WEIGHING IN – Rather than move forward with a new nickname, Fonda-Fultonville Central School District leaders last month made a pitch to rebrand the “Braves.”
In an appeal to a state panel to keep its nickname of approximately 70 years, school district officials argued that “Braves” could have a patriotic meaning by referring to the final line of the “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which goes, “And the home of the brave.”
Each member of the Fonda-Fultonville school community is a Brave, Superintendent Thomas Ciaccio laid out in a March 10 letter to the state’s Indigenous Mascot Advisory body. And when you have multiple members of the school community together, you have Braves.
The panel rightly rejected the logic.
The Fonda-Fultonville district’s contorted reasoning is the sort of mind bending and rationalization that has helped to enable discrimination to persist in our country by excusing or making light of offensive and derogatory sentiments. We need to purge such problematic ways of thinking and continue to banish negative labels and logos.
Fonda-Fultonville’s appeal was made in response to a 2022 New York State Education Department mandate and preliminary guidelines by the state Board of Regents requiring boards of education to adopt a resolution laying out plans to move away from the Indigenous imagery — including names, logos and mascots — by the end of the current academic year.
Let’s be clear: The mandate is in no way meant to scrub Indigenous culture from the mainstream. The rules are intended to have the opposite effect. The mandate, with specific guidelines still being finalized, allows for logos, mascots and names to remain as long as they are deemed culturally appropriate by a federally recognized tribal nation within the state, or a state recognized tribal nation.
Once all destructive names and imagery disappear, as mandated, by the end of the 2024-25 academic year, New York school communities will no longer be continually exposed to language and imagery that’s potentially offensive to Indigenous groups. That means future generations of students are less likely to grow up believing that a name like “Indians” is acceptable. Instead, students will see and hear culturally acceptable names and logos that members of Indigenous communities themselves are proud to support.
“Braves” doesn’t fit the bill.
“We are not aware of a federally recognized tribal nation within the State of New York or a New York State recognized tribal nation approving the district’s use of the term ‘Braves,’” a NYSED spokesperson wrote to our reporter Chad Arnold.
Instead of attempting flawed mental gymnastics to keep the name, the Fonda-Fultonville district, and other districts, should stop playing games and get serious about a rebrand. Such changes should have been made long ago. NYSED issued a recommendation in 2001 that school districts terminate Indigenous mascots, but two decades later not enough school districts have heeded the call. Hence, the need for a mandate.
Fonda-Fultonville is hardly alone. The Schoharie Central School District is finally getting rid of the name the “Indians” and will be announcing this week whether the new mascot will be the Hawks, the Coyotes, the Storm, the Titans or the Vale. Mohonasen, meanwhile, still has to sort out what to do about its “Warriors” nickname and may potentially have to address the name of the Rotterdam school district itself. Mohonasen is a mash-up of three members of the Iroquois Confederacy: the Mohawk, the Onondaga and the Seneca.
The point in making such changes shouldn’t be about school districts seeing how far they can test the limits of new naming rules. Instead, school districts should show they are truly committed to inclusion and acceptance.
Fonda-Fultonville demonstrated the opposite. The school’s Braves name originated roughly 70 years ago, and the school’s logo once featured an Indigenous person wearing a headdress. Fonda-Fultonville correctly phased out its Indigenous imagery a few years ago. But in a show of naivete, the district enlisted the help of someone who does not represent a properly recognized tribal nation in its attempt to rebrand the Braves away from Indigenous culture to patriotism, according to a NYSED spokesperson.
Now the school district should willingly move on from Braves and admit to the harm that can come from a nickname, just as professional sports franchises in Cleveland and Washington, D.C., did in changing their names. Neighboring Montgomery County school district Canajoharie made such a move decades ago when it switched its nickname to the Cougars.
Fonda-Fultonville and other districts need to accept how their names, logos and mascots can perpetuate stereotypes, even if that isn’t the intent. Our country has a long history of stereotyping marginalized groups and allowing those stereotypes to continue by dismissing them either as jokes or as benign terminology. We’ve phased out disparaging terms for a reason. We now use more inclusive labels such as AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islanders) and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) because we’ve finally started listening to members of these communities and taking into account how they want to be identified. This constant cultural learning process is one school districts should want to embrace.
People who support keeping nicknames like “Indians” and “Braves” say they want to preserve pieces of American history.
But such proponents should ask themselves what sort of American history they are trying to uphold.
Columnist Andrew Waite can be reached at [email protected] and at 518-417-9338. Follow him on Twitter @UpstateWaite.
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How is “Braves” considered to be destructive? Braves were considered couragous warriors. They were respected and honored.