Colorado looks at banning Native American mascots

DENVER — Colorado lawmakers are considering a proposal that would ban Native American mascots in public schools and colleges amid a nationwide push for racial justice that gained new momentum last year following George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis and the NFL team in Washington changing its name. The measure, which cleared the state Senate Education Committee last week, would include a $25,000 monthly fine on public schools, colleges and universities that use American Indianthemed mascots after June 1, 2022.

The committee passed amendments exempting schools that have or will seek agreements with local tribes to use such mascots. The changes also would exempt schools on tribal lands.

Nearly two dozen schools in Colorado still use Native American mascots such as the “Warriors,” “Reds” and “Savages,” according to Democratic state Sen. Jessie Danielson, one of the bill’s sponsors. Two prominent high schools dropped their “Indians” mascot in the last year: Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs and Loveland High School.

A commission of tribal members and state agencies in 2015 recommended schools remove Native American mascots, but many still remain.

“They’ve been protested. They’ve been begged. They’ve even been urged by the state of Colorado to do the right thing, and instead of taking it on their own to do the right thing, they’ve decided to continue using derogatory mascots,” Danielson said of the state’s need to intervene.

Before the Senate committee, tribal members testified that the bill was important because of the nation’s history of erasing Native American culture by prohibiting traditional practices.

Southern Ute Tribal Chairman Melvin Baker said the “inaccurate and cruel portrayals” of Native Americans as mascots have been used as “strategic tools to marginalize Indigenous communities.”

Sylvester Roubideaux, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, opposed the bill. He testified that the “Indians” mascot at a high school in Yuma, where his family lives, has allowed for celebration of Native American culture in his community.

Roubideaux said taking away the mascots would mean less Native American representation and that they would become a “vanishing people.”

At the committee hearing, Talon Long, an 18yearold from a Native American family, recalled his classmates calling him “Chief Talon” and asking whether he lived in a cave in the mountains.

“I’m not anyone’s mascot, and I’m not an animal, a savage or anyone’s good luck charm,” testified Brody SeeWalker, a seventhgrader and Lakota descendant from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. “I am a human and a proud Lakota who comes from a long line of ancestors that fought so very hard so that I could be standing here before you today.”

The push to remove mascots with Native American imagery began during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, according to the National Congress of American Indians, a nonprofit established in 1944 to protect Native American and Alaska Native rights. The movement gained little attention until 2005, when the National Collegiate Athletic Association directed schools to end the use of “hostile or abusive” mascots and imagery in collegelevel sports. In later years, the conversation spread to the multibilliondollar NFL.

After years of pressure and a federal ruling, the NFL team in Washington decided to drop the Redskins name last July and become the “Washington Football Team.”

California prohibits public schools from using “Redskins” as a nickname or mascot.

More than 1,900 schools across the U.S. have American Indianthemed mascots, according to a database kept by the National Congress of American Indians.