Push to ban Native American mascots accelerates amid year of racial reckoning

A vote by Colorado lawmakers this month to ban public schools from using Native American mascots embodies the acceleration of a decades-long campaign.

Lawmakers in Washington and Nevada adopted similar bans this spring. Connecticut and Massachusetts could be next.

For Indigenous communities, the push to eliminate offensive mascots and images began generations ago. What’s changed is people are starting to listen, said Denver American Indian Commission member Donna Chrisjohn, who is Sicangu Lakota and Diné. 

“This issue isn’t just about Native students,” Chrisjohn said. “This is about non-Native students also understanding that these mascots breed racism, and that they perpetuate negative stereotypes.” 

The movement built momentum amid the nationwide reckoning over systemic racism, sparked by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. 

Social media gave Native American advocates and allies a platform to tell others about the harm caused by mascots and other stereotypical images, said Crystal Echo Hawk, a citizen of the Pawnee Nation and founder and executive director of IllumiNative, a Tulsa nonprofit working to counteract negative stereotypes of Native Americans.

The decision by the NFL's Washington Football Team to drop its long-criticized mascot in July 2020 led to calls around the nation for others to follow suit, Echo Hawk said. 

“It’s like throwing pebbles in a pond,” Echo Hawk said. “Those ripples begin to build.”

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Still, the states that have approved new bans on Native American mascots share a common connection: Democrats have legislative control.

When Colorado’s ban faced its final vote in the House, none of the state’s 24 Republican representatives voted yes. A similar proposal failed this spring in Utah, where Republicans hold the majority. Recent efforts also stalled in Arizona and South Dakota, two states with significant Native American populations.

Echo Hawk and others believe closing the political divide is possible through education. She points to surveys that show growing support, particularly among young people. The continued success of the Washington football team shows fans don’t walk away when teams change their mascots, she said.

The wider public is starting to realize mascots do not honor Native Americans, said Northern Arapaho Chairman Jordan Dresser, whose tribe is based in Wyoming.

“It feels like finally about time,” Dresser said.

‘That’s not right’

Chrisjohn has protested the use of Native mascots for 30 years, joining a movement that was underway for decades. The National Congress of American Indians launched a campaign targeting negative stereotypes of Native Americans in 1968. 

Cheyenne and Arapaho Gov. Reggie Wassana grew up in Oklahoma in the `70s and `80s. He saw people dressed as Native Americans, with face paint and feathers, draw laughter from crowds at high school sporting events. 

He remembers thinking, “That’s not right. That’s not what we do.” But he believed that was the impression the rest of society had of Native people. Children and parents didn’t understand the atrocities his forefathers faced, or the meaning behind the traditions of his people, he said.

“We didn’t do those dances for entertainment. Or war cries for entertainment,” Wassana said. “We were fighting for our survival.”

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Research has shown Native-theme mascots damage the self-esteem of Native children and have other negative psychological effects. Researchers have also found that mascots and fan behavior, such as chants or “tomahawk chops,” affect the way people perceive Native Americans. 

As a child growing up in Nebraska, Chrisjohn was sometimes mocked or threatened when she traveled to other schools for sporting events. Her family left football games early to avoid being caught in crowds.

A generation later, her son was teased and called names when his team traveled to schools that had Native American mascots, she said. He graduated in 2020 from a Denver-area high school.

“There’s still this viewpoint of who we are that we can’t get away from, and mascots play a huge role in creating that imagery,” Chrisjohn said.

In 2012, Oregon’s board of education gave schools five years to eliminate Native American mascots. The board later agreed to let schools keep the mascots if they had approval from a tribe. 

No state legislature banned Native mascots until 2019 in Maine.

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Colorado work

When demands for racial and social justice grew across the U.S. in 2020, Colorado Sen. Jessie Danielson thought about her state's previous attempts to ban Native American mascots from schools. 

Danielson, who is not Native, asked Indigenous leaders across the state for their opinion. They started meeting on video calls to work out the language of the ban. Collaboration among Indigenous leaders made the bill's passage possible, she said.

Danielson, a Democrat who represents suburban Denver, saw a ban as unfinished work. A commission convened by then-Gov. John Hickenlooper had recommended in 2016 that schools stop using Native American mascots.

The commission considered research and a wide range of views, including from people who attended schools with Native mascots. At a commission meeting in Lamar in southeast Colorado, most people voiced support for the school’s mascot: the Savages. 

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Lamar, population 7,500, is the largest city in Prowers County. Less than 3% of the county's residents are Native American. 

Lamar sits about 40 miles from the site of the Sand Creek Massacre, where U.S. soldiers killed more than 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho camped for the winter in 1864. Many were women and children. Survivors were forced to leave Colorado. 

“The government was practicing genocide on Native Indian tribes,” said Wassana, the governor of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe in Oklahoma, among the nations descended from survivors of the Sand Creek Massacre. 

“I don’t think the schools or the younger people understand that. It’s almost like they desecrate or mock what the tribes are doing. Maybe they don’t know any better.”

Two dozen Colorado schools, including Lamar, still had Native mascots in 2020, Danielson said. 

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The legislative ban evolved during virtual talks, which included leaders from the two federally recognized tribes still based in Colorado, the Southern Ute and the Ute Mountain Ute. Writing the bill in a way that didn’t infringe on tribes' sovereignty was the most important part of the process, Danielson said.

Northern Arapaho representatives also took part in the discussions. Tribal leaders have partnered for nearly 30 years with Arapahoe High School in Littleton, south of Denver. A tribal citizen illustrated the school’s Warriors logo. Dresser, the tribe’s chairman, spoke at the school’s recent graduation ceremony. 

The relationship acknowledges the area’s original inhabitants and educates students about contemporary Native Americans, Dresser said. 

Lawmakers amended the bill to let schools with existing relationships with tribes, such as Arapahoe High, maintain their mascot name. Other schools that refuse to drop the mascots within a year will have to pay monthly fines of $25,000.

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"For me, the ultimate goal of this bill is to not only get rid of the derogatory logos and names," Dresser said, "but also that it opens up the door about the power of consultation."

In a statement, Southern Ute Chairman Melvin Baker, whose tribe is based in southwest Colorado, called the ban “a step in the right direction for Indian Country and the state.”

“We look forward to working with the schools who are interested in learning more about our people,” Baker said.

Chrisjohn took part in talks about the ban and testified in support of the measure. She recognizes there is still more work to be done.

“This is taking hold, and there is a conversation around it,” she said. “We’re just getting started in having somebody listen to us.”

In-depth coverage:Read all the stories here in Oklahoman's special section on Native Pride:

Oklahoma school is changing its mascot

Tulsa’s Union High School, the second largest in Oklahoma, decided in November that it would drop its Native American mascot. A committee recommended the change after concluding its decades-old mascot was offensive and costly: The school was losing out on thousands of dollars every year because outside funders objected to the school’s mascot. The school is now accepting ideas through July 16 for a new mascot. People can submit suggestions online at unionps.org/534236_3

Molly Young covers Indigenous affairs for the USA Today Network's Sunbelt Region of Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. Reach her at mollyyoung@gannett.com or 405-347-3534.