Tribal activists stand up for Long Island town’s Chiefs mascot after Trump pledges ‘fight’ over NY Native American logo ban

High-profile tribal activists backed a Long Island school in its fight to keep its team name despite a state ban on Native American logos – joining a President Trump rallying cry.

Frank Black Cloud, a member of the Spirit Lake Nation in North Dakota, said Tuesday that rebranding the Massapequa Chiefs would be a “terrible thing to do.”

“Historically, we are Chiefs, we are Warriors,” said Black Cloud, 60, referencing neighboring Wantagh’s Warriors team — which may also have to drop its name.

He pointed to a pair of 2004 and 2016 polls that found nine in 10 Native Americans do not take offense to terms like “Redskins.”

“All of these names, images, they are something we all uphold and we’re proud of,” Black Cloud said

The statement comes one day after Trump pledged to “fight” for Massapequa to keep the name even though the town lost a court battle over the change.

A state Department of Education spokesperson shot back on Monday that if the Massapequa board of education members were “interested in honoring and respecting Long Island’s Native American past, they should talk to the Indigenous people who remain on Long Island.”

But some locals like Laura Albanese-Christopher, a Massapequa graduate of Cherokee descent, called the removal of Chiefs “off the charts hurtful and disrespectful.”

“Massapequa’s history speaks for itself. The history cannot and should not be erased,” Albanese-Christopher, 51, told The Post. “Everyone is way too soft in this world. Instead of trying to abolish history, they should worry more about what’s being taught in the district.”

Native American symbols are found around the town beyond just the school team — including on the trucks of its volunteer fire department.

“We have no intentions of changing anything,” said Justin McCaffrey, Massapequa’s chairman of the board of fire commissioners. “It’s a long part of our history. We’re proud of our town. We are proud of our community and our heritage.”

McCaffrey also finds it laughable that the word chief is in jeopardy in schools.

“Everybody has chiefs, just look at us,” he said. “I would like to think the New York State Education Department has things that they should be focused on beyond renaming the emblems for the school.”

Calling in the Commander-In-Chief

Black Cloud joined the fight as a representative of the nationwide Native American Guardians Association (NAGA). The 87,000-strong group fights to keep Native American team names from being canceled in sports culture, from high school to the professional level, across all 50 states.

Massapequa and Wantagh were part of a group that unsuccessfully sued the New York State Board of Regents to keep their monikers in defiance of a 2023 mandate to remove all Native American team names statewide.

Massapequa’s school board, saying the rebrand could cost as much as $1 million, called on President Trump for help earlier this month.

“I agree with the people in Massapequa, Long Island, who are fighting furiously to keep the Massapequa Chiefs logo on their Teams and School,” Trump posted on Truth Social Monday afternoon, ordering Secretary of Education Linda McMahon “to fight” for the town.

Black Cloud, a car salesman by trade, praised Trump for standing up for the school.

“The left tries to tell us how we should feel,” Black Cloud said.

“They don’t want to listen to us on the reasons why these names and images should be kept sacred. They want us to just disappear, fade off into the sunset,” he added.

It’s unclear what the federal government can actually do beyond trying to get the state to rescind its ban.

But the state stood by the policy.

“Disrespecting entire groups of people is wrong in any context, but especially in our schools, where all students should feel welcome and supported,” said JP O’Hare, a spokesperson for the Education Department.

David Finkenbinder, a Crow Creek Sioux Tribe and NAGA member, in Coxsackie, New York said he was devastated when his Colorado high school in Yuma removed its “Indians” name a few years ago and is hoping for a different result for Long Island.

“It’s frustrating,” he said. “Not once was I ever offended or ridiculed or made fun of because of my Native heritage.

“There’s a lot of Native history here in New York,” he said. “But this takes the interest away from students to learn why their towns and teams are named this way.”