Indian mascots ruled insensitive
RONAN, Mont. – Naming the school sports teams here Chiefs and Maidens suggests racial discrimination against American Indians, the Montana Human Rights Bureau has ruled.
The bureau recently found reasonable cause to believe the Ronan School District engaged in discrimination, a decision that is a victory for Francine Dupuis of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. Since 2003, Dupuis has been active against use of the team names and Indian imagery by the school district in Ronan, which is on the tribes’ Flathead Indian Reservation.
School Superintendent Andy Holmlund, whose enrollment includes many tribal children, said the school board will decide what to do about team identity.
The Human Rights Bureau received the Dupuis case after she took her complaint to county and state school superintendents unsuccessfully. The matter ended up before the bureau by way of the Montana Supreme Court.
In 2000, Salish and Kootenai leaders officially denounced use of Indian mascots, emblems or imagery by public schools on the Flathead reservation. The case advanced by Dupuis gathered momentum about three years later, after the school board voted to decorate the floor of a new gymnasium. Decorations included painted feathers, arrowheads and the names Chiefs and Maidens.
In the Salish and Kootenai culture, maidens are considered virgins and “less than women,” according to Joyce Silverthorne, director of the tribal education department.
According to a report by bureau investigator Elaine Benedict, Dupuis said “a chief is a revered and respected member of the tribe, not someone who dresses up in feathers and runs around the field. Eagle feathers are given for achievement, such as getting one’s first deer while hunting, or upon graduating from school. Feathers are not to be used for costume or to dress mascots.”
Present and former members of the school board told Benedict they followed the wishes of most school patrons and students when they voted to put the imagery and names on the gym floor. The board said most people took pride in the names Chiefs and Maidens and a 2000 survey of students found 98 percent wanted to keep them.
Dupuis said seeing people walk on the images and names painted on the floor was disturbing, just as some people would find it disturbing to see the United States flag walked upon.
According to Benedict’s report, board member Roger Romero told her that he recalled the only arguments against use of the mascots came from female athletes “who said it was offensive because people called them maidens when they went places. The students said this offended them because a maiden is a virgin,” and Romero “couldn’t see how that was bad.”
Benedict cited five studies and reports, including one by the Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee of the NCAA, that encourage an end to the use of mascots with Indian connotations.
“I find the use or publication of Chiefs and Maidens as mascots distinguishes Native American culture from other cultures,” Benedict wrote. “That distinction is based on race. The use of such mascots limits the way in which Chiefs and Maidens are perceived to a generalized stereotype, rather than portraying the true meaning of Chiefs and Maidens in Native American culture.”