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PHOTO:
Garner, the Newfoundland dog, at a Lewis & Clark football game. (Lewis
& Clark Athletics)
SPORTS
Bill Oram: If Lewis & Clark’s ‘Pioneers’ is offensive, then ‘Trail Blazers’ has to go, too
By Bill Oram The Oregonian, Portland, Jan. 23, 2024
Sorry, folks, it’s time for the Trail Blazers to go.
No, not to Seattle or Las Vegas. The team can stay. But the name is hereby canceled, effective immediately.
That’s the only logical conclusion given the recent news that Portland’s Lewis & Clark College is strongly considering doing away with the longtime moniker of its sports teams, the Pioneers. Because if one of those is objectionable, then the other is, too. What is a trail blazer if not an evocative euphemism for the P-word?
Oh, you didn’t know you were supposed to be offended by the Pios?
I didn’t either until last week, when I learned about the discussion happening on Palatine Hill. Before then, I thought Pioneers was just a rather bland nickname for Lewis & Clark’s sports teams, one that they’ve worn for nearly 80 years. Campus leaders are now asking “whether the Pioneers mascot represents the values of the LC community,” according to an email sent to alumni last week.
I realize that “Pioneers” probably does not mean the same thing to me, a seventh-generation Oregonian who has long taken pride in ancestors who arrived on the Oregon Trail, as it does to descendants of the Indigenous people who were displaced and killed with the arrival of white settlers.
History has a knack for examining the people who came here and forced others off their land with a non-critical eye. But it is also those same people to whom we owe Oregon’s statehood and the society we now inhabit.
So it is complicated.
We owe it to those who came before us to tell their stories as those of multidimensional people rather than mythologizing them or, conversely, trying to erase them.
Neither of those works.
However, it is illogical, if not downright hypocritical, for the college to limit the scope of the conversation to the athletic department and not to the name of the college itself. If Lewis & Clark President Robin H. Holmes-Sullivan wants to go down this road, then she ought to be compelled to go all the way. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were not only trail blazing explorers — pioneers — but slave owners.
And while they did not settle Oregon, their Corps of Discovery helped open the gates to the American West. Attempting to separate the two makes no sense.
That, however, doesn’t seem to be the fight Lewis & Clark President Holmes-Sullivan wants to take on. And smartly so.
It is one thing for institutions and sports teams to be sensitive to marginalized communities and remove racist imagery depicting Native Americans and, in the case of the now-Washington Commanders, an outright racist slur. It is quite another to shy away from our history entirely.
I don’t write a lot about Lewis & Clark sports. The college sponsors 21 varsity teams competing in the NCAA’s Division III. And while the sports teams are called the Pioneers, I’m told it is hardly seen as a collective identity at the school.
Alumni are Lewis & Clark grads and not Pioneers in the way that the state’s major universities give us Beavers and Ducks. The school does not use any of the traditional pioneer imagery — covered wagons, rugged mountain men — but instead has a Newfoundland dog, like the one that accompanied Lewis and Clark on their expedition, as its school symbol.
It feels telling that this conversation is being held at a small and exclusive liberal arts college in Portland where tuition will soon eclipse $64,000 per year and and not with say, the 49ers of the NFL or the various Miners at larger universities. Those are also groups, described in broad strokes, that appropriated Native land.
And we haven’t even touched on Vikings, Raiders and Spartans, among other groups of people famous for rape, torture, pillaging and slaughter.
I am sure there are those who feel that all those names should be erased from the sports landscape.
Have at it. That’s someone else’s battle.
By making this a priority, Lewis & Clark is signaling to the rest of the country that we here in Portland have lost the plot and are not focused on issues of real importance.
Untangling Oregon’s history from the pioneers who arrived in the 1800s and the more nebulous “pioneer spirit” that feels so foundational to the state is a futile exercise. And a performative one at that.
The Gold Man atop the state capitol in Salem is the “Oregon Pioneer.” Millions of schoolchildren around the country have long played “Oregon Trail” games in computer labs. Four Oregon high schools wear the Pioneer nickname.
Would we be having this conversation if instead of Lewis & Clark College it was, in fact, Portland’s NBA team that had been christened the Pioneers as nearly happened decades ago after fans were invited to submit names for the new team? It was, the story goes, the existence of Lewis & Clark’s teams that pushed the expansion franchise and its founder Harry Glickman to embrace the Trail Blazers name.
Like “Pioneers,” “Trail Blazers” does not strictly refer to the overland explorers who “settled” the American West. As Glickman, an Oregon pioneer in his own right, noted — and is preserved in the team’s annual media guide — the Trail Blazers name “reflects both the ruggedness of the Pacific Northwest and the start of a major league era in our state.”
“Pioneer” evokes aspirational ideals as well: innovation, courage, strength. Those are all virtues with which I’m sure Lewis & Clark, and not just its sports teams, would be proud to be associated.
And Oregonians, too, with what has long been a ubiquitous state symbol.
When the same issue was raised at the University of Denver in 2020, the school elected to preserve the Pioneers identity. The chancellor there, Jeremy Haefner, wrote that the school was committed, “to fully educating our community on why some in our community reject it and why some honor it. In proceeding this way, we aim to reclaim and define our moniker in ways that embody our current values and commitments.”
That is a much healthier and nuanced way to proceed than simply scrubbing the identity from campus.
We should all share a common goal of rooting out offensive imagery and terms.
But if Pioneers is offensive, then Trail Blazers is, too.
Good luck with that one.
https://www.oregonlive.com/sports/2024/01/bill-oram-if-lewis-clarks-pioneers-is-offensive-then-trail-blazers-has-to-go-too.html
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Lewis & Clark College Considers Changing Its Mascot From ‘Pioneers’
The symbol smacks of colonialism to some; others are “stunned” by the move.
PHOTO: Garner, the Newfoundland dog, at a Lewis & Clark football game. (Lewis & Clark Athletics)
By Rachel Saslow Willamette Week, Portland Jan 18, 2024 at 3:35 pm PST
Lewis & Clark College is deep in discussions whether to change the school’s mascot from Pioneers because some people feel the name is “inextricably linked with settler colonialism,” said college president Robin H. Holmes-Sullivan.
The process has so far included a 19-member steering committee, community meetings, and an online survey. The committee will present a recommendation to Holmes-Sullivan this spring; the final call is hers.
“The question of whether the mascot name ‘Pioneers’ represents the values of our community has come up more frequently in recent years,” Holmes-Sullivan wrote in a Sept. 29 letter.
While the mascot smacks of colonialism to some in the Lewis & Clark community, others have fond memories, or associate pioneers with discovery and innovation, she wrote.
Still others might be confused and think the mascot is actually a Newfoundland dog named Garner, who made appearances at sporting events until moving away in 2022. The dog is actually the school’s logo, in tribute to a Newfoundland named Seaman who accompanied Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their expedition, according to the school.
With the Jan. 17 release of the survey, news of the reconsideration has spread across the alumni network, where it has met with a mixed response.
Alumna Sheila Gallagher played soccer and club lacrosse at Lewis & Clark in the 1980s and remembers affectionately referring to her teams as the “Pios.” She feels “stunned” and “offended” by the idea of ditching the Pioneer
“What’s the next step?” Gallagher says. “If they are changing the mascot from Pioneers, you could argue the name Lewis & Clark is worse.”
(The school says there are no plans to change the name of the college.)
Despite identifying as a “dyed-in-the-wool liberal,” she has struggled to find ways “Pioneer” is offensive. Rather, Gallagher finds inspiration in the mascot: “I think the pioneer represents a sense of independence and strength and ‘we can do this.’”
According to Lewis & Clark spokeswoman Lois Leveen, the Southwest Portland college is taking a page from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. “Their thoughtful process provides a model for how to engage around issues like this,” Leveen says.
In 2016, Whitman changed its mascot from the Missionaries to the Blues, after Whitman’s local mountain range.
“We are exploring this question [of a mascot change] as a thoughtful community that strives to be respectful of the many cultures and experiences of those we welcome to our campus as students, faculty, staff and visitors,” Leveen says.
Gallagher pointed out another college’s journey: After a multiyear battle, the University of Denver ultimately upheld its “Pioneer” mascot.
