Pa. lawmaker pushing to eliminate Native American mascots, images for sports teams

A Pennsylvania lawmaker is introducing legislation that would ban schools from using Native American mascots.

Rep. Chris Rabb, D-Philadelphia, said more than 60 schools and sports teams in Pennsylvania still use or refer to indigenous culture in their mascots and logos.

“For far too long, Indigenous peoples have faced discrimination, disrespect and violence,” Rabb said in a memo he circulated to lawmakers about the legislation he is crafting.

He said social science researchers consider the mascots and logos are not only derogatory, they have a negative psychological and social impact on people with indigenous heritage.

“Our commonwealth must not remain complicit in the perpetuation of derogatory, bigoted and harmful practices which encourage bullying and other forms of abuse,” he said.

“Eliminating the use of offensive stereotypes for school mascots is the least we can do to begin mending the damage done by the appalling historical oppression of these groups.”

Several local schools districts in the region — including North Hills, Penn Hills, Penn-Trafford, Peters Township and West Allegheny — continue to use Native American names and imagery for their mascots and logos.

In June, the Seneca Valley School board voted to continue using the Raiders name for its sports teams but to no longer use Native American imagery for its mascot and logos.

That same month, officials in the North Hills School District also said discussions about whether to drop the Indian name and logo would not be up for discussion while the district was dealing with the pandemic.

But Superintendent Pat Mannarino said the district was “fully open to working together to identify and combat inequalities that exist in our district to ensure North Hills provides a safe, caring and equitable educational environment for all.”

To achieve that goal, the district created an anti-racism task force.

In July 2020, Shady Side Academy stopped using its Indian mascot.

Penn Hills school officials were considering eliminating its Indian mascot in August 2020 but delayed action so they could focus on dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

The move away from using Native American images and names that are considered derogatory also has extended to municipal governments.

Penn-Trafford school officials could not be reached for comment.The high school uses Warriors as its mascot, with a spear and arrowhead used in its logo — an update from the drawing of a Native American with a feather tucked into his braided hair that the school once used.

According to the National Congress of American Indians, there are nearly 2,000 schools in the country that still use Native American images.

So far this year, 54 schools in the country stopped using the images, according to the organization.

A number of states have banned or limited the use of Native American images for public school mascots, including Maine, Washington, Colorado and Nevada.

Little League International, which represents changed its rule book in 2019 to “prohibit the use of team names, mascots, nicknames or logos that are racially insensitive, derogatory or discriminatory in nature.”

“As a commonwealth borne of a colony that would not have existed without the Penn’s Treaty at Shackamaxon in 1683 between British immigrants and the Lenape Turtle Clan, Pennsylvania must commit itself to ending the extended era of collective disregard for indigenous heritage and egregious cultural appropriation,” Rabb said in the memo.

Data from the U.S. Department of Justice shows that American Indians are more likely than people of other races to experience violence at the hands of someone of a different race, Raab said.

“While it has been well established that mascots, logos and the like that stereotype or fetishize Indigenous peoples highly correlates to the high suicide rate among Native youth,” he said.