“As natives have grown we are always push to the side, our rituals and our culture has been used as costumes. We only make up 2.09% of America’s population. And even though there are very little of us, our culture has been degraded by having mascots and the manufactured “native inspired decorations”. Not to mention the racism we face getting told “go back to your country” and the slurs that most people didn’t even know were slurs. I use to suppress my native culture because I was bullied for years. I would act like the slurs they use to say didn’t affect me. I stopped wearing my native jewelry. I stop wearing my braids that use to make me proud to be a native. And whenever I met new people I said I was “mixed” bc I was “white enough” to pass as mixed. The fact that I grew up with that mindset hurt, and now that I’m old enough to show people that it’s not okay for them to appropriate my culture. That you should respect all aspects of the native culture. We have been fighting for years for our FULL right to practice our cultural rituals. “The American Indian Religious Freedom Act legalizes traditional spirituality and ceremonies, overturning local and state regulations still on the books banning American Indian spiritual practices.” They lifted the ban in 1978. Our youth are now learning more of the culture we lost back when we were first colonized. And the fact that you guys genuinely are concerned and care about changing this. It means so much, we literally just want the bare minimum. We just want to be treated like we matter.”-Theresa Petersen, Lincoln High School

Native people are not your mascot. They are not your costume. Their culture is not yours to manipulate or be proud of or appropriate. The North Cobb mascot, a white person, wears a dark skinned costume with feathers and moccassins, this is gross cultural disrespect and appropriation, and coming from native voices, it has to change.

From the beginning of this country, Indigenous people have been silenced and pushed aside on their own land. They were tortured, enslaved, and murdered to build the country we know today, and their culture is still stolen, appropriated, worn as costumes and mascots, and pushed aside. All the other mascots you see are objects or animals, the Kennesaw Mountain Mustangs, the UGA Bulldogs, but ours is a culture, it’s a group of people, can we recognize how dehumanizing that is? Racism against Native Americans has been so normalized in our culture that we don’t even see it. Let’s turn that around and start making change.