Changing the Indian Mascot
by Jan Lee Brookes
In 1988, Larry Ashmore, an NHS science teacher who had a summer home in western Montana, told then principal, Tim Breslin, that after several conversations with Lakota people, he questioned the ethics of a school being represented by an Indian mascot. Believing students should make that decision, Tim referred the matter to the Leadership Council, twenty teenagers who formed the student government. He asked them to study the issue and promised to accept their recommendation. During the next 18 months, the Leadership Council talked to numerous Native People around the country and surveyed NHS students. Overwhelmingly, Native People supported a mascot change; however, two-thirds of NHS students opposed it.
Because of student resistance, the Leadership Council organized an informational assembly on April 5, 1990. They asked Roger Head, an Ojibwe, executive director of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, to speak in support of keeping the mascot, and the Educational Director of the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington, Connecticut, Trudy Lamb Richmond, a Schaghticoke Indian, to speak on the other side.
What I remember about Mr. Head was that he didn’t oppose the mascot change. Rather, he believed that faced with the loss of their traditional lands, high levels of unemployment and poverty, and public health issues such as alcoholism and suicide, Indian mascots were the least important issue facing Native Peoples. He felt that Newtown High School could keep its Indian mascot if the Indian mascot was done respectfully.
Trudy Richmond, however, believed that Indian mascots were stereotypes that demeaned and degraded all Native Peoples. Far from being a peripheral issue, mascots reenforced a public image of Indians that was glued to the past. If someone spoke as an Indian, she asserted, and didn’t wear a feather headdress or live in a teepee, most Americans denied he was a real Indian. If Indians didn’t exist, she insisted, their cultural and religious symbols could be appropriated and misused, the land and the resources on it stolen. Far from being minor, mascots were a fundamental problem facing Indians, she believed.
Once the two speakers had concluded, students were allowed to ask questions. Almost all of these became missiles hurled at Trudy Richmond.
“Why can’t you Indians understand that Newtown High School chose an Indian mascot because we respect Indians.”
“Indians represent bravery, strength and fighting to the end. Why would we choose a mascot we didn’t respect?”
In her quiet, non-confrontational voice, Trudy explained, “You aren’t respecting Indians. What you honor is the stereotype of Indians your mascot perpetuates.”
What followed were numerous and emphatic denials.
“How come we’re just hearing about this now?” someone demanded. Newtown High School has had an Indian forever. It’s our tradition.”
“Yeah,” someone else interjected. “This is all just political correctness, a few Indians whining about a fake issue.”
“It’s true that not all Indians agree about the importance of mascots,” Trudy agreed, “but to call our concerns whining is unfair.”
One of the senior boys took the microphone. “We have a man among us who is an Indian, and he’s on our side.”
Charlie Tilson, one of the custodians at Newtown High School, was indeed a Schaghticoke Indian. A gentle soul, Charlie always had a warm smile that showed no favorites.
“I’m a Native American,” he shouted into the microphone, “and I’m proud the Indian is our mascot.”
A pandemonium of cheers. The assembly ended.
The following two months were consumed with the mascot. In late April, the Leadership Council voted 18 to 2 to recommend to the new NHS principal, Bill Manfredonia, that the mascot be changed. The next day, Leadership Council president, Lee Ann Prete, read from her prepared speech during morning announcements.
“After 18 months of study,’ she said, “student representatives are recommending that the Indian mascot be changed. This is our opportunity to correct moral injustices resulting from the use of an Indian as the mascot.”
Before she had finished, more than 500 students, half the student body, walked out of their first period class, many with the full support of their teachers. They gathered in the school lobby and staged a sit-in. Students who had organized the sit-in had called newspapers, local radio stations, and Channel 8 News. After ninety minutes, the sit-in ended when Principal Manfredonia asked students to go into the auditorium. Sitting on the stage were leaders of the sit-in. They announced that after a period of education students would vote on whether to keep or change the mascot. On this issue, student-elected leaders had been summarily replaced by the leaders of the mascot sit-in.
Education consisted of one social studies class given to a panel of students who articulated their reasons to keep or change the mascot. There was also an evening forum attended by interested members of the community. In early June the matter was put to a school wide vote. It was considered so important that the registrars of voters brought in two voting machines and monitored the election. All students, staff, and teachers were allowed to vote, although the principal drew the line firmly against community members and alumni.
By a margin of sixty-seven percent, the outcome of the vote was to keep the Indian mascot. It was a landslide.
These events altered me forever. I had always believed that racism was somewhere else, not in my town, not living in the hearts of my students, colleagues and neighbors, and never resting unseen in the hidden corners of my soul. The Newtown High School Indian mascot was the mirror of racism, and the face I saw staring back was my own.
The students had promised that if the Indian mascot remained, they would learn about Native Peoples, end disrespectful behavior at football games, and choose authentic depictions of Native Americans for school murals and athletic insignia? A year passed and nothing changed.
I decided to act. I was a teacher with an optimistic belief in the power of education to transform society. The main problem, I thought, was that my students knew little about Native Americans. As one of them commented, “It’s like after Thanksgiving, they all moved west and disappeared.” I was no better informed. Our collective ignorance reflected a national amnesia.
I made an appointment to talk to Trudy Richmond. She encouraged me to focus on Northeastern Indians in my classroom, and suggested books to read. The more I read the more acutely aware I was that Native Peoples had suffered greatly as their land was taken illegally and immorally. Nor was their conquest finished. Contemporary indigenous Americans continued to battle the theft of their traditional land, and the misuse of their diverse cultures. As I read, I wondered incredulously why hadn’t any of my teachers taught me this stuff? Why was I better acquainted with the European Holocaust than with the one only whispered about in the history of my own nation?
Beginning in the fall of 1991 I highlighted Native Americans in one segment of the sociology class I taught. Students studied pre-Columbian achievements and the world view of Northeast Woodland Indians. The longest part of the unit required students to examine the effects of various U.S. Government policies. The unit ended with the most important issue facing Native Peoples today – maintaining sovereignty against encroachments of the dominant society. Students also looked at Indian stereotypes, especially team mascots.
It was a difficult unit to teach and an even harder one for students to process.
“You’re telling us that everything White people have done is evil,” one boy declared angrily.
“I know it seems that way. That’s because I’m asking you to look at U.S. History from the perspective of the conquered.
Seeing history from the standpoint of the defeated had injured these young people who previously had a positive racial identity, and I wasn’t knowledgeable or skilled enough at the time to help them deal with the blow.
I usually ended the Dominant-Minority Group Unit with a feeling of failure. Overwhelmingly, students remained attached to their mascot. They maintained that as tradition they had the right to keep it. Indians should understand them and their needs, not the reverse. Plus, they added, it would cost too much to change the mascot. As the years crept by, I doubted my ability to change hearts through education.
During the 1992-94 school years I advised a group of about 20 students who were committed to educating others about issues important to Native Peoples, and to changing disrespectful images of Indians in the school. They called themselves the Native American Committee for Change.
To educate the school community about issues important to contemporary Native Peoples, they organized Indian Day, a day-long, school-wide event. I used an $800 grant from the Newtown Board of Education to pay Native American speakers on a wide variety of topics; Indian gaming, the incarceration of Leonard Peltier, and the taking of Cree land to build the James Bay Hydro-Electric Dam. In addition, students listened to Native traditional stories, learned to drum and dance, played a Native game, watched a demonstration of traditional cooking, and were able to purchase a variety of Native foods. Peace and Dignity Journey, a group that honored the 500 years of Native survival in the western hemisphere, led the closing ceremony. They called on all people to help heal the wounds remaining from the conquest.
We invited teachers to bring their classes, and asked students to attend during their free periods. Indian Day was a mammoth undertaking that took nearly a year to plan and implement. Outside of my own students who were required to be there, however, few other students attended.
I had poured so much of myself into this project that I was in anguish at the apathy of the school community. As much as I felt the pain and anger of Native Peoples, I was just as worried about the burden carried by my own students. On the surface, their race and social class seemed to protect them, but they were also hurt. When I asked my students to identify the effects of stereotypes on the dominant group, they articulated specific ways.
“Stereotypes force people to see other groups in only one way. That means people won’t learn as much. They’ll grow narrow-minded.”
“They’ll be insensitive, sometimes even mean.”
Four years had passed since the mascot sit-in, and I had no idea how to proceed. The only thing I saw clearly was that students had to be involved. That spring I invited Sociology students to join me in studying the mascot again. Only three signed on, but each one was gold.
Calling themselves the Students Working to EliminatE Prejudice (SWEEP), Molly Dorozenski, Stephanie Dorenbosch, and Cheryl Bennett met with me weekly after school. The girls and I began simply with conversations about our own internal journeys, and where they wanted to go next. We spoke with others further ahead on the road we were traveling - Mark Cohen, the principal of Farmington High School who was engaged in replacing the Indian mascot at his school, Juanita Helphrey, the Director of the United Church of Christ Board of Homeland Ministries, who was trying to modify the Cleveland Indians mascot, and, of course, Trudy. We devoted one afternoon to library research on schools that had been successful in altering their Indian mascot.
Sitting in a circle during one of our meetings, Stephanie observed, “Schools that have changed an Indian mascot have one thing in common. Native Americans talked to students face to face about why Indian mascots are disrespectful.”
According to the 1990 Census, about 6,000 indigenous Americans lived in Connecticut out of a population of 2,000,000, and more than 5,000 of those were in urban areas. With the exception of the Schaghticoke reservation in Kent, and a tiny reservation in Trumbull, the Native presence in western Connecticut was small.
These three students devised a plant to make a documentary. They would videotape images of Indians at Newtown High School, show those to Native Americans, and then videotape their responses. They recruited a classmate, Mark Rucktenwald, who was enrolled in Newtown High School’s new video production class and had access to the needed equipment. Even more important, he had the desire to make a film that might matter.
Within two weeks Mark had a rough-cut video of school murals depicting Indians - people doing tomahawk chops at football games, a student who dressed up as an Indian during pep rallies and football games, the band playing the Indian fight song at football games, the grinning caricature of an Indian on varsity jackets, a group of girls wearing buckskin dresses that supported the cheerleaders, and clothing items for sale in the school store that featured stereotypic depictions of Indians. The last part of the video contained interviews with seeral students who briefly stated their positions on both sides of the mascot issue.
I called Trudy for suggestions of Native People we could interview, and she introduced us to many. In January 1995, Trudy invited SWEEP students and me to the Institute for American Indian Studies where the Joined Nations Youth Group would be meeting. That group had been created by Jane Deer Heart and Larry Gentle Deer to teach Connecticut Native children about their common histories and cultures.
“Jan, we don’t usually allow outsiders to visit meetings. The New York Times wanted to do an article about the group, and we refused because we never know what an outside group will say about us. Our cultures have been misrepresented in the past.”
I knew that Trudy’s first priority was to protect the children. In a supreme act of trust, she had opened a door. As I put down the phone, the full enormity of this task overwhelmed me, and I trembled.
On a clear Saturday afternoon in February 1995, Stephanie, Cheryl, and I went to the Institute for American Indian Studies for the Joined Nations Youth Group meeting. With some help from Debbie Rainey, mother of three of the children in the group, we organized the 20 teenagers into a circle surrounded by an outer ring of adults. Cheryl and the camcorder were in the center.
I explained that Newtown High School had an Indian mascot. We would show them a short video of how Indians were depicted at the school, and then we would videotape their responses. These teenagers watched the video of Indian images intently.
I asked what they would like to say to students at Newtown High School.
Silence. A knot tightened in my abdomen. Then one of the adults stepped toward the camera.
“I’m Jerry Two Bears, and I’m from the Blackfoot Nation. I see no honor in anything schools are doing. If you want to do something, help heal Mother Earth.”
Another adult came forward.
“A lot of people criticize Ted Turner, but the Atlanta Braves have a contract with the Eastern Cherokees to sell rubber tomahawks that brings the Cherokee Nation a lot of revenue.”
The flood waters had risen high enough, and the dam of their silence broke into a torrent of words. Fifteen-year-old Jeremiah spoke first.
“It makes me and my friends here angry to see what you’ve been doing. It just symbolizes the wrong things. You put us on paper, but you don’t know us at all.”
Amy, a Mohawk with flowing blond hair, said, “People who see that cartoon won’t respect us. That’s called making fun of us, and it makes us feel that we’re not important.”
Wunneanatsu, Trudy’s 16-year-old granddaughter, added, “You’ve picked our race because there aren’t as many of us. If you called yourselves the Newtown Afros, there would be a lot of people protesting.”
Jeremiah added, “You’d get upset if we called you the Newtown Honkies.”
Wunnea revealed her personal story.
“I attend Platt High School and I’m a member of the band. When we play the Indian Fight Song, the band director goes, ‘O.K., everyone, take out Wunnea’s song.’ Then people start hopping around and going, ‘Woh, Woh, Woh.’ “
Amy articulated what was now obvious.
“The important thing is that we’re still here, and we have feelings.”
Rosa, Debbie’s 16-year-old daughter, said, “If you’re honoring us, then why are so many of us upset.”
“If you’re honoring us by having an Indian mascot” Amy added, “the thing would be to ask us first, and I don’t think we were ever asked.”
Although twenty teenagers had introduced themselves to the camara, only four had spoken. While I wished it had been more, I was overwhelmed by their powerful voices.
Before she released the young people to socialize, Debbie summarized and extended their comments.
“You’ve seen across the room. We look the same as you. We have different heights, sizes, skin complexions, hair color, but we have one unity that makes us, us. And without the exposure to that, maybe you don’t understand. We’ll come to Newtown. We’ll talk with you for as long as you want.”
- - - - - -
By mid-February SWEEP had amassed a two-foot high stack of VHS interview tapes with several Native People, as well as NHS students, faculty and staff. The girls decided that because their documentary would be a teaching tool, they would structure it around four questions: what is a stereotype, how do stereotypes affect people, what’s happening at Newtown High School, and what do Native Americans think?
Reviewing this mountain of video data was emotionally draining because we had to decide what 30-60 second clip best encapsulated what that person said. During March, People Not Mascots slowly took shape as Mark made magic with the raw material we’d provided. My social studies colleagues graciously agreed to allow the girls to teach one class in early April. SWEEP developed a lesson plan that included possible questions and responses.
These three brave teenagers saw me frequently during the week of classroom presentations. Sometimes they shared small moments of victory. More often they needed to tell me how overwhelmed they were by the negativity of their peers. SWEEP also showed People Not Mascots to anyone who’d watch – interested teachers, the Board of Education, the PTSA, and Newtown clergy.
On May 1, Debby kept the promise she’d made during the Joined Nations Youth Group meeting. She and two adults accompanied nine Native teenagers to Newtown High School. They spoke during all eight school periods to 100-150 people at a time, never taking a break. They even ate lunch during one presentation.
The Danbury News Times reported:
This time there was no yelling, no tempers flaring, no snide comments. About a dozen American Indians, most of them teenagers, sat in front of students in the Newtown High School gym and quietly explained how they felt about the school’s Indian mascot. The scene was strikingly different from what had happened five years ago when a similar assembly over the mascot turned divisive. ‘We’re not here to point fingers at anyone in this room,’ said Tim Red Loon Kelly (one of the adult leaders). “We’re saying the school mascot offends us, and we’d like to explain why.’
On April 16, 1995, a Danbury News Times editorial began, “Five years ago, Newtown High School had a chance to right a wrong. They had a chance to get rid of its Indian mascot… Now thanks to a committed teacher and four determined students, the issue is on the table again.” On April 20th, the Newtown Bee Sports writer opined, “While I certainly wouldn’t mind be stereotyped as strong and brave and bold, I still maintain that if any number of people in our country, no matter how few, are offended by the depiction of their race, then something should be done about it.” In mid-June a letter to the editor of The Newtown Bee from the president of the Newtown PTA Council, a group representing the PTA’s of every school, stated, “The Newtown PTA Council urges the high school administration to be responsible and take appropriate action to change the school’s mascot… We commend the members of SWEEP for their efforts and respect for Native Americans. These students have outgrown the self-centeredness of immaturity, and shown awareness beyond their years.”
Out of camera sight, the experience of these six Native teens and their three adult leaders at Newtown High School wasn’t as positive. Their day began with a verbal epithet hurled at the nine Native People as the adults prepared the teens spiritually for the day ahead. A student stopped outside the door and yelled, “Prairie N_____s,” and then darted quickly away. These six teenagers already felt intimidated by social class differences after looking at the expensive cars in the student parking lot and glancing at the brands of clothes worn by students. After they heard the epithet, they knew they were in enemy territory. I wouldn’t have blamed their leaders if they had told me they were taking the children home. Instead, they continued on in the spirit of warriors that made them heroic. Their words and physical presence at Newtown High School made it impossible for students to believe that their Indian mascot was an honor to Native People.
Imperceptibly, student conversations about the mascot were shifting. In addition to impassioned statements to either keep or change it, there was something new.
“People Not Mascots didn’t change my mind,” said one boy to a news reporter, “but I’d like to change the thing to stop hearing about it.”
One frustrated sophomore told a teacher, “I’m sick of hearing about it. Just change it.”
What SWEEP accomplished was more transformational than removing a racist symbol. They created, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., a state of tension in the school and community that could only be relieved by establishing justice.
- - - - -
Education wasn’t enough to change a racist system. That was the job of authority.
Although Bill was aware of my work, I was less informed about what he had done in the five years since the mascot sit-in. Gradually, in his role as principal, Bill had made changes. He removed the mat depicting the head of a Plains Indian over which one walked when she entered the school and exchanged it with a plain black one. When band or sports uniforms were replaced, he refused to let students use depictions of Indians or Indian symbols on new ones. When the gym floor was resurfaced, the head of an Indian was replaced with a bold blue N.
Earlier that year, Bill had watched in dismay as Mark Cohen, the principal of Farmington High School who had been so helpful to SWEEP in its formative weeks, was publicly excoriated, and his decision to change the Indian mascot reversed by the board of education. As I sat with Bill in his office one afternoon in early May, he mentioned he’d been thinking of Mark Cohen.
“What was the Board’s reaction when SWEEP showed People Not Mascots?” he asked.
“Most were negative,” I replied. “One board member even suggested that the only reason SWEEP members were so invested in the issue was because I manipulated them. They refused to make a decision on the mascot, saying it was a decision for the school. The majority thought students should vote on it directly as they did in 1990.”
“The board sees no reason to change the mascot, but they won’t repeat what the Farmington Board of Ed did to Mark Cohen. I don’t know where John stands (Bill was referring to John Reed, Newtown’s Superintendent of Education), but he won’t reverse it either. The big question is the faculty. Mark Cohen thought his teachers were behind him, but when he took a public stand, no one supported him. How many faculty members attended the SWEEP presentation after school?”
“About fifteen.”
“What was the general reaction?”
“Teachers were interested and concerned.”
“Was anyone hostile?”
“One thought that our research was flawed because we didn’t include more Native People in favor of keeping the mascot, but no one was antagonistic.”
"I want to explore the mascot issue with more teachers,” Bill said. He asked me to organize a faculty committee to advise him.
The Mascot Faculty Advisory Committee met monthly and discussed a series of questions: Who should make the mascot decision? How do we bring students into the decision process without allowing another student vote? How should a faculty meeting on the mascot be structured? What would be a tentative schedule for a mascot change? Even as early as September, it was clear to all of us that Bill would have to make the mascot change. The question was, when?
Bill asked me to invite a couple Native Americans to speak at the November faculty meeting. The meeting was held in the vocal practice room, a semi-circle of steeply ascending chairs. At nearly 100 members, Newtown High School’s teaching staff must have looked intimidating to Tim Red Loon Kelly and 17-year-old Wunneanatsu Lamb as they sat looking up at a crowd of strange faces.
“We’re here because we’d like to explain why Indian mascots are disrespectful,” Tim began patiently.
He described the effects of those seemingly harmless representations of diverse Native cultures, and concluded with, “We recognize that you didn’t know how Native Peoples feel, but now that you do, if you continue, there’s a problem.”
When it was Wunnea’s turn to speak, her face reddened, and her hands fluttered helplessly.
“I don’t know what to say. Tim said everything.”
“Wunnea,” I called out, “there are about forty students at Newtown High School who say, ‘I have Indian blood, and I’m proud of the mascot.’ How are you different from those teenagers?”
Wunnea tapped her closed fist lightly on her breastbone.
“I would ask those students, ‘Do you participate in the life of your nation? Do you go to powwows? Do you believe that the drum is your heartbeat rising to the Great Spirit? Do you give your grandparents the ultimate respect? Are you Native in your heart?”
“Has it been hard for you being the only Native in your school?”
“People make fun of me in ways they wouldn’t think of doing to Blacks or Hispanics. And because I’m the only one, no one takes my side.”
One of the teachers asked, “What would most Native Americans prefer – to have some, although stereotypic, attention, or no cultural focus at all?”
Tim quickly responded, “These stereotypic representations prevent us from defining ourselves, and have huge negative effects on our children.”
Someone else called out, “How many Native Americans feel the way you do?”
Tim and Wunnea looked at each other.
Wunnea quietly replied, “We don’t know anyone who disagrees with us.”
Soon after the November faculty meeting, Bill asked teachers to fill out a written advisory ballot. Seventy per cent favored a change in the Indian mascot: another twenty per cent said they could live with the decision.
Bill and Superintendent of Schools John Reed met with student leaders to get their input on how they wanted to be involved in the process. All of those teenagers agreed: if student elected representatives changed the mascot, a repetition of what had happened five years earlier would occur – a mass uprising.
Although Bill hadn’t announced the mascot change, by February 1996, the school was rife with rumors. When I got home from school on February 7th, the parent of a former student called to tell me that the football team was planning a sit-in to protest the mascot change. I called Bill to inform him of this new twist in the drama.
February 8th dawned, dark and cold, with just enough snow covering the roads to cause a 60-minute delay. Bill met me in the social studies office.
“I’m going to announce the mascot change today. Are you ready?”
The day I had worked for had finally come. I didn’t feel ready. I felt overwhelmed. I nodded Yes.
Bill’s voice sounded calm during morning announcements.
“One of the most important qualities of a mascot is to bring the school together. Does the Indian mascot unite the school? Given the history of the controversy, the answer is No.”
He stated that in the fall of 1996 Newtown High School would no longer have an Indian mascot. The student government would organize the process by which students would choose another mascot.
Before Bill finished speaking, 200 students left class. They gathered in the lobby, shouting a war chant and performing the tomahawk chop in unison. They surged outside to the football field and continued their protest. Ten minutes later, they filed back in, subdued by the cold and snow.
One boy yelled, “We’re willing to educate ourselves about Indians to keep it in, but if that doesn’t work, we’re going over your head. Is it going to be peaceful, or are you going to make it difficult for us?”
“The decision to do this has been coming for six years,” Bill told the crowd. Then he was cut off by students who broke into a war chant, followed by chants of We want the Indian and Students Vote.
Like many other teachers I had gone to the lobby to help keep order and support Bill. I had hoped that when this day came, students would see the morality of Bill’s decision. Now, faced with their blatant disrespect, I felt helpless. I started to weep.
A no-nonsense friend gently shook me.
“Why are you crying?” she demanded. “You won.”
“This doesn’t feel like victory.”
Later I learned that Bill had stood in the lobby for ninety minutes. At that point all but thirty protestors returned to class, and administrators persuaded remaining students to continue their arguments in the auditorium. Later, one of the sit-in leaders convinced them to return to the lobby and demonstrate by sitting quietly along the wall. However, even these students returned to class by the end of the day. Bill’s authority and dignity had been challenged: he had been publicly and vociferously criticized, but he never wavered.
I drafted a letter to the Newtown Bee explaining why faculty supported the mascot change and asked each teacher to sign it. Almost half did. The Bee’s lead editorial opposed the mascot change. Letters on both sides of the issue filled the Letters to the Editor pages for weeks.
I wrote another letter that appeared in the school newspaper. It was addressed to students.
The day of the mascot sit-in was tumultuous for me… For reasons I don’t understand, I started to cry and couldn’t stop. No one had said or done anything to hurt my feelings. Many students and faculty were extremely kind. I was hugged throughout the day. I received several notes of support from students. The genuine concern of the school community overwhelmed me.
Now we need to extend our concern to those we don’t see. While some Native Americans aren’t bothered by our actions, many are. We need to hear them. Because genuine listening involves a giving up of self, it’s a frightening thing to do. We fear the loss of who we are. That fear of loss is at the heart of the mascot controversy. Who or what will we be if we aren’t Indians?
I can’t answer that. Students must. I know, though, that when a door closes, another one opens that provides new opportunities and experiences. I also know that if NHS continues to define itself by symbols that many Native Americans find humiliating and degrading, we’ll no longer be honoring them or ourselves.
Every day the school community demonstrates kindness. I believe we can also extend our compassion to those outside of Newtown.
The student government organized two open forums to generate suggestions for the new mascot. They were poorly attended, and everyone knew why. According to an opinion poll conducted by the student newspaper, 72 per cent of students wanted to keep the Indian.
The mascot selection committee narrowed the choice to twenty options. Among them were Storm, Centaurs, Blue Knights and Killer Bees. Some suggestions, such as Newtown Yaks were silly. Students who advocated for the Yaks took up the slogan If you can’t go back, pick the Yak.
Through a series of ballots, students in grades 8-12 reduced the choices, and on June 11th, students voted for the final time for Nighthawks.
After five years I was soul weary and lacked the perspective that came later. Education alone would never have changed the mascot, but it had made the mascot change possible.
One student later commented, “We knew that changing the mascot was the right thing to do, but we didn’t want to do it anyway.”
They knew because 16 members of the 1990 Leadership Council and four courageous SWEEP members taught them. They also knew because six heroic Native youth and their three adult leaders told them. They did it anyway because a brave principal made them.
Because of student resistance, the Leadership Council organized an informational assembly on April 5, 1990. They asked Roger Head, an Ojibwe, executive director of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, to speak in support of keeping the mascot, and the Educational Director of the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington, Connecticut, Trudy Lamb Richmond, a Schaghticoke Indian, to speak on the other side.
What I remember about Mr. Head was that he didn’t oppose the mascot change. Rather, he believed that faced with the loss of their traditional lands, high levels of unemployment and poverty, and public health issues such as alcoholism and suicide, Indian mascots were the least important issue facing Native Peoples. He felt that Newtown High School could keep its Indian mascot if the Indian mascot was done respectfully.
Trudy Richmond, however, believed that Indian mascots were stereotypes that demeaned and degraded all Native Peoples. Far from being a peripheral issue, mascots reenforced a public image of Indians that was glued to the past. If someone spoke as an Indian, she asserted, and didn’t wear a feather headdress or live in a teepee, most Americans denied he was a real Indian. If Indians didn’t exist, she insisted, their cultural and religious symbols could be appropriated and misused, the land and the resources on it stolen. Far from being minor, mascots were a fundamental problem facing Indians, she believed.
Once the two speakers had concluded, students were allowed to ask questions. Almost all of these became missiles hurled at Trudy Richmond.
“Why can’t you Indians understand that Newtown High School chose an Indian mascot because we respect Indians.”
“Indians represent bravery, strength and fighting to the end. Why would we choose a mascot we didn’t respect?”
In her quiet, non-confrontational voice, Trudy explained, “You aren’t respecting Indians. What you honor is the stereotype of Indians your mascot perpetuates.”
What followed were numerous and emphatic denials.
“How come we’re just hearing about this now?” someone demanded. Newtown High School has had an Indian forever. It’s our tradition.”
“Yeah,” someone else interjected. “This is all just political correctness, a few Indians whining about a fake issue.”
“It’s true that not all Indians agree about the importance of mascots,” Trudy agreed, “but to call our concerns whining is unfair.”
One of the senior boys took the microphone. “We have a man among us who is an Indian, and he’s on our side.”
Charlie Tilson, one of the custodians at Newtown High School, was indeed a Schaghticoke Indian. A gentle soul, Charlie always had a warm smile that showed no favorites.
“I’m a Native American,” he shouted into the microphone, “and I’m proud the Indian is our mascot.”
A pandemonium of cheers. The assembly ended.
The following two months were consumed with the mascot. In late April, the Leadership Council voted 18 to 2 to recommend to the new NHS principal, Bill Manfredonia, that the mascot be changed. The next day, Leadership Council president, Lee Ann Prete, read from her prepared speech during morning announcements.
“After 18 months of study,’ she said, “student representatives are recommending that the Indian mascot be changed. This is our opportunity to correct moral injustices resulting from the use of an Indian as the mascot.”
Before she had finished, more than 500 students, half the student body, walked out of their first period class, many with the full support of their teachers. They gathered in the school lobby and staged a sit-in. Students who had organized the sit-in had called newspapers, local radio stations, and Channel 8 News. After ninety minutes, the sit-in ended when Principal Manfredonia asked students to go into the auditorium. Sitting on the stage were leaders of the sit-in. They announced that after a period of education students would vote on whether to keep or change the mascot. On this issue, student-elected leaders had been summarily replaced by the leaders of the mascot sit-in.
Education consisted of one social studies class given to a panel of students who articulated their reasons to keep or change the mascot. There was also an evening forum attended by interested members of the community. In early June the matter was put to a school wide vote. It was considered so important that the registrars of voters brought in two voting machines and monitored the election. All students, staff, and teachers were allowed to vote, although the principal drew the line firmly against community members and alumni.
By a margin of sixty-seven percent, the outcome of the vote was to keep the Indian mascot. It was a landslide.
These events altered me forever. I had always believed that racism was somewhere else, not in my town, not living in the hearts of my students, colleagues and neighbors, and never resting unseen in the hidden corners of my soul. The Newtown High School Indian mascot was the mirror of racism, and the face I saw staring back was my own.
The students had promised that if the Indian mascot remained, they would learn about Native Peoples, end disrespectful behavior at football games, and choose authentic depictions of Native Americans for school murals and athletic insignia? A year passed and nothing changed.
I decided to act. I was a teacher with an optimistic belief in the power of education to transform society. The main problem, I thought, was that my students knew little about Native Americans. As one of them commented, “It’s like after Thanksgiving, they all moved west and disappeared.” I was no better informed. Our collective ignorance reflected a national amnesia.
I made an appointment to talk to Trudy Richmond. She encouraged me to focus on Northeastern Indians in my classroom, and suggested books to read. The more I read the more acutely aware I was that Native Peoples had suffered greatly as their land was taken illegally and immorally. Nor was their conquest finished. Contemporary indigenous Americans continued to battle the theft of their traditional land, and the misuse of their diverse cultures. As I read, I wondered incredulously why hadn’t any of my teachers taught me this stuff? Why was I better acquainted with the European Holocaust than with the one only whispered about in the history of my own nation?
Beginning in the fall of 1991 I highlighted Native Americans in one segment of the sociology class I taught. Students studied pre-Columbian achievements and the world view of Northeast Woodland Indians. The longest part of the unit required students to examine the effects of various U.S. Government policies. The unit ended with the most important issue facing Native Peoples today – maintaining sovereignty against encroachments of the dominant society. Students also looked at Indian stereotypes, especially team mascots.
It was a difficult unit to teach and an even harder one for students to process.
“You’re telling us that everything White people have done is evil,” one boy declared angrily.
“I know it seems that way. That’s because I’m asking you to look at U.S. History from the perspective of the conquered.
Seeing history from the standpoint of the defeated had injured these young people who previously had a positive racial identity, and I wasn’t knowledgeable or skilled enough at the time to help them deal with the blow.
I usually ended the Dominant-Minority Group Unit with a feeling of failure. Overwhelmingly, students remained attached to their mascot. They maintained that as tradition they had the right to keep it. Indians should understand them and their needs, not the reverse. Plus, they added, it would cost too much to change the mascot. As the years crept by, I doubted my ability to change hearts through education.
During the 1992-94 school years I advised a group of about 20 students who were committed to educating others about issues important to Native Peoples, and to changing disrespectful images of Indians in the school. They called themselves the Native American Committee for Change.
To educate the school community about issues important to contemporary Native Peoples, they organized Indian Day, a day-long, school-wide event. I used an $800 grant from the Newtown Board of Education to pay Native American speakers on a wide variety of topics; Indian gaming, the incarceration of Leonard Peltier, and the taking of Cree land to build the James Bay Hydro-Electric Dam. In addition, students listened to Native traditional stories, learned to drum and dance, played a Native game, watched a demonstration of traditional cooking, and were able to purchase a variety of Native foods. Peace and Dignity Journey, a group that honored the 500 years of Native survival in the western hemisphere, led the closing ceremony. They called on all people to help heal the wounds remaining from the conquest.
We invited teachers to bring their classes, and asked students to attend during their free periods. Indian Day was a mammoth undertaking that took nearly a year to plan and implement. Outside of my own students who were required to be there, however, few other students attended.
I had poured so much of myself into this project that I was in anguish at the apathy of the school community. As much as I felt the pain and anger of Native Peoples, I was just as worried about the burden carried by my own students. On the surface, their race and social class seemed to protect them, but they were also hurt. When I asked my students to identify the effects of stereotypes on the dominant group, they articulated specific ways.
“Stereotypes force people to see other groups in only one way. That means people won’t learn as much. They’ll grow narrow-minded.”
“They’ll be insensitive, sometimes even mean.”
Four years had passed since the mascot sit-in, and I had no idea how to proceed. The only thing I saw clearly was that students had to be involved. That spring I invited Sociology students to join me in studying the mascot again. Only three signed on, but each one was gold.
Calling themselves the Students Working to EliminatE Prejudice (SWEEP), Molly Dorozenski, Stephanie Dorenbosch, and Cheryl Bennett met with me weekly after school. The girls and I began simply with conversations about our own internal journeys, and where they wanted to go next. We spoke with others further ahead on the road we were traveling - Mark Cohen, the principal of Farmington High School who was engaged in replacing the Indian mascot at his school, Juanita Helphrey, the Director of the United Church of Christ Board of Homeland Ministries, who was trying to modify the Cleveland Indians mascot, and, of course, Trudy. We devoted one afternoon to library research on schools that had been successful in altering their Indian mascot.
Sitting in a circle during one of our meetings, Stephanie observed, “Schools that have changed an Indian mascot have one thing in common. Native Americans talked to students face to face about why Indian mascots are disrespectful.”
According to the 1990 Census, about 6,000 indigenous Americans lived in Connecticut out of a population of 2,000,000, and more than 5,000 of those were in urban areas. With the exception of the Schaghticoke reservation in Kent, and a tiny reservation in Trumbull, the Native presence in western Connecticut was small.
These three students devised a plant to make a documentary. They would videotape images of Indians at Newtown High School, show those to Native Americans, and then videotape their responses. They recruited a classmate, Mark Rucktenwald, who was enrolled in Newtown High School’s new video production class and had access to the needed equipment. Even more important, he had the desire to make a film that might matter.
Within two weeks Mark had a rough-cut video of school murals depicting Indians - people doing tomahawk chops at football games, a student who dressed up as an Indian during pep rallies and football games, the band playing the Indian fight song at football games, the grinning caricature of an Indian on varsity jackets, a group of girls wearing buckskin dresses that supported the cheerleaders, and clothing items for sale in the school store that featured stereotypic depictions of Indians. The last part of the video contained interviews with seeral students who briefly stated their positions on both sides of the mascot issue.
I called Trudy for suggestions of Native People we could interview, and she introduced us to many. In January 1995, Trudy invited SWEEP students and me to the Institute for American Indian Studies where the Joined Nations Youth Group would be meeting. That group had been created by Jane Deer Heart and Larry Gentle Deer to teach Connecticut Native children about their common histories and cultures.
“Jan, we don’t usually allow outsiders to visit meetings. The New York Times wanted to do an article about the group, and we refused because we never know what an outside group will say about us. Our cultures have been misrepresented in the past.”
I knew that Trudy’s first priority was to protect the children. In a supreme act of trust, she had opened a door. As I put down the phone, the full enormity of this task overwhelmed me, and I trembled.
On a clear Saturday afternoon in February 1995, Stephanie, Cheryl, and I went to the Institute for American Indian Studies for the Joined Nations Youth Group meeting. With some help from Debbie Rainey, mother of three of the children in the group, we organized the 20 teenagers into a circle surrounded by an outer ring of adults. Cheryl and the camcorder were in the center.
I explained that Newtown High School had an Indian mascot. We would show them a short video of how Indians were depicted at the school, and then we would videotape their responses. These teenagers watched the video of Indian images intently.
I asked what they would like to say to students at Newtown High School.
Silence. A knot tightened in my abdomen. Then one of the adults stepped toward the camera.
“I’m Jerry Two Bears, and I’m from the Blackfoot Nation. I see no honor in anything schools are doing. If you want to do something, help heal Mother Earth.”
Another adult came forward.
“A lot of people criticize Ted Turner, but the Atlanta Braves have a contract with the Eastern Cherokees to sell rubber tomahawks that brings the Cherokee Nation a lot of revenue.”
The flood waters had risen high enough, and the dam of their silence broke into a torrent of words. Fifteen-year-old Jeremiah spoke first.
“It makes me and my friends here angry to see what you’ve been doing. It just symbolizes the wrong things. You put us on paper, but you don’t know us at all.”
Amy, a Mohawk with flowing blond hair, said, “People who see that cartoon won’t respect us. That’s called making fun of us, and it makes us feel that we’re not important.”
Wunneanatsu, Trudy’s 16-year-old granddaughter, added, “You’ve picked our race because there aren’t as many of us. If you called yourselves the Newtown Afros, there would be a lot of people protesting.”
Jeremiah added, “You’d get upset if we called you the Newtown Honkies.”
Wunnea revealed her personal story.
“I attend Platt High School and I’m a member of the band. When we play the Indian Fight Song, the band director goes, ‘O.K., everyone, take out Wunnea’s song.’ Then people start hopping around and going, ‘Woh, Woh, Woh.’ “
Amy articulated what was now obvious.
“The important thing is that we’re still here, and we have feelings.”
Rosa, Debbie’s 16-year-old daughter, said, “If you’re honoring us, then why are so many of us upset.”
“If you’re honoring us by having an Indian mascot” Amy added, “the thing would be to ask us first, and I don’t think we were ever asked.”
Although twenty teenagers had introduced themselves to the camara, only four had spoken. While I wished it had been more, I was overwhelmed by their powerful voices.
Before she released the young people to socialize, Debbie summarized and extended their comments.
“You’ve seen across the room. We look the same as you. We have different heights, sizes, skin complexions, hair color, but we have one unity that makes us, us. And without the exposure to that, maybe you don’t understand. We’ll come to Newtown. We’ll talk with you for as long as you want.”
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By mid-February SWEEP had amassed a two-foot high stack of VHS interview tapes with several Native People, as well as NHS students, faculty and staff. The girls decided that because their documentary would be a teaching tool, they would structure it around four questions: what is a stereotype, how do stereotypes affect people, what’s happening at Newtown High School, and what do Native Americans think?
Reviewing this mountain of video data was emotionally draining because we had to decide what 30-60 second clip best encapsulated what that person said. During March, People Not Mascots slowly took shape as Mark made magic with the raw material we’d provided. My social studies colleagues graciously agreed to allow the girls to teach one class in early April. SWEEP developed a lesson plan that included possible questions and responses.
These three brave teenagers saw me frequently during the week of classroom presentations. Sometimes they shared small moments of victory. More often they needed to tell me how overwhelmed they were by the negativity of their peers. SWEEP also showed People Not Mascots to anyone who’d watch – interested teachers, the Board of Education, the PTSA, and Newtown clergy.
On May 1, Debby kept the promise she’d made during the Joined Nations Youth Group meeting. She and two adults accompanied nine Native teenagers to Newtown High School. They spoke during all eight school periods to 100-150 people at a time, never taking a break. They even ate lunch during one presentation.
The Danbury News Times reported:
This time there was no yelling, no tempers flaring, no snide comments. About a dozen American Indians, most of them teenagers, sat in front of students in the Newtown High School gym and quietly explained how they felt about the school’s Indian mascot. The scene was strikingly different from what had happened five years ago when a similar assembly over the mascot turned divisive. ‘We’re not here to point fingers at anyone in this room,’ said Tim Red Loon Kelly (one of the adult leaders). “We’re saying the school mascot offends us, and we’d like to explain why.’
On April 16, 1995, a Danbury News Times editorial began, “Five years ago, Newtown High School had a chance to right a wrong. They had a chance to get rid of its Indian mascot… Now thanks to a committed teacher and four determined students, the issue is on the table again.” On April 20th, the Newtown Bee Sports writer opined, “While I certainly wouldn’t mind be stereotyped as strong and brave and bold, I still maintain that if any number of people in our country, no matter how few, are offended by the depiction of their race, then something should be done about it.” In mid-June a letter to the editor of The Newtown Bee from the president of the Newtown PTA Council, a group representing the PTA’s of every school, stated, “The Newtown PTA Council urges the high school administration to be responsible and take appropriate action to change the school’s mascot… We commend the members of SWEEP for their efforts and respect for Native Americans. These students have outgrown the self-centeredness of immaturity, and shown awareness beyond their years.”
Out of camera sight, the experience of these six Native teens and their three adult leaders at Newtown High School wasn’t as positive. Their day began with a verbal epithet hurled at the nine Native People as the adults prepared the teens spiritually for the day ahead. A student stopped outside the door and yelled, “Prairie N_____s,” and then darted quickly away. These six teenagers already felt intimidated by social class differences after looking at the expensive cars in the student parking lot and glancing at the brands of clothes worn by students. After they heard the epithet, they knew they were in enemy territory. I wouldn’t have blamed their leaders if they had told me they were taking the children home. Instead, they continued on in the spirit of warriors that made them heroic. Their words and physical presence at Newtown High School made it impossible for students to believe that their Indian mascot was an honor to Native People.
Imperceptibly, student conversations about the mascot were shifting. In addition to impassioned statements to either keep or change it, there was something new.
“People Not Mascots didn’t change my mind,” said one boy to a news reporter, “but I’d like to change the thing to stop hearing about it.”
One frustrated sophomore told a teacher, “I’m sick of hearing about it. Just change it.”
What SWEEP accomplished was more transformational than removing a racist symbol. They created, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., a state of tension in the school and community that could only be relieved by establishing justice.
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Education wasn’t enough to change a racist system. That was the job of authority.
Although Bill was aware of my work, I was less informed about what he had done in the five years since the mascot sit-in. Gradually, in his role as principal, Bill had made changes. He removed the mat depicting the head of a Plains Indian over which one walked when she entered the school and exchanged it with a plain black one. When band or sports uniforms were replaced, he refused to let students use depictions of Indians or Indian symbols on new ones. When the gym floor was resurfaced, the head of an Indian was replaced with a bold blue N.
Earlier that year, Bill had watched in dismay as Mark Cohen, the principal of Farmington High School who had been so helpful to SWEEP in its formative weeks, was publicly excoriated, and his decision to change the Indian mascot reversed by the board of education. As I sat with Bill in his office one afternoon in early May, he mentioned he’d been thinking of Mark Cohen.
“What was the Board’s reaction when SWEEP showed People Not Mascots?” he asked.
“Most were negative,” I replied. “One board member even suggested that the only reason SWEEP members were so invested in the issue was because I manipulated them. They refused to make a decision on the mascot, saying it was a decision for the school. The majority thought students should vote on it directly as they did in 1990.”
“The board sees no reason to change the mascot, but they won’t repeat what the Farmington Board of Ed did to Mark Cohen. I don’t know where John stands (Bill was referring to John Reed, Newtown’s Superintendent of Education), but he won’t reverse it either. The big question is the faculty. Mark Cohen thought his teachers were behind him, but when he took a public stand, no one supported him. How many faculty members attended the SWEEP presentation after school?”
“About fifteen.”
“What was the general reaction?”
“Teachers were interested and concerned.”
“Was anyone hostile?”
“One thought that our research was flawed because we didn’t include more Native People in favor of keeping the mascot, but no one was antagonistic.”
"I want to explore the mascot issue with more teachers,” Bill said. He asked me to organize a faculty committee to advise him.
The Mascot Faculty Advisory Committee met monthly and discussed a series of questions: Who should make the mascot decision? How do we bring students into the decision process without allowing another student vote? How should a faculty meeting on the mascot be structured? What would be a tentative schedule for a mascot change? Even as early as September, it was clear to all of us that Bill would have to make the mascot change. The question was, when?
Bill asked me to invite a couple Native Americans to speak at the November faculty meeting. The meeting was held in the vocal practice room, a semi-circle of steeply ascending chairs. At nearly 100 members, Newtown High School’s teaching staff must have looked intimidating to Tim Red Loon Kelly and 17-year-old Wunneanatsu Lamb as they sat looking up at a crowd of strange faces.
“We’re here because we’d like to explain why Indian mascots are disrespectful,” Tim began patiently.
He described the effects of those seemingly harmless representations of diverse Native cultures, and concluded with, “We recognize that you didn’t know how Native Peoples feel, but now that you do, if you continue, there’s a problem.”
When it was Wunnea’s turn to speak, her face reddened, and her hands fluttered helplessly.
“I don’t know what to say. Tim said everything.”
“Wunnea,” I called out, “there are about forty students at Newtown High School who say, ‘I have Indian blood, and I’m proud of the mascot.’ How are you different from those teenagers?”
Wunnea tapped her closed fist lightly on her breastbone.
“I would ask those students, ‘Do you participate in the life of your nation? Do you go to powwows? Do you believe that the drum is your heartbeat rising to the Great Spirit? Do you give your grandparents the ultimate respect? Are you Native in your heart?”
“Has it been hard for you being the only Native in your school?”
“People make fun of me in ways they wouldn’t think of doing to Blacks or Hispanics. And because I’m the only one, no one takes my side.”
One of the teachers asked, “What would most Native Americans prefer – to have some, although stereotypic, attention, or no cultural focus at all?”
Tim quickly responded, “These stereotypic representations prevent us from defining ourselves, and have huge negative effects on our children.”
Someone else called out, “How many Native Americans feel the way you do?”
Tim and Wunnea looked at each other.
Wunnea quietly replied, “We don’t know anyone who disagrees with us.”
Soon after the November faculty meeting, Bill asked teachers to fill out a written advisory ballot. Seventy per cent favored a change in the Indian mascot: another twenty per cent said they could live with the decision.
Bill and Superintendent of Schools John Reed met with student leaders to get their input on how they wanted to be involved in the process. All of those teenagers agreed: if student elected representatives changed the mascot, a repetition of what had happened five years earlier would occur – a mass uprising.
Although Bill hadn’t announced the mascot change, by February 1996, the school was rife with rumors. When I got home from school on February 7th, the parent of a former student called to tell me that the football team was planning a sit-in to protest the mascot change. I called Bill to inform him of this new twist in the drama.
February 8th dawned, dark and cold, with just enough snow covering the roads to cause a 60-minute delay. Bill met me in the social studies office.
“I’m going to announce the mascot change today. Are you ready?”
The day I had worked for had finally come. I didn’t feel ready. I felt overwhelmed. I nodded Yes.
Bill’s voice sounded calm during morning announcements.
“One of the most important qualities of a mascot is to bring the school together. Does the Indian mascot unite the school? Given the history of the controversy, the answer is No.”
He stated that in the fall of 1996 Newtown High School would no longer have an Indian mascot. The student government would organize the process by which students would choose another mascot.
Before Bill finished speaking, 200 students left class. They gathered in the lobby, shouting a war chant and performing the tomahawk chop in unison. They surged outside to the football field and continued their protest. Ten minutes later, they filed back in, subdued by the cold and snow.
One boy yelled, “We’re willing to educate ourselves about Indians to keep it in, but if that doesn’t work, we’re going over your head. Is it going to be peaceful, or are you going to make it difficult for us?”
“The decision to do this has been coming for six years,” Bill told the crowd. Then he was cut off by students who broke into a war chant, followed by chants of We want the Indian and Students Vote.
Like many other teachers I had gone to the lobby to help keep order and support Bill. I had hoped that when this day came, students would see the morality of Bill’s decision. Now, faced with their blatant disrespect, I felt helpless. I started to weep.
A no-nonsense friend gently shook me.
“Why are you crying?” she demanded. “You won.”
“This doesn’t feel like victory.”
Later I learned that Bill had stood in the lobby for ninety minutes. At that point all but thirty protestors returned to class, and administrators persuaded remaining students to continue their arguments in the auditorium. Later, one of the sit-in leaders convinced them to return to the lobby and demonstrate by sitting quietly along the wall. However, even these students returned to class by the end of the day. Bill’s authority and dignity had been challenged: he had been publicly and vociferously criticized, but he never wavered.
I drafted a letter to the Newtown Bee explaining why faculty supported the mascot change and asked each teacher to sign it. Almost half did. The Bee’s lead editorial opposed the mascot change. Letters on both sides of the issue filled the Letters to the Editor pages for weeks.
I wrote another letter that appeared in the school newspaper. It was addressed to students.
The day of the mascot sit-in was tumultuous for me… For reasons I don’t understand, I started to cry and couldn’t stop. No one had said or done anything to hurt my feelings. Many students and faculty were extremely kind. I was hugged throughout the day. I received several notes of support from students. The genuine concern of the school community overwhelmed me.
Now we need to extend our concern to those we don’t see. While some Native Americans aren’t bothered by our actions, many are. We need to hear them. Because genuine listening involves a giving up of self, it’s a frightening thing to do. We fear the loss of who we are. That fear of loss is at the heart of the mascot controversy. Who or what will we be if we aren’t Indians?
I can’t answer that. Students must. I know, though, that when a door closes, another one opens that provides new opportunities and experiences. I also know that if NHS continues to define itself by symbols that many Native Americans find humiliating and degrading, we’ll no longer be honoring them or ourselves.
Every day the school community demonstrates kindness. I believe we can also extend our compassion to those outside of Newtown.
The student government organized two open forums to generate suggestions for the new mascot. They were poorly attended, and everyone knew why. According to an opinion poll conducted by the student newspaper, 72 per cent of students wanted to keep the Indian.
The mascot selection committee narrowed the choice to twenty options. Among them were Storm, Centaurs, Blue Knights and Killer Bees. Some suggestions, such as Newtown Yaks were silly. Students who advocated for the Yaks took up the slogan If you can’t go back, pick the Yak.
Through a series of ballots, students in grades 8-12 reduced the choices, and on June 11th, students voted for the final time for Nighthawks.
After five years I was soul weary and lacked the perspective that came later. Education alone would never have changed the mascot, but it had made the mascot change possible.
One student later commented, “We knew that changing the mascot was the right thing to do, but we didn’t want to do it anyway.”
They knew because 16 members of the 1990 Leadership Council and four courageous SWEEP members taught them. They also knew because six heroic Native youth and their three adult leaders told them. They did it anyway because a brave principal made them.
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