Tradition Prevails

The Warriors have quietly returned to school in Irvine. So have the Indians in Fullerton, the Comanches in Anaheim and the Aztecs in Westminster.

In contrast to the controversy in Los Angeles public schools over mascots that depict Native Americans, Orange County schools say they have heard little or no protest. Still, some have considered the arguments and opted to keep the names.

“We take a lot of pride in the Aztec name,” said James Monahan, principal of La Quinta High School in Westminster. “If it’s left up to us, we will continue to maintain the Aztec name.”

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, school mascots modeled after Native Americans will have a different fate. Trustees there voted Monday night to eliminate such symbols, a change for which Native American groups have campaigned for 17 years, officials said.

In Orange County, the closest thing to a protest came about six years ago and again last year in the form of a letter from a national Native American rights group. The missives apparently were mailed to schools everywhere with Indian-themed mascots, school principals said.

At La Quinta, an ethnically mixed school, the matter was turned over to the Student Council for debate.

“They felt strongly that the Aztec represents the very best of the cultural traditions of Native Americans,” Monahan said Monday. Because the student body is a mix of Asian Americans, Latinos and whites, he said, “they could certainly relate to the idea of how an ethnic name could be denigrated.”

Greg Cops, principal of Woodbridge High School in Irvine, did the same with his student body of Warriors.

“They talked about it, the issue of whether we had done anything in a derogatory way,” Cops said. The school has never used cartoon-like pictures of Native Americans, he said. The discussion, he said, “left us feeling good.”

Other student bodies with mascots reflecting Native American heritage are the Fullerton High School Indians and Anaheim’s Canyon High School Comanches and Esperanza High School Aztecs. A spokesman for the Fullerton school did not return phone calls Monday seeking comment. Representatives of the other schools indicated that no one locally has ever raised the issue.

The biggest flap over a mascot in Orange County concerned religion, not race. It occurred at Mission Viejo High School, first in 1986, when the Diablo (Spanish for devil) logo was dropped because of complaints by conservative Christian parents, and again in 1993, when a friendlier-looking version was voted back in.

The Native American mascot debate--or lack of one--could reflect Orange County’s demographics. The 1990 U.S. Census counted about 12,450 American Indians, or about 0.5% of Orange County’s 2.4 million residents.

August Spivey, a Native American activist from Newport Beach, said he objects to mascots depicting his people, used by professional sports teams and schools. Even if students say they take pride in the mascot, “that is European thinking. None of it is from American Indian thinking,” he said. “It’s their wants, their needs. They don’t care about how it offends us.”

But Jim Velasques, a chief with the Gabrieleno Indians, said he is not bothered by the mascots. “It’s just kid stuff. It’s not meant to offend.”

Sonia Johnston, a Juaneno tribal chief involved in efforts to attain federal recognition, would not comment on the issue.

“We have so many other issues that we are involved in at this point,” she said. “We have our own problems here.”