Hello all, When the Apache Group named itself and its software Apache, they were continuing a long-practiced North American settler tradition of appropriating Native identity as a costume for their own causes. An environment filled with propaganda including everything from Hollywood media to music festivals and children’s summer camps enabled them to feel entitled to play Indian.
The feather logo, meant to symbolize this community was clearly chosen for its association with Native people and their cultures. In the US feathers from many birds are highly regulated by the Feds, a lasting legacy of attempts at suppressing Indigenous cultures. In the 1970’s the Washington Redskins had a feather logo. After protests from Native people complaining about the name and the indignity of a feather being used to represent people, the team commissioned a Native artist to redraw one of their older “Indian head” logos instead of doing the right thing and changing the name and branding entirely. There’s no respectful way to use other people, let alone survivors of genocide, as a costume for your own causes. ASF’s mascotry has spawned its own niche of digital redface in projects like Apache Geronimo and Apache Arrow and no doubt inspired many others to use similar stereotyping. It’s almost a cliché to say but imagine substituting a different group with different stereotypes to use as branding. As a developer I recognize that ASF is involved in some of the most influential software out there. But as a Tlingit with the privilege of living on Lingít Aaní I can’t discuss ASF or its projects without cringing. By now there have been multiple peer-reviewed studies outlining the direct and indirect harm that Native mascotry causes Native and non-Native people. Schools, commercial products, and professional sports teams have changed their names and rebranded. It’s long past time for ASF to do the same. Gunalchéesh, Walter Cameron
