Native American Mascot Use No Reason To Withhold Funds: AG Opinion

LANSING, MI — The state can’t withhold school funding as punishment to districts that use Native American mascots or logos for their schools, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said in an opinion released Thursday. The opinion comes at the request of state school Superintendent Brian Whiston, who suggested this spring that the school withhold anywhere from 5 to 10 percent of a district’s state aid payment as a fine for failure to remove Native American mascots.

The issue is a divisive one in Michigan, where dozens of schools use Native American imagery, and around the country. Supporters argue the Native American mascots as a source of pride and heritage; critics call them culturally insensitive at best and discriminatory at worst.

Complaints date back decades, but the issue flared up again in February after a bitterly divided Paw Paw school district in western Michigan voted, 4-3, to continue using the Redskins mascot, despite pressure from Native Americans living in the area. Two months earlier, the Belding school board about 100 miles away voted to drop the Redskins and use Black Knights instead.

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Julie Dye, a member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians that pushed the Paw Paw school board to drop the Redskins logo, told the state school board in March the decision to keep it was “deeply hurtful,” MLive.co reported. Dye encouraged officials to ramp up the pressure against schools using Native American by instituting fines, prompting Whiston to seek the attorney general’s opinion.

Tell Us: If the issue goes to the Legislature, would you support a bill that would allow the state school superintendent to withhold some funding to schools that continue to use Native American mascots and logos?

The state school board adopted a resolution in 2003 recommending that schools drop Native American mascots and imagery, then reaffirmed the position in 2010. The resolution cited objections to the use of such mascots by American Indian tribes, state and local officials, private citizens and others.

The resolution also referenced a Michigan Civil Rights Commission recommendation in 2002 that said “schools should not use their influence to perpetuate misrepresentations of any culture of people” and that “stereotypes of American Indians teach all students that the stereotyping of minority groups is acceptable, a dangerous lesson in such a diverse society.”

Efforts to force a change have been unsuccessful. A 2013 American Civil Liberties Union discrimination lawsuit tried to stop federal funding to Michigan schools using such logos, but it was dismissed because it didn’t establish their continued use created a racially hostile environment.

In his opinion, Schuette said there is no “express or implied legal authority” for the state superintendent to withhold school funds.

“While the Legislature has expressly authorized the withholding or forfeiture of school aid under certain circumstances,” Schuette wrote, “it has not done so on the basis of a school’s ue of a particular logo or mascot.”

Whiston said at a state school board meeting this spring that if the attorney general’s opinion didn’t give him the authority to withhold funding, he might seek legislative authority to do so, MLive reported.

Read the full opinion below:

Photo of Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette (AP Photo/David Eggert)