It’s no secret how President Donald Trump feels about sports activities groups turning away from Native American mascots. He’s repeatedly called for the return of the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians, claiming their current rebrands have been a part of a “woke” agenda designed to erase historical past.
However one stunning group has actually gotten the president’s consideration: the Massapequa Chiefs.
The Lengthy Island faculty district has refused to alter its emblem and title underneath a mandate from New York state banning colleges from utilizing group mascots appropriating Indigenous tradition. Colleges got two years to rebrand, however Massapequa is the lone holdout, having missed the June 30 deadline to debut a brand new emblem.
The district misplaced an preliminary lawsuit it filed in opposition to the state however now has the federal authorities on its aspect. In Might, Trump’s Division of Schooling intervened on the district’s behalf, claiming the state’s mascot ban is itself discriminatory.
Massapequa’s Chiefs emblem — an American Indian carrying a yellow feathered headdress — is predicted to nonetheless be prominently displayed when the autumn sports activities season kicks off quickly, placing the quiet Lengthy Island hamlet on the heart of a political firestorm.
The district is now a key “battleground,” mentioned Oliver Roberts, a Massapequa alum and the lawyer representing the college board in its contemporary lawsuit in opposition to New York claiming that the ban is unconstitutional and discriminatory.
The Trump administration claims New York’s mascot ban violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients of federal funds from participating in discriminatory habits primarily based on race, coloration or nationwide origin — teeing up a probably precedent-setting struggle.
The intervention on behalf of Massapequa follows a sample for a White Home that has aggressively utilized civil rights protections to police “reverse discrimination” and coerced colleges and universities into coverage concessions by withholding federal funds.
“Our purpose is to help nationally,” Roberts mentioned. “It’s us placing ahead our effort and time to attempt to help with this nationwide motion and push again in opposition to the woke bureaucrats making an attempt to cancel our nation’s historical past and custom.”
When the NFL group in Washington, DC, retired its Redskins title amid social strain on the peak of the George Floyd protests in the summertime of 2020, different sports activities groups with related names adopted swimsuit. Cleveland’s skilled baseball group, the Indians, grew to become the Guardians in 2021, and the ripple impact reached beginner groups, too.
Becoming a member of New York, 10 different states now have laws proscribing Native mascots in colleges.
Practically 30 colleges deserted Native-themed mascots in 2020, in line with the Nationwide Congress of American Indians, which has opposed the monikers for years. Nonetheless, greater than 1,500 colleges nationwide proceed to make use of names affiliated with Indigenous tradition.
The talk was reignited final month, when Trump posted on Reality Social that Washington’s NFL group, now the “Commanders,” ought to revert to the Redskins — a dictionary-defined slur — and threatened to carry up the franchise’s new stadium deal on federal land in DC.
For now, plans for the Commanders to play on the previous RFK Stadium website seem like shifting forwad after the DC Council accredited the deal earlier this month. A second vote in September is predicted to equally green-light the venture, making it unlikely Trump might unilaterally derail it.
However the struggle is ongoing in Lengthy Island, dwelling to a number of of New York’s Algonquin tribes. Massapequa first obtained the president’s consideration within the spring, when the college district board publicly appealed to Trump for assist saving the Chiefs mascot. It labored.
“I agree with the folks in Massapequa, Lengthy Island, who’re preventing furiously to maintain the Massapequa Chiefs emblem on their Groups and College,” Trump wrote on Reality Social in April, including that he requested Secretary of Schooling Linda McMahon “to struggle for the folks of Massapequa on this crucial concern.”
He posted a photograph of himself holding up a “Massapequa Chiefs” sweatshirt with the emblem printed largely on the entrance.
McMahon visited Massapequa a month later to announce the Division of Schooling’s investigation discovered that the New York Division of Schooling had violated Title VI with its Native American mascot ban. McMahon in contrast Indigenous mascots to group names just like the Vikings, Preventing Irish and the Cowboys, arguing that New York’s ban unfairly singled out Native People.
The case was then referred to the Division of Justice in June.
However JP O’Hare, a spokesperson for the New York Schooling Division, mentioned in an announcement that there’s been no additional motion since then, including that it has been clear from the outset that “this ‘investigation’ was nothing however political theater.”
The US Division of Schooling didn’t reply to CNN’s requests for remark.
O’Hare mentioned the New York Schooling Division “intends to make use of all the instruments out there to make sure the implementation of this regulation,” including that the district might lose state funding or see board members eliminated for noncompliance.
‘Hurtful and stereotypical’
The overwhelming majority of the roughly 22,000 folks in Massapequa are White, in line with census data, and the county it’s positioned, Nassau, went for Trump in 2024. The Baldwin brothers and Jerry Seinfeld are among the many well-known alums of the highschool. Lengthy Island’s two Indian reservations — the Shinnecock and Poospatuck territories — are inside an hour’s drive.
The tribes have publicly supported New York’s ban on mascots with Native tradition prior to now. Requested whether or not Massapequa’s board of training communicated with leaders from these native tribes, Roberts, the lawyer representing the college district, mentioned, “We now have engaged Native American teams of many various tribes and backgrounds.” He declined to specify whether or not that included these from the encompassing Lengthy Island space.
Germain Smith, a former Shinnecock tribal chief who served on an advisory council of Indigenous leaders for the New York Schooling Division mentioned he personally communicated with state tribes earlier than recommending the mascot ban.
“There was a consensus that it was hurtful and stereotypical,” he mentioned.
In Massapequa, the Chiefs emblem with the profile of an American Indian in a headdress is an inaccurate depiction of the particular tradition and look of the Lengthy Island tribes, in line with John Kane, a member of the Mohawk tribe who additionally served on the advisory council of Indigenous leaders.
The host of a radio present in Western New York, Kane has challenged those that say the mascots are supposed to honor Indigenous folks by asking how they’d hypothetically apply the identical idea to the Black neighborhood.
“I don’t know what picture you’ll use to signify your honoring of Blacks as a mascot,” Kane mentioned, including that developing with an inoffensive title would even be a hurdle.
“However even when you might recover from these two issues,” Kane continued, “how do you suppose Black folks would really feel about White folks claiming their identification simply because it’s their faculty mascot? … I imply, are you able to think about a stadium full of individuals in blackface as a result of they determined that was their mascot?”
Native and Indigenous teams
However Roberts pointed to a different group that has been vocal for years in wanting to maintain Native mascots — the Native American Guardians Affiliation, or NAGA. A number of of its members joined McMahon in Massapequa throughout her go to in Might.
The group’s sole concern has been lobbying for the preservation of Native mascots with an “educate, not eradicate” motto. Washington’s previous Redskins emblem, for instance, “was meant to honor. It represents the warrior spirit, the power, and the pleasure of our folks,” NAGA mentioned in an announcement.
Members of the group’s board declined to be interviewed exterior of offering an announcement.
In recent times, distinguished Native teams and activists, together with Indigenous leaders in New York, have questioned NAGA’s legitimacy because the group’s representatives appeared in locations like Massapequa to protest Indigenous mascot bans. The group is commonly cited by sympathetic native non-Natives as the instance of American Indian help for the monikers.
NAGA first rose to prominence as a fierce backer of the Washington Redskins underneath earlier proprietor Daniel Snyder, a businessman who for years resisted any title change.
NAGA, which obtained federal nonprofit standing in Might 2017, is funded by means of non-public donations, which has fueled hypothesis amongst different Native American activists that the group was accepting cash from Snyder. NAGA’s web site says it “obtained ZERO funding from Dan Snyder, the Washington Redskins franchise or any of its charitable divisions or foundations.”
The group claimed to signify “on a regular basis American Indian households who really feel pleasure seeing our names and faces honored” with greater than 84,000 members — a quantity NAGA mentioned represents those that request membership from the group’s web site and observe their social media pages.
NAGA has repeatedly pointed to a 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey and 2016 Washington Post poll, each of which mentioned roughly 90% of American Indians supported the Redskins title.
However a more recent 2020 study from teachers on the College of Michigan and the College of California, Berkeley, had completely different outcomes after surveying greater than 1,000 Native People representing all 50 states and almost 150 tribes.
Roughly half of the individuals mentioned they have been offended by the Redskins’ title. Furthermore, of these polled for the research, 57% who strongly determine with being Native American have been discovered to be deeply insulted by caricatures of Native American tradition.
About 5 hours north of Massapequa, the Oriskany faculty district in Central New York unveiled the emblem for its new mascot, the Skyhawks, at a ceremony in February.
Like in different New York faculty districts, the choice to dispose of a beloved decades-old mascot — on this case, the Redskins — was controversial. However not like Massapequa, Oriskany finally complied with New York’s mandate. Choices for the brand new moniker have been put to a vote, and Skyhawks — for the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk fighter jet that was on the USS Oriskany plane service — was the winner.
“It was sort of pressured upon the district,” mentioned Oriskany Superintendent Gregory Cuthbertson. “I simply made certain that our neighborhood was a part of the method, and I needed to ensure that I heard all people’s voice and the completely different views.”
“However you will have some individuals who would nonetheless say that they’re a Redskin they usually’ll at all times be a Redskin,” he added.
Cuthbertson mentioned the rebrand price Oriskany about $50,000. New York didn’t present the colleges that had Native mascots extra funds to interchange them, and Cuthbertson mentioned the cash went towards new uniforms and alterations to the gymnasium, athletic fields, scoreboards and even official letterheads.
Different districts have mentioned altering mascots can be considerably costlier. Roberts mentioned Massapequa estimated a mascot rebrand would price about $1 million, and a neighboring district in Lengthy Island, Connetquot, calculated its swap from “Thunderbirds” would price as much as $23 million, according to The New York Post.
However Connetquot then struck a compromise with the state Board of Regents in late June that may permit the district to shorten its title to “T-Birds” in alternate for dropping ongoing authorized motion in opposition to the state emblem ban, according to The Post.
4 different districts obtained an extension to rebrand as a result of they have been discovered to be “performing in good religion to get rid of the usage of prohibited mascots,” mentioned O’Hare, the New York Schooling Division spokesperson. Massapequa’s request for extra time was denied as a result of “it has made no efforts to implement the regulation and has, at occasions, prompt that it has no intention of complying,” O’Hare added.
The federal Division of Schooling introduced final month that it had additionally opened a civil rights probe into Connetquot faculty district “for reportedly working to erase its Native American mascot and imagery, the Thunderbirds,” although the college was underneath strain from the state to adjust to its mandate.
The division hasn’t but opened investigations into the opposite districts, equivalent to Oriskany, that modified mascots underneath instruction from the state.
Deborah Hellman, a legislation professor on the College of Virginia, mentioned the case for overturning the New York ban primarily based on a Title VI civil rights violation is “terribly weak.”
The statute forbids discrimination in opposition to people on the premise of race, coloration or nationwide origin. As a result of a ban on Native American mascots doesn’t contain treating any individual in another way from one other, the one manner for Massapequa and the federal authorities to state a declare can be to indicate that eradicating Native American mascots creates an atmosphere “that’s extreme, pervasive and objectively offensive” to Native American college students.
However as a result of so many within the Indigenous neighborhood have mentioned they think about maintaining the mascots to be the true offense, assembly the court docket’s “objectively offensive” customary is prone to be “an insurmountable hurdle,” Hellman mentioned.
Simply 10 years in the past, the Division of Schooling underneath the Obama administration opened the same Title VI investigation after a college close to Buffalo was accused of violating college students’ civil rights by not taking down its Redskins mascot. Then, the federal authorities’s interference resulted within the district eradicating the emblem.
The statute is now being utilized in a very completely different manner, Hellman mentioned.
“The Division of Schooling is utilizing Title VI fairly aggressively,” she mentioned, including that “the alleged victims of discrimination, just like the conception of what’s an occasion of discrimination, has shifted.”
