The Estelline Redmen are no more… On Wednesday, the school district officially announced its new mascot… the Estelline Redhawks.
Since the mid-90’s, the school district has made attempts at slowly moving away from its Native American imagery.
LeAnne Johnson is a board member for the Estelline school district and a chairperson of the mascot committee. Johnson says this change has been a long time coming. She looks back at one of the first steps of the process with changing the schools homecoming tradition 24-years ago.
"They used to call the King, was the 'Big Chief', and then we had the 'Moon Princess,'" says Johnson. "And '94 was the last time that we used that because it had been suggested that we do away with any Native American imagery, Native American ... Anything to do with homecoming."
Students, school administrators and teachers, and alumni of Estelline recently voted on six mascot proposals. The name Redhawks received a majority of the support.
This change will go into effect at the start of the next school year. Even though the mascot is changing, the school district plans to keep its current Red and White color scheme.