The mascot to my High School is an Indigenous person, and I believe this to be racially insensitive because our school was named after Col. James ‘Nikki’ Rowe, a Vietnam war hero. He has nothing to do with Indigenous people, and the mascot seems to be there purely for aesthetic reasons. The mascot itself wears stereotypically racist clothing, including the very commonly exploited and stereotypical headdress. Our school has nothing to do with Indigenous people, yet we have that as our mascot. This is racially insensitive because we learn almost little to nothing about these people. Indigenous people are not meant to be our mascot like how dogs, lions, wolves and cheetahs would be, usually what most high schools would use, they are real people with a rich culture and history and should not be treated how they currently are. Indigenous and native peoples are not mascots and should never be boiled down into such.