LONGVIEW – The mascot question that Kalama and Toledo school districts have been grappling with in recent months may soon come up against a legal deadline.
House Bill 1356, which recently passed the state House of Representatives with strong bipartisan support, would prohibit public schools from using Native American names, symbols or images as mascots, logos or team names by 2022, with a few exceptions.
The bill had a Senate Committee on Early Learning & K-12 Education hearing Friday, and will be considered for referral to a Senate vote in a Monday executive session. Eight people spoke in support of the bill Friday.
Rep. Debra Lekanoff, a First Nations member from the state’s 40th District, sponsored the bill, saying she finds the practice of stereotypical chants, war whoops, costumed mascots and regionally incorrect Native American imagery to be both harmful to people and an impediment to improved relationships between sovereign nations.
During the Friday Senate hearing, Lekanoff said the bill “isn’t to say you’re doing anything wrong,” but is about relationship building and “coming together to say we’re going to do something better.”
If school districts do want to have a mascot to honor “the first Washingtonians and the first Americans,” Lekanoff said, they should work with their closest federally acknowledged tribe to ask, “How can do we this with respect?”
Lekanoff said in an October interview with The Daily News that she realizes some schools may feel they are honoring Native Americans with current mascots, but when mascots are not accurate and collaborative, it’s damaging and is “teaching these little ones from the next generation that this is who Native Americans are.”
During Friday’s hearing, Spokane junior Ivy Pete, a member of the Paiute Indian Tribe, said, “I was the humiliated little girl in the football stands. I do not feel honored, and I do not feel proud.” She asked the committee to pass the bill forward to the full Senate “to protect me and all other young people like me whose education systems have failed to listen.”
If passed, the bill would take effect Jan. 1, 2022. The law would not apply to public schools located on or partially on tribal reservations, as long as the usage is authorized.
Toledo Indians
Locally, Toledo used to use headdress imagery, the tomahawk chop and a caricature mascot costume, but it has been working with the Cowlitz Tribe to make changes.
Most recently, the tribe asked that students not wear headdresses at games, as they aren’t part of the local culture. Toledo agreed. The school also agreed to phase out its Indian mascot costume, along with the three Chief Wahoo logos that adorned the baseball field.
The Cowlitz Tribe also approved the school’s use of its current dreamcatcher logo – a stylized T inside a circle with feathers draped to one side.
However, Toledo Superintendent Chris Rust said that as the school district does not include the Cowlitz’s current tribal lands, which are in Ridgefield, the school’s mascot will have to change if the bill passes.
“It was our hope and our intention to do exactly what Rep. Lekanoff wants as a result of this bill,” Rust said. “She wants local school districts and the tribes to collaborate in exactly the way that the Cowlitz Tribe and our school district have been, so that’s going to continue regardless of what our mascot is.”
Crossroads for Kalama
Kalama formed a committee in September after community complaints that have been around for decades regarding its “Charlie Chinook” mascot came up again. Charlie Chinook, a caricature of a Native person without a local tie-in, used to have a hatchet in one hand and a scalp in the other.
Over the last 20 years, Kalama has redesigned Charlie, most notably by removing the scalp and replacing it with a diploma. It also did away with tomahawk-chop-style chants at games and has essentially abandoned the Charlie Chinook logo on its uniforms.
