Former Medicine Hat High School student Suzanne Tripp says she is happy the school is changing its team names. She started a petition in 2015 to remove the names Mohawks and Kwahommies.--SUBMITTED PHOTO
mcranker@medicinehatnews.com@mocranker
There are myriad reasons to look back and remember your Grade 12 year, but Suzanne Tripp definitely has a unique story.
The 2015 Medicine Hat High School graduate started a petition in her final year of secondary school to change the school’s team names from Mohawks and Kwahommies.
Last week, five years later, the school announced it would be doing so.
“I was really happy to see the change – I think it’s the right decision,” said Tripp. “I think this represents some of the positive change that is happening in the community.
“I had a lot of friends send me this when it got announced and I was just happy to see it happening.”
When Tripp started the petition in 2015 she received mixed feedback. Her story was also shared by CBC.
“When I first started the petition I had a lot of support from my friends and teachers I was close with,” she said. “After that, the entire town started to hear about it and it became this controversial thing. Some people became really angry about the petition.
“I think people really took it personally because of their ties to the high school and it was just normal to them, so they didn’t see the harm in the name.”
After starting the petition, Tripp reached out to the Mohawk people in Ontario as well as in New York to get their opinions on the team names. She says it is important for things to be made right, even if they’re normalized in everyday life.
“I went to Hat High for four years and it wasn’t until halfway through my Grade 12 year that I looked up at a banner and thought, ‘Hold on a second,'” she said. “It made me realize how deeply ingrained this was in our culture in Medicine Hat and normalized it was.
“I think if we picked Mohawks as a new name nowadays, it would be seen as inappropriate. That’s why I brought the issue up back then. I just wanted to get a discussion going and for everyone to look into the background of the name. I never anticipated how big it was going to get.”
Tripp has started her second year of Indigenous studies at Camosun College in B.C. She says her studies have opened her eyes even more to Indigenous issues.
“Starting school and being around like-minded people, it made me realize how truly easy it is to change the name of a team,” she said. “When I started talking with people in my program, it was definitely confirmation.
“The school made the right decision.”
