Maine House Passes Ban On Native Mascots, School Board Set To Say No Referendum

Yesterday the Maine House passed LD 944, An act to ban Native American mascots in all schools by a large margin, 88-54. 

Associated Press picked up the story which I saw in U.S. News & World Report including this local news: 

The Maine Education Department has urged schools to refrain from using mascots and logos depicting Native Americans. Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and several tribal leaders have said Skowhegan's former mascot "Indians" harmed Native Americans. 

 
The school retired the nickname last month.

The action on this bill now moves to the Maine Senate.

Senate Democrats have an easy to use contact form for each senator. You can copy and paste your message into each senator's contact form to save time. The vote in the House was largely along party lines, with the notable exception of Democrat Rep. Betty Austin of Skowhegan who not only voted against the bill but spoke against it prior to voting.

Austin came out in favor of local control. Folks who know her call her a "nice lady" who was once their children's bus driver. Several have noted that she was under "a lot of pressure" which I'm pretty sure means she has been harassed and threatened by Skowhegan I#$%*# Pride members who have been doing the same to me and my sister since we spoke publicly in favor of retirement.

SIP will be on hand Thursday night for a school board meeting which will consider their request to hold referendums in the six towns of the district, MSAD 54. The meeting at 7pm at the Skowhegan Area Middle School will consider a petition submitted with allegedly thousands of unverified signatures asking for a referendum to overturn the March 7 vote to "respectfully retire" the mascot.



It is unlikely the board will vote to undermine their own authority by holding a non-binding referendum on a topic they have thoroughly researched and considered before rendering their decision. On January 8 they listened for three hours at a public forum on the mascot (video of that meeting can be seen here).

Supporters of a new sports name/nickname/mascot are asked to wear red as a show of silent solidarity with the March 7 decision. 

Downeast Brother: I Would Feel Embarrassed Running In A Tank-top With A Picture Of A Native American's Head On It

UC Santa Cruz where one of my nieces went to school has a great mascot: the banana slug.

Some of the strongest testimony to the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee about banning Native mascots was given by two boys who were skipping school. 😂

I found out yesterday that theirs was not the only family that sat down together to write statements they would submit for the public record. As a teacher, I consider this a highly educational activity even before the public speaking component is added!

Because their mom witnessed the harassment of another speaker while he was at the podium (a Skowhegan I#$%^* Pride supporter passed directly behind and hissed an obscenity at him in a stage whisper), she has shared these with me but asked that I not identify her sons by name or school.

Senator Millett, Representative Kornfield, and honorable members of the Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs,

I am here to support LD 944, An Act to Ban Native American Mascots in All Public Schools. First, I want everybody to remember that Native Americans are people with feelings, not an animal or an object that should be used for a mascot, like a hornet or a dog.

Bowdoin College in Brunswick where I went to school has a polar bear mascot.

The mascots are not honoring, they are taking what is not ours and using it to represent us. Wabanaki people have kept saying that they do not feel honored, but the exact opposite. We invaded them for their land, and used them as symbols for sports teams, but they are people. Not mascots that somebody thought up.

I am on my school’s cross-country team. Our school mascot is a ripped bulldog. I would feel terrible and embarrassed running across a finish line with dozens of people watching me in a tank-top with a picture of a Native American’s head on it. 

The American Psychological Association has stated that racist mascots teach non-Native kids to discriminate against Native kids. While affecting non-Native kids in one way, it also harms Native kids’ self-esteem.

In conclusion, please make the right choice and pass the LD944 bill. Thank you.

(9-year-old Downeast brother)

Senator Millett, Representative Kornfield, and honorable members of the Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs,

I am here to support the bill LD944, An Act to Ban Native American Mascots in All Public Schools.

Albert and Alberta are the Gator mascots of the University of Florida at Gainesville

When you think about a mascot, what do you picture? Most mascots are either animals or professions. That means that when you put a group of people on a mascot, it is putting them on the same level as dogs. That just isn't alright.

You wouldn't have the mascot be the Chinese or the African Americans or even the Caucasians, so why do it to any other ethnic group?  

Imagine this scenario. The thumbs up is obviously a good thing for people in the USA, but not for some other countries. You don’t know this, and you go into another country where thumbs up is offensive and you congratulate a friend there with a thumbs up. The friend gets upset, and they ask you why you made an insulting gesture. You say you didn’t know that was an insult, apologize, and you don’t proceed to flaunt the thumbs up sign. You don’t say that it is respecting them, because it isn’t. It’s the same way for mascots.

When a group of people depicted by a mascot says they don’t want it, you don’t say you are respecting them, you just drop the mascot.

Whenever a group of people is depicted on a mascot, someone is going to get upset, and schools are supposed to be protecting people and helping them when they are upset. That means that in the moral code of schools, no group of people should be put on a mascot. Just keep it to the animals.

As a study by the American Psychological Association says, Native American mascots are hurting all students. They teach non-native children to be racist, and they make a hostile environment for Native students, as well as damaging their self-esteem. Please make the right choice, and pass the bill.

Thank you.

(12-year-old Downeast brother)

Incidentally, these boys also conducted research by listening to the testimony of Skowhegan students in a video of  the school board's public forum on January 8.

It consoles me to know that the whole mascot debacle has been an occasion for educating youth around the state in the English Language Arts I love: research, writing, listening and speaking.

I'll bet there was some reading in there, too. Woot!

Top 10 Reasons Why Maine Should Ban Native Mascots For School Sports

Photo shared by Jeff McCabe on Facebook.

The public hearing for LD 944, An Act to Ban Native Mascots in All Public Schools, is coming up. On Monday, March 25 at 1pm the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee of the 129th Maine legislature is in for quite a show.

Skowhegan "I#$%*& Pride" (SIP) supporters disrupted this week's school board meeting by chanting football cheers to show their displeasure at the board's vote on March 7 to retire the mascot. 

I imagine SIP thinks the Education committee can be swayed by their outpouring of support (they claim to have gathered 4,000 signatures calling for a referendum vote to overturn the school board's decision).

It's a mystery to me why the group waited until after the school board had debated the issue for months and held a vote to start their petition. Maybe they thought the school board vote would go their way, and they were unpleasantly surprised when it did not? The vote was not particularly close on March 7, with 14 voting in favor of change and 9 against; this translates to 558 for change vs. 441 against in the complicated representation scheme and weighted voting system of the Electoral College of school boards.

There was so much harassment and intimidation of board members who voted in 2015 in an unsuccessful attempt at retiring the mascot that several members of the current board kept mum about their views and voting intentions until the night of March 7.

I also received a threat of violence aimed at my weekly peace vigil on the bridge in Skowhegan, posted by Anonymous as a comment on my blog post after the vote:

Read the post and all comments here. A harasser from SIP did show up on the bridge last Sunday during our vigil, but the police chief had sent officers to monitor the situation, and no violence occurred.

Who will testify for change on Monday? Hopefully the ACLU of Maine. Maybe representatives from the governor and her education department, who have already come out in favor of changing the last Native high school mascot in Maine. Definitely Native representatives will be there.

I have to work, but my husband plans to attend and will give a ride to folks that want to get to Augusta but don't have access to a car that day.

I've already sent my written testimony to the Edu committee and received a reply from Rep. Michael Brennan who said he intends to support the bill. Yay! (Email addresses for the committee and text of my letter here). 

For those who have yet to weigh in here are my

Top 10 reasons why Maine should ban Native mascots and team names for school sports:

Screenshot of a sports booster item mocking the fact that Native people's scalps were sought by bounty hunters in colonial times.

1. Educational outcomes are adversely affected by discriminatory practices including stereotyping, mocking cultural customs, and cartoonish depictions of marginalized groups. Studies by psychologists have shown that not only the targeted group suffers; indeed, all students suffer when an educational entity appears to support discrimination.

2. Native parents and other elders have reported for years how painful it is to explain to young children at sporting events why their culture is being mocked. Native people are and historically have been the targets of racism in multiple ways, including having their children kidnapped by state agencies and raised in foster homes where they were punished for speaking their own languages. Native people's practice of their traditional ceremonies was illegal until 1978; encountering mockery of said traditions at a school basketball game is jarring and understandably takes the fun out of showing up and rooting for your team.

Penobscot Ambassador Maulian Dana speaking at school board public forum in Skowhegan on January 8, 2019.

3. The Penobscot Nation, Passamaquoddy Tribe, Houlton Band of Maliseets and the Micmacs, Maine's federally recognized sovereign entities, have all sent representatives to request that MSAD 54 in Skowhegan retire their Native mascot/team name. They have expressed that they find it offensive, and that they do not feel honored as SIP claims the name is intended.

4. Schools are maintained by state funding and local tax revenues for the purpose of educating students, not placating alumni who can't seem to move beyond their high school years. Resources in Skowhegan have been diverted for years into debating the now-retired mascot; the board's budget process has fallen behind the usual timeline this spring, because so many meetings have been dominated by this one issue that concerns middle and high school sports teams.

Skowhegan Area Middle School student athlete Carly McCabe testifying to the school board on January 8 (full video of all testimonies is available here via Somerset Community TV 11).

5. Students in the last school district still using a Native team name reported being embarrassed to be called "I#$%^@*" by reporters and announcers at games. They report being reluctant to wear the team t-shirt or spending their own money to order, for example, a batting helmet without the offensive word printed on it. You can see video of their testimony to the school board at a public forum on January 8 here.

6. Skowhegan Area High School's representative to Girls State last summer reported feeling ostracized and embarrassed by her school district's reputation among other teens from around the state. She felt the need to stand up and explain that she is not racist. You can read her letter to the editor "Mascot puts town in bad light" here. Speech team judge and board member Amy Rouse testified to similar experiences at statewide speech tournaments, even though Skowhegan speech teams have not called themselves by a Native name for years now.

Photo by Ben Bulkeley "New mascot pumps up Wiscasset's fans" Wiscasset Newspaper, December 22, 2014.

7. Students in a school with a Native team name are unable to have a fun mascot in costume to perform at games. Schools that have changed found that choosing a new mascot and designing a costume for it to put the fun back into supporting their teams.

8. Horrific bullying -- including threats of violence, gang rape, (unsuccessful) attempts at getting changers in trouble at work, racial slurs and mockery of Native cultural practices -- characterize those who cling to Native team names. For example, on more than one occasion SIP has compared Native people with dogs.

screenshot from the Facebook group Skowhegan "I#$%@* Pride"

screenshot of a Twitter account claiming to represent Republicans in Skowhegan

9. If the bill passes, superintendents will be able to block regressive forces trying to turn back progress by noting that Native mascots are illegal in Maine. School districts can save on legal fees from actions addressing discrimination being brought against them, so superintendents can also argue that following the law is prudent from a financial perspective.

10. MAGA

Screenshot from YouTube video of Native elder Nathan Philips drumming and singing a song of peace while being mocked by students from Covington Catholic High School on a field trip in Washington DC, January 18, 2019.