‘It’s derogatory’: one man’s four-decade fight against his town’s Native ‘mascot’

Ted Trujillo has been fighting for years against the use of the racist Redskins' mascot in a high school in Morris, Illinois

On a recent Friday evening, the teenage daughter of the then mayor-elect of Morris, Illinois, about 60 miles south-west of Chicago, led her high school's marching band on to the football field wearing a headdress, face paint and clothes resembling Native regalia.

As the band played the war cry" for the pre-game event, the student, with her reddish blond hair in braids, stood in a wide stance in the middle of the field with her arms crossed.

It was a familiar scene for Morris Community high school, a school of about 850 students, none of whom are Native, according to a 2019 Illinois report card. Its mascot has long been the Redskins", a term widely considered a racial slur against Native Americans.