Comment on Maine tribal leaders urge lawmakers to ban Native American school mascots

The protracted fight over the use of Native American mascots in Maine public schools made it to the State House on Monday, less than a month after the last school district in the state retaining such a mascot voted to change it. The bill, LD 944, from Rep. Benjamin Collings, D-Portland, would unilaterally bar Maine public schools from adopting Native American names, symbols or images for use as mascots, team names or logos. Though the bill would apply statewide, many who testified Monday before the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee were from Skowhegan, where on March 7, residents voted in a special school board meeting, 558-441, to permanently remove the “Indians” mascot from Skowhegan High School, capping years of contentious debate and reversing a decision made four years earlier. In December, newly elected Gov.