N.M. town questions use of name Redskins as mascot

Discussion comes after Calif. bans name from four schools

Native American activists won a small but symbolic victory this week in their ongoing quest against sports teams using mascots they deem offensive or racist.

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday signed a bill into law that bans public schools from using Redskins as a name for athletic teams or mascots. California, the nation’s most populous state, is the first to adopt such a ban, which will take effect in 2017. The four California schools that use Redskins as a name will have to consider alternatives. The passage of the bill comes in the shadow of a ongoing high-profile battle. In this case, the owner of the National Football League’s Washington Redskins continues to resist pressure to change the team name, saying that the mascot is an ode to Native Americans.

In Bayard, a small town in Southern New Mexico, residents take pride in the Redskins, which is the name the middle school uses for its sports teams, said state Sen. Howie Morales, D-Silver City. Morales was a teacher with the Cobre Consolidated School District, where he coached an elementary baseball

team called the Indians for nine years. Cobre High School, that also uses Indians as a mascot, receives its students from Snell Middle School, home of the Redskins.

Morales said he talked to Native Americans in his community who felt the middle school and high school should keep the team names.

“There would be some resistance to changing the name because there is loyalty to the mascot name,” Morales said. But, he added, if the residents of Bayard came to feel the middle school’s use of the name is insensitive toward Native Americans, they would eventually accept such a change.

Bayard, 11 miles east of Silver City, has a population of about 2,300, mostly Hispanic, with fewer than one percent of residents identifying themselves as Native American, according to U.S. census data. The middle school principal and the district superintendent were not available for comment Monday.

The national Change the Mascot group, which pressured Washington’s NFL team to drop its name, issued a statement applauding California lawmakers.

“This landmark legislation eliminating the R-word in California schools clearly demonstrates that this issue is not going away, and that opposition to the Washington team on this issue is only intensifying,” the statement said. “The NFL should act immediately to press the team to change the name.”

The California legislation was signed a day before Columbus Day, the federal holiday which recognizes the European explorer Christopher Columbus. Some activists protest the holiday, saying it celebrates genocide. In Albuquerque last week, the city council joined cities such as Seattle in approving a proclamation observing Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Monday.

Tribes sometimes have backed names that some said were offensive. For example, the Seminole tribe in Florida endorses the use of its name as the sports mascot for Florida State University. In northeast Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation, the Red Mesa High School sports teams are called the Redskins. Most students enrolled at the school are Navajo, members of the largest tribe in the country.

At the college level, numerous schools have changed mascots that Native Americans and others criticize as offensive.

Ripon College in Wisconsin stopped using the name Redmen in 1994, switching to Red Hawks. Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, made a similar move effective in 1997, changing from Redskins to RedHawks.

Independent of one another, two regional universities in Colorado broke from decades of tradition and stopped calling their teams Indians. What is now Colorado State University-Pueblo, in 1994 changed its mascot to ThunderWolves. Adams State College in Alamosa retired its Indian mascot in 1995 and renamed its teams the Grizzlies.

Arvada High School in suburban Denver dropped the name Redskins in 1993. Then-U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado had been a leading critic of the Washington Redskins name, prompting discussion within his state about possibly offensive team names.

Campbell also criticized Lamar High School on the Eastern Plains of Colorado. It uses the team name the Savages, which it pairs with an Indian mascot. Campbell called the pairing of Savages and Indians inappropriate and inaccurate, especially because the Sand Creek massacre occurred an hour north of Lamar. In 1864 at Sand Creek, a Colorado territory militia attacked villages where Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians lived, killing and maiming some 150 tribal members. Most were women and children.