This evening North Bay resident Stephen Brown appeared before the Near North District School Board to share his concerns about the board’s plan to change the name of Chippewa Secondary School. Brown recently began a petition to reverse the decision and keep the name. Around 20 members of the public attended the meeting, along with around 50 who watched via Zoom. Two police officers were also on hand, however, the mood of the room remained calm and orderly throughout Brown’s presentation.
See: Chippewa name-change petitioner speaks before school board tonight
Brown’s petition to keep the school’s name has over 3,000 signatures. He informed the board that his presentation would focus on a release from the board from April 6th, “concerning your December 2022 board report.”
That report noted that renaming the school was not a new idea but stemmed from “a decision made by the board in 2017,” Brown said. He mentioned that the decision was “not made until the fall of 2019,” and “this anchor statement which is the mandate for the recommendation is flawed—in fact blatantly false.”
Brown expressed that the school “was named in respect of the First Nation Chippewas,” and that changing the name would “be an act of total disrespect which would have the effect of insensitively erasing the history of these peoples.”
He noted that the board outlined that the Chippewa name was selected without consulting or considering the Indigenous community, but Brown mentioned “there is no empirical evidence that this name was selected without consultation or consideration.”
“The report is flawed.”
Brown also wanted to see more community input into the process, specifically regarding whether the name is offensive. He would like to see the board fully consider “the views of the public,” as “public input should never be complete by assessing it from your selected internal committees.”
He noted that the Raiders’ mascot “and all negative characteristics associated with it” has been an issue, however, “eliminating the word Chippewa from the high school’s name will do nothing to change this behaviour that needs to be called out and changed.”
See: 'Unacceptable' Chippewa Raiders name must go — school board
“Get to the root of the problem,” Brown urged. “The name is not the problem.”
The board explained that it would take Brown’s points into consideration and will send the report he prepared for board members to the committee overseeing the name change of Chippewa Secondary School.
David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
