The tomahawk chop and the accompanying chant by thousands of Kahuku football fans has the desired effect. Particularly at state-tournament games at rusty Aloha Stadium.
Yet, that well-meaning passion that shakes the house is misplaced in the eyes of longtime Native American activist Suzan Shown Harjo.
“People doing the offending say, ‘I’m honoring you.’ It’s not an honor. Thank you for the honor, but we don’t feel it’s an honor,” said Harjo, a 2014 Medal of Freedom honoree who is of Muscogee Creek and Cherokee descent. “If people (on the mainland) started calling themselves Kanaka Ma‘oli and used (Native Hawaiian) tattoos, a ti leaf or lei, or a canoe that isn’t an outrigger canoe, how would that be? It’s wrong.”
With an online petition and counter petition surrounding Kahuku’s nickname, Red Raiders, and mascot, the passion of longtime fans and alumni on either side is reaching a fever pitch. To longtime
Kahuku fans and alums, the name has been entrenched and intertwined with sports successes since 1950, when ‘Iolani donated red jerseys sporting the “Raiders” name.
Prior to that, they were the Ramberiers, and also Ramblers, and had won a Rural Oahu Interscholastic Association football title in 1943.
The terms “Red Raiders” and “Red Skins” showed up in headlines and newspaper articles more than a century ago. Even silent films pushed a narrative of “Red Raiders” as villains, threatening white settlers across America.
Harjo led the movement against the NFL’s Washington Redskins for decades. The lawsuit in 1992 by Harjo and Amanda Blackhorse for a name change to that franchise was one of many calls by Harjo to remove Native American nicknames and mascots nationally. The franchise recently announced a name change, pressured by financial partners like FedEx.
As of Friday, the anti-Red Raiders online petition titled “Change Kahuku High’s Racist Mascot” that was started by 2019 Kahuku graduate Kainoa Kester has close to 1,000 signatures. The counter “Petition Against the Dumb Petition” by Fatu Te‘o-Tafiti has more than 1,300, though the gap has closed in the past few days. Both are on change.org.
The mascot, or logo, was tweaked in 2014, giving a
Native American warrior more of a Polynesian look with Hawaiian-style face tattoo, and ti leaf rather than a headdress.
Tanoai Reed, known as the stunt double for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, is a stickler for Kahuku tradition. Reed, his father and son make it a generational legacy of football in their family.
“We have a legitimate, generations-deep culture as ‘Red Raiders’ and it doesn’t mean Native American skin color to us. This is much different than a fan base for a team like the Washington Redskins,” said Reed, who has led the charge on social media. “I have about 200 testimonies in the last couple of days of people explaining what being a Red Raider means to them. They are deep and filled with emotion. I’m sure if you took them to whatever group of counsel is trying to erase Native American mascots, they would understand that our concept of a Red Raider is different. It’s our own and it should be left alone.”
There are a few Kahuku fans of Native American ancestry who approve of the Red Raider name. One is
Loren Holly.
“As alumni and as a
Native American who is
Navajo and Sioux, I don’t
see the name or mascot offensive at all,” Holly wrote on Reed’s Facebook page. “We are a people tied by culture, that culture is identified as being a Kahuku Red Raider.”
Would pro-Red Raider petitioners be OK with dropping “Red” and having Raiders as a nickname? For many years, kids have played for the Laie Park Raiders youth football team.
“Personally, I’d be fine with that,” Reed said. “But that only means the word ‘Red’ means something (to other people) that it doesn’t to us.”
Kahuku All-State
defensive lineman Zion Ah You welcomes more
discussion.
“Personally, I love our mascot and would never want it to change. I do not feel it’s offensive to anyone,” he said. “If (Native Americans) protested and said it is very offensive, 100% I would be open to it. I also think Kahuku Raiders is acceptable.”
Norm “T-Man” Thompson, a proponent for change, also has been busy on social media. Kester, his nephew, has been overwhelmed and “intimidated.” There is one post online that dared Kester to run on the highway and get himself hurt, Thompson said.
“I think people feel they don’t understand, so the first reaction is always to pin the thing down and threaten it or stop it. They would rather not deal with it,” said Thompson, a Kahuku graduate who is a high school teacher at Kamehameha. “A lot of it has to do with our roots as a Mormon community. That’s essentially what we do. We don’t question. We don’t talk back. That culture is ingrained in our community, what’s ingrained in us. We fall in line. But once you question, you’ve got to be ready to face the music.”
Harjo knows what a racial slur can do to a child. Raised by her grandparents in El Reno, Okla., Harjo was 6 when she walked into a “five-and-dime” store on a hot summer day in 1951. She yearned for something cold to drink.
The storekeeper said, “No black redskins in here.”
Nearly seven decades later, the memory is fresh as ever.
“Oh, sure. Absolutely. Think of a physical scar. You fell off a horse or bike, you always know what that scar was. You don’t feel the pain of it, but you remember it. It’s always there,” said Harjo, now 75. “You might overlook it for a long time, then you’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, there you are.’ You remember the person who gave you the scar, and here you are, an older person, and that scar will start calling you,
almost.”
Reed, whose son Samson was an All-State lineman for
Kahuku and now plays for Virginia, believes it is possible to change the meaning of a term.
“It is funny because the only identity that the words Red Raiders have with racism is a 1920s silent movie that none of us have watched or even knew about. There was never any racist relations before that movie. We have redefined those two words into something beautiful,” Reed said. “They shouldn’t let Hollywood create a racial slur that holds any weight
100 years later in a small countryside community of minorities on the North Shore of Oahu.”
Thompson also grew up there without a second thought to the nickname. But he is now studying for his Ph.D. at the University
of Hawaii at Manoa and is a member of the Native American Indigenous Studies
Association.
“You begin to understand how it all relates. That’s why I feel passion for this. I just want us to review our mascot and name. Is there something that is potentially offensive? I think the answer is yes,” Thompson said. “The fact that people are so passionately against it is so telling for me. The fact that we’re even having this debate is a sign that there’s something wrong.”
Without a nickname change, Thompson said he may take the issue to the state level. The school is
expecting a long-awaited renovation of its field after football season, which he believes would be problematic with the current
nickname.
Harjo advises patience in making cornerstone change.
“It’s like going to your family and telling your sweetest aunt and uncle that what they’re doing is really bad, that it really is the wrong thing to do, and it has to be done carefully because this is your family,” she said. “You don’t want to say, ‘You’re behaving just like the white people.’ That’s not going to keep peace in the family.
“What has to be done is just talking it out and saying, think of the worst terms of colonization and the worst things they said about you. How about if we have a team called that? How would you explain it to us? It just takes talking and talking, making people understand why it hurts, that it does hurt, and we can all do better.”
