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Senator wants to curb Native American mascots
Herald Denver Bureau
Sen. Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora, said she is not trying to ban the mascots outright. Instead, she wants to follow the lead of colleges and a suburban Denver high school that used their mascots to learn more about Native American communities.
“The purpose is to build good relations between the high school and the Indian community," said Williams, the Legislature's only Native American member.
In Colorado, 17 to 19 high schools have “questionable" mascots, said Darius Lee Smith, who is working with Williams on the bill. Smith is director of the Denver Anti-Discrimination Office, but he's working on the bill as a private citizen.
Smith said colleges like Florida State University have successfully turned degrading mascots into sources of pride and education for both their schools and Native Americans.
Florida State used to begin its football games with a performance by its “Seminole" mascot.
“This Indian on a horse would ride out onto the field and throw a spear into the ground, and the crowd would go wild," Smith said.
But when Florida State leaders approached Seminole tribes and started to learn about the mascot, they found out the Seminoles didn't ride horses, and their mascot looked more like a Lakota than a Seminole.
So they changed the mascot's appearance and stayed engaged with the tribes, a process that has led to new scholarships at FSU for Native Americans, Smith said.
Such discussions are important for the psychology of Native Americans and non-Indians, especially children, Smith said.
Smith, a Navajo, grew up in Denver among mascot stereotypes and depictions of Native Americans in museums as a primitive people.
“I started to get this perception that all Indians were people of the past," he said.
Arapahoe High School in Littleton had a similar experience in the 1990s with its Warriors mascot, Smith said. The principal went to the Arapahoe tribe in Wyoming and engaged the tribal council. The council not only gave permission to keep using the nickname, but it commissioned an Arapahoe artist to draw a new logo.
The school now follows strict rules of respecting the logo, Smith said.
For example, the Warrior's face is not on the school's basketball court, where it would be trampled by players.
Williams wants other Colorado high schools to have similar experiences.
She did not release a copy of her bill and has not introduced it, but said she would do it soon. The Colorado Commission on Indian Affairs will talk about the bill when it meets Friday, said Ernest House Jr., the commission's executive secretary.
The bill applies only to high schools. The closest Native American mascot to Southwest Colorado appears to be the Montrose High School Indians.
In La Plata County, high school mascots include the Demon (Durango), Wolverine (Bayfield) and Bobcat (Ignacio).
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