by Monroe Gilmour, Coordinator
NC Mascot Education & Action Group (NCMEAG)
(a project of WNCCEIB)
Asheville, NC
 As Asheville Citizen-Times readers noticed when Clyde A. Erwin HS' faux-Indian statue was on the front page back in August, the national controversy about misusing American Indian culture for sports mascots is not limited to the NFL's Washington R*******. Visit Cleveland on baseball's opening day there and see American Indians protesting the grotesquely trivializing Chief Wahoo.
See Florida State and numerous other colleges protested because of their own faux-Indian mascots.
And check out North Carolina's high schools.
Back between 1997 and 2000, Asheville was the center of national media attention on this issue. For the first time, the US Justice Department shined a public spotlight the issue, specifically the Buncombe County Schools and Erwin's mascots. The USDJ senior trial attorney, Lawrence Baca, told us he considered Erwin's statue an "Indian lawn jockey." The USDJ was responding to a complaint by the family of Don and Pat Merzlak who felt the mascot created a hostile learning environment for their children. Five of their seven graduated from Erwin.
The Merzlak family helped the wider community understand that American Indians object to being stereotyped as violent, to having their culture appropriated and trivialized for fun and games, to being locked in a false 100-year-old Hollywood myth, and to having their religious iconography (paint, drum, feather, fire) misused. For this to happen in a tax-funded public school made the matter even worse.
 They focused their concern on non-Native public schools recognizing that the issue is about self-definition and personal identity. Although many American Indians bemoan the internalized oppression revealed in Native-schools using such mascots, the Merzlaks understood that American-Indian-run schools have the prerogative to do so.
You may read about that intense fight here in Buncombe County at our web site: http://wncceib.org Go to the Issues tab. The resulting resolution was the elimination of the S**** mascot for female athletes, $30,000 of diversity materials put in the county schools' media centers, and removal of certain offensive items and murals at Erwin. Ironically, the Buncombe County School Board exempted from consideration removal of that statue. Even so, the two experts who reviewed the school's material felt that they had to document that the statue is, indeed, offensive even if it was not removed along with other offensive materials.
The Buncombe County Native American Association and NCMEAG turned their attention to the broader issue throughout the State. Making a presentation to the NC State Advisory Council on Indian Education (which advises the State School Board), the groups urged action. That effort resulted in the State School Board issuing a directive for all educators in the state to educate themselves on the cultural, educational, and psychological impacts of using Indian mascots and logos. Moreover, schools with "Indian" mascots were required to send in an annual report delineating actions taken to fulfill that instruction. The State Board's action in combination with NCMEAG's continued education efforts led to 40 NC public schools changing their mascots, including the Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Guilford County systems.
Illinois professor Carol Spindel's "Dancing at Half-Time: Sports and the Controversy over Indian Sport Mascots" devoted a full chapter to our fight here at Erwin and in NC's public schools. Other publications also weighed in and the Asheville Citizen-Times editorialized often, one headlined, "School Board Participating in a National Disgrace."
Today, thirty-three NC public schools continue to use "Indian" mascots. Among them, Erwin uses the "Warriors" and "Lady Warriors" as their mascots.
The irony of the Buncombe County Schools making important strides on addressing bullying, diversity, and respect while maintaining this elephant-in-the-room statue is lost on no one. The problem, however, has never been the administrators or faculty. Even back in 1999, the faculty at Erwin voted 90 to 3 to change the mascot. The problem now, as then, is the intransigence of a generation of Erwin alumni. Those students from the 70s who raised the $8,000 for that "Indian lawn jockey" continue to hang on and, as a result, school administrators and the Board are hesitant to even bring up the issue.
Eventually, Erwin will change its mascot as will schools and professional teams throughout the nation. Change now, however, would give students currently in Buncombe County's schools a real-life opportunity to learn the lesson that respect & anti-bullying initiatives include not trivializing other cultures. It will be unfortunate if the Buncombe County School Board misses this opportunity...again. | 
