Drop racist mascots
As last year’s Truth and Reconciliation report made clear, schools have an essential role to play in healing the troubled relationship between Canada and First Nations. “Education is what got us into this mess,” Justice Murray Sinclair said of the dark legacy of residential schools. “And education will get us out.”
There is much our school system can do to better inform Canadians about indigenous issues and give First Nations students a better chance at success, but perhaps no measure is quite so easy or obvious as one proposed at last week’s annual meeting of the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario: a ban on stereotypical depictions of indigenous people in team names.
Debbie White, a teacher in the Peel district, tabled a motion to encourage “school boards to stop promoting stereotypical representations of aboriginal people, including team names and mascots.” That seems like a no-brainer and, evidently, the province’s elementary school teachers agreed. The motion was passed with a strong majority.
But as anyone who has followed the impassioned debate over the name and logo of the National Football League’s Washington Redskins well knows, these matters are never uncontroversial. While many Ontario schools have changed their indigenous-inspired team names in recent years, several others hold on. The Northern Secondary Braves in Sturgeon Falls and Hamilton’s Sir John A. Macdonald Chiefs are just two examples.
Of course, not all team names or mascots taken from indigenous cultures are as overtly racist as the Redskins’ name or the Cleveland Indians’ crude Chief Wahoo mascot (mercifully retired in 2013). Monikers like Braves, Chiefs, Warriors or Eskimos, and logos such as feathers or headdresses, are often defended on the grounds that they honour indigenous cultures. “It is a symbol of everything we stand for: strength, courage, pride and respect,” said Dan Snyder, the Redskins’ recalcitrant owner.
But an honour should inspire pride in the honoured, not pain or anger. Nor should it reduce nearly 600 distinct nations to one gross stereotype. And when you consider the context in which these names became popular — a time when indigenous people were so often held up as either noble savages or subjects of ridicule — the honour hardly seems like an honour at all. What is a symbol of respect to some may be a symbol of colonial oppression and persistent racism to others.
The argument is not just moral. A key challenge for Ontario as it works toward fulfilling its promise to repair relations with First Nations will be to close the yawning education gap between indigenous students and others. But, as the American Psychological Association declared a decade ago, aboriginal names and mascots create a “hostile learning environment” for indigenous students, affirming negative stereotypes and eroding self-worth.
All schools that have a team name or mascot taken from indigenous culture should consider the lesson they are teaching their students: that tradition trumps consideration, inclusivity and respect. As long as that’s on the curriculum, reconciliation is bound to remain sadly out of reach.