Indianz.Com > News > Cronkite News: Mascot ban falters amid removal of ‘Native’ imagery across nation
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Legislation to change Native American team names lacks momentum in Arizona
Friday, August 6, 2021
Cronkite News
PHOENIX, Arizona – For opponents of Native American mascots in the Southwest, 2021 has been a banner year.
In Nevada, Gov. Steve Sisolak signed a bill on June 4 prohibiting the use of “racially discriminatory imagery” in any school’s “name, logo, mascot, song or other identifier.” His Colorado counterpart, Gov. Jared Polis, followed suit at the end of the month by authorizing a ban on Native American mascots in schools that don’t have a relationship with a tribe.
The broader national climate shifted as well on Friday: Following in the footsteps of the Washington Football Team, MLB’s Cleveland Indians adopted a new name – the Guardians – after lengthy public debate.
In Arizona in 2018, then state Rep. Eric Descheenie, D-Chinle, introduced a bill targeting the Washington NFL team, prohibiting the display of team names that tribes deemed disparaging in publicly funded facilities. He said the bill was never assigned to committee and “died upon arrival.”
Now, amid the mounting legislative action in neighboring states, does Descheenie think the issue would go over any better in Arizona?
“No, I think it would be worse,” he said, noting “extreme” politics in the state.
The Republicans who control the Legislature aren’t willing to have difficult conversations about such topics as Native American mascots, Descheenie said.
“(For them) it’s about preserving power,” he said. “It’s not about growing the intelligence of our public so that we all benefit from cutting-edge ways of thinking.”
![Eric Descheenie](https://indianz.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/06/EricDescheenie-scaled.jpg)
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Jonathan Tso acknowledged it “kind of does hurt a little bit” to see people wearing a war bonnet at Washington’s football games, but he said education can teach them about when bonnets are supposed to be worn. However, the group doesn’t want such partnerships to be required, as the Colorado law does. “We don’t think that these sovereign tribes and these individual school communities should have to get the approval from anyone,” Henson said. He approves of partnerships for names that refer to a specific tribe, such as Utes, but because the honored warrior class to which many generic team names pay tribute no longer exists, he said, no group has ownership over it. The Native American Guardians Association argues that these laws constitute an erasure of Native American culture and place a financial burden on schools. As legislative efforts have ramped up across the country, the association repeatedly has equated the removal of these team names with “cultural genocide” and linked it to cancel culture. “I think the momentum off of last year, with the Black Lives Matter and everything that converged all at one time,” Henson said, “created an opportunity for the activists to get in there and have their best leverage point with these politicians.”Statement Regarding the Cleveland Indians Name Change. Go Indians pic.twitter.com/SsxyGMitK7
— Native American Guardians Association (@GuardiansNative) July 25, 2021
There has been some recent change in Arizona: Thunderbird High School in Glendale got rid of its Chiefs name in 2020 after a student-led movement. Henson’s group frequently characterizes the removal of Native-influenced team names as eradication. Descheenie doesn’t see it that way. “Native American populations are not substantiated by contemporary society,” he said. “They are substantiated in an entirely alternative body of knowledge that is rooted in a place that precedes the existence of the United States of America. … So when it comes to erasure, there is no such thing as it relates to things like mascots. Our existence has nothing to do with those mascots.” For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.WATCH: Charlene Teters joins the newscast. She is an advocate for the expulsion of Native mascots and has lead hundreds of rallies. https://t.co/JE6p4az7QT
— ICT (@IndianCountry) July 27, 2021
Note: This story originally appeared on Cronkite News. It is published via a Creative Commons license. Cronkite News is produced by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
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