Faries Gray is the Sagamore of the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag. What follows are excerpts from a conversation with Gray during the research process for our newspaper’s name change. We spoke with Gray about his role as a Sagamore and work to combat the appropriation of Indigenous cultures.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When you hear the word “Sagamore,” what do you think of?
It’s a title of a leader. We have three traditional leaders. We have a Sac’hem [primary leader], we have a pow wow or pow usk, which is a medicine man or woman, and then, we would have our Sagamore. The Sagamore, in our traditional times, was the war chief. The Sagamore was responsible for the protection of the people, the resources and the culture. Today, we don’t have that need for protection of our territory from invaders because our resources have all been assimilated along with us. So what that means for us today is protection of our territory from being developed. [The Sagamore is] like a protector. It’s a responsibility, it’s my job and it’s my duty to protect our people, territory and culture. For me, that name means a tremendous amount of responsibility.

How did you come into the role?
About 30 years ago, we had a Sac’hem who’s no longer with us. He was old, and I spent a lot of time with him. He told me that I was the Sagamore. I was younger and didn’t really want to hold that responsibility. The Tribal Council approved the recommendation, so I was the Sagamore. And so, I guess it probably chose me, rather than me choosing that as my role. It was just who I was; prior to being asked to be the Sagamore. I was already the Sagamore; I was doing all the same things. The title was with me always.

You have worked on a lot of mascot changing initiatives. Have you worked to do any name changes in conjunction with those?
[Name changes] often go hand-in-hand with a mascot change. Often, it’s the “so-and-so warriors” or the “so-and-so Indians.” Some schools have changed the name and the imagery [of their mascots,] while others just change the imagery and keep the name. It’s an ongoing battle with school committees and leaders in every city or town that has Indigenous mascots. It’s really a difficult decision for the elected leaders to change something because if the people don’t want it, then you have a good chance of not getting re-elected. So it’s a long process.

What advice do you have for running into resistance on initiatives like this?
We do run into quite a bit of resistance when we’re talking about changing a name. The people that don’t want to change it [have] no other reason than nostalgia and this memory they have. It’s not like they wish us any ill will or wish to appropriate our culture. It’s just part of their history and they don’t want to change it. What we do is try to help them understand what it’s like when things are named after us. Some of the people that don’t wish names to change will say, “It’s part of the education of your culture, and we have to teach people your culture,” and our response has always been, “why haven’t you been teaching our culture if you’ve been using this name for so long?” So, I try to tell them the history of my tribe, what happened to us and why it’s wrong to use us as a mascot. They conquered us. They conquered these “savage, hostile Indian warriors,” and now they’re going to use [us] as mascots. So, we try to find some commonalities between the two cultures, just to help them understand why we don’t wish colonizers to use our words or our culture for their benefit. It’s been a long, difficult road because not everybody wants change. We just keep on educating people.

Not everybody wants to change, and not all Indigenous people feel the same. Some Indigenous people do wish for us to be used as mascots. But, the overwhelming majority think it’s time for the dominant culture to let go of using us as their names. My advice would be just don’t give up. You have to keep going until it gets done and just keep educating people on why it’s not appropriate for your [school’s newspaper] to have the name “Sagamore.”

When you see schools with mascots like the Indian, or newspaper names like ‘The Sagamore,’ what do you feel?
In high school we had an Indigenous name; we were called the Renegades. I felt like hiding when I was in school because everyone was appropriating my culture and dressing up like us. When I see a school that has our mascot, honestly, I just feel like we’re trophies. They look at us like we are a trophy, like “look at this savage that we conquered.” When I see a mascot’s picture above a gym or outside a school, I feel angry that they view us as a trophy. And still, today, when they do that, they’re not viewing us as human beings. They’re still viewing us as this “savage,” as this less-than-human thing. What I feel most is anger.

What would you say to people who are resistant to accepting the name change of the BHS newspaper?
I would just educate them that Indigenous people here were murdered, assimilated and stripped of everything that we were. We were held in prison camps, cut off from our resources and separated from our families. All the nastiest things in humanity were done to us. If we say that something is dishonoring us, then it would be extremely helpful if people had empathy and could understand that there is this behavior that’s hurtful, it’s hurting an entire [group of] people and that it’s just not right. To a people that were done so wrong by a dominant society, now to use us as a trophy, it’s unacceptable.

There is no other race: it’s just us, we’re the only ones where it’s accepted. We just ask people to have some empathy and some heart and try to have some understanding of what it is that the Indigenous people here went through and continue to go through. Sometimes that has to sit with people and fester so they can absorb exactly what it is they’re telling them. But, it has worked out well. Some people will never change their minds. You can want to paint the school blue [when] it’s red right now, and they’ll fight you just because it’s a change, and those are the people that you can’t help to understand. But most people have the ability to reflect, and so, we just ask them to reflect a little bit on what it is we’re asking them to change.

Read more on our name change here.