This is a familiar story: at Marquette University, Native American students complained that the school’s seal was “disrespectful to indigenous people.” Here is the old seal. It shows, among other things, Father Marquette, after whom the university is named, in a canoe with an Indian who is said to be his guide:
Per the College Fix, the seal was taken from this painting of Marquette with a group of Indians:
It is not obvious why the scene depicted on Marquette’s seal would be offensive to Indian activists. This is the explanation:
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.
Which doesn’t really answer the question, but there you have it.
This is similar to instances like the statue of Theodore Roosevelt with a Native American and an African American man that stood at the American Museum of Natural History. It was deemed racist because Roosevelt was on horseback and the accompanying figures were on foot, thereby placing Roosevelt in a superior position. Well, of course, he was elected president, and they weren’t.
Another instance is the statue of Lewis, Clark and Sacajawea that was removed from Charlottesville because the figures were standing or sitting on rocks at different levels, so that Lewis’s head was highest, Clark’s second highest, and Sacajawea, sitting on a rock, was a little lower. So as a result there is no longer a statue of Sacajawea in Charlottesville.
Marquette has now unveiled a new seal which depicts neither Father Marquette (!) nor the Indian guide:
Instead of Marquette and the guide, the new seal depicts rivers and several stalks of wild rice:
[T]he bottom panel is an image of a river splitting into three separate rivers – the Milwaukee, the Menomonee and the Kinnickinnic. The panel features three stalks of rice, a crop popular with area Native Americans.
Wild rice may be popular with Native Americans, but it has nothing to do with Marquette University, unlike Father Marquette, after whom the school is named, and who explored what is now Wisconsin.
So Marquette’s Indian guide joins the Indian maiden who formerly adorned Land O’Lakes butter, Uncle Ben, who was a wealthy rice grower in Texas, and Aunt Jemima in the world of non-persons of color. It won’t be long before only whites will be depicted in advertising, statues, flags, seals, and so on. This will be considered progress by left-wing activists.
STEVE adds—the meme-sters beat you to it:
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