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Written by: Holly Near

Published: 25 February 2008

Created: 25 February 2008

Last Updated: 25 February 2008

The other night I attended a school board meeting in Kelseyville. The name of the school team was the subject of emotional debate. The school board has already responsibly changed the name away from “The Indians” and some apparently want it changed back.

I agree with the young athletes who spoke that the replacement name, The Knights, doesn’t cut it. School spirit is down. I imagine they just want to get on with their lives, have a successful academic year and get to play sports with the whole town turning out to cheer them on. Young people are go-forward kind of spirits. And it is hard to go back in time and awareness once we know better. I doubt they would really feel heightened school spirit from sitting in the stands yelling, “Smash the Jews,” “Cream The White Man,” “Slaughter the Coyotes,” “Pummel The Mexicans,” “Butcher the Whales” or hear from their opponents, ”Kill The Indians.” And if the students had been empowered to come up with a new school name, logo and song, I believe they would have brilliantly risen to the task.

But instead the other night, I heard a sincere plea from the grownups of European decent to go backwards, to stay in the horrors of the all-too-recent genocide. The Indians (the real ones, not the mascot) present at the meeting once again had to hear themselves equated to animals, told that no one there was a racist, that there was no harm meant by the mascot name and caricature, and so on.

I was born and raised in Potter Valley and went to high school in Ukiah. Our school names were Bearcat and Wildcat to symbolize speed and accuracy and skill. Fortunately, we were not called The Jews, The White Man, The Italians, The Mexicans or The Indians. Two of our star players were Pomo Indians and when I first met their grandmother, she told a story to my mother of white men hunting down Indians from horseback for sport. So the claim made the other night that this all happened a long time ago and we should move on did not ring true. This happened in my lifetime because it takes longer than one generation to forget the pain of rape and slaughter and kidnapping.

In 1965, I played on the volley ball team in high school. Sometimes if there was tension on the floor, there would be a fight afterwards, the White girls against the Indian girls, tearing out each other’s pierced earrings and bruising each other’s eyes. The claim that there is no racism here did not ring true.

One speaker talked about how proud she was to be An Indian (i.e. member of school spirit) and that it had meant so much to her to be the high school princess. I was high school princess in 1967. But it never occurred to me that there were no Indian girls nominated for the crown. And deeper yet, it never occurred to me to ask them, “How are the young women honored in your culture? Perhaps we could mix the two cultures or have two celebrations on home coming day.” It does not seem appropriate to carry a peoples’ name if you are not also willing to carry the history, the culture, the song, the stories, the traditions and the heartbreak.

I have watched my people lose touch with their own European culture and once lost in that sense of emptiness, when you no longer have a home, I watch us begin to steal. We steal land, songs, jewelry, food, clothes and holidays. As Meg Christian writes in one of her songs, “I nearly tore up your house looking for my own keys.”

So back at Ukiah High School 1967, if there had been such a meeting as the one in Kelseyville, I would have been sitting with the white kids. But guess what? The gift of change, like spring, is always in the air. The Pomo women educated my mother and father and our parents educated us and the other night, my sister Laurel and I were sitting with the Indians. The day my parents taught me to cross over the barriers between people was the finest day of my life.

How can we possibly dare to participate in decisions about other peoples’ lives and hearts if we cannot cross over and sit with them? Maybe we won’t speak, maybe we will just listen, maybe we will just let ourselves feel the hot and cold mix of nerves and relief that come when we dare to sit in peace with some one that isn’t from our own clan. But that is where peace starts.

It does not come from Bush ordering the bombing of Iraq. It comes from sitting with the Iraqi women and children and the men that they choose. Just sitting. Watching the babies play together. And out of that simple example of well-being will come the next generation of decisions. The war against the Indians will not end until the people of northern European heritage cross over that isle, that river, that silence, that denial of history.

I don’t like that my great grandparents remained silent and condoned the killing of Indians. But it won’t help for me to pretend it didn’t happen. The truth is hard at first and then it liberates and everything starts to change. I am not an Indian. I am sitting with the Indians. There is a big difference.

So, to the young people at Kelseyville High. Rise up. Call for a competition to find a new name for your school, for your team. Have art contests for logos and song contests for new songs. Don’t get brought down and depressed in this mire. Your neighbors are telling you loud and clear, “This hurts. Please stop hurting us.” The cleanest response is, “OK. That is not our intention so we will find another name. We will find the third way.“

What is the third way? The third way is when the first and second way is unacceptable. So instead of choosing between two negatives, you create a positive alternative.

Way one is unacceptable which is to keep the name “The Knights.” Hate it. Bummed out. Depressed. No school spirit. Makes it hard for current and future generations to trust neighbors, feel safe at school and get a good education.

Way two is unacceptable which is to keep the name “The Indians.” That is to hurt the Indians again, make it hard for current and future generations to trust their neighbors, feel safe at school, get a good education.

Way three. Take on a new name chosen by the current student body that is not offensive to any cultural or ethnic group, to women or to endangered species. In a formal ceremony, ask the Pomo Indian committee, chosen by the Clayton Duncan family, to clarify that there is no offense in the new logo. In a public ceremony, offer up the new name, the new mascot, the new logo, the new song to a new era of peace and understanding in the context of historic truth.

And be sure to invite the national press – 60 Minutes, Oprah and The Today Show – so that they can come and celebrate a student body and a community that is moving on, not with hate and denial and mistrust, but with full disclosure and a joyful decision. Let it go down in history that in 2008, the student body of Kelseyville High decided NOT to call themselves The Indians but rather to actually be IN community with their Indian neighbors.

Holly Near lives in Santa Rosa.

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