Natick cheers for its Redmen

Voters want to revisit nickname

The Redmen name stirred debate.

NATICK - Residents are apparently not ready to let go of the controversial name of their town's sports teams.

By a 2-to-1 margin, they approved a nonbinding ballot question asking the Natick School Committee to reconsider last year's decision to scrap the longstanding Redmen sports moniker, a nickname many feel is insensitive and demeaning to Native Americans.

A School Committee task force charged with coming up with a new moniker for the 2008 football season has proposed other names, including the Hawks and the Red and Blue, but neither suggestion has garnered much popular support.

Redmen traditionalists say the name is part of town history and refers to red athletic jerseys, not the Native Americans who settled in this Boston suburb in the 1600s.

Local devotion to the team name runs deep among longtime residents, and the town's most famous Redman, former Heisman Trophy winner and NFL quarterback Doug Flutie, has advocated keeping it.

"We're very, very pleased. We hope they will reconsider their original decision," said Jimmy Brown, who helped collect 1,800 signatures to get the question on yesterday's ballot.

Football fans wearing Indian headdresses with their faces painted have been a common sight along the playing fields in this sports-crazy suburb. During the debate over the name, bumper stickers bearing the slogan "Once a Redman, Always a Redman" were often seen on cars traveling on Main Street.

But opponents of the name said it is inseparable from the history of abuse of Native Americans by settlers during Colonial times.

Pete Sanfacon, founder of the Framingham-based New England Anti-Mascot Coalition, which advocates against racial stereotypes in sports team mascots, said he was disappointed by local resistance to dumping the moniker. He said the School Committee should ignore the vote.

"They are well on their way to having a new name by the fall season and they should continue with that," said Sanfacon. "Native Americans have told us the name is hurtful."

Voters also accepted a $3.9 million Proposition 2 1/2 override by a 55 percent margin, expected to cost the average homeowner an extra $290 in annual property tax assessments above the 2.5 percent increase permitted by state law.

Voter turnout was high, said Town Clerk Judi Kuhn, with roughly 50 percent of the town's 21,000 registered voters casting ballots, which election officials attributed mainly to the hotly contested override question, Natick's first since 2001.

Erica Noonan can be reached at enoonan@globe.com.