Since 1977 Native Americans have been trying to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day. The text of a bill in the Massachusetts legislature is short, sweet, and uncomplicated:

Chapter 6 of the General Laws is hereby amended by striking out section 12V and inserting in place thereof the following section:– Section 12V. The governor shall annually issue a proclamation setting apart the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples Day and recommending that it be observed by the people, with appropriate exercises in the schools and otherwise, to acknowledge the history of genocide and discrimination against Indigenous peoples, and to recognize and celebrate the thriving cultures and continued resistance and resilience of Indigenous peoples and their tribal nations.

Columbus’s First Encounter with the Indians, Senate Doors, Washington DC

The image above is not just any piece of federal artwork. The “Rogers Doors” (seen in videos of the Capitol insurrection of January 6th) are a set of 17-foot high, 10 ton bronze doors in the Center Building East Portico of the U.S. Capitol building which open into the Rotunda. The panel on the left (top right square on the door) depicts Columbus arriving in the Americas to claim the land and its people; one of Columbus’ sailors is shown carrying off an indigenous woman as his slave. Rape and pillage of Native Americans are a matter of public record and, unfortunately, even official memorialization.

The culture wars have put many Democrats on the defensive, especially when Republicans accuse them of “wokeism” or “political correctness.” But Democrats ought to first consider from what noxious pit of white supremacy these accusations are coming — and should also be less concerned about so-called “cancel culture” and “erasure” than the actual historical erasure of Native people.

Yet while Massachusetts legislators dither and squirm, other states have ratified some form of an Indigenous People’s Day that either replaces* Columbus Day outright or (the coward’s choice) coexists with it: Alabama (2019); Alaska* (2015); Arizona (2020); California (2019); District of Columbia* (2019); Hawaii* (1988); Iowa* (2018); Louisiana* (2019); Maine* (2019); Michigan (2019); Minnesota* (2016); Nebraska (2021); Nevada (2020); New Mexico (2019); North Carolina* (2018); Oklahoma (2019); Oregon (2021); South Dakota* (1989); Texas (2021); Vermont* (2016); Virginia (2020); Wisconsin (2019).

Indigenous People’s Day is also celebrated in over 130 American cities.

In 2021 President Biden signed a proclamation making Indigenous People’s Day a federal holiday, although Columbus Day remains.

And, internationally, the United Nations honors Indigenous people on August 9th.

Despite all this, some Massachusetts state legislators still regard indigenous people as a trivial issue that will go away if they ignore them long enough. But they are mistaken. If Indigenous People’s Day doesn’t move out of committee (again) this year, legislators can expect to see it on their desks once again in 2024. This has been the sad reality with Massachusetts legislators for 47 years now.

Replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day is one of five legislative priorities of the Massachusetts Indigenous Legislative Agenda which include: native education, protection of indigenous heritage, replacing the flag and seal, and retiring the 20+ Massachusetts school mascots that still dishonor Native Americans.

To support the Agenda, come to the state house in Boston on Thursday, June 15th, for the 11:30 am to 1:30 pm rally and Advocacy Day. For more information, or to participate even if you are not able to attend in person, RSVP to: www.facebook.com/MAIndigenousAgenda.org/

Since 1977 Native Americans have been trying to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day. The text of a bill in the Massachusetts legislature is short, sweet, and uncomplicated:

The governor shall annually issue a proclamation setting apart the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples Day and recommending that it be observed by the people, with appropriate exercises in the schools and otherwise, to acknowledge the history of genocide and discrimination against Indigenous peoples, and to recognize and celebrate the thriving cultures and continued resistance and resilience of Indigenous peoples and their tribal nations.

Yet, for whatever reasons, some in the Legislature resist making this simple change. And in so doing they are continuing to honor one of the first perpetrators of genocide and enslavement in the New World — instead of the victims of these atrocities.

Republican culture wars have created very real wounds. Some Democrats are now overly defensive to Republican accusations of “wokeism” and “political correctness.” But Democrats ought to first consider from what noxious pit of white supremacy these accusations are coming — and should also be less concerned about so-called “cancel culture” and “erasure” than the actual erasure of Native people.

But while Massachusetts legislators dither and squirm, other states have ratified some form of an Indigenous People’s Day that either replaces* Columbus Day or coexists with it: Alabama (2019); Alaska* (2015); Arizona (2020); California (2019); District of Columbia* (2019); Hawaii* (1988); Iowa* (2018); Louisiana* (2019); Maine* (2019); Michigan (2019); Minnesota* (2016); Nebraska (2021); Nevada (2020); New Mexico (2019); North Carolina* (2018); Oklahoma (2019); Oregon (2021); South Dakota* (1989); Texas (2021); Vermont* (2016); Virginia (2020); Wisconsin (2019).

Indigenous People’s Day is also celebrated in over 130 American cities.

In 2021 President Biden signed a proclamation making Indigenous People’s Day a federal holiday, although Columbus Day remains.

And, internationally, the United Nations honors Indigenous people on August 9th.

Despite all this, some of our state legislators still regard indigenous people as a trivial issue that will just go away if they ignore it long enough. But they are mistaken.

If Indigenous People’s Day doesn’t move out of committee this year, legislators can expect to see it on their desks once again in 2023.

Another reckoning with history

H.3191/S.2027 An Act establishing an Indigenous Peoples Day

There is a bill before the Massachusetts legislature asking that Massachusetts join Vermont and Maine in changing Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day. Yet for some reason several of our local state representatives are hesitant to move the bill forward. Perhaps they have forgotten the ugly, brutal history associated with the discoverer of the New World, Cristoforo Colombo, otherwise known as Christopher Columbus.

In the Fifties every kid could recite the poem, “In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue…” We learned that Columbus had made an astounding “discovery” of “America” — although it was hardly new to the Arawak and Taino people who had lived there for millennia. For them it was simply home.

We learned that Columbus was a Genoan explorer who finally persuaded a Spanish queen to underwrite his voyages in exchange for a cut of the plunder. Accompanying Columbus in the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria were 87 men. Encountering the Arawak people on what is now the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas, Columbus dubbed them “indios” and noted:

“They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I think they can very easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion.”

Whereupon Columbus immediately enslaved several, forcing them to show where they had obtained the gold in their earrings. Columbus explored a few more neighboring islands, including what is now Cuba and Haiti. Upon his return, the Portuguese royalty were unhappy at the Spanish royalty’s incursion, so four Papal Bulls (Vatican decrees) were issued to specify how the two Christian kingdoms would divvy up the spoils.

The following year, a second voyage of 17 ships explored a dozen other islands. On the island of Santa Cruz Columbus encountered Caribs, whom they murdered, gutted, and beheaded. The historical record also includes an account of the rape of a Carib woman by one Michele da Cuneo, a childhood friend of Columbus.

Spanish troops remaining on the various islands Columbus visited killed indigenous people at will, forcing them to carry the new slaveholders on litters, like royalty. As King Leopold of Belgium later did in the Congo, the Spanish gave native people quotas of gold to bring to the colonizers. The consequence for failing to deliver was being maimed or murdered.

By now we all remember the breach of the U.S. Capitol Building by insurrectionists on January 6, 2021. One of these breaches occurred at the Rogers Doors on the east entrance to the Capitol. The two doors are almost 17 feet high and 10 feet wide, made of bronze, each weighing 5 tons. Completed in 1861 by sculptor Randolph Rogers, the doors tell the story of Christopher Columbus.

The semicircular panel “Landing of Columbus in the New World” depicts the terror of native people encountering the heavily-armed Spanish. Another panel “Columbus’ First Encounter with the Indians” depicts a rape like the previously-mentioned one.

Howard Zinn may have upset more than a few people when he recounted the grisly details of European conquest in his history books, but all this was old history when the Rogers Doors were cast in bronze. At the time, 1861, the mistreatment, colonization, and enslavement of native people was seen as inevitable — if not desirable — when creating an American empire. And 1861 was the very moment in American history in which the government itself was involved in the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Native American people.

So here we are in 2022. Rather than continuing to honor Columbus for what in modern times can only be regarded as war crimes, it’s time we honored the indigenous people whose old world became our New World.

Please sign the petition to persuade your representative to get behind H.3191 — or just call them.

Three Massachusetts school districts retired their Native American mascots this week.

But Dartmouth was not one of them.

On August 5th Barnstable School Committee member Kathy Bent described her town’s decision: “I think it is time to retire the Red Raider as our mascot” she said. “We can take our time coming up with a new mascot, but that certainly should not be a decision we make as a school committee, but one that the community makes.”

That same day Hanover Schools retired its “Indian.” Libby Corbo, a member of Hanover’s School Committee said, “My opinion as a white person as to whether the sacred symbol of Native American heritage is offensive or not frankly doesn’t matter,” said Corbo. “I think the days of the white majority telling minorities what is best for them or how they should feel… it needs to end today with our voice saying this is no longer acceptable in our community.”

Hanover’s decision had been informed by a virtual public meeting on July 29th at which Indigenous people, including a Hanover Middle School teacher, explained why their Indian mascot was so offensive.

Again on the same day, North Quincy announced a new mascot would replace “Yakoo,” the racist depiction of a Native American North Quincy’s School Committee had retired the previous Monday. The team name, like Barnstable’s, is the “Red Raiders,” but no decision has been announced on a name change.

In June, while opponents of racist mascots were still gaining steam, Faries Gray, sagamore (war chief) of the Massachusett tribe, explained: “These mascots create such a negative environment for the indigenous [people], it is ridiculous that we even have to have a discussion about why this is a racist thing. That is not our culture. It is really disrespectful to us.”

Ridiculous though it may be, Dartmouth school board members would like this whole issue to just magically disappear. This time around they have decided to hand off this hot potato — not viewing it as a human rights or moral issue — to a yet-to-be-named “diversity committee” that will consider the mascot and an anti-racism resolution being voted on by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. And report back. At some point. Unless they forget.

Last October 2019 the Dartmouth School Committee refused demands to bring the issue of the mascot before a public hearing, providing an account of how the present-day “respectful” mascot was designed by Native American children who were overjoyed at their people finally being honored. In this tale, the childrens’ logo is used to this very day. And in this fable, too, Native Americans support the mascot because the words “honor” and “respect” appear in the Student Manual.

But last November, the Standard Times asked Bonnie Gifford, the school superintendent if she had actually contacted any Native Americans. Nope. “We have never had any response from anyone from the tribes,” she told a reporter by email.

But Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, of the Aquinnah tribe, managed to take questions from reporter Jennette Barnes of the Standard Times, noting that, although she helped redesign the Dartmouth “Indian” image as a child, she now thought there should be a public discussion.

The Standard Times also managed to ring up Chief George Spring Buffalo of the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation, who told the same reporter that the Dartmouth mascot issue should have been dealt with years ago. “It’s all about cultural respect, so children who go to your school don’t have to feel like they are cartoon characters when it comes to Halloween or Thanksgiving.”

With the Washington Redskins, Aunt Jemima, Land o’ Lakes, and Uncle Ben all scrapping their racist images, and legislation to ban school mascots, it would seem to be a good time to reconsider racist images in Dartmouth. But Dartmouth — which had plenty of time to plan, and plenty of cash to fund, a $1.8 million football stadium last Fall — decided to punt the issue to a committee for “study.”

A “diversity committee” to include two members of the School Committee, two faculty, two students, two community members, and two administrators will consider the mascot and race issues. All members must be Dartmouth residents. Committee member John Nunes made a point of excluding community members from New Bedford — and the “Dartmouth only” rule will exclude the Maltais family, trotted out regularly as designers of its mascot — because they live on tribal lands outside Dartmouth. And with virtually no Native American students in any of the Dartmouth schools, this is one more constituency the School Committee won’t have to listen to.

As a disappointed Maggie Cleveland so eloquently put it last Fall: “Ah, the southcoast region of Massachusetts, where we take pride in our ignorance.”

Some of that ignorance appears in curriculum. One example on the DPS website is guaranteed to insult Native American children, and the exercise itself is maddeningly Eurocentric. The objective of “Rate the Colony” is to attract more European settlers to your 18th Century colony. The exercise goes on to describe Indians as a potential danger to one’s health and the colonial enterprise.

The School Committee account of how today’s “respectful” mascot came into existence has never been adequately fact-checked. In this mendacious tale, two children proudly designed a logo used to this very day and they continue to support its use, as do the majority of Native Americans consulted.

But the children have changed their tune and most tribes are opposed to the mascot, thanks to a piece in the Standard Times which debunked these parts of the tale. And a hunt for Dartmouth High yearbook covers debunked the rest of the tale by showing that the design the children created was scrapped — only to be replaced with one Dartmouth College abandoned in 1974 because many people thought it was racist.

Dartmouth has apparently never been very original in its choice of mascots. In 1970 the Dartmouth “Indian” was a cartoon character that looks suspiciously like it was lifted from Quincy’s now-retired “Yakoo.”

By 1975 the Dartmouth Public Schools were using a newer Indian mascot with a Western headdress. In 1977 the Pathfinder Indian was designed by Cheryl Andrews-Maltais and her brother while students at Dartmouth High School. That may be the only true part of the tale.

Their Pathfinder appeared on yearbooks until at least 1988 (and possibly longer) but that image bears no resemblance to the one used today. At some point, when replacing the Pathfinder, the Dartmouth Schools managed to choose virtually the same mascot rejected by Dartmouth College in 1974!

This is the version that brings in royalties to the Dartmouth Schools — royalties not shared with any tribe.

In the last few weeks Aunt Jemima ditched the mammy on its syrup bottles with a press release explaining why images from slavery’s past were no longer in fashion. Perhaps it finally occurred to them they had been selling, as author M.M. Manring put it, a “Slave in a Box.” Uncle Ben’s retired its house servant because “now is the right time to evolve the Uncle Ben’s brand, including its visual brand identity.” And Land O’ Lakes dropped its Native American maiden, saying only “we need packaging that reflects the foundation and heart of our company culture.” Soon Mrs. Butterworth and Cream of Wheat followed suit.

On July 1st ADWeek reported that “three separate letters signed by 87 investment firms and shareholders worth a collective $620 billion asked Nike, FedEx and PepsiCo to terminate their business relationships with the NFL’s Washington Redskins unless the team agrees to change its controversial name.” ESPN Senior NFL Insider Adam Schefter reported the franchise was “undergoing a thorough review of the team’s name. And let’s be clear: There’s no review if there’s no change coming. Redskins on way out.” But the mother of all surprises was Mississippi’s abandonment of the Confederate flag.

One would think that in “liberal” Dartmouth, we could at least do as well as Mississippi. But one would be mistaken.

The Dartmouth Schools have kept their “Indian” mascot — the same one shared with Dartmouth College until 1974, when the college abandoned it because it was racist. Superintendent Bonnie Gifford and Board Chair Kathleen Amaral — both white — claim that the “Indian” and the greenface that “honors” it at sports events are townfolk’s way of “respecting” people murdered and sold into slavery when this area was colonized in 1619. And Dartmouth children contribute to “The Weekly Tribe” — a student showcase featuring mainly white faces.

To add injury to insult, Dartmouth pockets royalties it receives from a mascot merchandising agreement with OhioPyle Prints, which according to the District’s lawyer are not shared with any tribe. Dartmouth “Indian” gear is sold locally in drugstores and supermarkets, and Prep Sportswear, Spirit Shop Custom Apparel & Sportswear, Jostens, Inc., and Apparel Now all resell Dartmouth Indian gear online, though the District claims to know only of OhioPyle.

Last year the School Committee voted to block public hearings on mascots. Committee member John Nunes thought it was an insignificant issue, declaring at an October 28th meeting that he “bleeds Green” — the color of “war paint” students smear on their faces at sports events.

If Aunt Jemima was a “slave in a box,” all this is nothing more than an “Indian in a box.” For residents who cling to the lie that such cultural expropriation honors Native Americans, it’s the same lie slaveowners repeated of slaves enjoying being “cared for.”

A 2020 study at UC Berkeley found that 57% of Native Americans and 67% who engage in tribal cultural practices are insulted by mascots. The Chappaquiddick, the Herring Pond, and the Mashpee Wampanoag have all called for banning them.

Researchers have known for decades the damage mascots do to Native American kids (see Freyberg et al, 2008; Stegman and Phillips, 2014; Chaney, 2011; and Davis-Delano, 2020). The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) banned Native mascots in 2005. The American Psychological Association recommended retiring them in 2005 and the American Anthropological Assocation condemned mascots in 2015.

But in Dartmouth you’d think that Sherman was marching on Atlanta. A recent letter to the editor by Harvey Ussach asks, if we get rid of mascots, how are kids going to learn history? Well, why not teach kids the real history of genocide and enslavement and stop pretending that exploiting Native Americans is respectful?

It’s time to quit humoring clueless townies and immediately drop the Dartmouth Indian and hundreds like it. Senate Bill S.2593, “An Act Prohibiting the Use of Native American Mascots by Public Schools in the Commonwealth,” just moved out of committee. Legislators need to pass this bill to do what Superintendent Gifford, Committee Chair Amaral, Committee members Oliver and Nunes, and others entrusted to ensure a safe environment for all children simply refused to do — ban racist mascots.

With many white people suddenly taking an interest in structural racism and with Mississippi now about to remove the Confederate bars from its state flag, maybe it’s time for Bay State residents to think about replacing our flag and seal — a white man’s sword hovering over the neck of a Native American. Gone now are Aunt Jemima, the Land O’ Lakes maiden, Uncle Ben, and a slew of other racist caricatures. Maybe now it’s finally time for the people of Dartmouth to rid their schools of their own racist mascot — one copied from Dartmouth College, which banned it in 1974 because… it was too racist. The following is based on a post from September 2019.

If you haven’t looked closely, both the Massachusetts seal and the state flag feature a belt modeled after one worn by Wampanoag Chief Metacomet (beheaded by Puritans) and a white artist’s conception of Wampanoag Chief Ousamequin (Massasoit) standing in submission beneath the sword of Miles Standish. A shortened version of a Latin aphorism — manus haec inimica tyrannis ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem (this hand, an enemy to tyrants, seeks with the sword a quiet peace under liberty) — accompanies the image, conflating Native Americans with tyranny.

The original version of the seal bears no trace of tyrants or Miles Standish, but instead depicts a naked man with a cartoon bubble saying “come over and help us.” For a few short years around the time of American Independence the seal depicted a white man holding the Magna Carta and a sword, after which both versions were combined into what is more-or-less today’s seal. The history of the seal thus charts an arc from a patronizing White Man’s Burden to triumphant White domination. The new seal is one of many images throughout the United States depicting the defeat and humiliation of Native Americans, such as this WPA-era mural by Victor Arnautoff at George Washington High School in San Francisco.

In order to better understand the seal and its symbols, it may help to review some of the Massachusetts history you never learned in school.

The Puritans, named for their intent to “purify” Protestantism of Catholic influences, arrived in Provincetown Harbor in 1620 in a ship owned by the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London, the Mayflower, accompanied by an English-born Dutch mercenary named Miles Standish. Many regarded this group of religious zealots as quite extreme, even for England in the midst of the Protestant Reformation. Religion certainly played a part in the Puritan’s appearance in the New World; but colonial avarice was what brought them to it.

Upon their arrival, the Puritans swore allegiance to the English King, James (for whom a version of the Protestant bible is named) and signed the Mayflower Compact, “having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia [the Hudson Valley, now in New York].” With supplies running low and winter approaching, they never made it to the Hudson Valley and instead established the “Plimoth” colony.

Forget the communal First Thanksgiving potluck you learned about in school. It was war against brown people from the moment the Puritans arrived. Miles Standish had a well-earned reputation, even among some of the colonists, for brutality and slaughter of Native Americans. Hartman Deetz, of the Wampanoag Nation, notes that in 1623 Standish committed “one of the first recorded egregious murders of native people by colonists in north America. […] the murder of a man, Pecksuot, just south of Boston. Standish […] lured him into a house under the premise that they were going to conduct trade. And when he got into the house, they barred the doors, and he stabbed [Pecksuot] through the heart with his own knife.” Standish also killed and beheaded another warrior named Wituwamat, slaughtered his family, and brought Wituwamat’s head back to Plymouth and displayed it on a wooden pike.

In New England the genocide and enslavement of Native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans are bound together in a history that began almost simultaneously.

In 1633, European slave-hunters came to Southern New England to look for Native Americans to press into slavery. Two of them were killed by the Pequot and the Puritans demanded that the killers be turned over for colonial justice. The Pequots refused. In May of 1637 English troops set fire to a Pequot village near Mystic River in Connecticut killing 700 women, children, and elderly; the survivors were enslaved. William Bradford, the governor of the colony, reported, “It was a fearful sight to see them [Pequots] thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them […]”

In 1638, the Puritans began trafficking enslaved survivors of the decimated Pequot nation, trading them for African slaves from the West Indies. Historian James Drake notes that “the war produced hundreds of Indian refugees, who lived as vagabonds within or on the edges of New England towns.” Slavery “[…] helped satisfy the dilemma of what to”do” with them.”

It is understandable that a flag consisting of a subservient Native American, a colonial mercenary’s sword hanging over his head, and a Latin phrase insinuating that he is a tyrant would surely offend people in the 21st Century. More importantly, the sentiments on the seal and flag no longer represent the aspirations of a 21st Century democracy.

For this reason there are currently two resolutions in the Massachusetts legislature, both entitled “Resolve providing for the creation of a special commission relative to the seal and motto of the Commonwealth” — a House version, H.2776, sponsored by Reps. Lindsay N. Sabadosa and Nika C. Elugardo; and S.1877, sponsored by Senator Jason M. Lewis. Rep. Sabadosa told WGBH that “the legislation does not spell out what we want to change the seal and logo to, […] It just says that we need to put together a commission really composed of native voices so that we can find a symbol that represents the values of Massachusetts that’s true to our history but is also respectful at the same time.”

The current state seal was created in 1908 — eighteen years before the Wounded Knee Massacre and sixteen years before Native Americans were given American citizenship. 1908 was not a time of great sensitivity to Native Americans, who were not even regarded as fellow citizens when the “new” seal was created.

In parallel with calls to change the state flag, there is also a national movement to end the use of “Indian mascots” on school sports teams. Maine just became the first state in the nation to throw racist mascots into the dust bin of history. Nationally, over 2000 schools have mascots with names like Warriors (#1), Indians (#2), Raiders, Braves, Chiefs, Redskins, Redmen, Savages, Squaws, Shaman, or specific tribal names — like the Braintree Wamps (named for the Wampanoag).

As with the cigar store Indian, Native Americans have been frequently de-humanized and reduced to avatars and mascots for commercial products — on the same low level as the Geico gecko or the Aflac duck. And yet — here we are at the beginning of the 21st Century! — the Land o’ Lakes maiden still serves alongside Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima as a racist mascot for corporate America.

But corporate exploitation just echoes the widespread racism in society. Caricatures of Native Americans join the lawn jockey, the sleepy Mexican, Sambo, Chief Wahoo, mammies, Golliwogs, tar babies, pickaninnies, hooked-nosed Jews and Arabs, squinting Asians, and countless racist depictions of non-white people on White America’s lawns and curio shelves. The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) created a poster to try to convey to White America how racist the Cleveland Indian mascot was — but the lesson was apparently too difficult, or too subtle, to comprehend.

On June 25th, 2019 the Massachusetts legislature will conduct joint hearings on two bills prohibiting the use of racist mascots. House bill H.443 sponsored by Reps. Nika C. Elugardo and Tami L. Gouveia joins Senate bill S.247 sponsored by Senator Joanne M. Comerford in charting a path for the phase-out of offensive mascots without imposing financial hardships on the schools that have them. Local schools include: the Barnstable Red Raiders; the Braintree Wamps; the Bristol Aggie Chieftains; the Dartmouth Indians; and the Middleborough Sachems.

Closer to home, the Dartmouth Schools don’t understand how redface and caricaturing Native Americans actually undermines their own anti-discrimination, anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies: “The school system shall establish and maintain an atmosphere in which all persons can develop attitudes and skills for effective cooperative living in our culturally diverse society.”

Unless, of course, you go on Twitter.

A frequent justification for not retiring Native Indian mascots is that schools are somehow honoring Native Americans rather than simply turning them into cartoons. Dartmouth High School’s mascot is the “Indian,” patterned after Dartmouth (NH) College’s. The nickname “Big Green” remains the same for both schools, and the green letter “D” is still exactly the same. But in 1974 the College decided it was time for their racist mascot to go. Not so for the eponymous high school.

A number of Native American groups, including the National Congress of American Indians, Massachusetts Indigenous Legislative Agenda, and the Nipmuc nation, reject mascots outright. In Oregon one school district negotiated with a tribal council to set parameters for the use of tribal imagery. In Utah a tribal council took to social media to slam a parody of a tribal dance done by cheerleaders with wigs on a basketball court. Tribes are being consulted, or at least being heard, in other states.

Why not Massachusetts?

In 2005, when the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) looked at offensive mascots, 14 schools decided to drop them altogether, 19 were cited for abusive names and imagery, and many were prohibited from participating in tournaments. Several schools which previously used the name “Indians” changed them to: the Arkansas Red Wolves, Indiana Crimson Hawks, McMurry War Hawks, Midwestern State Mustangs, Newberry College Wolves, and so on. Change can be easily, and quickly, accomplished.

It is not known if the Dartmouth High School Student Manual’s “respect” rationale for continuing to use the “Indian” mascot was based on approval from local tribal councils or if they were ever consulted. The School Committee controls the mascot logo as if they held a copyright on Native Americans. I emailed and then followed-up with a call to Dr. Bonnie Gifford, Dartmouth’s Superintendent of Schools, passing along several questions to her assistant. But as of publication time I have not received a reply. Likewise, emails to every member of the town School Committee have gone unanswered.

When it comes to respecting or honoring tribes, “honor” is not a verb white people get to define. Tim Giago, an Oglala-Lakota from South Dakota, has his own definition:

“If the white race wants to honor Native Americans, start by honoring our treaties.”

“And please, please keep in mind; there is no difference between wearing Blackface than there is in wearing”Redface.”

The Massachusetts Indigenous Legislative Agenda supports both the flag and seal and mascot legislation. It is also supported by the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). Both bills are before the legislature and both bills need your support.

It’s 2020. There has been a recent shift in thinking about racism. Here in New England, and particularly the SouthCoast, we ought not congratulate ourselves for our supposed tolerance, given that even Mississippi has now retired their racist flag and a New Hampshire college banned Dartmouth’s identical racist mascot — 46 years ago. Let’s get rid of these insulting reminders of our white supremacist legacy and build on this first step by working to rid the rest of our institutions of the structural racism that is America’s most serious pandemic.

One of the justifications that supporters of the Dartmouth mascot give for “defending” it is that choosing something else would result in the “erasure” of Native Americans and Native American history. This is a view echoed by one Dartmouth school committee candidate who wrote on her Facebook page: “Our local Aquinnah Wompanoag [sic] Tribe was up against cancel culture.” The candidate’s other platform? “Helping our schools create and maintain a wholesome, safe, environment, […] get beyond race, […] oppose indoctrinating children […] to think a certain way about controversial topics.”

This is in a town that can’t even agree on the wording of an historical sign near a place where indigenous people were sold into slavery.

Part of the problem is the schools themselves. Dartmouth has a woeful track record of teaching indigenous history. One 2020 high school graduate wrote, “In my four years of being an Indian, I only was exposed to the mascot in connection to the white people wearing the uniforms.” Dartmouth School Superintendent Gifford seemed to confirm this, noting that students are taught indigenous history “primarily” in the 3rd grade. One AP History competition called the “Colonial Real Estate Agency Project” involved students trying to “attract more settlers to your region of the colonies […] persuade your European audience to migrate.”

So if indigenous history is not being taught in the schools, then precisely what history is being erased? Are football teams the only way to remember indigenous people? And if a mascot is a stand-in for history education, what is the mascot actually teaching kids?

There were plenty of answers to these questions at a school committee meeting on March 8th.

Three years ago the Dartmouth School Committee voted 3-2 against holding community hearings on the mascot. But the issue refused to go away, partly because of state legislation to restrict native mascots. So the Committee formed a “Diversity subcommittee” to look at curriculum and they threw in the mascot, which otherwise would have suffocated in the thin air of neglect. March 8th was the subcommittee’s best work.

The leadership of the Aquinnah, pressing hard at both school and town level for exclusive representation on indigenous issues and exclusive control over the “Indian” logo, attacked the subcommittee, calling its members “outsiders,” a view echoed by ultraconservatives both within and close to the leadership. It was only thanks to the Committee chair, Dr. Shannon Jenkins, and other level heads that Wampanoag tribes other than the Aquinnah received invitations to be heard.

And was it ever enlightening.

For years we have heard that the mascot “honors” Native Americans. Pushing back on that narrative, Mashpee Wampanoag members Dawn Blake Souza, Shawna Newcomb, and Brian Weeden; Pokanoket Wampanoag council member Megan Page; and Aquinnah Wampanoag member Brad Lopes explained in thoughtful detail why mascots and symbols — even if historically accurate — harm indigenous people nevertheless.

For years we have heard that no one is offended by mascots, that only “woke” crybabies and “outsiders” want to “cancel” the Dartmouth mascot. There was plenty of testimony on March 8th to lay that one to rest.

And for years we have heard that retiring the mascot would “erase” history — a laughable assertion from folks who refuse to acknowledge real erasure: genocide, ethnic cleansing, and enslavement of indigenous (and other) people, some right in our own backyard.

Brad Lopes, who spoke for Aquinnah members opposing mascots, provided a perfect example of why “erasure” is a demonstrably false narrative:

“Yesterday was the three-year anniversary of the ban of mascots in the state of Maine. And the Wabanaki people are still here. They do not need a mascot to represent them. They do not need a symbol. They do not need an image. They are still here. And their culture and history are brought directly into the classroom because of LD.291, which is a state law that requires schools to teach Wabanaki history. That is how you provide some sort of honor to native peoples, some sort of respect, as you will actually form authentic relationships. […] I would encourage you all to move away from any narratives that have to do with “erasure” […] A symbol is not the solution, education is. This is something I want you all to strongly consider.”

David Ehrens is a Dartmouth resident and one of the founding members of The New Bedford Light. The Light is a nonprofit, non-partisan community news organization, and donors. sponsors and founders do not exercise any influence over content.

Like so much in America that is touched by race, a reckoning with the Dartmouth High School mascot has been simmering for years. Maine, Oregon and Washington state have all banned Native American school mascots. And here in Massachusetts – even after Pentucket, Groveland, Merrimac, West Newbury, Athol, Barnstable, Nashoba, Hanover, Winchester, Grafton, Brookfield, Taconic High, Braintree, Walpole, and Pittsfield abandoned theirs – many in the Town of Dartmouth insist on defending their “Indian” mascot as if it were a besieged Confederate monument in the Heart of Dixie.

Massachusetts legislation to ban Native American mascots brought the local issue to a head in 2019. That was the year the School Committee voted 3-2 to reject a public discussion of the mascot. With George Floyd’s murder, a short-lived national moment prompted the School Committee to create a “Diversity Committee,” in which the mascot issue was conveniently buried. This subcommittee, though it tried hard to address the issue, never really had the full support of the larger School Committee and the chair became the recipient of numerous ad hominem attacks by mascot defenders.

In 2021 Chairwoman Cheryl Andrews-Maltais of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) registered her formal notice to both the Town of Dartmouth and its School Committee that she was displeased with the “lack of consultation and coordination regarding the name and imagery” used by the school system and that she supported the mascot. A Dartmouth High School graduate herself, Chairwomain Andrews-Maltais’ sentiments were echoed by several other Aquinnah alumnae: her brother Clyde Andrews (who created the 1974 version of the “Indian”); her sister Naomi Carney; her nephew Sean Carney; Massachusetts Tea Party activist and former school committee member Christopher Pereira (who runs Friends of Dartmouth Memorial Stadium Inc. and the Dartmouth Indians Football Alumni Club); and twice unsuccessful anti-immigrant state senate challenger Jacob Ventura.

This group has the full and exclusive attention of both the School and Select Committees. Everyone seems content to let the Chairwoman speak for all Native Americans.

But the Wampanoag Nation is not the only indigenous nation in Massachusetts and it includes numerous tribes, not just the Aquinnah. Even voices within the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah are anything but monolithic. Kisha James, a member of the Aquinnah who supports statewide legislation to ban mascots, told the Boston Globe last Fall that the word “mascot is just another word for pet.” She added, “It solidifies this idea that we’re not people. We’re costumes, we’re characters forever stuck in the past.”

Brad Lopes, Program Director of the Aquinnah Cultural Center, created a change.org petition disputing Chairwoman Andrews-Maltais’ efforts to promote the Dartmouth mascot “as the official position of our Nation.” In a separate letter to the Chairwoman he wrote, “I worked alongside members of the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Nations here in Maine in an effort to ban mascots, with that bill passing, and would also think it would be wise to hear from them why. I do not feel this would provide any benefit to our tribal nation, and may in fact just create another symbol that Thomas King would describe as a ‘dead Indian’ for colonial narratives to use as they see fit. We are Wôpanâak after all, not ‘Indians’ or objects.”

Chairwoman Andrews-Maltais suggested in her letter to the Town and Schools that the Aquinnah enter into an agreement “much like the historic Seminole Tribe of Florida and Florida State University agreement of 2005.” In that agreement Florida State created scholarships for some Florida Seminole tribal members.

But Seminole history is complicated. Oklahoma Seminoles remember their ancestors being forced to march the bitter Trail of Tears, and not all were happy with the FSU accord. David Narcomey, a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma who was part of the 2005 NCAA review that banned many Native American mascots, referred to Florida State’s use of Chief Osceola as a “minstrel show.” Here in the SouthCoast, members of other indigenous nations, other Wampanoag tribes, and other members of the Aquinnah have similarly expressed their frustration with Chairwoman Andrews-Maltais for speaking in their name.

Nevertheless, the School and Select Committees have chosen to hear what they want to hear – and who they want to hear it from.

So at the January 24th meeting this year committee member Chris Oliver asked the Committee to “reaffirm” the Indian and to begin discussions with [only] the Aquinnah – discussions he admitted that had long been in “limbo.” Committee member John Nunes went a step further, demanding that the whole issue be “put to bed” with an immediate vote, right then, right there. Nunes argued that “if we need to have discussions with the Wampanoag tribe [sic]” he was good with that. The Committee member revealed a decided lack of enthusiasm for consulting with even the Aquinnah. Level-headed members of the Committee urged that other, unheard, indigenous voices be respected and consulted.

Many of those ignored in Dartmouth were nevertheless heard at state Senate hearings on legislation to ban the use of Native American mascots and through letters and statements published by many local tribes and Native American groups. They include:

• A letter of January 21, 2019 from Alma Gordon (White Sky), Sonksq of the Chappaquiddick Wampanoag Tribe: “Any time a school sports team plays a game against a school with an offensive mascot, they experience demoralizing racial prejudice. Native American mascots in sports are not educationally sound for Native American and non-indigenous youth.”
• A letter of January 2019 from the Chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe: “A state law to address the problem of these nicknames / logos is necessary because many communities in Massachusetts resist calls to eliminate [those] used by the schools. The Tribe / Nation urges you to listen to our voices, and the voices of other Native American tribal nations […].”
• A letter of January 2019 from Megan Page of the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe: “We have tried at a local level to get offensive mascots removed, but attempts remain unsuccessful. We were not heard, and it solidified the need for state legislation regarding this matter. It is time we are heard. It is time we are celebrated for who we are. It is time for a change.”
• A statement by Melissa Harding Ferretti, Chairwoman of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe: “The fact that racist ideas about Native peoples in Massachusetts are deeply ingrained, and are reflected in sports teams mascots, should not have to be explained in 2020 – especially since Native activists and educators have worked so hard for so long to educate other Americans about this. But here we are again today.”
• A letter of June 28, 2020 from Elizabeth Solomon on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Massachuset-Ponkpoag Tribal Council: “Despite repeated calls from Native communities, non-Native allies, and numerous professional organizations to eliminate the Native American nicknames/logos used by their schools, many communities maintain them while insisting that no harm is done and no disrespect is meant. The Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag urges you act on the research regarding the actual harm that is generated by Native American mascots and to listen to our and the many diverse voices calling for the prohibition of all Native American sport team mascots/nicknames/logos in Massachusetts public schools.”
• A letter of July 7, 2020 from Cheryll Toney Holly, Sonksq of the Nipmuc Nation: “As humans living among the many communities in the Commonwealth, we would prefer to speak and reason with townspeople about the harmful effects of their school mascots. Unfortunately, our voices are not heard.”
• A letter of July 22, 2020 from Fawn Sharp, President of the National Congress of American Indians: “Indian Country’s longstanding position on this issue has been made abundantly clear for decades – we are not mascots, and we will not tolerate being treated as such.”
• An open letter of February 17, 2022 from Brad Lopes, Director of the Aquinnah Cultural Center: “Native American mascots can have a harmful effect on the development of self in indigenous students, even in settings where the tribal entity has been involved in these designs. The American Psychological Association acknowledges the negative impacts these mascots can have on students, and I was one of those kids unfortunately. I attended Skowhegan High School, which was the last Native American mascot here in Maine. Due to our ‘Indian’ mascot, which was meant to ‘honor the Wabanaki people’, I faced continually bullying and torment from students and some staff as well. I found my daily life in that school to be about survival, and whenever I could pretend to be white, I would. This has taken me years to unravel and heal from. I would not wish a similar experience on any other indigenous student.”
• The website of MA Indigenous Legislative Agenda: “According to 2019 data from the Census Bureau, there are more than 50,000 Native American people living in Massachusetts, many of whom attend Massachusetts public schools. Native American mascots are likely a violation of state and federal anti-discrimination laws, including the Massachusetts Anti-Bullying Law. Often school districts fear community backlash and so fail to fulfill their legal responsibility to protect all students from this discrimination.”
• The website of the United American Indians of New England: “Native Americans are people, not mascots.”
• (non-native but relevant): American Psychological Association Resolution Recommending Retirement of American Indian Mascots: “The use of American Indian mascots as symbols in schools and university athletic programs is particularly troubling because schools are places of learning. These mascots are teaching stereotypical, misleading and too often, insulting images of American Indians. These negative lessons are not just affecting American Indian students; they are sending the wrong message to all students.”

Despite an impressive number of towns that have done the right thing and retired their nicknames and logos, about 20 Massachusetts school districts still choose to ignore Native voices and a large body of research shows how harmful their use is to both Native and non-native children.

It remains to be seen if any indigenous views will be honestly considered on March 8th at a special hearing for Native Americans on the mascot – or in time for a town referendum on the mascot on April 5th that the town’s Select Board decided to drop on the ballot at the last minute. The referendum vote is barely three weeks after the town’s first, last, and only community hearing on the issue on March 22nd.

Only between 11-15% of the 91% white residents of Dartmouth historically cast votes in the town election. When a voter walks into the booth and stares at the reverse side of a ballot, they will probably know little about what indigenous people think of mascots and will have had little or no time to digest any Native American testimony. They will also have been amply influenced by constant dog-whistling about “woke” “aristocrats,” “elites,” “outsiders” and “cancel” culture.

But people don’t just wake up one morning and decide to be arbitrarily “PC” or “woke.” Human dignity involves real issues, real moral values, and real people. The NAACP, whose members are hardly “aristocrats,” includes people of all colors and our local branch includes members of the Wampanoag nation. We have consistently opposed Native American mascots since at least 1999. We’ve said it again and again and again – and we’ll say it once more:

Native American mascots should not be a matter for a plebiscite. Human dignity is a moral issue.

We took some heat for remarking previously that if this were 1965 and not 2022, some of the “Dartmouth defenders” would be railing against “woke” white allies of the Civil Rights movement like Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched to Montgomery, Alabama with Martin Luther King. This is the same Abraham Heschel, a respected German rabbi, who had to flee Nazi Germany.

It doesn’t take a genius to guess what Heschel would have thought of letting an ethnic majority take a vote on what rights or what level of tolerance a minority deserves.

As America changes, a reckoning with real history and real respect for every member of society is needed more desperately than ever. But great swaths of White America are pushing back with book and curriculum bans, and there is considerable whining from those who no longer feel free to practice their racial insensitivity at will.

Dartmouth College created not only the big “D” letter and the “Big Green” nickname but also the Indian logo that is virtually identical to the one Dartmouth High School uses today. But in 1974 – almost 50 years ago! – Dartmouth College actually honored Native Americans by agreeing to a 1971 student petition and retired a stereotype that, as the students described it, “is a mythical creation of a non-Indian culture and in no manner reflects the basic philosophies of Native American People.”

If the Town of Dartmouth can “borrow” every other sports symbol from Dartmouth College, why not also adopt a principled, ethical decision to retire their Indian?

Today the whole story of the “Indian” mascot at Dartmouth College has become a teachable moment. In 2020 the college offered History 08.07: The Indian Symbol at Dartmouth: A Story of Voices and Silence. Likewise, Dartmouth Schools could incorporate the town’s struggle with a tough issue into their own History or Civics curriculum.

Supporters may regard the Dartmouth mascot as a trivial issue foisted upon them by “woke” “outsiders,” but the stakes for the Town and the Schools are much higher. According to state data Dartmouth has 443 teachers and 436 of them are white. In a town that’s 91% white and where 98.4% of the teachers are white, how can Dartmouth ever attract BIPOC teachers and staff or make BIPOC students feel like they really belong?

Calls for retiring the mascot, which to some appear as nothing more than an arbitrary assault on a beloved town symbol, have much in common with ultra-conservative efforts to purge school curriculum that reckons with America’s racist history.

“Critical Race Theory,” a post-graduate research methodology that has nothing to do with teaching history in public schools, has become the latest Trumpian bogeyman in dozens of states. The many Constitutionally-questionable initiatives and enacted laws to limit speech, control thought, and let history be written by politicians of a certain sort, are designed to result in the Disneyficaton of American history and the whitewashing of America’s crimes against indigenous and enslaved people.

This is what can be found in the deeper waters of the mascot debate.

Let’s give Kisha James the final word. “It’s like settlers are hearing ‘no’ for the first time and they don’t like it. […] Getting rid of mascots and acknowledging racism humanizes us and a lot of people aren’t comfortable with that. Because if you do, you also have to acknowledge the other wrongdoings, like genocide.”

Last June I wrote about legislation that had been filed to reconsider the racist Massachusetts state seal and flag, and another bill to prohibit the use of racist mascots by school sports teams.

Here in my home town of Dartmouth the “Dartmouth Indian” is hardly different from the Confederate flags and monuments to the legacy of slavery that MAGA America feels is their heritage and their birthright. Dartmouth teenagers in “green face” (as if the Wampanoag were some species of leprechaun) are seen at football and lacrosse games. Community members cry that they “bleed green” and claim their caricature of Native people somehow “honors” them. The Dartmouth Schools even have licensing agreements that have netted thousands of dollars from the “Indian” image. Not a cent was ever returned to Native Americans.

I am not the only one to find this exploitative and racist. A couple of local tribes of the Wampanoag, letter-writers and historians who have been complaining about this far longer than I, the NAACP New Bedford Branch, and others in the community joined in forming a small group to try to do something about it. We wrote letters, attended meetings, asked pretty please. But the Dartmouth Schools weren’t having any of it. The school committee shut down even a discussion of their racist caricature.

Two months after the dust settled a bit, one more tribe affiliated with the Wampanoag came out in support of at least talking about it. The committee again refused to even listen to them. As Superintendent Bonnie Gifford finishes up her career, one thing will have changed: the superintendent and her enablers on the school committee can no longer claim — with either straight or green face — that they are “honoring” Native Americans. Too many Native people have told them that this is a bald-faced lie.

In the process of going through this exercise, we met the Native advocacy organization Massachusetts Indigenous Legislative Agenda, which supports not only the two bills I mentioned above but three others related to education and other issues.

Two weeks remain for the legislation to be voted out of committee. You can help by going to the Massachusetts Indigenous Legislative Agenda website and adding your voice.

But even if this legislation never makes it out of committee, we will be back at it again next year. With more passion and more people.

Both slavery and the genocide of Native Americans were committed as soon as colonists began arriving in the Americas. It has taken White America over 400 years to begin a process of self-examination for its crimes — and as a group we’re not accustomed to apology or introspection. As the Town of Dartmouth approaches its 400th anniversary, it is only now looking at two issues related to its depictions of Native Americans. One is historical signage now under review by the Historical Commission. The other is the town’s school mascot, the “Indian.” Jim Hijiya is an emeritus professor of history at UMass Dartmouth, lives in Dartmouth, and offers a thoughtful take on changing the mascot’s name.

by Jim Hijiya

Whether to keep an Indian as a school mascot is a hard question to answer — at least it has been for me. I’ve changed my mind twice already.

I was born and raised in Spokane, Washington, less than twenty miles down the highway from Eastern Washington State College. My sister went to Eastern in the late 1960s, and I rooted for the sports teams from her school. Those teams were called the Savages, and their logo featured a Native American who did not look friendly.

At the time I didn’t see anything wrong with that. It was what I grew up with. I was used to it, and so was everybody else, except maybe some Indians, and nobody cared what they thought. Go, Savages!

Then I went off to college, followed by graduate school. In the 1970s I heard that Eastern had changed its mascot. They weren’t the Savages anymore; they were now the Eagles. “Eastern Eagles” — kind of poetic.

Some of Eastern’s alumni complained thunderously about the treacherous and spineless abandonment of tradition; but I, having spent a few years away from home, now thought the change made sense. The word savages, when associated with Native Americans, did not reflect kindly on those Natives. It seemed unfair.

However, at about the same time, I heard about other name changes for which I had less sympathy. The Stanford University Indians had switched their name to the Cardinal (singular, with no S, indicating a shade of red, not a flock of birds). On the other side of the continent, the Dartmouth College Indians had changed their name to the Big Green. One red, one green, no Indian.

I thought that this was going too far: political correctness run amok. Sure, Savages was derogatory. Redskins was not much better. But Indians? What’s wrong with that? You insult somebody by calling her or him a “savage,” but there’s nothing wrong with being called an “Indian.”

That’s what I still thought when I came to teach history at Southeastern Massachusetts University in 1978. My neighbors had kids who went to Dartmouth High, so I tagged along with them to football games on Thanksgiving. With untempered enthusiasm I rooted for the Dartmouth Indians.

But then, over the years, I changed my mind again. I read more and thought more and came to a different conclusion.

Indians are a race of human beings, like whites or blacks or Asians or Hispanics. However, I don’t know of any sports team named after whites, blacks, Asians, or Hispanics. “The Orientals”? “The Fighting Caucasians”? I can’t even imagine giving a team a name like that. So why do we have “Indians”?

Then I got to thinking about who gets used as mascots. Most often they’re animals: Atlanta Falcons, Boston Bruins, Chicago Bulls, Detroit Tigers. Sometimes mascots are human beings but ones who aren’t around anymore: USC Trojans, Bishop Stang Spartans, Minnesota Vikings, Pittsburgh Pirates, New Bedford Whalers.

Some mascots are beings that never existed: Giants (from New York or San Francisco) or, closer to home, Blue Devils from Fairhaven. The Boston Celtics and the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame both are represented by leprechauns.

We have, then, three common kinds of mascots: (1) animals, (2) people from vanished civilizations, and (3) creatures of fantasy. At first glance, the Dartmouth Indian may seem to belong to Category 2. He wears paint on his face and feathers in his hair, which not many people do any more, at least not at the office or the supermarket. He seems to belong to the past. The Dartmouth High School Student Handbook says that the mascot recognizes “the Native American Heritage of the South Coast,” and “heritage” comes from the past.

Actual Indians, however, exist abundantly in the present, which causes a problem for Dartmouth High. When your school mascot shares a name with living people, you need to be careful not to make that mascot look bad. The Student Handbook prohibits “dress, gestures and/or any other activities or characterizations that portray the Dartmouth Indians in a stereotypical, negative manner.” For example, students attending games are forbidden to do the Tomahawk Chop, which makes Indians look like bloodthirsty savages.

The image of the Dartmouth Indian is not explicitly “negative,” but it is “stereotypical.” It has to be. No one icon can accurately depict a group as numerous and various as Native Americans. The Dartmouth Indian has to stand in place of many people who don’t look much like him: women, for example. (I can’t think of any school mascots who are distinctively female.)

The Dartmouth Indian is a man in the prime of life, and he looks vigorous. Though he lacks armor and armament, he appears to be a worthy adversary for the Bishop Stang Spartan with his helmet or the New Bedford Whaler with his harpoon. This is why he symbolizes the Dartmouth High School sports teams: he embodies physical prowess.

This is also why he does not symbolize the school math team or debate team, who, whatever other strengths they possess, are not distinguished by their athleticism. Those teams don’t call themselves “the Indians.” They call themselves “Dartmouth.”

But why can’t the Dartmouth Indian smile? Why does he look so serious?

Because that’s his job. Like a Lion or a Tiger, he is supposed to scare you. He is the embodiment of a boast, saying, in effect, “I am strong, and I will beat you!” Consider the fact that Pirates, Corsairs, and Raiders are sports mascots. When they roamed the earth as actual people, they were loathed as robbers and murderers; but now that they’re safely deceased, we honor them as symbols of martial dexterity. Even the leprechaun is pugnacious: the Notre Dame mascot has his fists up, spoiling for a fight, and the Boston Celtics symbol has a hand resting on a cudgel. You don’t want to mess with these guys. And you don’t want to mess with the Dartmouth Indian.

But here’s the problem. The Dartmouth Indian exploits and reinforces an old stereotype of the Indian as a killer. He may not be called a “Brave” (like Atlanta) or a “Warrior” (like Golden State), but he sure looks like one, enough so that he makes some fans want to perform the Tomahawk Chop. He makes it easy for us to continue to believe that Indians are all about battle. We remember them mainly for the same reason we remember the Trojans and the Spartans: they fought wars.

For four hundred years, Indians seemed dangerous to Americans who weren’t Natives. As the whites pushed Natives off the land and subjected them to alien rule, Indians fought back, killed some of the invaders, terrified the rest, and created a lasting image of the Indian as a menace. That image was used to justify exterminating Natives and taking their land. Even after the Indians had been subdued, their threatening image was perpetuated in books and movies. This, then, is why Indians, unlike all the other human races, serve as mascots for athletic teams: because of their reputation for violence.

If the mascot of Dartmouth High sports teams were a Bear or a Viking or a Giant, there would be nothing wrong with his seeming to be a potential threat to public safety. However, he’s not. He’s an Indian. By reminding us that some Indians, sometimes, were fighters, he lets us forget that most Indians, most of the time, devoted themselves to peaceable pursuits like farming or hunting or caring for children — or playing sports.

Try to imagine a different kind of Indian mascot: say, one looking like the picture on the Sacajawea dollar (a coin, by the way, that you never see), which commemorates the guide and interpreter for Lewis and Clark. A woman would be just as typical of Native Americans as the current Dartmouth Indian. However, I don’t think she would be as inspiring to the football team. For that we want somebody rough and tough.

But does it have to be an Indian?

There are, of course, arguments for keeping the high school mascot. For example, some people insist that the Dartmouth Indian honors the original inhabitants of our region. The high school handbook says that the Dartmouth Schools “shall be responsible for educating Dartmouth students on the history and important role that the Apponagansett-Wampanoag” played in the history of Dartmouth, so perhaps the mascot is supposed to be part of a program teaching students about Native Americans.

But does that happen? Maybe at some point in the students’ education a teacher tells them something about the Apponagansetts. If it’s not an integral part of the curriculum, however, I doubt that students remember much. Are there courses for them to take in subjects like Native American History, Conversational Wampanoag, or Indians in Contemporary Society? I don’t think so.

Is there, then, any reason to believe that Dartmouth students know more about Indians than do students at New Bedford High or Bishop Stang? Probably not. What Dartmouth students know about Indians, I suspect, is what they have seen on their uniforms or green sweatshirts. But isn’t that granting “honor” to Indians on the cheap?

Before we make our judgment on the Dartmouth Indian, there is one very important question that we ought to ask: What do actual Indians think? I have read that some local Native people love the mascot (though they might not like having it called a “mascot”) and want to keep it. I can understand that. The Dartmouth Indian is a symbol of courage and strength, somebody who will not be pushed around, somebody to make you proud.

If you wrap yourself in the image of the warrior, however, you trap yourself in that same image. It’s hard to look like a warrior and also look like, say, a novelist or a nurse. Thus the symbol narrows our vision of what Native people are; every stereotype, even a positive one, carries a price tag. By perpetuating the idea that Indians are warriors, we give fans of the Atlanta Braves and Florida State Seminoles a stronger excuse for doing the Tomahawk Chop. Warriors and tomahawks go together.

This is probably why I have read about not only Native Americans who want to preserve the Dartmouth Indian but also about ones who want to get rid of Indian mascots altogether. The National Congress of American Indians, for example, has applauded Maine’s recent law banning all Indian mascots at public schools in the state. I don’t know whether the NCAI accurately represents Native opinion, but I suspect that it represents a significant chunk of it.

Now I would like to know what tribal councils and large numbers of individual Indians in southeastern Massachusetts believe. If there is a consensus or even a strong majority opinion among the people most affected by the existence of the Dartmouth Indian, then I think we ought to let their judgment weigh heavily on the scales. I hope that in its consideration of this issue, the Dartmouth School Committee will seek out several organizations and many individuals to find out what Native people want.

I think we all should do a cost/benefit analysis. The benefit of having an Indian as the symbol of Dartmouth sports is obvious: it associates Native Americans with courage and strength. The cost of having an Indian mascot, in contrast, is not obvious but hidden: you can’t see its effect right away, and you have to think about it before you can see it coming. Associating Indians with physical struggle perpetuates the notion that fighting is what Indians are all about. I think there’s more to them than that.

I can understand why many Dartmouth High School alumni don’t want to give up the Indian. He was part of their high school experience, they cherish that experience, and so they cherish the Indian. What I hope they realize now, however, is that he was not an essential part of that experience. If the mascot had been an Eagle or a Pirate, the students’ lives at Dartmouth High would have been pretty much the same. They would have learned math and history (or not), enjoyed the football and basketball games (or not). The mascot doesn’t make much difference. It’s the school itself that counts.

If Dartmouth High gets a new mascot, people will get used to it, though it may take a generation or two for everybody to come around. At Eastern Washington University nowadays, students cheer wholeheartedly for the Eagles. A few still wish the Savages were back on the warpath, but not many. A nephew of mine graduated from Stanford a year ago, and he didn’t even know that his university’s teams had once been called the Indians instead of the Cardinal.

How soon we forget. And how fortunately.

Massachusetts liberals like to think of our state as the home of Camelot and the heart of Abolition, all while smugly bashing Confederate monuments in the South. But our own history and our own flag are just as shameful as those in the former Confederate States of America.

If you haven’t looked closely, both the Massachusetts seal and the state flag feature a belt modeled after one worn by Wampanoag Chief Metacomet (beheaded by Puritans) and a white artist’s conception of Wampanoag Chief Ousamequin (Massasoit) standing in submission beneath the sword of Miles Standish. A shortened version of a Latin aphorism — manus haec inimica tyrannis ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem (this hand, an enemy to tyrants, seeks with the sword a quiet peace under liberty) — accompanies the image, conflating Native Americans with tyranny.

The original version of the seal bears no trace of tyrants or Miles Standish, but instead depicts a naked man with a cartoon bubble saying “come over and help us.” For a few short years around the time of American Independence the seal depicted a white man holding the Magna Carta and a sword, after which both versions were combined into what is more-or-less today’s seal. The history of the seal thus charts an arc from a patronizing White Man’s Burden to triumphant White domination. The new seal is one of many images throughout the United States depicting the defeat and humiliation of Native Americans, such as this WPA-era mural by Victor Arnautoff at George Washington High School in San Francisco.

In order to better understand the seal and its symbols, it may help to review some of the Massachusetts history you never learned in school.

The Puritans, named for their intent to “purify” Protestantism of Catholic influences, arrived in Provincetown Harbor in 1620 in a ship owned by the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London, the Mayflower, accompanied by an English-born Dutch mercenary named Miles Standish. Many regarded this group of religious zealots as quite extreme, even for England in the midst of the Protestant Reformation. Religion certainly played a part in the Puritan’s appearance in the New World; but colonial avarice was what brought them to it.

Upon their arrival, the Puritans swore allegiance to the English King, James (for whom a version of the Protestant bible is named) and signed the Mayflower Compact, “having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia [the Hudson Valley, now in New York].” With supplies running low and winter approaching, they never made it to the Hudson Valley and instead established the “Plimoth” colony.

Forget the communal First Thanksgiving potluck you learned about in school. It was war against brown people from the moment the Puritans arrived. Miles Standish had a well-earned reputation, even among some of the colonists, for brutality and slaughter of Native Americans. Hartman Deetz, of the Wampanoag Nation, notes that in 1623 Standish committed “one of the first recorded egregious murders of native people by colonists in north America. […] the murder of a man, Pecksuot, just south of Boston. Standish […] lured him into a house under the premise that they were going to conduct trade. And when he got into the house, they barred the doors, and he stabbed [Pecksuot] through the heart with his own knife.” Standish also killed and beheaded another warrior named Wituwamat, slaughtered his family, and brought Wituwamat’s head back to Plymouth and displayed it on a wooden pike.

In New England the genocide and enslavement of Native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans are bound together in a history that began almost simultaneously.

In 1633, European slave-hunters came to Southern New England to look for Native Americans to press into slavery. Two of them were killed by the Pequot and the Puritans demanded that the killers be turned over for colonial justice. The Pequots refused. In May of 1637 English troops set fire to a Pequot village near Mystic River in Connecticut killing 700 women, children, and elderly; the survivors were enslaved. William Bradford, the governor of the colony, reported, “It was a fearful sight to see them [Pequots] thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them […]”

In 1638, the Puritans began trafficking enslaved survivors of the decimated Pequot nation, trading them for African slaves from the West Indies. Historian James Drake notes that “the war produced hundreds of Indian refugees, who lived as vagabonds within or on the edges of New England towns.” Slavery “[…] helped satisfy the dilemma of what to”do” with them.”

It is understandable that a flag consisting of a subservient Native American, a colonial mercenary’s sword hanging over his head, and a Latin phrase insinuating that he is a tyrant would surely offend people in the 21st Century. More importantly, the sentiments on the seal and flag no longer represent the aspirations of a 21st Century democracy.

For this reason there are currently two resolutions in the Massachusetts legislature, both entitled “Resolve providing for the creation of a special commission relative to the seal and motto of the Commonwealth” — a House version, H.2776, sponsored by Reps. Lindsay N. Sabadosa and Nika C. Elugardo; and S.1877, sponsored by Senator Jason M. Lewis. Rep. Sabadosa told WGBH that “the legislation does not spell out what we want to change the seal and logo to, […] It just says that we need to put together a commission really composed of native voices so that we can find a symbol that represents the values of Massachusetts that’s true to our history but is also respectful at the same time.”

The current state seal was created in 1908 — eighteen years before the Wounded Knee Massacre and sixteen years before Native Americans were given American citizenship. 1908 was not a time of great sensitivity to Native Americans, who were not even regarded as fellow citizens when the “new” seal was created.

In parallel with calls to change the state flag, there is also a national movement to end the use of “Indian mascots” on school sports teams. Maine just became the first state in the nation to throw racist mascots into the dust bin of history. Nationally, over 2000 schools have mascots with names like Warriors (#1), Indians (#2), Raiders, Braves, Chiefs, Redskins, Redmen, Savages, Squaws, Shaman, or specific tribal names — like the Braintree Wamps (named for the Wampanoag).

As with the cigar store Indian, Native Americans have been frequently de-humanized and reduced to avatars and mascots for commercial products — on the same low level as the Geico gecko or the Aflac duck. And yet — here we are at the beginning of the 21st Century! — the Land o’ Lakes maiden still serves alongside Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima as a racist mascot for corporate America.

But corporate exploitation just echoes the widespread racism in society. Caricatures of Native Americans join the lawn jockey, the sleepy Mexican, Sambo, Chief Wahoo, mammies, Golliwogs, tar babies, pickaninnies, hooked-nosed Jews and Arabs, squinting Asians, and countless racist depictions of non-white people on White America’s lawns and curio shelves. The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) created a poster to try to convey to White America how racist the Cleveland Indian mascot was — but the lesson was apparently too difficult, or too subtle, to comprehend.

On June 25th, 2019 the Massachusetts legislature will conduct joint hearings on two bills prohibiting the use of racist mascots. House bill H.443 sponsored by Reps. Nika C. Elugardo and Tami L. Gouveia joins Senate bill S.247 sponsored by Senator Joanne M. Comerford in charting a path for the phase-out of offensive mascots without imposing financial hardships on the schools that have them. Local schools include: the Barnstable Red Raiders; the Braintree Wamps; the Bristol Aggie Chieftains; the Dartmouth Indians; and the Middleborough Sachems.

Closer to home, the Dartmouth Schools don’t understand how redface and caricaturing Native Americans actually undermines their own anti-discrimination, anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies: “The school system shall establish and maintain an atmosphere in which all persons can develop attitudes and skills for effective cooperative living in our culturally diverse society.”

Unless you go on Twitter.

A frequent justification for not retiring Native Indian mascots is that schools are somehow honoring Native Americans rather than simply turning them into cartoons. Dartmouth High School’s mascot is the “Indian,” patterned after Dartmouth (NH) College’s. The nickname “Big Green” remains the same for both schools, and the green letter “D” is still exactly the same. But in 1974 the College decided it was time for their racist mascot to go. Not so for the eponymous high school.

A number of Native American groups, including the National Congress of American Indians, Massachusetts Indigenous Legislative Agenda, and the Nipmuc nation, reject mascots outright. In Oregon one school district negotiated with a tribal council to set parameters for the use of tribal imagery. In Utah a tribal council took to social media to slam a parody of a tribal dance done by cheerleaders with wigs on a basketball court. Tribes are being consulted, or at least being heard, in other states.

Why not Massachusetts?

In 2005, when the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) looked at offensive mascots, 14 schools decided to drop them altogether, 19 were cited for abusive names and imagery, and many were prohibited from participating in tournaments. Several schools which previously used the name “Indians” changed them to: the Arkansas Red Wolves, Indiana Crimson Hawks, McMurry War Hawks, Midwestern State Mustangs, Newberry College Wolves, and so on. Change can be easily, and quickly, accomplished.

It is not known if the Dartmouth High School Student Manual’s “respect” rationale for continuing to use the “Indian” mascot was based on approval from local tribal councils or if they were ever consulted. The School Committee controls the mascot logo as if they held a copyright on Native Americans. I emailed and then followed-up with a call to Dr. Bonnie Gifford, Dartmouth’s Superintendent of Schools, passing along several questions to her assistant. But as of publication time I have not received a reply. Likewise, emails to every member of the town School Committee have gone unanswered.

When it comes to respecting or honoring tribes, “honor” is not a verb white people get to define. Tim Giago, an Oglala-Lakota from South Dakota, has his own definition:

“If the white race wants to honor Native Americans, start by honoring our treaties.”

“And please, please keep in mind; there is no difference between wearing Blackface than there is in wearing “Redface.”

The Massachusetts Indigenous Legislative Agenda supports both the flag and seal and mascot legislation. It is also supported by the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI).

It’s 2019, people! Time’s up for lawn jockies, mammies, and blackface. Time’s also up for racist mascots and redface. Please call your representatives in both the House and Senate to support both Native American-related bills now in the Massachusetts legislature.