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Maine becomes first state to ban Native American mascots at public schools, colleges: 'They are a source of pain and anguish'

Maine has become the first state to ban Native American mascots at public schools, colleges, and universities,  CNN reported . Gov...

Maine has become the first state to ban Native American mascots at public schools, colleges, and universities, CNN reported.

Gov. Janet Mills — a Democrat who took office in January — signed the measure Thursday. It will go into effect 90 days after the legislature adjourns, the governor's office said.

"While Indian mascots were often originally chosen to recognize and honor a school's unique connection to Native American communities in Maine, we have heard clearly and unequivocally from Maine tribes that they are a source of pain and anguish," Mills said in a statement. "A mascot is a symbol of pride, but it is not the source of pride. Our people, communities, and understanding and respect for one another are Maine's source of pride and it is time our symbols reflect that."

What does the law say?


The new law "prohibits all Maine public schools from adopting a name, symbol or image that depicts or refers to a Native American tribe, individual, custom or tradition and that is used as a mascot, nickname, logo, letterhead or team name of the school."

How did others react?


"Our tribal communities laid the foundation of our state," state Rep. Benjamin Collings, a Democrat, said in a statement. "They are people, not mascots."
James Francis, the tribal historian for Penobscot Nation, noted that that "argument has always been that 'we are honoring you.'" But he added that "by passing this legislation the State of Maine is truly honoring Native Americans."

Darren Ranco, chair of Native American Programs at the University of Maine, said that "overwhelming research shows how harmful Naive mascots are to children, especially to Native children" and that the new law "ensures that our children will not be harmed by the kind of disrespectful representations of Native people that always come with these mascots."

Ambassador Maulian Dana of Penobscot Nation said the new law "is a very personal issue for me. I have been educating and advocating for change of these mascots since I was a teenager, and it is very meaningful to have my daughter here at this signing ceremony along with our tribal leaders, allies and friends."

Last Native American mascot in Maine retired

The Skowhegan school board voted in March to change its "Indian" mascot after years of debate. It was the last district in Maine to use a Native American mascot.

Here's news report on the Skowhegan school board's decision to change the mascot: 


13 comments

  1. There goes the neighbourhood~ If its not bad enough you wont acknowledge your existence to the mercy of a British debt collector~ wish you'd have bought that Tea now ? ~ you have to try to rub out John Wayne~ you need all the help you can get:~ think fat boy in Deadpool 2~ that's the USA,

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  2. Yeah, let's just totally wipe out all memory of these defeated people. While we are at it, let's close down their casino's too.

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  3. The English explorer Samuel Hearne was the first white man to reach the Coppermine River in 1770. He kept a remarkable journal of his travels accompanied by a wholely native entourage. With the exception of the European educated chief Matonabbee, these Indians could be remarkably barbaric. They fell upon an inuit village at night and slaughtered all the inhabitants for no reason other than the joy of killing. Hearne, who wanted no part of the barbarity tried to save one young female, but the savages mocked him by asking if he wanted her as his wife. Later in the journey, his native host robbed a wandering native band of everything they owned, leaving them destitute and probably starved. He wrote of the Indians desire for slaves, of which they promptly murdered whenever they desired. These and other horrors are intermixed with interesting notes of the general culture of these primitives. So it's just as well these "maskots" are removed.

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  4. the snowflakes of the tribes have spoken,.. these people don't represent native americans, they're after publicity and the accolades of the victimhood movement.

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  5. In his epic work France and England in North America, the great American historian Francis Parkman describes the early 17th-century recreational and culinary habits of the Iroquois Indians (also known as the Five Nations, from whom, some will have it, the United States derived elements of its Constitution). He tells that the Iroquois, along with other tribes of northeastern United States and Canada, “were undergoing that process of extermination, absorption, or expatriation, which, as there is reason to believe, had for many generations formed the gloomy and meaningless history of the greater part of this continent.” Parkman describes an attack by the Iroquois on an Algonquin hunting party, late in the autumn of 1641, and the Iroquois’ treatment of their prisoners and victims:
    They bound the prisoners hand and foot, rekindled the fire, slung the kettles, cut the bodies of the slain to pieces, and boiled and devoured them before the eyes of the wretched survivors. “In a word,” says the narrator [that is, the Algonquin woman who escaped to tell the tale], “they ate men with as much appetite and more pleasure than hunters eat a boar or a stag …”
    The conquerors feasted in the lodge till nearly daybreak … then began their march homeward with their prisoners. Among these were three women, of whom the narrator was one, who had each a child of a few weeks or months old. At the first halt, their captors took the infants from them, tied them to wooden spits, placed them to die slowly before a fire, and feasted on them before the eyes of the agonized mothers, whose shrieks, supplications, and frantic efforts to break the cords that bound them were met with mockery and laughter …
    The Iroquois arrived at their village with their prisoners, whose torture was designed to cause all possible suffering without touching life. It consisted in blows with sticks and cudgels, gashing their limbs with knives, cutting off their fingers with clam-shells, scorching them with firebrands, and other indescribable torments. The women were stripped naked, and forced to dance to the singing of the male prisoners, amid the applause and laughter of the crowd …
    On the following morning, they were placed on a large scaffold, in sight of the whole population. It was a gala-day. Young and old were gathered from far and near. Some mounted the scaffold, and scorched them with torches and firebrands; while the children, standing beneath the bark platform, applied fire to the feet of the prisoners between the crevices … The stoicism of one of the warriors enraged his captors beyond measure … they fell upon him with redoubled fury, till their knives and firebrands left in him no semblance of humanity. He was defiant to the last, and when death came to his relief, they tore out his heart and devoured it; then hacked him in pieces, and made their feast of triumph on his mangled limbs.
    All the men and all the old women of the party were put to death in a similar manner, though but few displayed the same amazing fortitude. The younger women, of whom there were about thirty, after passing their ordeal of torture, were permitted to live; and, disfigured as they were, were distributed among the several villages, as concubines or slaves to the Iroquois warriors. Of this number were the narrator and her companion, who … escaped at night into the forest …
    Of the above account, Parkman writes: “Revolting as it is, it is necessary to recount it. Suffice it to say, that it is sustained by the whole body of contemporary evidence in regard to the practices of the Iroquois and some of the neighboring tribes.”
    The “large scaffold” on which the prisoners were placed, is elsewhere in his narrative referred to by Parkman as the Indians’ “torture-scaffolds of bark,” the Indian equivalent of the European theatrical stage, while the tortures performed by the Indians on their neighbors – and on the odd missionary who happened to fall their way – were the noble savages’ equivalent of the European stage play.

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  6. There was a war in the mid-1600s you've never heard of, ending in the near-extermination of the Erie by the Iroquois and others. Captives were sold into slavery and thus disbursed from the Cherokees in the Carolinas to the Senecas in Canada. All that remains of the Erie are place names—a lake, a city, a canal and so forth—and fugitive traces for linguists and historians to puzzle out.

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    the 1622 Massacre that wiped out Wolstenholme Towne in Virginia, killing 78 settlers. See First Look at a Lost Virginia Settlement by Ivor Noel Hume, National Geographic June 1979. [ PDF] See also Massacre Site Found in Virginia, By Wilson Morris, Washington Post, July 5, 1978 and The Skulls Tell the Tale, By Hank Burchard April 25, Washington Post, 1980 which calls it “Virginia’s worst mass murder.” Of course the Powhatans and English had been at peace since 1614 and the English had no control over the Indians so the Indians had nothing to "rise up" against!
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    In the Minnesota Massacre of 1862, as pointed out by anthropologist John Greenway in the pre-purge National Review, “at least 800 whites were killed and 10,000 square miles of Minnesota cleared of settlers.”

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  7. SIBERIAN/MONGOLIAN immigrants ..... not "native"
    SIBERIAN Immigrants of MONGOLIAN ( you recall the sophisticated, charming, Mongols?) stock who were busy sticking stone spears into one another and living on the primitive Tribal level. Of course many in Central America graduated to ritualized Human Sacrifice the Northern Sacrifices remained fireside brutalities.
    The Okunev people are seen as the Siberian ethnic grouping most closely related to Native Americans. In other words, it was ancestors of the Okunevs who populated America, evidently using primitive boats to venture to the ice-covered Beringia land bridge some 12,600 years ago.
    There was a war in the mid-1600s you've never heard of, ending in the near-extermination of the Erie by the Iroquois and others. Captives were sold into slavery and thus disbursed from the Cherokees in the Carolinas to the Senecas in Canada. All that remains of the Erie are place names—a lake, a city, a canal and so forth—and fugitive traces for linguists and historians to puzzle out.

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  8. Just when you thought 'nuts as hell' couldn't get any 'nutser'.

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  9. With Lobsters, Clams, Mussels, etc. Maine Schools have a ton of mascot names to choose from. The Maine Blowtoads come to mind. The Portland High Pissers?

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  10. You may want to take a look at the latest Graham Hancock book, America Before. It will change how you view who got here, how they got here, and how long ago. Well documented. Fascinating stuff. We have so much still to learn.

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  11. I was hoping a school would rename their team "The Porn Stars"; imagine the mascot. Make them beg to return to some Siberian Immigrant name.

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