Letter: Algonquin Regional tomahawk mascot not racist
Telegram & Gazette
High schools all over Massachusetts are choosing to replace their names and mascots as well as the legacies they contain due to their “racist implications.”
Since 1959, Algonquin Regional High School has been associated with their mascot – the tomahawk. At the end of April, the school board unanimously voted to change this out of the belief that this mascot is insensitive to the Algonquin tribe that the school was initially named after.
The logic behind the racist implications of the tomahawk doesn’t work out because a tomahawk is simply a tool this group of Native Americans invented. By coordinating a tomahawk as the Algonquin mascot it’s not only opposing racism by implementing part of Native American culture into modern times, but also creating a lasting legacy for the Algonquin tribe by means of a school.
They Need To Understand The Harm : How Indian Mascots Affect Native American Students
Quannah Morrison (l) and his father Jamie Morrison (r) stand outside their home in Milton, Mass. on June 2, 2021. Quannah is 17 and plays basketball at Milton High School and club hockey.
Meredith Nierman / GBH News
Winchester High School s mascot when Jamie Morrison went there was the Sachems and still was until last year. The associate director of the Urban Scholars Program at UMass Boston, who is Eastern Cherokee, has been trying to get rid of Native American mascots for a long time.
âI witnessed a lot of things at Winchester, he said. A lot of close friends who were white that grew up and they would dress up. Or their siblings would dress upâ as Indians.
When Teaching About The Holocaust Isn t Enough
Brittany Burns teaching her Fragility of Democracy course at Algonquin Regional High School in Northborough.
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When Teaching About The Holocaust Isn t Enough | May 5, 2021
Just months after former President Donald Trump took office in 2017, militant neo-Nazi groups rioted in the streets of Charlottesville, Va., carrying torches and chanting Jews will not replace us!
Three days later, someone threw a rock at the Holocaust Memorial in downtown Boston. Bystanders chased and tackled the perpetrator, a 17-year-old from Malden.
Greg Hurley heard the news with horror. At the time, he was a social studies teacher in charge of the history curriculum at Malden High School, where the suspect was enrolled. Because the coursework included lessons about Nazi Germany s mass slaughter of 6 million Jews during World War II, the father of one- and four-year-olds started to reckon with why his efforts hadn t succeeded.
Northborough-Southborough Votes To Retire Tomahawk Imagery From Algonquin Regional High School
American Football and Helmet on the Field at Sunset
33ft/Getty Images/iStockphoto
The Northborough-Southborough Regional School Committee voted on Wednesday night to drop the use of Native American imagery for Algonquin Regional High School s sports teams.
In a 9-0 decision, the ten-member committee agreed to follow the recommendation of a study group made up of students, the school principal and other community members to stop the using Tomahawks as their logo and nickname, which has been in place since the school s inception. One member was not present at the time of the vote.