Credit: Courtesy of Dahkota Brown

Dahkota Brown, heart, with Mari Levi, left, president of the American Indian/Alaskan Native Educational activity caucus for the California Teachers Association, and Marty Meeden, board member of the CTA.

California, home to the largest number of American Indians in the country, is for the third time considering legislation that would end the use of "Redskins" as a school team name or mascot.

If the legislation passes and is signed past Gov. Jerry Chocolate-brown, California would become the first state in the nation to ban the use of "Redskins" as a team name or mascot in public schools, co-ordinate to the Washington, D.C.-based National Congress of American Indians, founded in 1944. Many Native Americans consider the term a racial slur.

The beak is the latest try in a more 50-twelvemonth national campaign by Native Americans to remove race-based squad names from schools and sports groups. In California, proponents of the ban have cited peer-reviewed studies by researchers at the Academy of Arizona, Stanford University and the University of Michigan that constitute American Indian youth who were exposed to Native American mascots and stereotypical imagery reported a diminished sense of what they could achieve academically.

Cindy La Marr, executive director of the Sacramento-based nonprofit system Capitol Area Indian Resources, said the harm of stereotypical racial mascots is compounded because there is a widespread lack of knowledge about the modern-twenty-four hour period lives of Native Americans or their history. That history, documented past the California Research Agency in a 2002 report, includes country-funded military expeditions against the Indians in the 1850s and an 1850 law allowing a white person to obtain Indian children for indenture.

"It's time that we as a state take a stand against racial slurs used in our public schools," said state Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Salinas, author of Assembly Bill thirty, known as the California Racial Mascots Act.

The bill unanimously passed the Assembly Education Committee last calendar month and is heading for a hearing before the Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism and Internet Media on April 21.

"I exercise non think they knew improve or considered what they were doing every bit incorrect," said Dahkota Kicking Bear Brown, a junior at Argonaut High Schoolhouse in Jackson, whose friends yelled 'Send them dorsum to the Trail of Tears!' during a football game confronting the Calaveras High 'Redskins' team.

Just four California schools go on to use "Redskins" as a team name and mascot: Calaveras Loftier Schoolhouse in Calaveras Canton, Chowchilla Union Loftier School in Madera County, Gustine High Schoolhouse in Merced County and Tulare Union Loftier School in Tulare County.

"Nosotros dear our mascot," said Ron Seals, superintendent of Chowchilla Wedlock High School Commune. The school mascot is an Indian main known as "Reddy Redskin," he said.

"I'm not disputing the fact that it's offensive to some, but I'm not calling you a Redskin," he said. "We telephone call ourselves Redskins."

"The name and the mascot have been a source of pride at the high school for 60 or 70 years," said Joseph Oliveira Jr., a  former get-go baseman for the Gustine High baseball game team and a member of the Gustine City Council, which officially opposes the effort to remove the proper noun. "It's never been thought of as being a slur. Nosotros are the Redskins. We are the mighty Redskins. The town loves the nickname and to lose it now will be devastating."

Dahkota Boot Bear Dark-brown, 16, a Miwok Indian and a inferior at Argonaut High Schoolhouse in Jackson, told a different story at a hearing before the Assembly Teaching Commission.

As a sophomore lineman for the Argonaut football team, Chocolate-brown said he dreaded game day against the Calaveras High Schoolhouse "Redskins" because information technology included war cries from fans, sports announcers announcing "a wild political party of Redskins!" and even his own friends shouting "Kill the Redskins! Send them on the Trail of Tears!" He recalled his cousin crying after a football game during which a female person student dressed up as "Pocahottie" while other students pretended to prepare to burn her at the stake.

"I do not blame those students, the school or staff for whatsoever of these things," Brown said in an electronic mail interview. "I do not retrieve they knew better or considered what they were doing equally wrong." Only, he said, "I volition blame people for hearing the facts and so non caring enough to end the harm."

The California Racial Mascots Act would require California schools to phase out "Redskins" as a squad proper noun and mascot by Jan. 1, 2019. Similar legislation failed to pass the land Legislature in 2002, just did win approval in 2003, only to be vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said it was up to local communities to make up one's mind on team names and mascots.

Schools have a responsibility to ensure that every student feels respected, said Eric Stegman, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan policy institute, and co-author of a report almost the impact of Native American mascots on American Indian youth. "We shouldn't be placing the sentimentality of a letterman's jacket or bailiwick of jersey above the interest of success for any pupil," he said.

In 2001, the U.Southward. Commission on Ceremonious Rights stated that the apply of Native American images and names by non-Native schools "has the potential to create a racially hostile educational environment." The American Psychological Association said in 2005 that Native American team names and mascots create "an unwelcoming and even hostile school environs" for American Indian students.

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