciplinary action from the school.
“It wasn’t our intention to be offensive,” Zach said. “We’re just here for the football game.”
Zach said a buddy of his drew the picture for the T-shirt and they used it as an idea to make some extra money.
“We thought it would be cool to see everyone wearing them at the game,” he said.
Spotted Elk said she came to the tailgating lot to ask the students to stop selling the shirts and to bring the issue to the attention of the university.
“I hope the U looks at this and I hope it opens their eyes,” said Spotted Elk. “This is culturally offensive.”
Lucas IsleyTwo Utah students created a t-shirt they thought would be fun for the TCU game but didn?t realize it was offensive to American Indians.
