NY Regents vote to ban Indian mascots at schools. Here's what it will mean
You couldn’t go wrong rooting for the Indians on Monday evening at the baseball diamond behind Mahopac Middle School, as freshman baseball squads from Mahopac High and RC Ketcham High faced off on a crisp spring evening.
As expected, the Indians won on Monday: The Ketcham Indians took home the victory over the Mahopac Indians, 8-4.
It was a game with a touch of history, played the night before the state Board of Regents voted to adopt its regulation banning Native American mascots. For now, the team mascots for teams at both Mahopac and Ketcham are the Indians – the last schools in the Hudson Valley to retain the mascots that the state Department of Education since 2001 has sought to eliminate.
But those mascots will soon be replaced following Tuesday's vote by the state Board of Regents, which ordered school districts to vote to retire their mascots by June 30 and to have the transition to new teams names and the elimination of Indian mascot imagery complete within two years.
The vote on the regulations came five months after the state Department of Education alerted school districts that Native American mascots had to be retired.
“It’s coming,” said Ketcham assistant coach Joe Emanuelo. “We’ll make the adjustment.”
As the Indians played each other on the baseball field, Mahopac students, parents and community members met privately in the high school cafeteria in the second of three meetings to select finalists for Mahopac’s new mascot. Students from kindergarten through 12th grade will vote on the finalists in June.
Superintendent Christine Tona denied access to the mascot committee meeting, telling this reporter that the event was “invitation-only.”
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While Mahopac has begun its community process to choose a new mascot, the Wappingers Central School district, where Ketcham High is among two high schools, was awaiting Tuesday’s action in Albany before it began to address the issue.
At stake now is state education aid, which the Board of Regents said could be withheld if districts don’t comply.
Wappingers Board President John Lumia said the Dutchess County district has to make a change, and fast.
“Although I will not like any regulation regarding a name change, the district has no choice but to comply,” he said. “The name has to be changed by June 30th. The Board of Education must find a way to make it happen.”
Lumia, like some spectators at Monday evening’s baseball game, grumbled about the upcoming changes, maintaining that the districts meant no harm with what they saw as a way to honor the indigenous tribes that were driven out of the Hudson Valley 300 years ago.
But the Board of Regents acted, emboldened by a state Supreme Court decision and a solid body of scholarly research that details the harmful impact that the mascots have on both Native Americans and non-Natives. It acted after the state Legislature failed to enact legislation to do so in June 2022.
For Natives American students, the mascots create a hostile environment under the state’s Dignity for All Students Act, the state Department of Education found. For non-Natives, research shows that the mascots reinforce stereotypes and prejudice about Indigenous people.
“Arguments that community members support the use of such imagery or that it is respectful to indigenous persons are no longer tenable,” concluded the Board of Regents in a summary of its reasoning for the regulation adopted Tuesday.
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The summary included a statement from scholars C. Richard King and Charles Frueling Springwood about the mascot’s impact on how non-Native view our nation’s indigenous people who live here today.
“These kinds of images dehumanize and demonize Native Americans, constraining the ability of the non-Indian community to relate to Indians as contemporary, significant, and real human actors,” they said.
Mahopac parents and administrators were active in contributing to the issue in Albany, with residents both backing the proposed regulations and others making arguments for the Indian mascot’s retention.
A parents’ rights group from Mahopac argued that the state Department of Education had sown division in the school community by insisting that the Indian be retired.
“The Indian mascot is being vilified by those who do not live in our community or understand the importance of our history,” the group wrote.
Even Mahopac Superintendent of Schools Christine Tona, who this winter created a committee to find a new Mahopac mascot, joined the statewide discussion. She asked if a mascot name, such as Warriors or Braves, would be acceptable, citing the dictionary definition of those words. Another commenter wondered if a logo that uses feathers, like the ones used at Ketcham and Mahopac, would be acceptable.
The state said such usage would be prohibited when viewed in the context of a district’s current use of Native American imagery.
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"The question is not whether the words 'brave' or 'warrior' are offensive in the abstract but whether their use is appropriate in school districts that have a history of utilizing stereotypical names and imagery," the summary stated.
The regulations, which take effect May 3, prohibit public schools from using or displaying an indigenous name, logo or mascot, except for classroom instruction. The districts have until June 2025 to come into compliance.
The Mahopac baseball cap, with its befeathered Native American spear, will have to be retired, along with the Native American imagery found throughout the high school campus.
In recent years, Ketcham High and Mahopac High had downplayed the stereotypical image of a Plains Indian in a headdress, though one still remains on the scoreboard at the Mahopac High athletic field. The Mahopac district’s logo, which features a spear and feather, is ubiquitous around the high school campus – in huge relief on the side of the school, emblazoned on doors to the gymnasium, and on banners that declare “Mahopac Proud.”
There’s also a corridor with Indian imagery by the Mahopac gymnasium with trophies. It's a corridor off-limits to the press. The school administration has refused this writer access to over the past three years. After the most recent request, Superintendent Tona said she would only allow access to the trophy corridor if she were allowed editorial oversight of the article.
We declined.
The trophies, with their Native American imagery, can remain, with the state saying it will not require the destruction of historical artifacts, such as photographs, trophies or banners.
“Harmful as they may be, the use of indigenous mascots, like the forced relocation of Native American tribes, is a historical fact that must be acknowledged,” according to the state.
State Assemblyman Matt Slater, R-Yorktown, who had opposed the new state regulation, wanted that option reserved to school districts like Mahopac and Wappingers, even though they had failed to do so for 22 years. He also sought additional state aid to implement the transition to a new mascot, and in February, filed a bill to mandate state payment. The bill lacks a sponsor in the state Senate.
That’s not on the table, though building aid would be available for transition projects with a cost exceeding $10,000.
“The department believes that the importance of prohibiting offensive or stereotypical imagery outweighs any attendant costs,” it wrote.
Follow David McKay Wilson on Twitter @davidmckay415 or email him at dwilson3@lohud.com.
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This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Indian mascots banned in schools by New York Regents
