SKOWHEGAN, Maine - Skowhegan-area schools won't be forced to drop the nickname "Indians" for their sports teams. In a close decision late Thursday, the school board in SAD 54 voted to keep the name, over the objections of Maine's four tribes, which argue the term is racially insensitive and hurtful to Native Americans.
Skowhegan schools are the only ones in the state that still use such a nickname, which defenders say is not meant to be racist and is simply a part of the town's heritage and identity.
On Thursday night, nine members of the school board voted to drop the name. Eleven, including Valerie Coulumbe, voted to keep it. Here's Coulumbe, explaining her vote to the board, in audio obtained from video shot by WMTW News 8.
"I have gotten more phone calls from student athletes, begging me to keep the name. As a former student athlete and a former graduate, I am a Skowhegan Indian," Coulumbe said.
"I'm very disappointed," says Maulian Smith, a member of the Penobscot Nation, who spoke at a district forum several weeks ago. At the session, Smith and other members of Maine's four tribes told personal stories of the misunderstanding and hurt they've experienced when confronted with nicknames like "Indians."
"It's unfortunate that the school board allowed the people of the town to intimidate them and bully them into making this decision," Smith says. "It's really not in the best interests of their children."
In the weeks leading up to the vote, school board members were inundated with e-mail and other messages from frIends and neighbors, weighing in on the issue. At Thursday night's meeting, one board member who voted to dump the nickname told the Portland Press Herald that she'd gotten a lot of nasty e-mails from people.
Tim Downing, the board's vice chair, has also heard from a lot of people. "Oh gosh! Yes. Hundreds." But Downing, who also voted to drop the nickname, says 99 percent of the e-mails he received were civil and more or less equally split between those on both sides of the debate. "People had done their homework on this, knew where they wanted to come down and were trying to help us through the process, which was appreciated."
Skowhegan schools are now the last in the state that use a nickname that Native American tribes find offensive. Disagreement over the use of the term "Indians" first surfaced in the town as early as 1999, when the American Indian Movement sent a letter of protest to local district. The school board formally rejected a push to drop the name two years later. Then, in February of this year, the Bangor chapter of the NAACP weighed in, demanding that the district come up with a different nickname and mascot.
"When you look at the vote, obviously, had it flip-flopped, eleven in favor of change would have been sweeter," says Barry Dana, a former tribal chief of the Penobscot Nation. But Dana says the tribes still accomplished a lot by pushing the issue and demanding to be heard. "To come into a situation, totally without allies, and then in such a short amount of time have so many people in town, in the district, come to our support, and then to finally have nine out of 20 people vote for change, I thought was remarkable."
But for Maulian Smith, who's Dana's daughter, the outcome stings. She says she'd like to see the tribes put pressure on the Maine Principals Association to get other schools to refuse to play Skowhegan in sports unless the district drops the "Indians" nickname.
