Charlene Teters | !free!
Through her art, lecturing, and persistence, Charlene Teters has ensured that the "conqueror’s" story is no longer the only one being told, achieving a national shift in perception.
she and others used against mascotry. Where to watch the documentary In Whose Honor? . The status of other Native mascots today.
In series such as What You See Is Not Real , Teters juxtaposes kitsch tourism items—like plastic tomahawks and "Indian maiden" dolls—alongside brutal realities, including photographs of the historical trauma inflicted upon Indigenous communities. By placing these contrasting images side-by-side, she exposes the cognitive dissonance of a society that consumes Indigenous caricature while ignoring Indigenous suffering. Her art challenges the viewer to strip away the layers of myth and see Native people as modern, complex human beings rather than relics of the past. charlene teters
In the late 1980s, Teters enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Expecting a welcoming academic environment, she was instead confronted with a "racially hostile environment" embodied by the university's mascot, "Chief Illiniwek".
: Her work often features provocative pieces like "Way of Sorrows," which addresses migration and the US-Mexico border, and "It was only an Indian," an installation challenging the casual dismissal of Native lives. Through her art, lecturing, and persistence, Charlene Teters
In works like Offering of the Sacred Pipe and Her Clothes of Doeskin , Teters re-centers the female body as a vessel of culture. She beadworks and sews with a precision that honors her matrilineal heritage, yet she often presents these sacred objects on stark, gallery-white walls, creating a jarring dissonance between Indigenous intimacy and institutional sterility. She forces the museum—that colonial archive of Native "artifacts"—to confront the living spirit it attempted to cage. Her art does not ask for permission; it reclaims the gaze. As she famously said, “For years, they looked at us. Now, we look back.”
That question became the engine of her life. She began standing silently outside the university’s football stadium, holding a sign that read “Indians Are Human Beings.” She was met with mockery—fans threw beer and bones at her, chanted “Scalp her!”—but she refused to move. This was not a political calculation; it was a mother’s instinct. Teters understood that the mascot debate was not about a name; it was about a pedagogy. Every tomahawk chop taught non-Native children that Indigenous people were extinct, cartoonish, or a costume to be worn. It taught Native children that their sacred regalia—the eagle feather, the war bonnet—held no more meaning than a foam finger. The Turning Point: Chief Illiniwek
: She holds an Associate of Fine Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) , a B.F.A. from the College of Santa Fe , and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign .
Teters is often described by fellow activists as a pioneer who forced mainstream America to confront the racist underpinnings of sports mascotry. Her advocacy contributed significantly to the eventual retiring of the University of Illinois mascot in 2007, and it helped lay the groundwork for the eventual, albeit slow, change of professional team names like the Washington Redskins.
Teters’ journey as a catalyst for change began with her own artistic development. Educated at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA)—a premier institution for Native arts—she developed a deep appreciation for the role of art in maintaining cultural continuity and resisting the clichés that often plague Native representations. Her artistry, focused on painting and mixed media, began to center on the ways in which settler colonialism actively works to define—and diminish—Native identity. The Turning Point: Chief Illiniwek
