Glory Days

Today I learned that a town near where I grew up is one of the ones whose high school mascot was the word "Indians." This is in New York State, which passed a law last year requiring schools to change their mascots or face loss of state funding, unless an Indigenous tribe or nation approves the use of the term.

For instance, the town of Salamanca, in western New York, is located within the Seneca Nation's Allegany Territory, and has a large enrolled population among its staff and student body. The Seneca have signed an agreement with the school to let it keep the team name, which is the Warriors.

The town near where I come from and learned about today is farther east. It's not in the midst of a reservation, and its only obvious connection to any Indigenous heritage is the town name, which is said to derive from a word in one of the Haudenosaunee languages. After some hemming and hawing, and an application to several tribes, including the Cayuga Nation, to allow them to keep the Indians name*, they started a process in early 2023 to come up with a new name, and decided on the River Hawks.

That sounds like a good name, since those birds — another name for ospreys — are fierce raptors that are native in the area, and it ties in with environmental themes the school emphasizes. The new name was supported by two-thirds of respondents in an online poll, out of three possible names that were finalists.

Not everyone in the town is happy about the change, of course.

One guy wrote an impassioned defense of the old name in the local monthly newspaper not long after the law passed. He's a former high school athlete from about 25 years ago, now a town booster. He gave the usual arguments about how the old name "actually" glorifies Indigenous people, plus it's part of the town's history and they just can't let it go.

He describes several symbols the school has used, as if they honor the specific Indigenous people from the area, when they are clearly not based on references to those particular people:

• One is a reproduction of the statue called "The Appeal to the Great Spirit," created by sculptor Cyrus Dallin in 1908. In addition to portraying a Plains man rather than a man from an Eastern tribe, the model used was an Italian immigrant. Art historians and curators have recently been discussing its meaning as depicting Indigenous subjugation. (This video is a 2019 panel discussion about the statue's meaning, held at the museum where the original statue is located.) 
• The other is a graphic showing a chief's head with a full Plains Indian war bonnet and the words "Once an Indian, Always an Indian." The fact that the writer doesn't know how offensive it is for a white person to use that phrase... is kind of astounding. I'm intentionally not reproducing the image here.
  

But then, this is the guy who also wrote this without a hint of irony:

In the early 2000s, phrasing in our Alma Mater was changed from “Wild & Savage” to “Brave & Noble” Indians. Once again, our school district forefathers made the change as the right thing to do.  

This is something I opposed at the time, but looking back now I agree with what they did. Time and time again, [our town] has done the right thing when it comes to using our Native American team name, logo, and imagery.

It's clear what it would mean now to do the right thing, too, but he's opposed to that. It's only hindsight for this guy.

His homage to keeping the racist name is interspersed with photos from his own athletic glory days in high school, which is an odd choice. How is that relevant to anyone but him?

He also wrote this:

I am proud of what the Indian name stands for and where our community came from and what it has done in recognition and preservation of our Native American heritage.

"Our Native American heritage"? Who is "our"? The only part of the heritage he seems interested in is keeping his "glory days" memories from high school unchanged, not in finding out how colonial settlers stole the land of the people who lived in the area. He never acknowledges that Indigenous people still live in New York State.

He thinks the symbols of Plains peoples the school has used are "positive portrayal[s] of Native Americans." I don't know whether fans at the school do tomahawk chops, war whoops, or other behaviors during games and pep rallies, but it's bad enough without those kinds of actions.

I realize I am coming late to this controversy, after the decision to change has been made, and the writings of this one guy are now irrelevant. But he's such an example of how one person can try to rally a community to the wrong direction. Starting with this bit of editorializing, he worked for months to prevent the change.

I'm glad the big stick New York State brought has made the schools get in line. It's sad that money is what it takes to get them to do the right thing, but at least it worked.

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* The Cayuga Nation said "no" in no uncertain terms. According to the Binghamton Press and Sun Bulletin: 

...they declined the district's request, stating its attempts to normalize the use of "Indians" as a mascot is just as offensive as the use of the word itself.

"Decades of racial insensitivity by your district does not make it right to continue that use," Clint Halftown, Cayuga Nation Federal Representative and council member wrote. "The Cayuga Nation's non-negotiable position is that school mascots based on Native imagery are symbols of disrespect that degrade, insult and harm Native people, particularly our youngest generations.

"The Nation urges you to follow the lead of the New York State Education Department and replace the offensive mascot with one that is inclusive and sensitive to all races."