Maine Banned Native American Mascots
Celebrating end of Indian mascots in Maine high schools
MAINE VOICES: No schools in Maine retain Native American nicknames, mascots – that’s something to celebrate The focus has been on the bill banning the practice in the future, but it should be on the heroes who brought about its end.
Hidden heroes have done the right thing on Indian mascots
All through the late 1990s and well into the 2000s, I was part of the growing national movement to get the Cleveland Indians to drop Chief Wahoo — perhaps, the most racist caricature in use in American society. Frustration with that effort, ultimately successful after many years, led me to more than a decade of trying to work to see that all such offensive nicknames and mascots end in my home state of Maine.
Skowhegan has opportunity again to cleanse itself of insensitive mascot
I’m seeing two inconvenient truths as the Skowhegan Area High School’s 23-member school board — again — considers whether to do the right thing, and end its use of an insensitive Indians nickname and mascot, or, maintain the status quo by continuing to bury its head in the sand, bringing shame and condemnation upon its communities.
Skowhegan adults desperately need a mascot lesson. Students could teach it to them
Recently, a friend of mine, who was an anti-Vietnam War activist, had a surprising message for me, concerning my involvement in a now six-year campaign to end the use of Native American nicknames and mascots in my home state of Maine.
Maine’s do-nothing Board of Education needs to take on school mascot disrespect
know many conservatives revere the notion of “local control.” But I believe here in Maine, probably as a direct result of five combative, wholly divisive years of ultra-conservative LePage administration policies, we have come face to face with a very sinister version of this philosophy that merely allows elected officials to ignore injustice and abrogate governmental responsibility.
Skowhegan ‘Indian Pride’ website continues to denigrate Native Americans
Since the French, the British and colonial Americans invaded North America, the use of alcohol helped white people to subjugate Native Americans in all manner of nefarious ways and made the indigenous peoples subservient to their respective wills. They cheated them in basic trades for furs and goods, stole lands from them again and again in treaties they never intended to honor and robbed them of their self-respect and perverted their health.
It’s up to students to end Skowhegan mascot dilemma
Skowhegan Area High School is keeping the entire state from declaring that Maine is the first state in the country to end the practice of school use of Native American nicknames and mascots. As one Skowhegan school official recently noted, sadly, “We have a target on our backs.”
Institutionalized racism is embarrassing for Skowhegan schools
When will town officials, education officials, and faculty, staff and students at Skowhegan Area High School stand up to the 11 or 12 members of the school board who do more thinking backwards than forwards, surrounded by a small but volatile group of residents who threaten and mock the very people they are said to be “honoring?”
On Indian mascots, Maine’s top school officials get failing grade
Maine could be the first state in the U.S. to eradicate school use of Native American nicknames and mascots. But our effort to make that a reality has encountered two obstacles:
Skowhegan has a chance to break shackles of acceptable racism
Well-publicized across the state, the Skowhegan-area school board, by a narrow 11-9 vote in early May, rejected an appeal by Maine’s four Native American tribes to end the use of their inappropriate nickname and mascot. For the time being, those 11 school board members have thumbed their noses at more than 30 other Maine communities and public schools that have ended such usage over the past decade.
Skowhegan High School stands in Maine’s way: ending Native American mascot use
When all around her members of Congress stood frightened and mute in the face of Joseph McCarthy’s Communist fear-mongering, Margaret Chase Smith of Skowhegan stood, alone, in opposition and spoke what she knew to be right, what she knew to be the truth. Today, we need that spirit in Skowhegan once again.
Time for Skowhegan, Nokomis to answer: What makes your school so special?
Nearly 30 schools in Maine have stopped using Native American nicknames and symbols, mostly over the past decade. Standing all alone are Nokomis Regional High School of Newport, Skowhegan Area High School and southern Maine’s Wells High School in a race for infamy: Who will be the last to stop this insidious practice in Maine?
Maine students should protest, end Native American school mascots
From our Colonial period right through to the present day, Native Americans have always been the victims of an intrinsic “institutional racism” in the United States. Or, put more bluntly, it’s always been okay to be flat-out disrespectful.
Indian nicknames lacking in respect; mascot makeover might be in order for some Maine high school teams
We live in a curiously impolite era. We know no new sporting team in this country – whether spawned to give identity to a new grade school, college or amateur team, or to promote the creation of a new professional enterprise – that would dare feature a mascot or logo with a direct racial or ethnic theme. And, of course, no one would seriously contemplate a design that would clearly be offensive to the Black, Hispanic, Jewish communities, etc.