‘It’s derogatory’: one man’s four-decade fight against his town’s Native ‘mascot’
On a recent Friday evening, the teenage daughter of the then mayor-elect of Morris, Illinois, about 60 miles south-west of Chicago, led her high school’s marching band on to the football field wearing a headdress, face paint and clothes resembling Native regalia.
As the band played the “war cry” for the pre-game event, the student, with her reddish blond hair in braids, stood in a wide stance in the middle of the field with her arms crossed.It was a familiar scene for Morris Community high school, a school of about 850 students, none of whom are Native, according to a 2019 Illinois report card. Its mascot has long been “the Redskins”, a term widely considered a racial slur against Native Americans.
Current and former students told the Guardian most home football games involve a white student who has been named “chief” dressed in an outfit meant to resemble Native regalia.But it is this practice, along with the school’s mascot, that Ted Trujillo – considered the only enrolled tribal member of a federally recognized tribe living in the small city and an alumnus of the school – has been fighting against for nearly four decades.“It’s racist. It’s derogatory. It stereotypes a whole race of people,” Trujillo, 51, told the Guardian. “It appropriates our sacred culture and traditions. A headdress has meaning in the Native world; the regalia, everything has meaning.”Trujillo filed a formal complaint with the superintendent and president of the school board last month, demanding an independent investigation of the events at the game. He explained he was told by the superintendent weeks before the game that the practice would no longer take place. The superintendent, principal and school board president did not return requests for comment.
“This incident needs to be treated as a racial incident and not treated as anything less than a racial incident,” Trujillo wrote in the complaint that he shared with the Guardian. “Morris high school in the past has left out Natives from their racial harassment and discrimination policies along with their policies for students.”In response, the school board president, Scot Hastings, told him that the subject of his complaint was not covered by the board of education’s uniform grievance procedure, so the district won’t be taking action, according to the email shared with the Guardian.Despite the ongoing nationwide reckoning over racial injustice, and Washington’s own profes