Colorado lawmakers passed legislation to prohibit publicly funded schools, colleges, and universities from using Native Americans as their mascots.
The bill, passed by the state House of Representatives and Senate on Thursday, established the legislature’s view that “derogatory American Indian mascots” are harmful to Native American students and would fine certain schools that maintain their mascots beyond a 2022 deadline.
“The presence and use of derogatory American Indian mascots across Colorado creates an unsafe learning environment for American Indian students by having serious negative impacts on those students’ mental health and by promoting bullying of American Indian students,” according to the bill. “American Indian mascots teach non-American Indian children inaccurate information about American Indian culture and teach them that it is acceptable to participate in culturally abusive and prejudicial behaviors.”
The bill would impose a monthly fine of $25,000 on any institution that maintains a Native American mascot after June 1, 2022, though it makes exceptions for schools that have existing agreements with federally recognized tribes to use Native American imagery. It also makes exceptions for schools operated by tribes.
Republican state Rep. Richard Holtorf, one of 24 no votes in the House, ascribed the push to pass the bill to a “woke” political environment.
“Not everything is racially motivated, unless you look through those glasses,” he said on the House floor Wednesday. “In some cases, these mascots were selected to actually point out the importance of that tribe in the history of the communities in rural Colorado that I represent.”
“This bill has been a long time coming,” Democratic state Rep. Adrienne Benavidez said Wednesday.
“Rather than honoring native peoples, these caricatures and stereotypes are harmful,” she said. “They perpetuate negative stereotypes of America’s first people and contribute to a disregard for the personhood of Native Americans.”
The bill itself used similar language to discount the notion that schools’ use of Native American mascots communicates respect.
“Despite continued claims that such mascots honored American Indian peoples, the majority of such mascots in Colorado regularly employed racist stereotypes,” the bill said, pointing to the Eaton High School’s Fightin’ Reds mascot and Lamar High School’s “Chief Ugh-Lee” mascot.
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The debate over Native American mascots has extended well beyond Colorado with sports teams at the highest level, including the National Football League’s Washington Football Team, formerly the Redskins, making their name changes formal in 2020.
Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians also decided to change their name in 2020, though a replacement has yet to be chosen.
The Colorado bill heads to Democratic Gov. Jared Polis’s desk for approval. The Washington Examiner reached out to Polis’s office for comment on the measure but did not immediately receive a response.
