BUCKLAND — Mohawk Trail Regional School will remove its Native American logo, Co-Principal Marisa Mendonsa confirmed Monday.
“The decision was made,” Mendonsa said at Monday’s Local Education Council meeting. “The discussion is about how to move forward.”
Now the issue will go before the Mohawk Trail Regional District School Committee for a formal vote.
In Mendonsa’s view, the reason to remove the logo is to ensure all students feel comfortable at Mohawk.
“If there is one student who feels that way, who feels like it is offensive, we should not be using it,” Mendonsa said.
The Local Education Council on Monday supported empowering the School Committee to make a decision. The School Committee has the authority to vote to remove the logo, while the council can only make recommendations.
The logo appears in two places at the school — as a mural on the wall of the gymnasium and on a stone sign at the entrance. Efforts to remove the logo began a couple years ago, when it was phased out on sports uniforms. However, a vote by the School Committee to remove the logo would be the first formal decision made on the matter.
The school is only considering removing the logo at the moment. However, some School Committee members including Jason Cusimano expressed support for removing the team name, “Warriors,” as well.
A handful of Mohawk alumni – mostly from the class of 1978, who gifted the gymnasium’s painting to the school – voiced some concerns about removing the logo at the meeting, saying the mascot honored Native Americans and removing it would whitewash history.
Mary Bolduc of Buckland, who attended the school, said she had some reservations about removing parts of Mohawk’s history.
“You have to understand, too, that you’re impacting generations of people who have history in this town,” Bolduc said. “And those generations of people are the voters, who give you money to run your institutions.”
Some community members said they were in favor of the change. Prospective Mohawk parent Erbin Crowell expressed support for the logo’s removal, saying he had been bracing to have a conversation with his son about the image.
“It creates stereotypes that hide history from us, that hide real people from us,” Crowell said.
Springfield College sociology professor Laurel Davis-Delano, who studies the impact of Native American mascots, said she was concerned about the image, saying its appearance would compromise the education of some students.
“Nobody is saying the intention of those who support Native American mascots is the issue,” Davis-Delano said. “The main issue is … it creates a hostile climate.”
Senior Class Vice President of 1978 Lisa Nartowicz Jablonski admitted she was conflicted, and wished she had been included in conversations earlier. However, she accepted the reason to remove the logo, she said, and urged Mohawk to reconsider removing the team name.
“To keep the name warrior amazes me,” Nartowicz Jablonski said. “It’s senseless. It’s sad because you’re not helping the purpose that you’re trying to help.”
Rhonda Anderson, a Colrain resident with Native American ancestry, said she chose not to send her daughter to Mohawk Trail due to the logo.
“I always felt very uncomfortable seeing the mascot on the hall – it in no way reflected who I am as an Inupiaq-Athabaskan, and held me to a stereotype amongst my peers,” she wrote in a testimony.
A few Mohawk students present Monday night offered to work with the class 1978 to find a way to preserve their painting, including Meghan Davis, Lily Wickland Shearer and Mae Rice-Lesure. The three supported removing the logo, they said, and planned to bring the issue to their grade and to the class of 1978.
“It’s not something we’re proud of,” Rice-Lesure said, of the logo.
The School Committee will address the issue around the logo and how to proceed at a meeting in the future. The date has yet to be determined.
Contact Grace Bird at gbird@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 280.