The Friday night lights are bright at Roy C. Ketcham High School in Wappingers Falls, but among the cheers and jeers, there is an underlying dispute.

"Native Americans are still here and there are hundreds of tribes. It just doesn’t make sense to wear somebody's identity as a mascot," Roy C. Ketcham High School alumna Yvonne Gor said.

The school’s team name is the "Indians."

It’s been that way for as long as Gor and fellow graduate Krisy Lawlor can remember.

Gor was on the step team and Youth Against Racism club. Lawlor says she wore the name proudly on her softball uniform, but now, she feels the team name is racist and offensive to Native Americans.

"When we were in school, the mascot was a caricature of a Native American, the entire outfit, so a head with feathers," said Gor.

"I wore the uniform proudly. I was proud to be on these sports teams," said Lawlor. "But I also take responsibility that I perpetuated [it] by having a human being without consent used to represent my school and my team."

Over the years, the school’s made changes, and now uses the letter 'K' with feathers instead.

"It didn’t occur to me that this was offensive to Native Americans. I didn’t know any better," said Gor.

It wasn’t until Gor met a Native-American woman, and the country began its own reckoning with the use of Native-American names, like the NFL’s Washington Redskins changing its name last year, that pushed them to take a stand at their own high school.

Gor and Lawlor started a petition on Change.org in the summer of 2020 calling for the school to change the team name from the Indians. To their surprise, the petition caught on, receiving more than 1,800 signatures so far.

The National Congress of American Indians wrote the school board, explaining why it believes the school should change the team name from the “Indians,” saying, in part, “The use of ‘Native-American’ sports mascots, logos or symbols perpetuates stereotypes of American Indians that are very harmful. The ‘warrior savage’ myth has plagued this country’s relationships with the Indian people, as it reinforces the racist view that Indians are uncivilized and uneducated."

Gor and Lawlor said they reached out to the Wappingers Central School District Board of Education, asking them to change the name. They also asked the board to engage the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican tribe, descendants of the Native Americans who once lived in the area.

The tribe also asked the school to change the team name.

Gor and Lawlor say they’ll always be proud members of the Ketcham community, but are looking at the example set for future generations.

"I want to ask, 'What will your legacy be?" said Lawlor. "Will it be that you clung on to a name for the sake of history and tradition? Or will your legacy be that you recognized harm was done and took action to begin to repair it?"

The Wappingers Central School District Board of Education plans to discuss the team name at a meeting in the near future, and invite local descendants and the Stockbridge Munsee to present their views.

The date of that board meeting has yet to be announced. The board will make a decision on the use of the name "Indians" following that meeting.