By Andrea L.
Ever since the announcement that, starting this upcoming school year, Western Canada High School will change the name and logo of the Redmen, opposition has made itself known. Loudly.The announcement came this past Thursday near the end of Period 3. The school has been in talks since this past August with the Calgary Board of Education, with Council of Elders, with parents and teachers, and reached the conclusion that the use of the word Redmen, coupled with the logo depicting an aboriginal man with braids and feathers on his hair, is disrespectful and potentially offensive. The school plans to have all references to the name and logos removed from uniforms, website, and the school gym by the beginning of the next school year. The CBE has offered to help shoulder the financial burden of the renovations.
The responses against this move made themselves known swiftly. Two handwritten posters appeared Friday morning in the hallway in front of the Career Centre’s billboard. One of them claimed that the name “is a point of pride for us -- not a derogatory insult” and, paradoxically, implied that removing the name was like “pretending discrimination doesn’t happen.” The second poster invited readers to “stand up for our heritage” and implied that an association with “some of history’s most industrious, environmentally-friendly people” is a point of pride for the school. Both posters had been taken down before the end of the day.
They were far from the only ones. The number of student athletes proudly wearing hoodies and jerseys bearing the Redmen logo doubled overnight. A Facebook group, Keep Western Canada Redmen, was founded. It currently has over 1300 members, consisting mostly of students both current and past. Posts in the page claim to be planning an e-mail and letter writing campaign directed towards Area Director Calvin Davies and the CBE Board of Trustees. Western Canada alumni and famous former football player Norman Kwong expressed his distaste for the change to the Calgary Herald, and announced that he would write to Davies and ask him to reconsider.
Western Canada is not the first school, nor the first Redmen sports team, to ever need rebrand itself to a less racially charged name or logo, and it will not be the last. Just a week before Western, a high school in Saskatoon, also nicknamed the Redmen, announced their own name change. Many aboriginal groups across North America have campaigned against the use of Native Americans as mascots and the use of slurs in team names. Most notably, a campaign by the National Congress of American Indians against NFL’s Washington Redskins has attracted national attention in the United States, to the point that even President Obama commented on it.
The argument behind this movement is that names like “Redskins” and “Redmen” have been and continue to be used as slurs against Native Americans. Even if it is done unintentionally, to use the name, to wear the logo, does not result in a connection with First Nation peoples, but rather with the history of abuse and discrimination that they have suffered. They claim that it is time for people to move past outdated stereotypes that are damaging for First Nations communities. While the CBE was not approached by one of these groups, and chose to act preemptively, the sentiment stands.
Meanwhile, the members of the “Keep Western Canada Redmen” Facebook page express a variety of reasons behind their support of the name. The comments on the page range from those who are concerned for the monetary cost of such a move, to those offended that the student body was not consulted before the decision, to those who criticize what they perceive as excessive political correctness by the CBE, to the occasional openly racist comment. Behind most of these opinions, however, there is an undercurrent of pride for the history of the school and concern for how changing their name will affect their identity as student athletes and alumni.
The issue of names, logos, and mascots referencing ethnic communities is one that goes beyond Western Canada High School and affects current North American society. The CBE’s willingness to accommodate others might be best exemplified by a quote from the editor of the Slate magazine, explaining why they will no longer use the term Redskins. “Changing the way we talk is not political correctness run amok,” he writes. “It reflects an admirable willingness to acknowledge others who once were barely visible to the dominant culture, and to recognize that something that may seem innocent to you may be painful to others.”
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