Tradition or Offense? The Debate Over Jackson’s Indians Name Is Back
Sunday Spotlight
The sticker reads “DO IT FOR THE INDIANS” and features an illustration of a man wearing a feathered headdress. Claims have circulated online about who made the stickers and how they were distributed, but I did not attend the game and have not independently verified those claims. I am not going to present them as fact. Regardless of where the stickers came from, they are only one small piece of a much bigger discussion. The real question is whether Jackson’s school name and imagery are something the community should continue to embrace, or whether it is finally time to truly consider a change.
I graduated from Jackson in 2005. I rarely played sports, and I was never the kind of kid who lived and breathed school spirit. If anything, though, I did always prefer Jackson over Cape a tiny bit, and for a long time, I hoped my own children would eventually attend Jackson, too. But even when I was young, the Indians' name and logo raised questions for me.
I read a lot growing up, especially history, and I knew enough about Andrew Jackson and his role in the forced removal of Native American peoples to find the connection confusing. Here was a town named after a president whose policies helped drive Native Americans from their ancestral lands, including the Cherokee people who endured the Trail of Tears, and a school whose identity was built around the name Indians. I remember wondering how the heck those things fit together. That does not mean I believe the town chose the name with the intention of insulting anyone, but it does mean the history was difficult for me to ignore and embrace.
This is not a new argument, either. I remember the strong opposition when Southeast Missouri State University retired its Indians identity and adopted Redhawks in the early 2000s. For some, changing a name like that feels like giving up a piece of history, and I understand why they see it that way.
Think about what the name Indians means to some people who grew up in Jackson. It may bring back memories of sitting in the stands with a grandparent who is no longer here, watching a son score his first touchdown as a starter, marching with the band, eating nachos under the stadium lights, or standing among a crowd that rises to its feet as the team moves toward the end zone. I have friends who met their spouse at a game. Some of their families have been cheering for Jackson for generations. Those memories are real, and nobody should pretend they mean nothing.
I remember watching Mario Whitney run down the sidelines for a touchdown when I was around 13 or 14 years old. The guy once scored more than 400 rushing yards in a high school game. At the time, it was a state record. For us in Jackson, it may as well have been like watching our team win the Super Bowl. It was that big of a deal. I remember thinking that he and the other players were something special, almost royalty. That memory has stayed with me, even though I was never much of an athlete myself, so I can understand how those moments become part of a person’s identity and how a school nickname can come to represent far more than the words themselves.
For people who want to keep the name, the argument may be simple. They are not using it to demean Native Americans. They associate it with school pride, athletic tradition, community, and generations of memories. They may see the name as a tribute to strength or bravery rather than an insult, and they may feel that people calling for change are judging their intentions without understanding what the name means to them. They may also worry that once a community starts changing traditions because someone objects, there will be no clear line for where that process ends. Those are real concerns, and they deserve more than being brushed aside as ignorance or stubbornness. A community’s traditions matter. People should be allowed to care about them, and disagreeing with a proposed change does not automatically make someone a bad person.
But there is another side to this question, and it is one I came face to face with through a conversation I have never forgotten. It was a lesson I learned the hard way, you could say. About three years ago, I worked with a Native American man at a local factory. We talked about how white people sometimes fail to recognize the racism embedded in things we grow up watching and hearing. We talked about music, Hollywood, and the ways Native Americans are portrayed in popular culture. I remember pushing back a little. I asked him if it was really that bad, and I brought up Disney’s Pocahontas. I told him that, while I knew the movie was not historically accurate, many of my friends and people my age had learned something about Native American culture through it. Surely that kind of exposure had to be worth something.
He looked me dead in the face and started singing a song from the movie: “Savages, savages, barely even human. Savages, savages…”
I honestly wanted to cry because I immediately understood what he was trying to show me. I had watched that movie a hundred times and heard those words as part of a story. I had focused on what I believed the movie taught us while overlooking what it was saying about the people it portrayed. I had been looking at it from my side of the screen. He was asking me to look at it from his. I have never forgotten that conversation and how it fundamentally altered my perspective. It didn’t mean every movie featuring Native Americans was bad, or that every person who enjoyed Pocahontas held prejudice against them. It meant that something I had viewed as harmless, even educational, could carry another meaning that I had never stopped to consider. My intentions had not changed at all, but my understanding had.
That conversation and others like it helped me understand why this debate cannot end with the simple argument that nobody means any harm. The question is not only what a name or image means to the people using it. It is also what that image communicates, what stereotypes it reinforces, and how it affects the people being represented.
The Association on American Indian Affairs, a Native-led organization that has advocated for Native communities for more than a century, has taken a firm position against Native-themed sports names, mascots, symbols, and gestures. The organization argues that such imagery perpetuates harmful stereotypes, distorts public understanding of Native peoples, and can contribute to discrimination. It also points to research linking Native mascots to negative psychological effects on Native youth, including lower self-esteem and increased stress and depression. Those are serious concerns, and they deserve to be considered seriously. A school mascot is not just a drawing on a helmet or a name printed on a scoreboard. It becomes part of an educational environment, one that helps shape how young people understand the world and the people around them. If an image intended to represent pride to one group reinforces a harmful stereotype for another, then the conversation deserves more than a dismissal that nobody meant anything by it. That does not mean every Jackson fan has bad intentions. I definitely do not believe that. But good intentions alone cannot answer every question about whether a tradition should continue.
I also recognize that Native American people are not a single group with one opinion on every issue. I have not interviewed a Native American person specifically for this article, and I am not going to pretend to speak on behalf of Native communities. Their perspectives deserve to be heard directly. The statement from the Association on American Indian Affairs is one documented perspective, not a claim that every Native American person agrees with it.
I personally believe it wouldn’t hurt anything if Jackson changed its name and logo. I think it is long past time to have that conversation seriously, and I believe the community could find a new identity to be just as proud of. That does not mean I think the people who want to keep the name should be forced to accept a change handed down to them from somewhere else. If this is a decision about the identity of Jackson, then I believe the people of Jackson should be the ones to decide that. I would support putting the question to an official community vote. We could look at Dolly Parton as our example actually. When she changed the name of her Dixie Stampede attraction, she explained it pretty simply. “As soon as you realize that something is a problem, you should fix it. Don’t be a dumbass,” she said. “I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose.” That's Dolly. She wasn't saying everyone who loved the old name was a bad person. She recognized that something familiar to her could mean something different to somebody else, and she was willing to make a change.
Changing a mascot would not erase the memories people made under that name. The grandparent in the stands, the first touchdown, the band, the friends, the family traditions, and the excitement of a Friday night game would still belong to the people who experienced them. But I understand why some people feel the name itself is woven into those memories, and why changing it might feel like losing something important. That is part of what makes this a difficult conversation rather than an easy decision.
At the same time, I think we have to ask ourselves whether the comfort of a familiar tradition should be enough to end the discussion. If we are confident that a name and its imagery are harmless, shouldn’t we be willing to listen when people explain why they see them differently? And if we discover that something we have always associated with pride carries a different meaning for others, are we willing to reconsider it?
I want to hear from both sides. If you believe Jackson should keep the Indians name, tell us why. If you believe it is time for a change, explain what makes you feel that way. If you are somewhere in the middle, I want to hear that, too.
Let’s have the conversation without assuming that everyone who disagrees with us is ignorant, hateful, or oversensitive. We can disagree strongly without deciding the other person must have bad intentions. But let’s also be willing to hear arguments that challenge what we have always believed, even when those arguments make us uncomfortable or are unfamiliar.
Tradition or offense? Is it time for Jackson to change, or should the Indians name remain? What do you think?
By Justin Stewart Burns
Publisher, The Missouri Stream
You can contact The Missouri Stream through Facebook or by emailing Streamdirect@missouristream.com.
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