Massapequa, NY (AP) -As a high -school hockey player, Adam Drexler wore his Massapequa Chiefs jersey with pride.
But when the member of Chickasaw Nation grew up and found out about his indigenous roots, he came to see as problematic to see the school’s mascot – a stereotypical American Indian man who was wearing a headdress.
Now his hometown Long Island has become the youngest Flashpoint in the eternal debate about the square of indigenous pictures in American sport: The Trump administration initiated an investigation on Friday whether New York official Massapequa was threatening to hold back the funds. The city has refused to comply with a state mandate to retire sports names and mascot of the indigenous people.
“There was no tribe east of the Mississippi who ever wore a headdress – ever,” said Drexler, 60, who was adopted and raised by a white Jewish family. “How can you argue for a symbol that has no meaning or relevance here, while at the same time you honor and respect the culture and history of the people of which this city is named?”
It is arduous to miss the American indigenous people around Massapequa, a 40 miles (40 miles) eastern coastal pictures east of Manhattan, where about 90% of the residents are white.
The Chiefs logo can be seen prominently on signs of the school, police and fire brigade buildings. In recent years, the students have even painted a colorful mural with the logo and the team name in a commercial building next to the high school in protest against the mascot.
A few minutes away by car, next to the city’s post office, a statue of an Indian figure that carries a flowing headdress towers over those who represent a buffalo, a horse and a dead recommendation.
“If you think of Massapequa, think of the chiefs,” said Forrest Bennett, a 15-year-venerable high school in the second year.
A city in contradiction to state politics
New York has tried to free schools from Mascot from the American indigenous people who return to the administration of Republican governor George Pataki for more than two decades, and in 2022 gave the districts until the end of the school year to replace them.
Massapequa was one of the four school districts on Long Island, which submitted a federal action that questioned the ban and argued that their choice of team names and mascot was protected by the first change.
Districts could satisfy themselves from the state mandates if they were approved by a tribe of the American indigenous people, but state officials say that Massapequa “still” for years.
The local school authority rejected it to make a comment this week and instead referred to an explanation on Friday, in which they praised the Federal Education Agency’s investigation, which President Donald Trump has brought to the deposition in the past few weeks.
For his part, Trump has made regular visits to Long Island in recent years because the pre -city region has shifted the Republican. Last spring he visited Massapequa to take part in the New York police officer.
“They force them to change the name after all these years is ridiculous and actually an affront to our great Indian population,” Trump wrote in a recently published social media contribution. Days later he posed with a Massapequa chief sweater in the Oval Office. “I don’t see that the Kansas City Chiefs will change their name soon!”
Despite years of protests by some American activists, the bosses of the NFL have recorded their name. Five years ago, the team banned the fans, headmaker or facial color in which the culture of the American indigenous people refers.
In the meantime, other professional teams, including the Washington Redskins (now commanders) of football and the Cleveland Indians, adopted recent Monikers and Logos.
The residents say that mascot “honors” American indigenous people
In the restaurants and shops next to Massapequa High, the students and parents insisted that the team name and the mascot were the Massapequa, which were part of the wider Lenape, or in Delaware, which lived in the forests of the northeast of the United States and Canadas, a thousand years inhabited by European colonization.
“It is not that we try to do something disrespectful,” said Christina Zabbatino, a mother of two children. “Actually, I would be honored if it were my face, do you know what I mean?”
Lucas Rumberg, a 15-year-venerable second student, shrugged that the school logo reflects the established robe of a tribe from the middle west, and not the clothing that was worn by the Lenape, which were finally forced to move further west by colonial settlers and then the American government forces.
“Although it is not necessarily what they look here, I have the feeling that it still conveys that we respect the American indigenous people,” said Rumberg. “I understand that people may be offended by him, but I only have the feeling that it is here for so long that it should stay.”
Indians say that mascots are dehumanized
However, this repellent attitude is exactly the reason why stereotypical mascot is offensive, Joseph Pierce, director of the American indigenous people and indigenous studies at Stony Brook University, also argues on Long Island.
“It is as if this picture were an abbreviation for all Indians,” said the citizen of the Cherokee Nation. “And that reduces us to a guy instead of presenting us as different peoples.”
Indian mascot also helps to ensure that there are relics of the past and that there are no living communities that are exposed to urgent threats today, says Joey Fambrini, member of the Delaware tribe of Indians, who works for the New York Indian Council, a non -profit organization that the American indigenous people offer.
“This dehumanization is not harmless: it directly contributes to why our fights are ignored or minimized,” said the 29-year-venerable Brooklyn in Brooklyn and found that there were high poverty quotas, inadequate apartments, lack of pristine water and constrained educational access.
The cheerful mascot also hides massapqua’s gloomy legacy of violence against Indians, says John Kane, member of the Mohawk tribe in the state of New York, who has been pushing districts across the state for years to change their names and mascot.
After all, the city was a massacre in which numerous local men, women and children were killed by the Europeans in the 16th century, he said.
“You don’t try to honor us. Therefore, the accuracy of the logo is not a role,” said Kane. “So the idea that this is a kind of honor for us? I mean, come. It is an absurd suggestion to suggest.”
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Follow Philip Marcelo at Twitter.com/philmarcelo.
