Change Minooka Indians Mascot: Petition

MINOOKA, IL — An online petition at Change.org is asking people to lend their voice to help get rid of the Minooka Community High School Indians mascot. The petition was started by an unidentified student, according to Change.org.

"For decades, MCHS has been the 'Home of the Indians,' a promotional catchphrase that is insensitive to Native Americans of the past, as well as those currently residing in our community. Some argue that this choice of mascot honors the Native Americans; however, representing ourselves as 'Indians' in a stereotypical manner is dehumanizing, and many Native Americans have expressed their opposition to this harmful practice," the petition states.

The petition has collected 1,102 signatures as of 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Some of the people who signed the petition offered the following comments:

• "Because this town has been full of racism since I can remember. At least this is one thing that can be changed."
• "My high school was also the Indians until 1993 when they decided to stop being on the wrong side of history. Read the room, Minooka."
• "Signing on behalf of my culturally insensitive cousin who is a graduate of MCHS. He shared this petition along with his negative comments about it on FB, giving me the wonderful opportunity to support it!"
• "We need to do better and right the wrongs in this country! This is offensive and degrading to our Native American people!"
• "I cringe every time I tell people about my high school. We are not honoring Native American people by maintaining a term they’ve explicitly expressed is incorrect and offensive. Let’s change our mascot!!"
• "I was a student at MCHS in the 80s and liked the mascot at the time. I have since come to understand that it is a bunch of oversimplified stereotypes that do nothing to teach about an real or specific American Indian nation."

The petition called Change Minooka Community High School's Mascot can be found here.

The organizer of the petition wrote: "We urgently propose that Minooka Community High School change our mascot."

There is also a petition aimed at preserving Minooka's history and keeping the Indians as the school mascot. For more, read this Patch article here.