[JustinD]

My first wife was native Chippewa, and as such my son is native and a member of the tribe as well. I can certainly see the benefit of reaching out to local tribes to establish relationships but not erasing Indian imagery in some misguided white savior move. I spent his childhood at tribal events to build his knowledge of culture with powwows and celebrating the traditions.

His tribe has a partnership with Central Michigan College as they are the Chippewas. I honestly have never personally heard anyone at the tribe discuss any concerns with mascots other than this older article here supporting them used positively when asked -

https://www.mlive.com/news/bay-city/...w_chippew.html

As an addendum to this article, the local school district was indeed forced to change their Warrior logo to the chagrin of the tribe in the end that took pride in that representation. The federal government threatened to withhold school funding for the mascot that they deemed offensive on behalf of the tribe who were financially donating to the sports program to support the mascot.

What I found shocking was this quote in a similar article on the mascot forced change from a press release by the Michigan Department of Civil Rights:

stated a press release from MDCR. “Continued use of American Indian mascots, names, nicknames, logos, slogans, chants and/or other imagery creates a hostile environment and denies equal rights to all current and future American Indian students and must therefore cease. ... Because there is now, for the first time, an objective showing that actual harm is resulting and that it disparately falls on American Indian students, there is no longer any need to question what the school, or what the ‘reasonable American Indian’ thinks about the mascot.”

Yep, that just shut down any American Indian that would disagree with their purity plan by disavowing their opinion because any “reasonable American Indian” would of course agree with them.