By Kevin Canessa Jr. - Jun 23, 2009
Also read: cultural competency, American Indians, law, Black, history
A McDonald's Happy Meal figurine depicting Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer riding a motorcycle has members of American-Indian communities angry. Some American Indians are calling into question the fast-food giant's cultural sensitivities.
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The McDonald's Custer figurine is part of a series of Happy Meals based on the movie "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian."
DiversityInc contacted McDonald's for comment. Here's their response.
"At McDonald's, we value and respect people of all ethnicities, as well as their cultural history. "The Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" Happy Meal features eight toys portraying different characters from the film. As with all Happy Meal promotions, our goal is to provide families a positive experience that can be shared by all."
"I don't think the big shots at McDonald's realize what an insult this is to the Lakota people. Here was a man responsible for the death of many Lakota and a man responsible for discovering the gold that eventually led to the theft of the Sacred Black Hills of the Great Sioux Nation, and they have the audacity to hand out his likeness to children here in Rapid City, a town now fighting to prove it is not a racist community," said Jason Wolters, an Oglala Lakota Indian. "Most white people would never understand our perspective on this horrible faux paux, but to every Indian in America, the insult is obvious."
Word of the Custer figure broke recently in a blog post on TheHuffingtonPost.com. There, Bobbie DuBray, an administrative assistant for the Lakota Peoples Law Project in South Dakota, wrote she was shocked and "visibly upset" after she recently visited a McDonald's to get a Happy Meal for her son.
"I went through the drive thru at McDonald's ... to get a Happy Meal for my five-year-old son. I got home and my brother opened the meal and found the Custer doll," DuBray wrote. "I think it's insulting. It's like handing out KKK dolls in the south where there are a lot of Blacks."
DuBray told DiversityInc she spoke with the restaurant manager and asked for an apology and that the Custer figurines be taken off the market.
She said the local McDonald's had stopped selling the Happy Meals with the Custer figurine but she said she's disappointed no one from McDonald's corporate headquarters has responded to her request for an apology. The Custer Happy Meals ended at McDonald's June 19, reports said.
"Most of the employees in the McDonald's here are Native Americans. Even if they apologized at this point, it would be too late so far as I am concerned," DuBray said.
Custer's infamy among American Indians stems largely from his role as a commanding officer in Indian Wars in the 1860s and 1870s, in which thousands of American Indians were killed, according to "A Complete Life of Gen. George A. Custer."
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