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Chahārshanbe-Sūri, Iran’s Festival of Fire, falls on the Wednesday before the Persian New Year. Join in celebrating Iran’s unique New Year traditions this Saturday at the Freer and Sackler Galleries.

Friday, March 15: Movie Night!

Tired of $10 movie tickets? Smithsonian has three free films on tap tonight. Rebels with a Cause (2012, 72 min, USA, directed/produced by Nancy Kelly and Kenji Yamamoto; trailer here) tells the story of pioneer environmental activists who saved California’s coastline from suburban development in the 1950s. Market Imaginary (2012, 54 min, USA, directed by Joanna Grabski; trailer here) investigates Dakar’s Colobane Market, a major market in the West African city that is deeply embedded in the local economy and culture. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002, 129 min, Korea, directed by Park Chan-wook, Korean with English subtitles; trailer here), follows a hearing-impaired factory worker who turns to an illegal organ-trafficking ring to get a new kidney for his dying sister, then goes on a quest for vengeance when he is cheated. All films free. In respective order: 6:30 p.m., 7 p.m. and 7 p.m. at Anacostia Community Museum, African Art Museum and Freer Gallery.

Saturday, March 16: Persian New Year Celebration

When Americans celebrate their new year, they watch a ball drop. Persians jump over fire. Chahārshanbe-Sūri, the Festival of Fire, preludes Nowrūz, the Persian New Year, which welcomes the beginning of spring. Today, learn about Iran’s exciting new year traditions while enjoying Persian songs, dances, games and food. You can even practice some (fake) fire jumping of your own! Fun for the whole family. Free. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Freer and Sackler Galleries.

Sunday, March 17: Hok-Noth-Da Story Time for Families

Hok-Noth-Da–Did you hear? People often remember stories their parents told them for their entire lives. Because they make such an impression, stories are ways for families and cultures to pass down important lessons for generations. Today, a Native museum staff member passes down lessons from different Native communities throughout the Western Hemisphere by reading children’s stories by or about Native people. Open to children ages 4 to 8. Free. 11:15 a.m. to 12 p.m. American Indian Museum.

Also, check out our Visitors Guide App. Get the most out of your trip to Washington, D.C. and the National Mall with this selection of custom-built tours, based on your available time and passions. From the editors of Smithsonian magazine, the app is packed with handy navigational tools, maps, museum floor plans and museum information including ‘Greatest Hits’ for each Smithsonian museum.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

Smithsonian in snow, circa 1977. Photo by Smithsonian Institution

Looking for something to do today, while the snowy weather conditions persist? The Smithsonian museums will be open for business today. But the National Zoo will be closed Wednesday, March 6, 2013.

Plan your visit, using our convenient Tours app, a free download is available here.

Jazz artist Michael “Bags” Davis pays tribute to trumpet legend Kenny Dorham (above, performing in Toronto in 1954) at Thursday night’s Take Five! jazz performance at the American Art Museum. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Tuesday, February 19: Voices of Native Youth

See life through the eyes of a young person in an indigenous community today in movie clips from the Native Youth Film and Video Festival. Open to submissions from American Indians, Alaskan and Hawaiian natives and members of Canadian First Nations under the age of 24, the festival selects numerous 10-minute films to be screened at the Santa Fe Indian Market in the summer. Last year’s chosen clips recently made their way to Smithsonian, where they are running until the end of the month. Free. 12:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. daily in February. American Indian Museum.

Wednesday, February 20: The Artist

The Artist is the most awarded French film in history. Shot in the style of a black and white silent film (check out its trailer), it depicts a romance between a fading silent film star and a rising actress from 1927 to 1932, when silent film was rapidly being replaced by sound film, a.k.a. “the talkies.” The American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery are showing the movie in their shared Kogod courtyard, which is an ideal place to escape a dull February Wednesday and slip into a romantic past. Be sure to bring along your Valentine from last week. Free. 7 p.m. to 8:40 p.m. American Art Museum, National Portrait Gallery.

Thursday, February 21: Take Five! Mike “Bags” Davis: Kenny Dorham

Trumpet rock star Michael Davis takes the stage tonight to perform the music of Kenny Dorham, one of jazz’s most influential trumpeters in the mid-19th century. Dorham made his mark playing bebop and hard bop, and composed the jazz standard “Blue Bossa.” Listen to a sample of Dorham’s genius here, and see Davis’s chops on display here. The performance is part of Smithsonian’s Take Five! program, a series of free jazz concerts every Thursday. Free. 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. American Art Museum.

Also, check out our Visitors Guide App. Get the most out of your trip to Washington, D.C. and the National Mall with this selection of custom-built tours, based on your available time and passions. From the editors of Smithsonian magazine, the app is packed with handy navigational tools, maps, museum floor plans and museum information including ‘Greatest Hits’ for each Smithsonian museum.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

Illustration by Aaron Sechrist

There was a lot of Twitter activity today covering the American Indian Museum‘s panel on the controversial use of Indian imagery and names in sports leagues, from football’s D.C. Redskins to baseball’s Cleveland Indians. Museum director Kevin Gover says the practice dates back decades but that it’s time to put an end to it. With some notable successes already achieved, the call to remove and replace the offensive names and mascots seems to be picking up speed and Gover predicts the mascots will be put to bed within the next couple of decades. The panel broke into three sections: mascot origin myths, case studies from around the country and D.C.’s own NFL team.

Take a look at some of the responses on Twitter where people wondered why the tradition persists and what can be done to change it:

Full list of panel participants:

• Manley A. Begay Jr. (Navajo), moderator, associate social scientist/senior lecturer, American Indian Studies Program, University of Arizona, and co-director, Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
• Lee Hester, associate professor and director of American Indian Studies and director of the Meredith Indigenous Humanities Center, The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma
• E. Newton Jackson, associate provost and professor of Sports Management, University of North Florida
• N. Bruce Duthu (United Houma Nation of Louisiana), chair and professor, Native American Studies, Dartmouth College
• Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne/ Hodulgee Muscogee), moderator. President, Morning Star Institute and past executive director, National Congress of American Indians, and a founding trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian
• C. Richard King, co-editor, Team Spirits, Native Athletes in Sport and Society, and Encyclopedia of Native Americans in Sports, and professor and chair of the Department of Critical Gender and Race Studies, Washington State University
• Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Council of Chiefs, Northern Cheyenne Tribe; President, Nighthorse Consultants; Trustee, National Museum of the American Indian; Award-winning Artist/Jeweler, U.S. Representative of Colorado (1987-1993); and U.S. Senator of Colorado (1992-2005)
• Delise O’Meally, director of Governance and International Affairs, NCAA
• Lois J. Risling (Hoopa/Yurok/Karuk), educator and land specialist for the Hoopa Valley Tribes, and retired director, Center for Indian Community Development, Humboldt State University
• Ellen Staurowsky, professor, Department of Sports Management, Goodwin School of Professional Studies, Drexel University
• Linda M. Waggoner, author, Fire Light: The Life of Angel De Cora, Winnebago Artist; and “Playing Indian, Dreaming Indian: The Trial of William ‘Lone Star’ Dietz” (Montana: The History Magazine, Spring 2013), and lecturer, Multicultural Studies, Sonoma State University

The Washington football team is a notable example of groups that still use Indian names or imagery for mascots. Photo by Ryan R. Reed

When Kevin Gover was a kid growing up in Norman, Oklahoma, college students at the nearby University of Oklahoma had begun protesting the school’s mascot. Known as “Little Red,” the mascot was a student costumed in a war bonnet and breech cloth who would dance to rally crowds. Gover, who today is the director of the American Indian Museum, says he remembers thinking, “I couldn’t quite understand why an Indian would get up and dance when the Sooners scored a touchdown.” Of Pawnee heritage, Gover says he understands now that the use of Indian names and imagery for mascots is more than just incongruous. “I’ve since realized that it’s a much more loaded proposition.”

On February 7, joined by a panel of ten scholars and authors, Gover will deliver opening remarks for a discussion on the history and ongoing use in sports today of Indian mascots.

Though many have been retired, including Oklahoma’s Little Red in 1972, notable examples—baseball’s Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves, and football’s Washington Redskins—continue, perhaps not as mascots, but in naming conventions and the use of Indian motifs in logos.

“We need to bring out the history, and that’s the point of the seminar, is that it’s not a benign sort of undertaking,” explains Gover. He’s quick to add that he doesn’t regard the teams’ fans as culpable, but he likewise doesn’t hesitate to call out the mascots and the names of the teams as inherently racist.

Black and American Indian caricatures were both popular in the past, but Gover says American Indian mascots continue to linger in the modern sports scene. Illustration by Aaron Sechrist,
courtesy of the American Indian Museum

Many of the mascots were first employed during the early 20th century, a time when Indians were being oppressed under policies of Americanization. Children were forced into boarding schools. Spiritual leaders could be jailed for continuing to practice native religions.”It was a time when federal policy was to see that Indians disappeared,” says Gover. Looking back on the timing of the mascots’ introduction, Gover says, “To me, it looks now as an assertion that they succeeded  in getting rid of the Indians, so now it’s okay to have these pretend Indians.”

A push for Native American equality and tribal sovereignty emerged during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. “That’s when the response started,” says Gover. “There’s a lot of activism around it. Since that time, slowly but surely, a lot of the mascots have been done away with.”

Gover made an effort to get a range of expertise on the panel but significantly, he says he was unable to find anyone willing to defend the continued use of the mascots. That doesn’t mean those people don’t exist, says Gover. At some of the very schools which banned racist mascots, alumni are calling for a return to the old ways. “I actually saw a website a couple of weeks ago where a lot of Stanford alum were wearing this clothing that had the old symbol on it,” Gover says.

But he still believes that momentum is on his side. “The mood is changing,” Gover says, “and I have no doubt that in a decade or two, these mascots will all be gone.”

The discussion “Racial Stereotypes and Cultural Appropriation” will be held at the American Indian Museum, February 7, 10:00 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. Get the live webcast here. Panelists include:

• Manley A. Begay Jr. (Navajo), moderator, associate social scientist/senior lecturer, American Indian Studies Program, University of Arizona, and co-director, Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
• Lee Hester, associate professor and director of American Indian Studies and director of the Meredith Indigenous Humanities Center, The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma
• E. Newton Jackson, associate provost and professor of Sports Management, University of North Florida
• N. Bruce Duthu (United Houma Nation of Louisiana), chair and professor, Native American Studies, Dartmouth College
• Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne/ Hodulgee Muscogee), moderator. President, Morning Star Institute and past executive director, National Congress of American Indians, and a founding trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian
• C. Richard King, co-editor, Team Spirits, Native Athletes in Sport and Society, and Encyclopedia of Native Americans in Sports, and professor and chair of the Department of Critical Gender and Race Studies, Washington State University
• Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Council of Chiefs, Northern Cheyenne Tribe; President, Nighthorse Consultants; Trustee, National Museum of the American Indian; Award-winning Artist/Jeweler, U.S. Representative of Colorado (1987-1993); and U.S. Senator of Colorado (1992-2005)
• Delise O’Meally, director of Governance and International Affairs, NCAA
• Lois J. Risling (Hoopa/Yurok/Karuk), educator and land specialist for the Hoopa Valley Tribes, and retired director, Center for Indian Community Development, Humboldt State University
• Ellen Staurowsky, professor, Department of Sports Management, Goodwin School of Professional Studies, Drexel University
• Linda M. Waggoner, author, Fire Light: The Life of Angel De Cora, Winnebago Artist; and “Playing Indian, Dreaming Indian: The Trial of William ‘Lone Star’ Dietz” (Montana: The History Magazine, Spring 2013), and lecturer, Multicultural Studies, Sonoma State University