"Spindel's work is a marvelous voyage that prepares the reader for
further adventures that are clearly not designed to reveal but to
suggest. . . . In explaining white America to Itself, the book is
an unqualified success."
-- "American Indian Quarterly"
"An unusual and unfailingly interesting examination of a clash
of cultures."
--Sports Illustrated"
"Readers of this very important, highly readable book will have
a new understanding of the insidiousness of racism and the ease
with which mass marketing can create new mythology. Highly
recommended."
--"Library Journal"
"A thorough treatise on a controversial topic."
--"Booklist"
"Spindel writes convincingly about how her research has helped
her to understand attitudes toward American Indians. . . . Many
fans of professional sports would benefit by reading this
book."
--"Publishers Weekly"
"Although a great deal has been written about the controversy of
using fake Indians to get fans pumped up at football games, it took
an entire book to give full vent to the subject. Carol Spindel does
this admirably and evenhandedly."
--"Chicago Tribune"
"An important resource in the ongoing controversy over Indian
mascots across America."
--"Religious Studies Review"
"Spindel displays considerable courage in tackling a
controversial subject. A very personal account of the
twentieth-century phenomenon of American Indians used as sports
mascots, Dancing at Halftime also contains some fascinating history
of early college football. The whole is strongly and beautifully
written."
--"Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee"
"With clear and compelling language, Spindel shows us how the
naiverituals of a previous era can become the insensitive orthodoxy
of today. I can't imagine a more readable-or a more
even-handed-exploration of the mascot issue. This should be
required reading for anyone committed to building a new sense of
community in the United States."
--"Frederick E. Hoxie, Swanlund Professor, University of
Illinois, and editor of The Encyclopedia of North American
Indians"
"Honest, insightful, and a well balanced analysis of this
complicated problem. Spindel has discovered the confusing reservoir
of tangled emotions that underlie American attitudes towards
Indians-and toward themselves. A 'must read'."
--"Vine Deloria, Jr., Professor of History Emeritus, University of
Colorado and a Standing Rock Sioux tribal member"
"Yesterday's racism we recognize and we are embarrassed by it.
Today's racism we often do not recognize until we read something
like Carol Spindel's clear and fascinating message in Dancing at
Halftime."
--"Senator Paul Simon"
"I celebrate Dancing at Halftime, which brings Carol Spindel's
wry and penetrating perception to this subject. As she well
understands, it is a cipher through which one can read the deeper
meanings not only of American history but of contemporary life
today."
--"Susan Griffin, author of A Chorus of Stones"
Sports fans love to don paint and feathers to cheer on the
Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians, the Atlanta Braves,
the Florida State Seminoles, and the Warriors and Chiefs of their
hometown high schools. But outside the stadiums, American Indians
aren't cheering--they're yelling racism.
School boards and colleges are bombarded with emotional demands
from both sides, while professionalteams find themselves in court
defending the right to trademark their Indian names and logos. In
the face of opposition by a national anti-mascot movement, why are
fans so determined to retain the fictional chiefs who plant flaming
spears and dance on the fifty-yard line?
To answer this question, Dancing at Halftime takes the reader on
a journey through the American imagination where our thinking about
American Indians has been, and is still being, shaped. Dancing at
Halftime is the story of Carol Spindel's determination to
understand why her adopted town is so passionately attached to
Chief Illiniwek, the American Indian mascot of the University of
Illinois. She rummages through our national attic, holding dusty
souvenirs from world's fairs and wild west shows, Edward Curtis
photographs, Boy Scout handbooks, and faded football programs up to
the light. Outside stadiums, while American Indian Movement
protestors burn effigies, she listens to both activists and the
fans who resent their attacks. Inside hearing rooms and high
schools, she poses questions to linguists, lawyers, and university
alumni.
A work of both persuasion and compassion, Dancing at Halftime
reminds us that in America, where Pontiac is a car and Tecumseh a
summer camp, Indians are often our symbolic servants, functioning
as mascots and metaphors that express our longings to become
"native" Americans, and to feel at home in our own land.
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