More than 80 Ohio high schools have Native-themed names and mascots
Four years after the Cleveland Indians announced they would change its name to the Guardians, many Ohio high schools have retained their Native-themed names and mascots.
More than 80 Ohio high schools have Native-themed names and mascots, according to an Ohio Capital Journal analysis of high school team names. The “Warriors” and “Indians” were the most common, followed by “Redskins” and “Braves.”
“The fact that Ohio high schools still use mascots like Braves, it tells Native youth that their identity is still seen as a costume or a symbol as something not real and not human, it reinforces systemic disrespect, and it tells students — both Native and non-Native — that racism can still be rationalized,” said CC Hovie, a spokesperson for the Association on American Indian Affairs.
Ohio has the most high schools that use Native-themed names and mascots, said Homer Shadowheart, administrative and office manager at the Urban Native Collective in Cincinnati.
“It’s sad,” he said. “I think that part of the reason is that the original tribes that were here have been removed or killed, so they don’t think there are Natives here anymore, but we do live here. We are here.”
The Ohio Capital Journal reached out to all schools and districts with Native-themed names and mascots, but many did not respond by deadline. Those that did respond said they are not considering changing their team names.
President Donald Trump recently called on the Cleveland Guardians and the Washington Commanders to change their team names back to the Indians and Redskins.
The Cleveland Indians changed to the Guardians starting with the 2022 baseball season and the Washington Redskins changed to the Washington Football Team in 2020 before becoming the Washington Commanders in 2022.
“When the Guardians changed their name, it was a significant step forward,” Hovie said.
However, the Guardians and Commanders name change has not led to many Ohio high schools following suit.
“I think it sends a troubling message that these profit-driven corporations can respond to public pressure and do the right thing, while public institutions, like schools, lag behind,” Hovie said.
Some Ohio high schools have changed their nicknames.
Anderson High School in Cincinnati changed its nickname from the Redskins to the Raptors in 2021. Cincinnati Country Day School changed its mascot from the Indians to the Nighthawks in 2021, and Cuyahoga Heights High Schools in Cuyahoga County changed its nickname from Redskins to Red Wolves in 2022.
School districts response
Some Ohio schools have kept their team name, but changed their logo.
“In the past 10 years the district has made an effort to move away from the official use of the Warrior head logo,” Lebanon City Schools Superintendent Isaac W. Seevers said in an email. “We adopted a new logo of an L with a spear and have not purchased uniforms or equipment with the Warrior head logo since the adoption of this new L-spear logo.”
Similarly, Olentangy High School in Delaware County updated the school’s logo during the 2020-21 school year, but kept the mascot name Braves, district spokesperson Amanda Beeman said in an email.
Fairfield City School District in Butler County has not considered changing its name from the Indians, but the district has made some changes, Superintendent Billy Smith said.
“For years, a student at the high school would dress as an Indian and lead our student section at our sporting events,” he said. “Prior to the start of the 2020-2021 school year, the district decided that this act would no longer be permitted.”
Copley-Fairlawn Superintendent Aimee Kirsch said Indians was originally chosen as “a way to acknowledge and honor the Native peoples who inhabited the area prior to its settlement in the early 1800s.”
Bellefontaine City Schools School Board President Colin Yoder said the chieftain mascot “honors the legacy of the great war chief Blue Jacket, or Weyapiersenwah, leader of the seven nations of the Shawnee who once made their home in Logan County.”
Shadowheart and Hovie disagree.
“We’re not honored,” Shadowheart said. “You’re trying to honor people who were removed from their homelands. You’re trying to honor people who were killed in their homelands? I don’t understand that because so many Native organizations and people have said that it’s not an honor.”
Keeping the mascots is “continuing that erasure,” Hovie said.
“These mascots are the legacy of a colonial mindset that fought to erase Native identity, so keeping them today isn’t honoring Native culture,” Hovie said.
A breakdown of the various Ohio high school Native-themed names and mascots, as found listed in the Ohio High School Athletic Association.
- 25 Warriors
- 23 Indians
- 9 Redskins
- 7 Braves
- 5 Redmen
- 4 Arrows
- 3 Chieftains
- 2 Mohawks
- 2 Red Raiders
- 1 Apaches
- 1 Senecas
- 1 Seminoles
- 1 Brave
- 1 Chipps
- 1 Big Reds
‘Native people are not mascots’
Native-themed names and mascots are harmful, Hovie said.
“We know Native names like Redskins are racial slurs,” Hovie said. “Even terms like Indians and Warriors, while seemingly neutral to outsiders, flattens hundreds of diverse Native nations into a single stereotype of violence and savagery and spiritual mysticism.”
Native-themed names and mascots are rooted in racism, cultural appropriation, and intentional ignorance, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) said in a statement released earlier this year.
“Native people are not mascots,” the group’s President Mark Macarro said in the statement. “We have our own languages, cultures, and governments — our identities are not anyone’s mascot or costume. No political endorsement or misguided notion of ‘honoring’ us will change the fact that these mascots demean our people, diminish the enduring vibrancy of our unique cultures, and have no place in our society.”
The American Psychological Association called for the “immediate retirement of all American Indian” mascots and images by schools, athletic teams, and organizations in 2005.
“Native people have been frozen in the past and reduced to this caricature of a romanticized savage or noble warrior, and were created by non-Native people to draw on those stereotypes of who Native people are, so even when they’re presenting as honoring Native people, they reduce rich diversity and contemporary people into a single, static stereotype image,” said Dr. Anna Fetter, a psychologist and researcher on Indigenous student mental health.
Native-themed names and mascots are damaging to Native students and normalize stereotypes for non-Native students, she said.
“They lower Native students’ self esteem,” Fetter said. “They reduce feelings of community worth, and they even limit how Native students see their possible futures and their academic futures. … It just creates a school climate where Native students feel less safe, they feel less seen and less valued.”
Ohio Legislation
Back in 2021, former-Democratic state Reps. Adam Miller and Jessica Miranda introduced an Ohio House Resolution that called on schools to retire the use of Native-themed names and mascots, but it only received sponsor testimony.
“We cannot accept the continuing dehumanizing of people,” Miranda said in her testimony in 2022. “Some of these logos are far more egregious and offensive than ‘Chief Wahoo.’ It is not believable to say you are honoring a person by demeaning and belittling them.”
She said districts should have fun with finding a new mascot that matches the community’s history.
“Most of these schools with Native American mascots have never thought of the imagery and its use as disrespectful,” Miranda said. “This is more about education. We need to teach the Native American story.”
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