Professional teams, most of which are privately owned, have resisted efforts to remove Native American names. Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves, and the National Football League’s Kansas City Chiefs have so far proven impervious to grassroots movements organized by tribes and activists over the years, as have the NFL team in the nation’s capital, the Washington Redskins.
The Sanford Redskins
It’s the Washington Redskins that provide local Redskins supporters the most political cover. Sanford High School principal Allan Young, himself a Sanford alumnus and a Redskins true believer, says, “The way I’ve always looked at it is when the capital starts jumping on the inappropriateness of (the nickname), and that starts to move things and trickle down, then I think that’s more appropriate” for Sanford to reconsider.
But Young's response didn’t consider whether the term was intrinsically racist or not. Many people believe it is, which makes his argument akin to a hypothetical student being called into his office and saying, “I’ll quit smoking dope or having unprotected sex only after the other kids do.”
Young responds: “I think it’s different, because this community feels very strongly about the mascot. Graduates of Sanford High School that live in this community, business owners, the people that support and follow our programs, have a whole different meaning to the word ‘Redskins.’ And I think that in this day and age, with the political correctness of things, sometimes we go overboard.”
Which isn’t to say that he resents the discussion. “I welcome the questioning of it, but I also believe that people have to back it up, and that it should be documented historically as to the meaning of the ‘Redskins’ and what is derogatory about the ‘Redskins,’” Young says. “I haven’t researched, I haven’t read, I haven’t had anything presented to me that was beyond Internet resource material. Nothing that’s an official document. Nothing that gets my dander to the fact that maybe we need to take a look at that.”
The NCAA states its case on its Web site, also offering a news-release archive on the topic. The US Commission on Civil Rights issued a statement condemning the use of Native American images as sports symbols in 2001 because they were “a dangerous lesson in a diverse society;” a copy of the statement is available online.
But the “entirely benign” origins of the term — including the fact that its first users were Native Americans describing themselves — are perhaps best explained in “I Am A Red-Skin,” an exhaustively researched and footnoted 2005 essay by Ives Goddard, a curator and senior linguist with the anthropology department at the Smithsonian Institute’s Museum of Natural History. Nevertheless, Goddard’s essay ends with the admission that in “more recent times” the term has been viewed negatively.
Young says he feels any movement to change the Sanford nickname should come from within the Sanford community, but “that type of underpinning has not come to my desk, and not anyone else’s desk at this point, because of the strong feelings here for the Redskin.”
Betsy St. Cyr, Sanford’s superintendent, summed up Sanford’s dichotomy of local opinion over the nickname succinctly: “Some alumni in town feel like the mascot has always represented pride. There’s another faction that feels like it has the same connotations as the N-word. Those are the two ends of the spectrum,” St. Cyr explained. She noted that Sanford High’s are barred by policy from saying “Redskins,” and says, “I think we struck a balance.”
According to school policy, Sanford High students are forbidden from chanting the nickname at sporting events because it might offend someone. According to sports editor Don Coulter, the Portland Press Herald’s editorial policy is to ignore the nickname in its sports reporting. So why continue a team name that can’t be worn by athletes or chanted by fans, a nickname that the state’s largest newspaper won’t acknowledge? Young replies, “Like I said, that’s a community decision.”
