This Massena Red Raiders logo will have to be updated for the school district’s new mascot name, the Raiders.

MASSENA — Goodbye, Massena Red Raiders. Hello, Massena Raiders.

That’s the agreement worked out between the Massena Central School District and St. Regis Mohawk Tribe to comply with a state Education Department directive to remove all mascots and team names that refer to Indigenous people, unless there was an agreement in writing between the tribal nation and public school.

The district had already removed the old “Indian chief” mascot in 2004, replacing it with a capital “M.” But, Superintendent Patrick H. Brady told board of education members Thursday night, the “Indian chief” had still been used in some circles despite the official change.

“It was creating problems with some of our students, and we created the School Climate Committee. Before we started a lot of that work to change the mascot, we approached the (St. Regis Mohawk) Tribal Council and asked them about the continued use of the name Red Raiders,” Brady said. “At the time, we discussed the fact that we found in our research that Red Raider actually came from the name of the football uniforms of our varsity team back in the 1930s and was not initially connected with anything Indigenous.”

In June 2018, the district’s board of education officially approved a new mascot for the district. While the Red Raiders name would continue to be used, the new mascot was a Spartan, which replaced the capital “M,” although the letter “M” continued to be used in some ways such as on stationery.

“We had a committee that was formed. Students were part of this. They had a contest, and they came up with a mascot, which I think turned out to be a pretty cool mascot for the district,” Brady said.

With a recent Supreme Court decision and a state Education Department memo to remove all names, mascots and logos associated with Indigenous people, “it has changed the tenor on this,” Brady said.

“The (state Education) Department did form an advisory committee. There are representatives from the local St. Regis Mohawk Tribe on that committee,” he said. “Much of their deliberations has been about removing these mascots and so forth that have been seen as disrespectful to Native American people. But even among them, there isn’t always a common viewpoint on this. You can find a variety of viewpoints. But for many, it is seen as disrespectful.”

He said in recent months, he and Danielle Chapman, the head of the district’s Native American education program, have been in discussions with the Tribal Council.

“We discussed keeping Red Raider, but we would need a written agreement from them,” Brady said. “At the same time, as the Tribal Council was listening to their own community; they were getting a lot of feedback from their community. They were also getting feedback from others and from the SED advisory committee, and they were watching to see what was happening around the state as schools were dropping their names and mascots.”

He said that at the same time, he was having conversations with the head of the SED advisory committee “because I wanted to be sure we were going through the right process.”

“I was in fact assured by them that the process was correct and that if we had an agreement, that would be sufficient,” Brady said. “It’s clear that what’s happening here is the state Education Department has placed this authority in those local tribal councils to make these decisions. So it’s their authority and it’s their pressure to make those decisions.”

Brady and Chapman were recently asked back for another meeting with the Tribal Council to discuss the latest directive, and that’s when the decision was made to change the name from Red Raiders to Raiders.

“We went through these different viewpoints and issues that they were seeing,” he said.

Based on that conversation, “they would be willing to put in writing the district would be able to maintain the word Raider, but to drop the Red,” he said.

“That has now been passed on to the state Education Department and I’m waiting for their official approval of that agreement. The next step would be to come back to the board of education at the June meeting and have the board, through resolution, make that official if that’s what the board wants to do,” Brady said. “What this does is it allows options for the board to maintain an essential part of what was the name, which is now associated with something that is not Indigenous. If the board and community want to decide to move in a different direction down the road, they have that option as well.”

Board member Kevin F. Perretta said he understood the situation and was appreciative of the district’s efforts.

“I appreciate everything you’ve done on this,” he said. “We really have no choice in any of this course of action, and we’re doing everything we can to maintain what we have, and the decision is not going to be ours.”