The Co-opting of a Symbol

What do you think when you see the Zia sun symbol? You may not even know what it's called, but I'm willing to bet you think Native American and the sun. If you see it in red on a yellow background, you might think of the New Mexico flag. But even the New Mexico flag speaks of our Native Americans and of the bright sun we are blessed with.

Several of us ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers at CNM got together to recreate a state group for TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) , our professional conference. New Mexico TESOL had been created before, but interest died out, so we were going to restart it. I was playing with banners to help with the website Jennifer had created. I found a red Zia symbol, placed it on a yellow background, and added the words in red NM TESOL on the horizontal rays. It wasn't wonderful, but it was a start and I figured we'd tweak it.

But at our first meeting, I was informed that we couldn't use the Zia sun symbol. "It's co-opting their symbol," I was told. I was aghast. "But I was using the New Mexico flag," I argued. "I didn't take it from a piece of pottery."

"Doesn't matter. It's offensive to them."

Now, while personally it wasn't so important to me that they used MY design, I couldn't get over the personal correctness of the group, to such an extent that they would eliminate from their options a perfectly clear symbol that speaks of three things we were proud of, that is, New Mexico, our sunshine, and the Native Americans that live here.

Let's take the issue of co-opting. Co-opting would be taking the symbol and turning it into something else from what it originally meant. Co-opting is what the Nazis did with a perfectly fine Native American symbol. You can't see the swastika now without thinking of a horrible regime.

Who was it offensive to that we (or businesses like Zia.net) use the symbol? Not all Native Americans, not the majority of New Mexican natives, not all the members of Zia Pueblo. I may be going out on a limb here, but I'm willing to bet it's a small group of Native Americans who have been persuaded by ACLU that they are victims of evil non-Native peoples. Being victims is good business.

But I also think that we can't just change our language and eliminate symbols that mean something just because people find themselves offended by the fact that we use them. For that reason, I rejoiced when I saw the blog website for the Albuquerque tea party being planned. It has a dynamite use of the Zia sun symbol.

And when I made my lemon jello cookies for our East Mountain conservative group meetup, I proudly piped red Zia's onto them.