Board eliminates offensive names (sports team names).

Windspeaker Staff Writer

LOS ANGELES 

A battle was won in the war against sports team names that depict Aboriginal people in an offensive manner last month when the Los Angeles County board of education voted to force schools with team names that depict American Indian people in a stereotypical manner to change them.

Angie Stockwell, the board's assistant superintendent for inter group relations, explained that three Los Angeles high schools and one junior high school have been given until the start of school next year to come up with new names, logos and mascots.

The Gardina Mohicans, the University Warriors and the Birmingham Braves -- all teams from high schools in the L.A. area -- will be renamed over the course of the next year.

The board voted six to nothing (with one abstention) on Sept. 8 to enforce the ruling of recently retired school superintendent Sid Thompson. Stockwell said the American Indian Education Commission, a group of Aboriginal people who advise the board, have been trying to get this measure passed for 17 years.

There was a great deal of pressure put on the board to not follow through on Thompson's ruling. After a year-long process during which the American Indian Education Commission members attended each school and presented their point of view, there was still a great deal of attachment to the existing names and that translated into resistance and political pressure to let the initiative die.

Despite the pressure, in a rare show of political courage, when the question was considered by the board each of the six board members who supported the initiative read a section of the motion, openly demonstrating their support in the face of the opposition.

The one member of the seven member board who did not vote for the change in policy represents an area that was strongly against changing the name of the school team.

He chose to abstain rather than vote against it.

Members of the American Indian Education Commission have volunteered to help each school with the fund raising that will be required to make the change-overs.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, Suzan Shown Harjo reports that her battle to make the owners of the Washington Redskins reconsider their team name has not been affected by the death of long-time team owner Jack Kent Cooke. Harjo, a well-connected Aboriginal activist with the Washington, D.C. Morningstar Institute, told Windspeaker the many years of legal motions and counter-motions are coming to an end.

"The team is fighting just as hard as ever. We're in the last round of the paper chase," she said. "I believe we'll get to the oral arguments soon but not sooner than two months from now."

Harjo and her lawyers are attempting to get federal trademark regulators to recognize that the name `Redskins' is insulting and degrading. United States law prohibits the use of offensive brand names.