All eight other schools removed from the list opted to change their mascots. The commission did grant permission to the Kiowa schools, part of the Elbert County School District, to keep their Indian mascot, the only school on the list to be allowed to do so. Instead, the commission pledged to follow up with the school district. Krug asked for a second vote, but didn't get it. That information was relayed to the commission near the end of their meeting, including the resolution the board voted on. "This must end for the benefit of our students," Krug said. The Lamar school board, which was meeting at the same time as the commission, voted almost immediately to remove "savage" from its mascot, and will now just be known as the Lamar Thunder. "We need to change that and take away the savage imagery of how they first thought about us," he added. ![]() Legislation has been adopted in the past that recognized Native Americans as "savages" and not equal to Europeans coming to the United States, said Manuel Heart, chairman of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe. The term "historically referred to Native Americans" and "savage thunder" is a continuation of that, he said. Given that the school has used Native American imagery in the past in association with the term, continuing to use the term "savage" with the new mascot does not meet the spirit of the law, said Jill Hunsaker Ryan, a commission member who is also executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.ĭoug Vilsack of the Department of Natural Resources agreed. The school did submit a bison to be known as "Savage Thunder" as a new mascot, but that didn't fly with the commission due to the district's previous refusal to drop the word "savage" from the title.Ĭommission member Crystal Loudhawk-Hedgepeth pointed out that the word has been used in legal and government documents to describe Native people.Ĭhad Krug, superintendent of schools for Lamar RE-2, said the district's view was that dropping the Native American imagery was enough to separate the term from the mascot. The commission approved removing 11 of the 12 schools on the list. ![]() Ahead of the meeting there were 12 schools with mascots flagged by the commission, including three schools in Kiowa, the three schools in the Yuma School District, Lamar High School, and two schools in the Arickaree School District. Thursday's meeting was the last chance for the last of the schools with those mascots to make their case for keeping their mascots or win approval for changes. But last-minute action by the Lamar RE-2 school board may have been enough to spare the school. That left Lamar High School out of compliance ahead of Senate Bill 21-116's June 1 deadline, after which any public school that still has an Native American mascot without prior approval could face fines of up to $25,000 per month. The Colorado Commission on Indian Affairs on Thursday opted to clear all but one of the dozen schools listed as out of compliance with a state law barring the use of any American Indian mascot or symbol in public schools unless that school had an agreement with a Native American tribe.
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