{"id":45984,"date":"2021-07-01T16:08:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T22:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/grand-junction-school-to-retire-warrior-mascot-as-polis-signs-ban-into-law\/"},"modified":"2021-07-01T22:08:00","modified_gmt":"2021-07-01T22:08:00","slug":"grand-junction-school-to-retire-warrior-mascot-as-polis-signs-ban-into-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/grand-junction-school-to-retire-warrior-mascot-as-polis-signs-ban-into-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand Junction school to retire Warrior mascot as Polis signs ban into law"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Grand
Grand Junction Central High School's mascot, known as Tawasi, will be retired. (Stina Sieg\/Colorado Public Radio)<\/span>Stina Sieg\/Colorado Public Radio<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

After 75 years, Grand Junction\u2019s Central High School will keep the name Warriors, but the school\u2019s mascot \u2014 that depicts a Native person \u2014 will soon be retired.<\/p>\n

The image looks like it was pulled straight out of an old Western film: an Indigenous man with a stern, angular profile, feathers in his long hair. His name is Tawasi.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I have absolutely no idea where that came from,\u201d said Principal Lanc Sellden.<\/p>\n

When Sellden announced Thursday that the school will be getting a new mascot, he knew it had been a long time coming. Various people in the community had already been demanding the school get rid of the racist image, on and off, for years. Sellden didn\u2019t know the specifics, but said that decades ago people in the Native community asked the school to change how it used the mascot, including ending the practice of having someone dressed as Tawasi appear in public. The school did that, but Sellden said there hasn\u2019t been much contact with the Native community since, which he regrets.<\/p>\n

He believes the mascot was never meant to be racist, \u201cbut as times change and cultures change, that is what is seen now. And so we\u2019re going to change it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students and alumni are divided over the news. Some have told Sellden that he should fight the change, that it goes against the school\u2019s history. Others, he said, have a different message: \u201cIt\u2019s about time.\u201d<\/p>\n

A bill passed by the Colorado legislature earlier this month levies a $25,000 per month fine on schools that continue to use Native imagery or names. The Colorado Sun recently reported that 24 schools across the state still use this kind of imagery. Gov. Jared Polis on Monday signed the Senate Bill 116 meaning the schools have until June 2022 to comply.<\/p>\n

That includes Montrose High School, about an hour from Grand Junction. Montrose\u2019s teams go by the moniker the \u201cIndians;\u201d their mascot symbolized by a Native man in a headdress. A totem pole sits at the school\u2019s football field. School officials there have also talked about starting the process toward finding a new mascot.<\/p>\n

For Central High, that journey has already begun, though the specifics of how a new mascot will be chosen have not been decided. For now, Principal Sellden has been asking the community to submit ideas for what the school\u2019s new version of a \u201cWarrior\u201d could be. He\u2019s received all kinds of answers. What about a member of the military? Or a Spartan? Or Viking?<\/p>\n

Some have recommended doing away with a human mascot altogether and opting something like a shield or war horse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I love is that some of the ideas that have come out from just opening it up to people have been super interesting and very different,\u201d Sellden said.<\/p>\n

Whatever the end result, he knows coming up with a new mascot for the school will be a big undertaking. It\u2019s not just about ordering some new uniforms and rebranding the website. It\u2019s changing signs and billboards, too, not to mention a giant painting splashed across the front of the school, 30 feet in the air.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t happen overnight,\u201d Sellden said. \u201cYou know, it takes some time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Schools have until June 2022 to retire mascots that use Native American images or names. Or they can be fined $25,000 a month<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[233,28,29,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-45984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45984"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=45984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}