A Pennsylvania lawmaker has proposed legislation that would ban school districts from using Native American imagery as a mascot or logo.
State Representative Christopher Rabb (D-Philadelphia) is making his fifth attempt at introducing a bill to remove any Native American logos or mascots that might be seen as offensive.
“It’s based in tradition for tradition’s sake, where those traditions were created at a time where it didn’t matter if it was offensive to the dominant community because all that mattered in previous generations was what the dominant community wanted,” Rabb said.
Maine, Washington, Colorado and Nevada have passed similar state laws, and Rabb said speaking with lawmakers from those states helped shape his strategy for the bill to be introduced in Pennsylvania.
“We have no federally recognized tribes in Pennsylvania, so those are the folks who I’ve been working with for multiple terms over my nine years in office,” he said. “The lessons I learn are learned from those folks on the front lines.”
He says the main goal is to let school communities know that they are not the enemy, while plotting a way forward to eliminate images and stereotypes that hurt indigenous communities.
“All the research shows that the demographic that is most likely to consider committing suicide is native youths,” he said. “It’s young people who only see themselves reflected in the most stereotypical ways.”
Rabb also wants to introduce a companion bill that would provide grants to school districts that transition away from those mascots and images to help defray the costs for those changes.
The precedent for those decisions has already been set in western Pennsylvania. In 2022, the North Hills School District voted to keep its Indians mascot but discontinue using the chief logo. A year earlier, Seneca Valley’s school board voted to keep its nickname, the Raiders, but stop using the Native American imagery and mascot. A passage from the resolution passed with that decision said, “that imagery no longer fulfills the intended positive purposes of a mascot or reflects favorably upon the Seneca Valley School District.”
Rabb said he has gained more co-sponsors for the bill, and he hopes to announce support from across the aisle in Harrisburg. If the bill is passed, more than half a dozen schools could be affected, but Rabb said it’s important to help school groups move away from those traditions that have been seen as harmful.
“Ignorance is not an excuse,” he said. “We have so much information, but if we don’t share it and share it in good faith, we’re just going to keep making bad decisions. And who pays the most? The folks closest to the pain, and that’s native youth.”
