Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - There continues to be much discussion regarding the use of Native American names and imagery for mascots in schools across New York State.
A decision at the hands of the New York State Board of Regents on Tuesday will likely add some fuel to the fire with the unanimous approval of prohibiting schools from using logos or mascots with ties to Indigenous people.
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A number of local schools in Western New York will now have to make some changes with their names, logos or mascots, or they risk defunding at the hands of the Board of Regents. Some of the districts in the area facing these changes includes Tonawanda, Cheektowaga, West Seneca, and Salamanca. Iroquois Central School District will be allowed to keep its name with the district, but will not face a change of their team name (Chiefs).
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John Kane, Native activist and host of the "Let's Talk Native" podcast, says this change in New York State is long overdue. He says if one thing is wrong, it's wrong across the board, and that Native Americans have to be treated the same way, with the same sensitivities as any other marginalized community that's offended.
"We don't have a strong enough voice, as Native people. We're a relatively small percentage of the population," said Kane during an appearance on WBEN with David Bellavia on Tuesday. "Let's be honest here, we're the only people used as a race-based mascot. For all those people who say we're just honoring Native people, I ask you a simple question: What if you want to honor Black people? How would you do that? What name would you use? What logo would you use? How would you do that? And the fact is, you wouldn't, and you couldn't."
More than eight years ago, one of the schools in Western New York that changed its team name from a derogatory Native term was Lancaster, who eventually became the Legends later in 2015. Kane says it was Superintendent Mike Vallely who said it best when it came to the name change:
"You don't determine issues of social justice in the same way that you vote for your prom queen. This isn't about public referendum," he said. "And frankly, this isn't about what the kids want, and it certainly isn't about what people who peaked in high school 30 years ago want. This is about, simply, right and wrong. Not right and left, right and wrong. Native people should not be dehumanized and be used as mascots. It's that simple."
When asked if there is a fine line between patronizing and honoring Native Americans with names for these schools across the state and in Western New York, he says there is none in many instances.
"What's at issue here is whether the school can appropriate our name, our references, our images, and then have kids, for the rest of their life into adulthood, being miseducated about who Native people are," Kane said. "Let's be honest, every one of these mascots are like an 18th century depiction of what White people depicted what the Native person looked like."
Kane says there are some names or imagery that are worse than others, when it comes to school names with Native American ties, but it's about the appropriation of a culture that does not belong to someone without those ties.
"Whether people think that it's meant to be derogatory or not, let's be honest, this is still mockery," he said. "If you've got people who are claiming an identity that they clearly are not but they're claiming it for their amusement and entertainment, that's the definition of mockery."
While Kane feels this decision from the State Board of Regents is a step in the right direction, he also believes there is still a complete disconnect between the real education of Native history to this area, and what has been perceived for several years.
"In most of these places, there's not a Native person who attends any of these schools. All that's left is some bastardized name associated with with a landmark there, and it's usually the language or the words have been altered such it's almost unrecognizable to the Native people who give it that name," Kane said. "I don't know that we ever get to a place where it's ever going to be appropriate for people to mock somebody, whether they think they're being offensive or not.
"When I was in school, it was taught Indians, discovery, revolution, colonization, it was all those those periods of time. Well, the fact of the matter is, when we talk about genocide, we aren't just talking about massacres, we're talking about residential schools. But we're also talking about the fact that many people still have a difficult time accepting that we may not necessarily embrace American citizenship, U.S. citizenship. We are quite comfortable being Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas and Onondagas. That is our identity. So when you have a whole system that has been so geared towards assimilation and appropriation; we hear it all the time - when can Native people be considered Americans like everybody else? Well, what if we don't want to be considered Americans like everybody else? We want our autonomy, we want our distinction. And that doesn't mean that we hate anybody. We just say this has been our battle, and this is what we go through."
Kane also makes mention of some people who have suggested that the school mascots name may be the only way that Indigenous people of the region stay relevant. He argues that keeping Native mascots around is erasure.
"You're characterizing us as only people of the past, because every one of those logos is 18th century imagery of some sort - accurate or otherwise," Kane said. "Many of the logos in the State of New York are like Plains Indian headdressers, they're straight out of Hollywood imagery. It has no accuracy to it whatsoever. I don't think keeping the mascot makes us more relevant. I think that we have an opportunity all the time, in every school to educate, to some extent. I realize curriculums can be kind of full, and there's only so much time in a day to teach certain things, but it's not even offered as an option for some of these kids to learn about Native history. And if you did, you might find that all those things that you thought you were so proud of with your mascot, really, you might want to be a little bit ashamed of it."
Superintendent of Salamanca City Central School District, Dr. Mark Beehler has been one of the open voices on this whole matter, especially with the school district primarily sitting on Seneca Nation land. He also discussed how the school serves the Seneca Nation of Indians, and 38% of its population consist of Indigenous students.
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However, Kane feels that Beehler may be exaggerating just a bit on some of what he has said.
"I'd be more apt to want to look at what's the percentage of graduates each year? It's fine to say you got this many kids there, but if they aren't having success in that school, I would argue that you'd have a hard time saying that 40% of every graduating class is made up of Senecas," he claimed.
"He also boasts that they have a respectful, historically accurate depiction of what a Seneca person, a Seneca man looked like in the 18th century. Well, you're still casting it as a relic of the past. But here's the thing with their logo: Their logo is not a Warrior. If anything, it's more of a depiction of what a Seneca chief may have looked like. The difference between a chief and a warrior are dramatic. Wearing a gustoweh that logo has on is actually a suggestion of a man of peace, not a warrior."
However, the designer of that Warriors logo for Salamanca City Central School District, Carson Waterman, says the depiction of the Seneca man is more accurate than it was even in the past.
When the Seneca Iroquois National Museum opened its doors in the mid-1970s in Salamanca, leadership at the museum brought about the issue at-hand with high school using its emblem, at the time, with the wrong style headdress.
"It was a Western style headdress, which ours is not with all those feathers," said Waterman during an appearance with Tom Bauerle on WBEN. "Our headdress is a bonnet with split eagle feathers around the crown, and one single eagle feathers standing that represents the Seneca Nation. I hadn't seen one up close, but George Heron - one of our prominent leaders, President and a cultural consultant with our museum - he described a gustoweh, which is our Seneca word for our style headdress. The rest of the Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois Confederacy, they have similar designs or were using similar designs."
As it pertains to the State Board of Regents making the decisions to force schools to be rid of their Native American name, logo or mascot, Waterman falls more so on the opposite side of the spectrum, saying the people who are making these changes are ignoring the history and culture of Indigenous people.
"As far as I know, I don't know if anybody has come to us and asked us about this. But I know I see in the paper there they're threatening to cancel funding and whatever if we continue to use Native American emblems and so on to represent high schools and such. I think it's very bothersome to us, because those headdresses, those gustowehs and our regalia was in place before Christopher Columbus came along. Then that happened, and then eventually we come to this point where they're saying, 'We shouldn't be using Native style headdresses as emblems or symbols.' But that's who we are," Waterman explained. "We had that before Christopher Columbus came along, and now we're being threatened that that is taken away, or we can't use that.
"The other question I have in relation to that is, if you take that away, then what do we have? We have zero. What do we have to represent us, and what's appropriate? Those answers are already there, they've been there for centuries. So people should really look at our history, our culture, our customs and learn more about us so they understand."
Waterman feels it's not so simple to pinpoint a fine line between what is acceptable and unacceptable for school names with Native ties. However, like Kane, Waterman says it is imperative that more people need to be educated on Native history and its significance.
"I think on history, you have to depend on what was there before all this recent issue, challenging and condemning emblems across New York State. I think the answer is, if everybody were to look at history and follow it through, at least, from our historic events to today, New York State is a lot different than what we are," he said. "I would also like to bring up the treaties that have happened between our Haudenosaunee people and New York State people. Those treaties, I think they don't give us the rights. I've always thought, and I'm not alone, when they talk about this territory as being a reservation, it implies New York State reserved it for us. New York State didn't own it to reserve it for us. We've always been here. We've been here before New York State, we've been here before the United States. There is a lot of education that needs to take place, and now's a good time to start talking about re-writing some of the books that people are using, and the curriculums in New York State."
In the years since the Salamanca Warriors logo was designed, Waterman says he has never had had anyone from the Seneca Nation come to him with any complaints. And with Tuesday's recent decision from the State Board of Regents, Waterman feels inclined to talk with the Seneca Nation's leadership to address the decision and where things should go from here.
"I will talk to people now, and I think it would be a good idea to do just that," he said. "To have our leadership get together and see what ought to be done and what shouldn't be done. I always view these things as an educational process, and this is definitely a learning period."
Meanwhile, Kane says every Native organization, every organization of Nations - whether it's the next National Congress and American Indians or whether it's the Native American Journalists Association - have all come out and condemned the use of Indigenous names, logos and mascots at schools across New York because of it promoting stereotypes.
However, that's not to say some Native people still find some sense of identity with these logos and names, according to Kane.
"You've got to look at it historically: We had a period of time that was well over 100 years, closer to 200 years, where our identity was stripped away. When you come out of that residential school era, and all of a sudden you realize, 'Oh look, there's a professional football team that's got a native image to it,' you may find when the dominant culture offers something out that you can claim as your own identity, you might be drawn to it. And for many years, I think that was true," Kane explained. "I saw a lot of Native people who would don a Cleveland baseball hat, or a Washington football jersey or something like that. But then you come to realize what a mockery it is and that it's not really yours, it's theirs, these are billion dollar corporations that are merchandising this stuff, that's why you've seen some change amongst the rank and file of Native people over the last 20-30 years."
So what would Kane like to see going forward when it comes to the changing narrative beyond just the removal of Native names and imagery from schools in New York?
"I would like to see our sovereignty respected more, I would like to see our autonomy respected more, I would like to see some restoration of not only that autonomy and sovereignty, but the restoration of land. That doesn't mean we're going to get the country back, that doesn't mean that we're going to topple American society or anything else," Kane said. "When I hear the United States is just beginning the process of trying to reckon with the 200 years of residential schools, 100 years of an active funded program to indoctrinate and assimilate Native kids, I don't want a check. I don't want truth and reconciliation, I want truth and restoration. We had to experience a period of land loss, and the largest period of identity loss. And that identity loss is something that you can't reconcile with the current state of mascots and some of the appropriation that takes place culturally, in entertainment, at schools, colleges, pro teams, all of that stuff."