Home of the Braves

The arguments are prolific, in many cities and towns, though at times louder in some than others, about the sensitivity or lack thereof in the choice of mascots for pro sports teams and also for schools.

Mascots say a lot about a school, or are supposed to.

At South Terrebonne High School the gator rules, and it is because of this that the hard-working young men and women who provide music from there at parades and football games are gifted with the awesome moniker “The Million Dollar Band from Gatorland.”

The oddest school mascot I ever personally encountered resides in Key West. Their school’s mascot is the conch, which is the mollusk with the really pretty, grand and curvy shell, the kind that when you hold it to you ear lets you listen to the ocean. They are similar to snails, which begs the obvious question, and makes “Go Conchs” an almost comical proposition.

But I digress.

Here in Terrebonne Parish, worthy of closer examination is the mascot at H.L. Bourgeois High School in Gray.

The school, from its inception, has adopted a Native American theme. The football team is called the “Braves.” The school is called the Reservation. The band – a very good band, incidentally – plays a theme recognizable to anyone who has watched an old western as the signal that Indians area afoot. Among Native Americans locally there has been little or no complaint about this.

And that may be due to the history of education in Terrebonne, and how it relates to the high school’s proper name.

Henry Louis Bourgeois was an educational icon, reigning for four decades as the superintendent of public schools, in this place where segregation was the law and the practice.

There is no doubt that during his tenure, advancements in education were made. The problem is that those advancements tended to benefit only one group of students, those who were white, with everyone else kind of left behind.

The black students were relegated to schools separate and, in many cases, decidedly unequal from the time local public education began.

The Native Americans had educational opportunities that were fewer in number. Barred from attending white schools, many refused the insistence of the school system that they be classified as black. Much of the problem had to do with translation of some French words, which, according to one take, said they were indigenous people and, according to another, they were “people of color” and, therefore, black. The bottom line is that for decades the ability to attain a public high school education on a par with the majority of the population was pretty much nonexistent for most Native American children here.

Of no help to them was Bourgeois, the aforementioned superintendent, who took it upon himself to deny that the sons and daughters of the Houmas, the Chitimacha or any other local tribe were Indians at all.

His words, spoken and written, were at times cruel, and in all ways non-inclusive, and there is a clear record of this.

When a new high school was built in Gray, the decision was made to name it after the superintendent, who no doubt had a profound effect on the lives of many who served on the school board then, in a positive way.

It was up to the students to devise a mascot. Innocently having learned that a Houma Indian settlement had existed not far from the campus at one time, the students chose to honor its people by adopting an Indian brave. In short, for all the right reasons.

They didn’t know that they were birthing an historical irony.

The great irony is well known among native people here, and is that is one reason why, as controversy over the names of teams like the Washington Redskins continues, all is quiet at Terrebonne Parish’s educational reservation.

“He was not for us and kept his distance from us,” says the Rev. Kirby Verret, the former Houma chief who administers the school system’s federal Indian Education program.

”With this we get the last word, because his name goes down in history with an Indian. Call it ironic justice. If he had his way I am sure an Indian would not be the mascot.”