WASHINGTON, D.C. – Across America, outrage over high school athletic team mascots featuring Native American imagery is bubbling over in the form of angry editorials, federal complaints being filed and even proposed legislation to deprive schools of funding.

Many of the nation’s schools have already caved to the pressure, changing the names of their beloved team mascots to something more progressively palatable. In the last forty years, the number of schools using Native American mascots has dropped from 3,000 to 900, according to the The New York Times Upfront magazine.

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An editorial posted at the Huffington Post this week by Matt Kramer of the left-of-center non-profit group “Teach for America,” for example, made the argument that Indian-themed mascots should be banned, explaining that “facing those images on a daily basis makes it harder for American Indian young people to develop the academic and cultural identity that we know children need to succeed in our country.” Referring to the issue as “urgent,” Kramer writes that “the stakes for native students today couldn’t be higher, and it couldn’t be clearer that these anachronistic mascots do not represent the best we can do as a society…”

Another editorial in a local news source in Massachusetts laments, “Football season: the time of year when racism gets blindly supported throughout the country.”

Democrat Joseph Salazar proposed legislation in Colorado that would require schools to get “tribes’ permission” or lose funding if they used “unauthorized mascots,” as reported earlier this month at the local CBS affiliate in Denver. Salazar was quoted as saying that legislation can’t change “attitudes,” but does change “behavior.”  “You want to continue using your racist and your stereotypical imagery? Then we don’t have to fund that,” he declared.

Speaking of the proposed law at the ironically-named Pueblo Chieftain, the outspoken Salazar was quoted as saying, “We have too many people saying, ‘I don’t think this is offensive,’ and they’re not Native American.”

Thirty-five schools in Michigan are spared from federal intervention – for now – after the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) dismissed a complaint brought about by the taxpayer-funded Michigan Department of Civil Rights who claimed that Indian mascots are “discriminatory” and have a “harmful academic impact on American Indian students.”

The complaint, filed last year, asked the Feds to “issue an order prohibiting the continued use American Indian mascots, names, nicknames, slogans, chants and/or imagery” according to a press release sent by the Michigan department. The complaint alleges that the use of such imagery “creates a hostile environment and denies equal rights to all current and future American Indian students and must therefore cease.”

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Schools with politically incorrect team names like “Warriors,” “Braves” and “Chiefs” were included in the complaint.

In 2012, the Oregon Board of Education voted to ban Native American mascots from the state’s schools, a rule that will take effect in 2017.

In Wisconsin, a law passed by Democrats in 2009 created “a process for people to challenge a school district’s Native American mascot, logo or nickname.” The complainant could go to the Orwellian-sounding Department of Public Instruction (DPI), who would force the school district to defend the name of their mascot. In 2013, Governor Scott Walker updated the law, which “stipulates any complaints will have to include a petition signed by members of the community equivalent to 10 percent of the district’s student population saying the logo or mascot is offensive.” Walker asked, “[I]f the state bans speech that is offensive to some, where does it stop?”

Responding to the the updated legislation in Wisconsin, co-founder of “Religious Americans Against Indian Nicknames and Logos” Harvey Gunderson said, “It’s another example of the reason why Republicans have what’s called a race problem,” as reported at Wisconsin Public Radio.