During a dramatic presentation before the Skowhegan school board Thursday evening, Skowhegan residents echoed the request of local members of Penobscot Nation and implored the panel to retire the town’s offensive mascot.
“I would hate to think how Native American children felt here at Skowhegan High School each time a depiction of their culture was used as a mascot,” said resident Hope Savage, according to her sister Lisa Savage’s account of the meeting.
“Humiliated?” Savage continued. “Probably. Angry? Probably. Powerless to stop it? Yes, surely. Because the use of them as mascots wouldn’t be done if they had power to stop it. You have the power to stop it, Skowhegan school board. You have much to gain by listening. Listen to their ambassadors tell you you’re offending them. Listen when they tell you they don’t feel honored. Listen to what the rest of the country has said as they, one by one, change their offensive mascots.”
The mascot was officially retired in 1990 but the name and imagery has persisted. Team paraphernalia has included everything from a so-called “scalp towel,” to white residents wearing face paint and headdresses, to cartoony images of a Native American. Last year, the Skowhegan Chamber of Commerce was forced to cancel their town-wide game of “hunt the Indian” after widespread backlash.
Savage’s statement was prompted by a request by Maulian Dana, tribal ambassador for Penobscot Nation, who on November 1st gave a presentation to the District 54 board of directors asking them to retire the nickname “Indians” for the district’s high school teams.
“Your ‘Indian’ mascot is the last one of it’s kind in the state of Maine, which you share with five tribal reservation communities,” Dana said. “Mascot use has been found to be harmful to children and creates an unhealthy learning environment as well as shaping their views of Indigenous people to be stereotypical and not based in reality which is problematic for their Indigenous peers and hinders their development.”
SAD 54 Superintendent Brent Colbry told the Morning Sentinel that after Dana’s presentation there was “no action taken or discussed.”
Poking a hornets’ nest
Back in 2015, after a lengthy process involving all the Indigenous Nations of Maine, members of SAD 54 voted to keep the mascot. In response to the effort, some community members including board member Jennifer Poirier founded the closed group “Skowhegan Indian Pride,” which asserts that the mascot honors the history of the town.
Lisa Savage, a schoolteacher whose family is from Skowhegan and who owns a house in the town, was among the five women who attended last Thursday’s meeting. She told the board that she has heard from family members and students who expressed discomfort with the racist imagery. She also explained that her work as a civil rights team leader at Carrabec High School taught her that “all hate crimes, all acts of violence that are racially motivated start with hateful language and images,” like the Skowhegan mascot.
When asked about the connection between language and violence, Dana agreed. “When you see a group as less than human it is easier to treat them accordingly,” she explained. “The people of Skowhegan Indian Pride who seek to protect the mascot have threatened me with rape, violence, they have said terrible things about my children, and have used racist memes and imagery to depict us as savage drunks and caricatures.”
“Who is to say this mascot and the racist practices associated with it,” she continued, referring to the Chamber’s ‘Hunt the Indian’ game or the vintage ‘Scalp Towel,’ “wouldn’t inspire an individual to act out these acts as a way to keep the legacy of hunting the Indian alive? It is beyond offensive, it is dangerous what they are doing and I am so glad the tides are turning and this will stop.”
In a Facebook post on Nov. 12, Dana wrote that she was not only devastated by the 2015 vote but afterwards she was regularly harassed by members of the so-called “Indian Pride” group.
“I sat on my bed at home. And sobbed. I felt like a failure. How could I have put this much effort into doing the right thing and been shut down so hard,” she wrote. “I felt like I stirred up hate and damaged the whole cause by poking a hornets’ nest.”
Nonetheless, she said she has resumed the campaign in Skowhegan “[n]ot for my ego. Not to win. But because they have disgraced and made a mockery of my people for long enough. And it’s time to clear the state of this racism and bigotry that flows into so much and has wide ranging implications and negative impacts on existence as an Indigenous Maine Citizen.”
White people’s work
As Lisa and her sister Hope have made clear, Dana is not alone in this fight. After last week’s chilly reception, Lisa started a Facebook page calling on other community members to “tell Skowhegan’s school board: retire the racist team name.” As of Monday morning, 89 people have said they are interested in attending the Dec. 6 meeting and more than 20 others have said they are going.
“It’s 2018. It’s post-Charlottesville,” Lisa said, referring to the white supremacist rally that resulted in the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer. “What side are you on? It’s time to draw a line in the sand and stand up against racism.”
As for why she feels that it is important for herself and other non-Native residents to join Dana and other members of Penobscot Nation in this fight, she said: “It’s white people’s work to repair the harms of systemic racism. We are the ones privileged enough to do it and we have to do it to make things right.”
For her part, Dana said she is “overjoyed” at the community response. Back in 2015, she explained, “when the tribes all met with the school board and put so much time and energy into trying to educate, we were told by some to mind our business and that we were ‘from away’–even though we are descendants of the ancestors that were the original inhabitants of that land.”
“The fact that these brave people are willing to take a stand and ally with us to do the right thing is what it will take to make this change,” Dana added.
You can read the complete text of Hope Savage’s statement here.
Skowhegan resident Hope Savage asks the school board to retire the town’s offensive mascot. (Photo by Lisa Savage)
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