Greater Bangor Area NAACP President Michael Alpert, has asked Skowhegan High School officials to stop using the 'Indian' name and image as it's mascot.

He wrote the school and included a petition, saying: “The implications of cultural violence embedded in Skowhegan High School’s nickname and mascot are deeply offensive to native people.”

The school's Superintendent Brent Colbry and Principal Monique Poulin say changing the nickname is a community decision. Barry Dana of Solon, the former chief of the Penobscot Nation, supports dropping the current mascot.

In recent years other schools, including Scarborough, Sanford and Wiscasset, dropped Indian-themed mascots.

The following is a brief history from skowhegan.org:

For thousands of years before the first white man arrived at Skowhegan Island, the area was used by Maine Indians. They speared salmon and other fish in the pools beneath two waterfalls there and utilized the rich land on its banks to raise corn and other crops. This place was an important stop on their annual migrations from northern hunting grounds in winter to coastal Maine in summer. They dried fish on the Island in early summer and planted crops to be harvested on their return northward in autumn.

There is uncertainty of the origin and meaning of the name Skowhegan. One source says that in the Abnaki language it means "Falls by the Pine Plain Lands.” Another says that "Skowhegan" is the Indian word for "spearing" or "place to watch." Most historians lean toward the latter translation but either would have been descriptive.

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