NY Board Of Regents Bans Native American Mascots At Schools: Reports

Greg, I have two ancestors who were on the Trail of Tears, and my ancestry search has revealed relatives as far back as the Jamestown Settlement and the Powhatan tribe of Pocahontas, possibly even related to her, on my mother's side. The Mi'kmaq is on my father's side. I have been to pow-wows, but my mother raised me to respect all cultures and people. COMMUNITIES should decide how they want to be perceived. If a COMMUNITY has a population of Native Americans, I am OK with the local government inviting their say. I am against a central government dictating how We the People live. The Constitution was written to establish a gov't OF, BY and FOR the PEOPLE, not of, by and for the gov't. Democratic principles require democratic processes, not edicts from above. I though we learned that the hard way during the COVID scam.

MAJ Montgomery Granger - If we didn't have a central government doing that, blacks would still be second class citizens, and both a central government and the courts are necessary to keep pure democracy in check. It doesn't allow "Communities" to make all of those decisions, we saw what happens when you did that in the South for decades after the Civil War.

Second, "Of, by, and for the people" does not appear in the Constitution, it was from the Gettysburg Address, and is not part of the governing rules of this nation. What the Constitution protects is a "republican form of government", meaning that the states are members of a federal republic, and use a system of representative democracy to fill the leadership positions.

Finally, having a couple of ancestors from one of the nine or ten Cherokee trail of tears, some 182 to 185 years ago doesn't mean that you're Indian, or even that you have a good view of what they believe.

Capt Gregory Prickett - If we didn't have a central government, blacks would still be slaves in many states, Native American children would still be stripped away from their parents and given to white people to adopt or forced to go to boarding schools so the "red savage can be made civilized", etc. And there were people who laughed at Deb Haaland for crying with the various audience members who talked of those boarding school experiences within their families. SIGH!!!
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2023/01/21/interior-secretary-hears-from-arizona-boarding-school-students/ [login to see] 7/

Patricia Overmeyer - My grandfather was taken from the reservation in Wisconsin and sent to an Indian Boarding School in Kansas, and then, since half-breeds could get work outside of the Indian Service (the predecessor of BIA), he was sent to the Kiowa Agency in Oklahoma. Those places were hell-on-earth for Indian children. One of his cousins was sent to the Carlisle Indian School and ran away, walking back to home in Wisconsin.

We have had culture after culture cancelled in this country by a WOKE minority. Enough! The beauty of America is LOCAL control, of schools, towns, counties, etc. This issue should be decided by the people who are affected by it, not by snowflake frauds from out of town, out of state, out of their minds.

MAJ Montgomery Granger; Capt Gregory Prickett - And the Native American culture was the first to be cancelled by this country under the WOKE minority of white people. It was well over 200 years before a law was passed to ensure Native children weren't taken away from their tribal nations and made available to adopt by WOKE white people. Oh wait a minute, those WOKE white people were in the majority, so forcing Native American children to be taken away from their parents and given to white people wasn't WOKE. It was simply LOCAL control of schools, towns, counties, etc. The people affected by it, the Native American tribal nations/parents/children, didn't have a say in that LOCAL control.
And why do you think it's okay to have a bunch of roads, streams, rivers, valleys, etc. all named "squaw"? Would you like to live on C--t Peak? Are you offended by that term but not offended by the term "squaw"? Under your theory of "LOCAL control", then white people could continue to use the word "squaw" because the WOKE minority just don't understand that it's always been called that and besides, it's a compliment to Indian women.

What's interesting is that people who don't live there, think their opinion should matter to people they don't know and don't care about. It's called PROJECTING one's beliefs onto others without being a stakeholder. Let people in a community decide how they want to be perceived without outside WOKENESS coming in and cancelling their culture. That's NOT America, where people are promised Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness that THEY choose, not outsiders.

MAJ Montgomery Granger - It's a cover for bigotry. That's the same argument used in the 1960s.