Grand River Collegiate makes amends for past use of aboriginal imagery
'Indian head' icon replaced with letter cresting
This weekend at Grand River Collegiate's 50th anniversary reunion, the school plans to acknowledge its previous inappropriate use of aboriginal imagery in school crests and logos.
For the last 50 years, Grand River Collegiate Institute has been home to the Renegades, and for the majority of that time, the "Renegade Indian" was their mascot.
Providing education
Tamara Grant, alumnus and co-chair of the reunion committee, said the reunion will give the school the opportunity to educate the public and former Renegades on how the imagery has changed.
The school was built on Indian Road, which inspired the use of this imagery.
Grant said the image of an aboriginal chief was used on sports jerseys to represent the Renegades. She described the image as the profile of a chief wearing a feathered headdress.
She said the school has phased out using the image throughout the past decade and now simply uses interlocking letters, featuring the words "GR Renegades," on its sports jerseys.
Preserving history
At the opening ceremony on Friday, June 2, the school plans to unveil "decade lockers," which feature memorabilia to permanently showcase Grand River's history.
"Because many people ... identified with a certain logo and that has now changed. And we wanted to make sure that there was an understanding as to why that's changed," Grant said.
Two of the items on display in the lockers will include buckskin and a headdress, which had been used at pep rallies in the past.
Grant said these pieces had been used to promote school spirit until Grand River realized that they were not authentic to the aboriginal people in this area.
Now these pieces will be featured in the decade lockers, along with an explanatory plaque about why these items are no longer used.
Getting endorsements
When the reunion committee began planning the opening ceremony, Grant said they reached out to the aboriginal community and received an endorsement from the Waterloo Region Aboriginal Advisory Committee.
"When you're making these steps to try and do right by a certain community, I think it was really important to us to make sure that we had a few endorsements," she said.