As a high school hockey player, Adam Drexler wore his Massapequa Chiefs jersey with pride.
But as the Chickasaw Nation member grew up and learned about his Indigenous roots, he came to see the school’s mascot — a stereotypical Native American man wearing a headdress — as problematic.
Now his Long Island hometown has become the latest flashpoint in the enduring debate over the place of Indigenous imagery in American sports: The Trump administration launched an investigation Friday into whether New York officials are discriminating against Massapequa by threatening to withhold funding. The town has refused to comply with a state mandate to retire Native American sports names and mascots.
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It’s hard to miss the Native American imagery around Massapequa, a coastal hamlet 40 miles east of Manhattan where roughly 90% of the residents are white.
The Chiefs logo is prominently featured on signs adorning school, police and fire department buildings. Students in recent years even painted a colorful mural with the logo and team name on a commercial building next to the high school in protest of change to the mascot.
A few minutes drive away, next to the town’s post office, a statue of a Native American figure wearing a flowing headdress towers over those depicting a buffalo, a horse and a totem pole.
“When you think of Massapequa, you think of the Chiefs,” said Forrest Bennett, a 15-year-old high school sophomore.
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New York has been trying to rid schools of Native American mascots going back more than two decades to the administration of Republican Gov. George Pataki, and in 2022 gave districts until the end of the school year to commit to replacing them.
Massapequa was among four school districts on Long Island that filed a federal suit challenging the ban, arguing their choice of team names and mascots were protected by the First Amendment.
Districts could seek exemption from the state mandates if they gained approval from a Native American tribe, but state officials say Massapequa instead “stayed silent” for years.
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“Forcing them to change the name, after all of these years, is ridiculous and, in actuality, an affront to our great Indian population,” Trump wrote in a recent social media post. Days later he posed with a Massapequa Chiefs sweater in the Oval Office. “I don’t see the Kansas City Chiefs changing their name anytime soon!”
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The post A Town Refuses to Give Up the School’s Native American Mascot — and Gets Trump’s Support appeared first on American Renaissance.
