Threatened over Indian logo vote, one Dartmouth School Committee member refused to blink

“Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

James Madison

It’s not been an easy year for Shannon Jenkins.

Responding to increasing calls to ban Native American names for school athletic teams, the UMass Dartmouth political scientist and Dartmouth School Committee member tried to find a middle, evidence-based solution. 

Jenkins was the moving force two years ago to form a Dartmouth schools diversity committee that invited members of the various tribes of the Wampanoag nation to town. The committee wanted the tribes to discuss their perceptions of the growing awareness that these Indigenous sports team names are harmful. For that, Jenkins was rewarded by being relentlessly vilified by local supporters of continued use of the name “Indians” for Dartmouth teams, which evidently started somewhere in an unaware 1950s.

The crowd behind “Defend Dartmouth” beat up Jenkins on social media, threatened to sue her over an apparent Twitter comment, and staged a quietly organized, but very well-funded, ballot referendum campaign that successfully sought to dismiss all the harmful evidence about what Indigenous names for sports teams actually do to Native kids. They also got out their voters in what would have been an otherwise little-noticed town election. If they weren’t so surly about their victory, you almost might say good for them, if the stakes for Dartmouth and Native kids were not so high. 

Ever since the town vote, Defend Dartmouth has  been crowing about the 81 percent of the 23 percent turnout that favored keeping “the Indian logo” (as if this was ever ultimately about a logo rather than a sports team name). These same Indian-name supporters, the very next day after the election, threatened a recall election for any School Committee member who did not follow the recommendations of the non-binding referendum at the very next committee meeting.

Jenkins, however, was undeterred. 

The poli-sci professor, who teaches the Constitution for a living, refused to buckle to the pressure of Defend Dartmouth, and before Monday’s vote, outlined for anyone on the committee who would listen (and astonishingly there were none) the sad history of American majorities abusing American minorities. From the internment of the Japanese during World War II, to the widespread opposition to gay marriage in Massachusetts before the 2004 Supreme Judicial Court decision to the 100 years of Jim Crow segregation of Blacks and whites in the South, Jenkins rattled off just a few of the best known times that this country has denied the rights and dignities of minorities. That doesn’t mean America is any worse than any other place on God’s blessed earth in that regard, but it doesn’t mean we are any better either.

“History has shown us repeatedly that approval by the majority does not mean that something is right,” Jenkins said.

https://newbedfordlight.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Shannon-Jenkins-addresses-Dartmouth-School-Committee-1.mp3

Unfortunately, Jenkins’ colleagues were not so courageous.

You might forgive John Nunes, who like myself is an older guy. He started off the meeting by acting as if he was just so bored by the whole issue, saying he’s been on the committee for 31 years, and that these attempts to get rid of the Indian name have come and gone. Nunes clearly wants the issue to just go away, but those days are gone in America. Appropriation by whites of Indigenous names is not going away, no matter how many people with some part of Indigenous blood say it’s alright by them. Ultimately, Dartmouth can stem that tide but it will not resist it. 

The popular Mr. Nunes, to this outside observer, seems to function as some kind of School Committee “political boss” used to getting his way instead of functioning as one of five equal members of the committee. It’s worth noting that a member of the Dartmouth Educators Association during the meeting asked if the committee would consider appointing someone other than Nunes as the rep to the negotiating team next year. Nunes, who was elected committee chair Monday, quickly re-appointed himself to the job. 

That matters for the teachers but it will not matter for the poor Dartmouth kids who will now have to continue to travel to other cities and towns carrying the name Indians and an Indian image that no matter how nobly drawn, will be increasingly seen as prejudicial outside of town. And that will be the case no matter how many “reaffirm” votes that Defend Dartmouth extracts out of the terrified members of the School Committee, and no matter how many laudable programs the town adds to its curriculum on the history of the Southeastern Massachusetts Pokanokets (the name for the mainland Wampanoags). The issue is not going away.

By the way, in the wake of the suggestion by several Aquinnah members that the town forge a relationship with that branch of the Wampanoags for the use of the Indian logo, if the town goes in that direction — which a majority of the members approved Monday — the financial arrangements of any such agreement should be thoroughly scrutinized for their appropriateness.

In the end, the School Committee narrowly followed the Defend Dartmouth demand, giving the nod by just a 3-1-1 vote with Jenkins the only member with the courage to stand up against the recall threat. 

Member Kathleen Amaral’s position was the most disappointing. She seemed to understand the importance of protecting minority points of views, and initially insisted there must be conditions if the Indian name survived. She even said that any student-athletes who don’t want an Indian on their back or their chest or their head, should not have to have one. But after Nunes said he would only support member Chris Oliver’s reaffirmation motion of the Indian name if it included no conditions, Amaral collapsed. Oliver, by the way, said little of substance beyond seeming to be a functionary for the motions Nunes wanted.

Perhaps the most disappointing committee member on Monday was Mary Waite, who gave a rambling speech about the necessity of respecting minorities but did not have the courage of her convictions. She proposed something about adding the words “Dartmouth honors” wherever Indian image is used, as if that would cover any sins or misunderstandings. In the end, Waite tried to avoid the whole controversy by abstaining from a vote the town deserved to have her take a position on. Both Amaral and Waite are up for re-election next year and seem to have received Defend Dartmouth’s threat even though they both seem to know better.

The fallout from the Defend Dartmouth debacle won’t go away easily.

There was one speaker on Monday whose remarks caught my attention. She asked who is Dartmouth being defended against? From the looks of the people who may have paid for all those Defend Dartmouth signs, it was traditionalist and activist Republicans trying to defend the town against “woke” liberals. It was a classic wedge, culture-war battle —  except most of the Democrats in this increasingly conservative town seemed just fine with the Indian name, too.

The Defend Dartmouth Ballot Question Committee quietly raised almost $2,200 before the April 5 vote. It’s not known whether that money was used to pay for all those Defend Dartmouth signs with the Indian logo on them, or the robo-calls that some town residents said they received about the importance of a 90%-plus white community being able to continue to call itself Indians.

That’s because the state doesn’t require the expenditures for the campaign to be made public until 30 days after the election. Take a note, state Rep. Chris Markey.

The two biggest contributors to the stealth campaign — and I call it a stealth campaign because the Dartmouth Select Board did not consider, and then approve the ballot referendum until early February, almost 2½ years after the diversity subcommittee first formed — and just two months before the election.

It didn’t matter. The Defend Dartmouth referendum committee was set to go. Of the $2,200 it raised, some $1,800 of it came from just two sources. One of them, Ricky Tsay, is a Republican congressional candidate from Florida who gave $300. The other, a single contribution of $1,500, was given by one person named Leslie Pereira. 

Pereira has the same address as Dartmouth Republican Town Committee member Chris Pereira, according to campaign finance reports. Pereira is perhaps best known for organizing a Dartmouth rally for Donald Trump in 2020.

Add in the booster clubs, former Republican state Senate candidate Jacob Ventura and Sean Carney, son of conservative New Bedford City Councilor Naomi Carney, as Native representatives of a branch of the Wampanoags with connections to the town, and it was a very, very effective campaign.

There is no doubt that they are right, that a very large part of Dartmouth doesn’t want to give up the name Indian.

But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t.

Email Jack Spillane at jspillane@newbedfordlight.org