As with many other liberal enclaves, New York State previously passed a law banning the use of Native American imagery or nicknames in logos and symbols employed by sports teams and other school activities. This impacted many schools across the state because New York has a rich history of interactions with the native tribes that were encountered here, frequently with disastrous results, primarily to the Indigenous Peoples. One of the schools that was swept up in the controversy was Liverpool High School, located in a suburb of Syracuse. Their team is the Liverpool Warriors. The name “warrior” was on the list of banned names because of its association with Native American tribes. They are now seeking to keep their mascot, but change the name of the team and are soliciting suggestions from the public. But not everyone agrees that the rules should apply to them for what should be fairly obvious reasons.
Liverpool Central School District’s mascot, a warrior, has been an ongoing discussion.
Back in April of 2023, the New York State Board of Regents unanimously approved new rules to ban the use of Native American culture by schools.
But Liverpool says their current mascot — a Roman Warrior — was adopted 20 years ago, and that they would prefer to keep the Roman Warrior logo but change the nickname. Keeping the current logo would cause less disruption for their branding work.
Many don’t agree with the state’s new terms, but the school must abide and move forward with brainstorming a new mascot.
This example should have been quickly identified as yet another overreach in an overtly, politically correct environment that sweeps up completely innocent people who are painted with a broad, progressive brush. Liverpool did not choose a name such as the “Redskins” or the “Chiefs.” It’s true that the team name is the “Warriors,” and that name often shows up associated with Native American iconography. But if you click through the link above, you will see that the team’s mascot does not look remotely like anything associated with Indigenous Americans. It’s a Roman Warrior with a helmet and a sword.
The community doesn’t want to give up their iconic mascot, so they are attempting to compromise by coming up with a new team name. I suppose that they could rename the team the “Trojans” or the “Legionnaires” and skirt around the law, but why should they be forced to do that? They didn’t name the team the “Warriors” more than twenty years ago in reference to the native tribes. They were clearly paying homage to the fighting spirit of the Roman legions. (Perhaps not coincidentally, there is a large and thriving Italian community in the area. I grew up only an hour from there.)
Does the school board simply lack the resources to fight the state on this issue? Or are they perhaps afraid of being painted by the broad brush I mentioned above and accused of being somehow insensitive or insulting to Indigenous Americans? If the latter, that’s simply cowardice because the allegation is patently ridiculous. The icon is not related to the native tribes and the tribes do not hold some sort of trademark on the word “warrior.” It’s been in common use across many cultures since long before Europeans ever first made contact with the indigenous North Americans. There is a version of the word “warrior” in virtually every language on the planet.
This is yet another case of local and state liberal governments running wild and forcing changes on communities that nobody wants and without any reasonable rationale. I did some searching today and was unable to find a single example of anyone representing the local Onondaga Nation tribal government objecting to Liverpool’s iconography. Even they don’t care. And yet the Liverpool community is being put through this torturous exercise to ensure that they don’t cross some sort of line in the new, liberal rules of order. It’s madness, and somebody needs to push back.