Controversial Apache mascot dropped by Northern California school

A Northern California school district on Wednesday decided to drop its controversial Apache mascot.

The Apache, adopted decades ago, has long been a sensitive issue for Vallejo High School, and altering it has been raised several times over the years, according to the Vallejo Times Herald.

A school design team is working on ideas for a replacement, and students and staff will vote on the mascot, the Times Herald reported. The new mascot will be revealed to the Vallejo City Unified School District’s governing board on Jan. 22.

The high school, one of four in the state to use the Apache as its symbol, will retire the mascot at the graduation of the Class of 2014, the paper reported.

“It will not happen overnight because there is an extreme cost involved,” board President Hazel Wilson said, adding that as equipment and other school-related items wear out, they will be replaced without the Apache logo.

After nearly two hours of debate over the symbol, the crowd cheered and clapped at the final vote.

“You have made history,” said Norman “Wounded Knee” DeOcampo, a member of the group Sacred Sites Protection & Rights of Indigenous Tribes, which has been pushing for the change.

The Vallejo group had argued that the mascot was disrespectful to Native American history and perpetuated the idea that indigenous peoples’ culture is not a living culture.

Some of the meeting’s 19 speakers spoke in support of the mascot, saying it keeps history alive and allows American Indians to tell their story, the Times Herald reported.

But opponents, who represented the majority of the meeting’s crowd, argued that the mascot was not an effective educational tool and that indigenous people should be part of the conversation about how to honor and educate others about their culture.

The Coachella Valley Unified School District is engaged in a similar debate over one of its mascots, the Arab.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has urged Coachella Valley High School to eliminate the mascot -- a costume of a man with a large nose and heavy beard wearing a kaffiyeh, a traditional Arab head covering -- saying the school is perpetuating demeaning stereotypes of Arabs and Arab Americans, according to a Nov. 1 letter to the district superintendent.

A representative from the group announced Wednesday that the 1920s version of the mascot is preferable to the current form, which the group finds offensive, the Desert Sun reported.

The anti-discrimination group and the Coachella Valley school district are in discussions about changes to the mascot, but the district will ultimately make the final decision, the paper reported.

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