Native American mascots under fire
Resolution asks boards to push against imagery
School districts around the state could be forced to retire their Native American mascots if a resolution being circulated by a central Wisconsin school board gains traction.
The Wausau School District is asking school boards to endorse the resolution, which calls on the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to recommend legislation effectively barring schools from using Native American mascots and imagery as part of its legislative and lobbying agenda.
The Madison and Sun Prairie school districts have signed on. It is expected to be endorsed by the Milwaukee Public Schools Board when members take up the measure this month, board President Larry Miller and Vice President Tony Baez said Tuesday.
“Wisconsin has reached a point where we have to do away with these vestiges of anti-Native American thinking,” said Baez, who likened the controversy to that surrounding the use of the Confederate flag in the south. “As school boards, we have to do away with these symbols of what has been culturally an overtaking and general dismissing of Native Americans,” he said.
According to the resolution, about 31 of the state’s 421 public school districts still use Native American mascots, symbols, images, logos or names. In southeastern Wisconsin, those include the Muskego and Ozaukee (Fredonia) Warriors; and the Menomonee Falls and Mukwonago Indians.
Menomonee Falls Superintendent Corey Golla said his board generally sees these types of policies as a matter of local control.
“That said, we fully respect that this is regarded by many as controversial. Native American groups have reached out to us, and we’re sensitive to the impact that it has,” Golla said. At the same time, “we’re trying to reconcile that we also have a community that is supportive of its school and that there is some history behind the name.”
The Wausau School Board unanimously approved the resolution, put forth by President Tricia Zunker, in July. The goal is to get it before the state school board association’s Policy & Resolutions Committee this fall and ultimately its Delegate Assembly, or annual convention, in January.
The resolution says the use of
Native imagery reinforces stereotypes, perpetuates “culturally abusive behavior” by non-Native students and “undermines the educational experiences” of all students. And it cites a 2005 statement by the American Psychological Association calling for the immediate retirement of Native American mascots and imagery “because of the harm caused to the social identity development and self-esteem of Native American students.”
“If you are a school that respects diversity, you’re not going to have these mascots that are culturally abusive,” said Zunker, a member of the HoChunk tribe who sits on its Supreme Court. “This is about educating our students, whether they’re Native American or not Native American. This is about ensuring that we don’t have a hostile learning environment,”
The Wausau district doesn’t have any schools that use Native American mascots or other imagery.
The debate over the use of Native American imagery by school districts has ebbed and flowed in Wisconsin for years.
In 2010, then-Gov. Jim Doyle signed a bill making it easier for individuals to force the retirement of a Native American mascot through a complaint process, the first of its kind in the country. The law gave the superintendent of public instruction — at that time nowGov. Tony Evers — the authority to evaluate the complaint and order changes.
As attorney general in 1992, Doyle issued an opinion that Native American logos and mascots could violate state laws against discrimination.
The Osseo-Fairchild School District in northwestern Wisconsin became the first district forced to change, ultimately switching from the Chieftans to the Thunder in July of that year. Around the same time, Kewaunee received a complaint and switched from the Indians to the Storm.
The Mukwonago School District appeared to be on track for a similar fate the same year when a recent grad — Rain Koepke, a descendant of four tribes — filed a complaint.
Mukwonago was ordered to change its mascot. But two Mukwonago residents, Craig Vertz and James Schoolcraft, challenged the process in court. A Waukesha County judge initially ruled in their favor. But the state Court of Appeals reversed the decision, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the administrative hearing process.
By 2013, it would be moot. That year, a bill approved by the Legislature and signed into law by then-Gov. Scott Walker made it harder for DPI to strip schools of their mascots and logos, and vacated all prior complaints and orders, including the one against Mukwonago.
In the years since 2010, Mukwonago has carefully curated its sports environment. While it continues to refer to its sports teams as the Indians, it no longer displays the word or Native American imagery on new jerseys or walls in the athletic facilities. A message “This is Indian Country” was painted over in the school’s old gym before a new fieldhouse was completed in 2018.
Community members and alumni have demonstrated fierce loyalty to the incumbent mascot in many of these cases. As one example, the Milton school board approved a change from Redmen to Redhawks in 1999, and three board members who approved the change were then subjected to recall elections. All three won the right to close out their terms, and the Janesville Gazette speculated that the recall votes produced the biggest voter turnout in community history.