In taking on the Turners Falls mascot question, the Gill-Montague Regional School Committee undertook what its members had hoped would be a constructive public discussion about a hot-button issue. The committee must now choose how to resolve what has turned out to be a divisive and emotional issue.
After a half dozen people last spring asked that the Indians be replaced as the school mascot, the committee took up the request, establishing a months-long process for exploring the issue’s many facets and soliciting public comment along the way.
Predictably, the battle lines formed between traditionalists who saw no disrespect in the school’s generations-long appropriation of the term “Indians” and those who only saw disrespect when Native American names or imagery are used to promote non-native sports endeavors.
Since fall, the school board has brought in speakers to parse the two positions in the context of the area’s native American and colonial European experience as well as opening the door to much public discourse. But after five months of talking, listening and debating, what was originally mapped out to be an open, inclusive, exhaustive process has become exhausting, for advocates of both positions.
So, too, for the school board, which seems on the verge of short-circuiting the original review process that otherwise could play out for months longer, and probably without changing any minds.
While the school board deliberates how to proceed, the voters of Gill and Montague and the state Legislature have moved into the picture. Defenders of the Indian mascot in Montague are gathering signatures to put the question in a non-binding referendum on this spring’s annual town election. At the same time, a Tewksbury resident who failed to persuade that community’s school board to abandon its Redmen mascot, has submitted a Senate bill for statewide ban on Indian mascots in public schools.
In a town that saw bloodshed on both sides as Europeans moved into native territory in the 17th century, the question of our Indian heritage can be complicated. In this case, both sides of the mascot debate draw on that history to support their positions.
Mascot defender Chris Pinardi has argued the Indian name and logo are part of the history of Montague and its school teams, and that people identify with them out of a connection to and respect for the Native heritage.
“I believe that if you eradicate the name and logo, you will also be further removing the Native American history that it helps connect to this town,” he has said.
David Detmold, who first proposed changing the mascot last spring, says it is offensive and “We should not pretend we are honoring the bravery of the people who were so brutally eliminated from this area.”
For several years now Montague has been wrestling with concerns over the question of sensitivity and appreciation of the town’s early Native American heritage. Gill and Montague are in the midst of an archaeological study of a 1676 battle between Europeans and natives that took place in the area that became Gill and Turners Falls. Both sides in the mascot debate have called for additional study in the schools about Native Americans, and the School Committee voted last week to adopt several such new courses.
Having followed this debate closely, we have to agree with school board Vice Chairwoman Sandy Brown who said last week, “This process is getting strung out, and it’s ended its useful life.” The time has come to make a decision of some sort.
The committee seems to have three choices before it:
One, take an up-or-down vote soon. If the mascot is eliminated, deal with the blowback and find a replacement.
Two, decide not to decide but to honor the results of the planned referendum.
Three, back away completely and see if the Legislature will make the decision.
We have been impressed with the school board’s desire to provide an informed and inclusive process for deciding this contentious and sensitive issue, hoping perhaps that a consensus would emerge that would leave no serious divisions. But that isn’t where this discussion went, unfortunately, and it is now time to choose.