Indian nicknames generate little controversy in Alaska

Just imagine what would happen if some group tried a similar move in Alaska’s high schools, where there are seven teams nicknamed the Warriors, three known as the Braves and one school that proudly calls itself the Halfbreeds.

The Aniak Halfbreeds come from a Kuskokwim River village of 532 people located 317 miles west of Anchorage. It is accessible only by air or riverboat and is more than 73 percent Alaska Native, primarily Yup’ik Eskimos and Tanaina Athabascan Indians.

Students approved the nickname in the late 1970s as a nod to the community’s origins — white settlers who intermarried with Yu’pik Eskimos, said Wayne Morgan, a graduate and the school board president.

Aniak gets calls when there are headlines elsewhere about school nicknames deemed offensive.

“We see it as who we are, but not as other people hear it for the first time,” Morgan said. “It sounds offensive, but we don’t see it that way. It’s who we are.”

According to Alaska’s official Website on communities, a homesteader, Tom L. Johnson, in 1914 opened a store and post office at the site, which had been abandoned by Yu’pik people. Eskimos Willie Pete and Sam Simeon brought their families from Ohagamuit to Aniak. A trader, Semen Lukin, discovered gold nearby in 1932.

The school had different nicknames before the late ’70s.

“How it started was, our name before that was the Apostles. The girls had their own name, the Angels,” Morgan said. “A group of kids at that time changed it to the Halfbreeds. It was up to the kids.”

The symbol of the school is a traditionally dressed Alaska Native man holding a spear next to a white man holding a rifle, Morgan said.

“They symbolically cross the spear and the rifle and that’s the mascot,” Morgan said. A mural on the school wall shows similar characters shaking hands.

Morgan is Yu’pik, but his grandfather was a German who arrived in the early 1900s. He figures most Americans are a combination.

“Most people are of mixed race, mixed background,” he said. “We’re proud of it. The kids are still proud of it.”

Neither the governing body of Alaska high school sports nor the state’s largest Native Alaska organization has addressed the issue of high school nicknames.

“It’s never been an issue with us,” said Gary Matthews, executive director of the Alaska School Activities Association, who has lived in Alaska for 37 years. “They mean something to the communities or they wouldn’t select them.”

The names were not just “pulled from the sky,” Matthews said, and each has a meaning to the community in a state where more than 15 percent of the population is Indian, Aleut or Eskimo.

“It’s not a derogatory term to call someone an Eskimo or an Indian or a Harpooner,” he said. “It’s just a fact of life.”

Tim Towarak, co-chairman of the Alaska Federation of Natives, said nicknames are a relatively new phenomenon in rural Alaska and have not been a major concern for the largest Native Alaskan organization. Team names such as Braves reflect the local culture, he said, and students are proud of their heritage.

“Up here in rural Alaska, it’s all just part of our culture,” he said.

Some in Aniak object to the name, Morgan said, but the objections never have reached the school board level. When people from outside Alaska criticize the name, Morgan said, residents become more protective.

“We don’t want no outside organization coming in and saying, ‘That’s a bad name,'” he said.

“We’re one of a kind. No one else probably in the nation or the world has a name like that. We feel pretty special. There’s many Eagles and Panthers and Cougars and Fighting Irish. We’re Halfbreeds.”