Ketchikan students dressed as cowboys for a basketball game against Metlakatla, prompting criticism and raw emotions in Alaska’s only Native reserve

The Ketchikan school district has launched an investigation after the local high school pep squad dressed in cowboy hats and boots for a basketball game against the Metlakatla Chiefs, eliciting raw emotions and condemnation from community members in Alaska’s only Native American reserve.

The pep squad dressed in a “country” theme for Saturday’s game in Ketchikan. To players and parents from Metlakatla — an Indigenous community in Southeast Alaska where basketball is an important part of everyday life — the outfits were a painful symbol of the cowboys and Indians stereotype that is associated with a history of brutal violence toward Native Americans.

The incident has left some wondering if a racist past is resurfacing.

In a strongly worded letter from Metlakatla Mayor Albert Smith to Ketchikan schools superintendent Melissa Johnson on Wednesday, Smith called the pep theme “hurtful and emotionally violent,” recalling a time when, 77 years ago, signs in Ketchikan storefronts read “No dogs or Natives allowed.”

“There is broader historical context, one of white supremacy, genocide and trauma, that permeates the white-privileged blindness that allowed the cowboys-and-Indians pep theme to form,” Smith wrote.

The Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District, Ketchikan High School and school board chairman Stephen Bradford were quick to apologize on social media after the game, calling it an incident of “cultural insensitivity.”

”The district will not tolerate any form of cultural mistreatment and we’ll take all appropriate actions to ensure our schools and students uphold the highest standards of sportsmanship, respect and hospitality,” the statement from the district read.

But Smith condemned the district’s response as “remarkably muted” and called for “a strong response, equal to the harm” inflicted on the Metlakatla community, including an investigation and disciplinary action.

Johnson did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. The district’s investigation is ongoing.

Richard Chalyee Éesh Peterson, president of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, also wrote a letter to the Ketchikan superintendent and school board president.

“The very fact that no student, advisor, teacher, or coach had the foresight to see the issue in this, speaks to the desperate need for Alaska Native history education and racial equity in your community. Ignorance and naivete are no excuse for racism, even if unintended,” Peterson wrote.

In coming up with the theme for Saturday’s game, the pep club had in mind “square dancing, farming, flannels, and hats,” one student said. But Indigenous scholars and leaders point to the history of harm embodied in the cowboy image.

Michael Yellow Bird, an expert on the effects of colonization and a professor of social work at the University of Manitoba, has written that cowboys and Indians “represent the overt and hidden hatred and fear that many Americans harbor toward Indigenous, dark skinned peoples. They are symbolic of the white colonizer’s claim of superiority and Indigenous Peoples’ inferiority.”

In a special meeting Monday by the Annette Island School District, which oversees Metlakatla schools, some community members were in tears as they described behavior from some people at the Ketchikan game.

“As Indian people, we are always to be resilient no matter what people say to us,” said Christina Martinez, a mother of a basketball player. “We just sat back and took it.”

The members of the team and its coaches were absent from the meeting Monday, as they were in Kodiak for another basketball game.

Some Metlakatla community members in attendance called on the district not to return to Ketchikan for future sports events. But for a community of less than 2,000, the ability to travel to Ketchikan — a ferry ride away — is critical.

“We always say, ‘Hey, we’re not going back to Ketchikan.’ Yeah, right,” said Martinez. “They’re like our bloodline. We go through them for everything.”

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Martinez and other parents in attendance said they were “oblivious” to the Western theme of the pep club when the game began. But they couldn’t ignore the barking sounds made by pep club members while players were shooting free throws.

“These students were calling our children ‘Rez Dogs’ and just barking at them and making some obscene noises,” said Jeanine Marsden, who accompanied the Metlakatla team to Ketchikan as a chaperone.

“None of those boys complained,” Marsden added. “They just played the game that they love.”

Members of the Ketchikan pep club say they did not realize the country theme they chose for the event would be offensive, nor did they realize that the barking sounds they make during free throws would be construed as racially insensitive.

“We obviously didn’t take into account how it could look,” Ketchikan High School senior Dylan Nedzwecky said in an interview. “We just thought it was a fun cool thing to dress up.”

Nedzwecky also said he didn’t think that any members of the pep club used the term “rez dog,” which can be a derogatory term for Native Americans. He said making barking sounds during free throws is common practice for the club, regardless of who the opposing team is.

“It just happened to have a significance in this case because of the term ‘rez dog,’ ” he said.

Nedzwecky first learned that the opposing team took issue with the themed outfits when he saw a social media post after the game ended. The post, featuring a picture of Nedzwecky and fellow students in hats and boots, quickly garnered hundreds of comments. Some comments, he said, left him and other students feeling like the club’s side of the story wasn’t taken into account.

“It’s just a lot of hate on a bunch of 16-, 17-, 18-year-olds, and we are just all shell-shocked by it,” Nedzwecky said.

Taw Lindsey, superintendent of the Annette Island School District, said Wednesday that he hopes both Ketchikan and Metlakatla can use this experience as a learning opportunity.

“It’s an opportunity to bring our communities closer together and to have a better understanding,” Lindsey said. “Understanding some of the trauma that has taken place against our Native peoples across Alaska and just the ability to have that empathy and say, ‘Hey, that might not be perceived as we are perceiving it.’ ”