The history of UBC’s mascot is rooted in the concept of people thinking they know better than to ask.

In 1933, after 12 years of being known as “Blue and Gold” or just “Varsity,” the university was looking for a more personable name for their branding. The Ubyssey put out a call for name ideas, and since athletics were then a part of the AMS, the naming process went to a student vote. But things didn’t go to plan, and the most popular name ended up being a write-in: the Seagulls. Not very intimidating, I know. The Ubyssey and the Pep Club quickly dissented with the public’s answer and decided to choose the name themselves.

With their criteria of “the history or geographical location of our University,” the group took a short list of suggestions — Spartans, Corsairs, Golden Eagles, Musqueams and Thunderbirds — and chose the Thunderbird in January 1934, after Ubyssey sports reporter Clarence Idyll’s advocacy for it based on its connection to various BC Indigenous cultures.

Despite the acknowledgment of the name being tied to Indigenous cultures, it was chosen without input or consent from any nation.

For 14 years, the UBC Thunderbirds’ name was appropriated.

Given the unsavoury past, I was surprised to hear Kavie Toor, the managing director of Athletics and Recreation at UBC, use that word too.

“The Indigenous community didn’t necessarily provide the approval to use the name and it was never a partnership or goal around reconciliation or decolonizing sport,” Toor said. “It just was appropriated.”

What changed appropriation into appreciation wasn't settler reconciliation but rather Indigenous generosity, according to Dr. Moss Norman. Norman, a fourth-generation white scholar who teaches sport sociology at UBC, said that knowing the gifting of the name wasn’t an initiative kick-started by UBC is key to understanding the full history of the Thunderbird.

In April 1948, Neel decided to carve a totem pole for the university team and wrote to then-UBC President Norman A. MacKenzie to see if its gifting could be arranged. MacKenzie accepted, but it was Neel’s actions, those on behalf of Indigenous peoples, which started the conversation.

“It's the Indigenous communities that made it right,” Norman said. “I think that's a really important piece of history.”

On Oct. 30, 1948, Neel and Scow gifted the name of the Thunderbird on behalf of the Kwakwa̲ka̲’wakw peoples. Under tribal law and customs, this gifting was a legal way for UBC to continue to use the name.

In an impressive and august voice, Chief Scow said, in part, “On behalf of Ellen and Edward Neel, and with the full consent and approval of our tribal council and our people, I present this Totem to the Alma Mater Society of this University. I give to you also the right to use the name “Thunderbird” for your teams. This is according to the laws of my people, and is hereby legal for the first time. The totem has been carved for you by our two best tribal carvers. It has a long and an honourable history: a totem— of which your teams have every right to be proud. It is yours now, and if you follow the precepts accepted with it, you cannot fail.”

— The Native Voice, November 1948

Along with the name, Neel’s carved totem pole titled “Victory Through Honour” was given to the university. The 16-foot tall pole was topped with a Thunderbird, its wings outstretched.

In 1948, under the Indian Act, the act of wearing traditional regalia and gifting could be considered a ‘potlatch,’ which were banned until 1951. Neel and Scow broke Canadian law in order to give the university team their name, publicly risking arrest in demonstrating just how important they felt it was to give the gifts.

Norman continued to tell me that the Coast Salish peoples gifted the name because they wanted Indigenous students and athletes to feel a sense of connection to their culture while at UBC, something that was addressed at the 1948 ceremony.

“To the Native people of the whole province we can give our assurance that your children will be accepted at this school by the Staff and Student Council, eager to smooth their paths with kindness and understanding,” Neel said during the ceremony.

During our conversation, Norman brought up another interesting point: there are distinctions between the story of the Thunderbird and the story of how UBC acquired it. The Thunderbird is bigger than UBC’s history with it.

Storytelling in Indigenous cultures is different from Western storytelling. Oral histories have a more prominent role and have cultural teachings embedded in them. Some stories have specific guardianship requirements, like only being with a certain knowledge keeper, family or nation, and only those tasked with its stewardship may retell the story. Some stories are protected, with only certain individuals being allowed to hear them. Stories also come with responsibilities. In his book The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative, Thomas King wrote that once stories are out in the world, they cannot be called back — and once you have heard them, you cannot live your life saying you would live differently if you only knew the teachings. Norman echoed this on the local scale, telling me that knowing the legend of the Thunderbird could deepen students’ understanding of the gift and how to carry the name.

Neel also gifted the legend of this Thunderbird, customized specifically for UBC. In Neel’s customized version of the legend of the Four Tests of Tsekume, Tsekume is presented with a totem pole after completing four trials that proved his ideals of honour, respect, integrity and excellence. Neel’s totem pole references the pole in the legend, and in both, the mighty Thunderbird sits above all the other animals. According to an abridged version by Neel’s granddaughter, Lou-ann Ika’wega Neel, “Victory Through Honour” is a legend that showcases the journeys that individuals at the university would undergo throughout their life and how to handle them.

Unfortunately, Ellen Neel’s original totem pole was vandalized and destroyed in 2000. During the 2004 rededication ceremony for the replica pole, the Kwakwa̲ka̲’wakw Chiefs Frank Nuck and Edwin Newman raised the pole with representatives of the Musqueam present, emphasizing their role in the Thunderbird name and legacy (although the Musqueam gave consent in 1948).

But permission doesn’t signal the end of the university’s engagement with the Indigenous peoples and cultures on which it has built its identity. UBC Vancouver is a predominantly non-Indigenous campus (only 2.8 per cent of students in 2024/25 self-identified as Indigenous) which means the responsibility for learning about Indigenous cultures — and the origins of our mascot — falls to settler students, staff and faculty. This means taking the time to research: how is the Thunderbird being used? How are students learning about and honouring its origins? Is this how Musqueam sees it should be used? As Norman explained, these questions might not have clearcut answers, but are nonetheless crucial for students, and especially student athletes, to consider.

“Are we fulfilling the obligations that this gift came with?” he said. “I have wondered about that.”

Sports are political. Dr. Janice Forsyth has always known this. The UBC kinesiology professor and member of the Fisher River Cree Nation seemed shocked when I suggested that some people thought otherwise.

“To say that sport is not political, or that it shouldn’t be political, is just a strange thing to say,” she said. “It has always been political. It’s just [about] whose politics is it serving?”

And let’s be clear: sports have always been political. Think of Jesse Owens’ performance in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union, even the newly-created Professional Women’s Hockey League. Sports have never been separate from the systems that built them. They reflect the dominant behaviours, beliefs and values of a society, including colonization. Sports may serve some segments of society, but they sideline others through that same process — even institutionally.

Sports were a tool in the residential school system, which existed to “take the Indian out of the child,” according to Sir John A. Macdonald. Hockey, specifically, was used to promote the assimilation of Indigenous students into Canadian culture. Forsyth led a project called Crossing the Red Line, which looked into Sioux Lookout Indian Residential School survivors’ experiences being on the school’s hockey team. For students, sport may have been a way to connect with other children or to learn the value of hard work, but school administrators used it to parade how well they believed residential schools worked at assimilating Indigenous children. The link between Indigeneity and sports has always existed, which means the link between sports and decolonization also exists; the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recognized this with five explicitly sports-related calls to action.

Dr. Rosalin Miles, a UBC Indigenous scholar and research associate and a member of the Lytton First Nation, is the first person in her family to not attend residential school. She echoed how sports and Indigeneity intersect, noting that sports were a way of connecting with her heritage growing up.

“I think sports gives you a place where you can really express yourself emotionally and be connected to your inner warrior,” she said.

This juxtaposed the behaviour many residential school survivors were forced into: to be silent, well-behaved and passive. In sports, you could be aggressive or loud, and there was an opportunity to be emotionally grounded. According to some accounts, sports are perhaps the only good thing that male residential school survivors remember. And although the last residential schools have been closed for 29 years, it isn’t always culturally safe for Indigenous athletes to connect with their inner warrior. Miles recounted a time when other athletes looked at her like she was crazy when she suggested howling like wolves for a photo. For her, it was being “tribal,” being herself. But the sports world still gave a very clear message of exclusion.

The sooner the sports world realizes that it is inherently political, the sooner it can seriously start to address societal issues. But by cherry-picking social justice causes, Forsyth said, sports only reinforces an exclusive narrative. It can’t advocate for racial and gender equality while feigning political neutrality when it comes to decolonization and reconciliation. Being a vehicle for social justice means being a vehicle for all aspects of social justice — not just the convenient or popular ones — and it seems the sports institution doesn’t know if it’s willing to be that vehicle.

“It needs to take a big, long, hard look in the mirror and decide how it wants to be in the world,” she said.

Between the Black Lives Matter protests and COVID-19 pandemic throughout 2020 and 2021, more consumers — and brands — became aware of how sports are intertwined with broader social movements. Advocates wanted change and sports were becoming more pronounced as part of that change. The key word being “more.”

Social justice isn’t new for sports. Many people can remember Billy Jean King’s victory in the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ or Colin Kaepernick’s Nike ad after he protested police brutality in the United States by kneeling during the American national anthem at NFL games. Hockey players Travis Dermott and Connor McDavid protested the NHL’s ban on Pride Tape, intended to be worn in support of the queer community.

What seemed new was how decolonization was — or wasn’t — being addressed.

For Forsyth, these displays of activism from athletes are commendable. It’s great that athletes are using their platforms to make statements and be engaged citizens; it shows everyone that sports are indeed political. But mainstream athletes have also not discussed decolonization, especially not with regard to the repatriation of land.

“It’s this form of decolonization, it is this form of social justice that is getting lost in the bigger celebration of social justice,” she said. “It’s the Indigenous part that is still lacking and that’s a fundamental challenge to sport in how it’s organized.”

In wake of the uncovering of mass graves at former residential school sites across Canada, institutions like universities and governments began to take recommendations for reconciliation more seriously. Sports were no exception — although teams with Indigenous names had been told years prior to rebrand, most finally did in 2021. Most notably, this included the Edmonton Elks football team and the Cleveland Guardians baseball team.

While some could finally feel a sense of relief at knowing they wouldn’t be hearing slurs as team names, not everyone’s reactions to the name changes were positive — which Forsyth said reinforces colonial ideas. People are more upset about maintaining a brand than the fact that these teams operate on Indigenous land without equal partnership. “[It] is a form of colonialism expressed as capitalism,” she said.

Norman explained that these negative reactions often stem from settlers’ feelings of entitlement . If settlers feel they can claim and belong to a sports team that takes from Indigenous culture, they feel they can claim and belong to the land. It might just be a name, but it justifies settler colonialism. To take away that name is to take away some settlers’ sense of belonging.

That isn’t necessarily the case at UBC. We’re in a different situation because of the 1948 gifting, at least according to Toor. He didn’t hear any pushback on the name from the university community or Musqueam Nation during the late 2010s and early 2020s , unlike at other Canadian universities like McGill. However, there is a large likelihood that’s because of the knowledge and education around the story of the Thunderbird and how our mascot came to be.

On campus tours, prospective students stop by the “Victory Through Honour” totem pole which currently sits in front of Brock Hall. According to Toor, student athletes receive experiential teachings, like lectures from guest speakers, alongside “some elements” in their mandatory education to deepen their understanding of sports’ role in reconciliation.

For Norman, education around the story of the Thunderbird, what it represents and how students choose to carry it through their time as a Thunderbird is radically important to how the name is viewed. Compared to the Edmonton Elks, it’s clear why we are still the Thunderbirds.

“I think that's actually disruptive of some of those ideas about belong[ing], settler entitlement and indigenization of white settler folks,” he said. “I think it actually challenges that.”

While UBC Athletics didn’t change their name, they did meet the socio-political moment. In January 2024, a new art piece of the Thunderbird was revealed in a similar fashion as it had been 75 years prior: in front of a crowd of students watching a sports game. Only this time, it was inside the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Arena for the annual Winter Classic hockey game.

Before a ceremonial puck drop, Toor stood at centre ice, admiring the debut of the reimagined version of the Thunderbird that lay six inches beneath his feet. While the game was happening, in which the teams wore jerseys with the new design, he said he’d never had so many people ask about the new design.

Deanna-Marie Point, a Musqueam artist, redesigned the Thunderbird logo. “Thunderbird Takes Flight” shows a side profile of a full Thunderbird, with its body and patterns representing the Coast Salish peoples and the colouring of blue and gold representing UBC. It is the first official representation of the Musqueam Thunderbird on campus.

Toor said the Athletics and Recreation department has been building a relationship with Musqueam for the past five years and has been having conversations about what decolonizing sports looks like and how UBC can better support their needs. The partnership, he stressed, is built on shared understanding and mutual trust and support. Over the years, he’s learned the key to making partnerships strong: listen more than you talk.

“If you build a relationship and listen, then you’re going to land in a good spot in the end,” he said.

Since becoming managing director in 2020, Toor has become more aware of the lack of Musqueam representation. While he believes the 1948 gifting by the Kwakwa̲ka̲’wakw nation was done in earnest, he said it felt unusual to him that it wasn’t given by the Musqueam, especially as he learned and engaged in more dialogue.

That’s when UBC Athletics began to have conversations about how to enhance the connection to Musqueam. Toor said his department has been engaging with nation partners to figure out what decolonizing sport looks like. From there, the department has worked on more recreational-based initiatives, such as adding “A Jaunt through Musqueam Territory” to the Great Trek title and adding Musqueam Swims, a weekly program for Musqueam with Indigenous swim instructors, to the UBC Aquatic Centre.

But Toor wanted something that could connect with the varsity teams, which is how the logo redesign was brought forward. He said that this proposal specifically connected with the Musqueam partners and soon, calls for Musqueam artists were put out. In a room with equal parts UBC and Musqueam representation, Point’s artwork was chosen.

The design was first incorporated into UBC Recreation’s events, starting with Storm the Wall in 2023. For Musqueam Chief Wayne Sparrow, yəχʷyaχʷələq, the new logo collaboration shows that “patience, mutual respect and openness to listen and learn about our protocols,” is the best way to honour Musqueam’s relationship to the land. The following varsity season, the alternate logo began to appear on jerseys, warm-up shirts and arena walls.

For Toor, the reimagined logo is not only a powerful piece of art, but a tool to inform settlers of the history of the Musqueam lands on which UBC Athletics operates.

“The best part about it … [is] how we arrived at these pieces — through a shared approach and lots of trust and good relationships.”

But changing a name or a symbol is so surface-level that Forsyth wouldn’t even count it as decolonization.

For her, decolonization is about systemic reform. It means, ultimately, undoing all forms of colonialism.

“If there is no systemic change that advances the needs and the interest of the Indigenous nations, then I would say we can't call it decolonization,” she told me. “It's another project, but it's not decolonization, especially if it doesn't repatriate land in some way.”

The connection to the land is key to Forsyth’s definition of decolonization, especially in a Canadian, settler-colonialist context. She said that decolonization is finding ways to live on Indigenous land and with Indigenous peoples in ways that preserve their culture and sovereignty. Indigenous nations are nations, not communities as they are so often referred to as, and in shifting that vernacular, a shift must also happen in negotiating. You don’t address a city like Burnaby the same way you’d address the United States.

A change in negotiating also means a change in how partnerships are addressed. Forsyth advocated for stronger economic reparations and creating better economic relationships between sports organizations and Indigenous nations. For example, the 91st call to action from the TRC urges the organizers of major sporting events, like the Olympics or Commonwealth Games, to engage with local Indigenous communities. But she said it shouldn’t stop at engagement — again, you wouldn’t host a Canadian game in the United States and not pay them for it. Having an Indigenous partner for events should mean that nations not only get opportunities for money, but guaranteed economic benefit. Their value isn’t only in representation, but in everything else too.

When UBC hosted the two Final 8 national basketball tournaments in March, Toor said Musqueam were consulted before they accepted the offer to host and that they had Musqueam guest speakers at keynotes and the opening ceremony.

“When we do a major event, it’s a really deep partnership that we look to engage with Musqueam on and in around these things because we view them as opportunities for the Musqueam, opportunities for us to storytell and to have an impact on our community,” said Toor.

In an October 3 email statement to The Ubyssey, Toor said hosting national championships “do not generate profits” and as such, a financial arrangement with the Musqueam for hosting “does not occur at USports events in Canada.”

Miles would also like to see a stronger economic benefit going back to the communities, although said it’s less about the tangibles and more about the efforts of reciprocity.

Reciprocity is embedded through an expression Miles mentioned a few times: “nothing for us without us.” This refers to a collaborative mindset in which no program, initiative or action regarding Indigenous people should be done without consultation and collaboration with the impacted Indigenous peoples. Essentially, don’t assume you know better than the people who actually know. It’s the element of reciprocity that Miles feels settlers don’t do enough in reconciliation. She gave an example of how much UBC has been able to do on Musqueam land and what they’ve done for the Musqueam people in return and how unequal it is; the scale of reciprocity is unbalanced, regardless of monetary value.

“It's not about money, it's about a relationship,” she said.

“Nothing for us without us” also highlights the accountability that Indigenous peoples have to their community or nation. Accountability is just one responsibility, Miles said, that Indigenous people have — others include practising resilience, self-respect, and reciprocity. And these responsibilities are amplified by Western standards of tokenism and representing your culture.

“It’s not just your family, it’s your people,” said Miles.

Although Indigenous people have ties to their communities, Miles noted that there is a lack of locality and a sense of responsibility to the Musqueam. UBC hires Indigenous people — although not enough to meet the national average — but they are often from nations outside BC, which means they don’t have a strong connection and accountability to the communities or land here. For Miles, this means that community events or engagement led by Indigenous people can still be colonial, because there is no local accountability. It’s still outsiders running the show. She’d want to see larger support for Indigenous hires that are local to either UBC campuses.

To this point, she suggested better integration of the Thunderbird to cultural and traditional ways of knowing. Symbolism isn’t just symbolism — or at least it shouldn’t be. Because there’s meaning behind the symbol of the Thunderbird, there are ties to Musqueam culture, traditions, the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ language and, therefore, land. Ties to the land also mean ties to Indigenous title rights. Symbolism isn’t just metaphorical, but without integration, it is.

Through advocacy and engagement, Indigenous people reciprocate with their communities by making “nothing for us without us” a reality. But there also needs to be a greater emphasis on reciprocity between settlers giving back to Indigenous peoples. While it might not come easy — reciprocity is less entrenched in more individualistic, Western cultures — it is a necessary step toward reconciliation.

And just like there isn’t one way to build a better society, there are many ways to express decolonization based on the sport. Forsyth has been working with Canoe Kayak Canada to understand the sports’ connections to colonization, focusing on history and implications for their sports. Sports like running or kite-skiing have specific initiatives to increase Indigenous access and participation. Decolonization will look different to each organization based on their own history, location, goals and available resources. This could, if executed well, be really cool.

“[To see] how it’s getting operationalized in these very specific sporting contexts — that would be a wonderful mosaic of decolonization,” Forsyth said.

But sports are notoriously slow at systemic change. In their defence, most institutions are not much better. Systemic reform requires physical, emotional and mental energy to deconstruct both where and how the system isn’t working. It requires organizational support; creating more inclusive systems, paying individuals their worth, making new scholarships and developing programs takes time. Add on the fact that there isn’t a silver bullet for how an institution is supposed to decolonize — the process of decolonization and reconciliation looks different in education, medicine and policing — then yes, it’ll take time. But that’s not an excuse for how long sports have taken to make even the smallest amount of progress.

“Health has advanced. Justice has advanced, education has advanced, government has advanced. And yet, sports … the gates have opened, the gun has gone off and they’re still standing there looking at each other, wondering what to do,” Forsyth said. “I don’t know why it’s so far behind the curve, but there it is.”

77 years can feel like a long time. Not for Miles. She reminded me that the gifting of the Thunderbird happened only two generations ago.

When the first Great Trek happened, where were the Musqueam? When the Thunderbird Stadium opened, where were the Musqueam? They were always here — this is their land — but they weren’t acknowledged systemically in athletics. While there have been advancements, there is still lots of work to be done when it comes to sports and reconciliation on campus.

Miles said part of moving forward is about creating equal and collaborative relationships between organizations and nations. One tangible way she suggested sports could improve is by making their approaches to decolonization more collaborative and strength-based, as opposed to a deficit-based model.

Deficit-based approaches are ones that focus on wrongdoing instead of rightdoing — what don’t you have instead of what you do have. This mindset is inherently negative but more commonly used because you don’t need to form a relationship in order to address it. It’s much easier to take a quick glance at an individual or a community and point out the flaws than it is to build a relationship and see where greater good can be created. Miles also pointed out that a deficit-based model invokes shame, a tool in colonizers’ attempts to assimilate Indigenous peoples. By contrast, a strength-based approach is about empowerment of unique gifts.

Miles also said that a strength-based approach is more positive, which she says is important when considering wholistic health and wellness, especially for Indigenous communities where this mindset has existed for generations.

“If you watch the Elders with the little ones and the children, they’re always building them up and they’re focusing on their gifts,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

In doing strength-based work, there is also co-creation: what the community thinks they are doing well, in addition to what the external partner reaching out thinks. Before co-creation can happen, there needs to be a relationship and dialogue of what people are doing really well, which in turn fosters the “nothing for us without us” mantra. “It’s kind of full circle,” said Miles.

She also stressed that the “us” part is crucial — that there should be more than one person who’s Indigenous involved in these conversations. This not only adds more perspectives, but creates better representation for Indigenous people as leaders, both on and off the field.

In 2020, UBC launched their Indigenous Strategic Plan (ISP), a document that outlines the university’s plan for progressing reconciliation. The plan had input from 2,500 students, staff, faculty and community members, leading to the creation of 43 distinct actions. These actions are intentionally broad, as the ISP is “a set of measures that [departments] can begin to put into their own context,” according to Dr. Sheryl Lightfoot, ISP co-lead, in a 2021 interview with The Ubyssey.

“It's important that we get the word out that this is everybody's plan and everyone has a role to play here. Everyone should see themselves in some of those action items and can start moving those forward,” she continued.

The plan is meant to guide university faculties, departments and units, including Athletics and Recreation, and Toor said they saw where they could take action in various goals. The ISP is a guiding document in their community engagement, specifically encouraging and creating Athletics’ relationship with Musqueam.

Although UBC Athletics hasn’t outwardly taken a strength-based approach, they have worked more on the collaborative end. Toor told me their building block of decolonizing sport is their relationship with Musqueam and taking direction from them. He said the department isn’t trying to decide what is best, but rather work together to create programs or pathways to decolonize sports.

Point’s redesign of the Thunderbird logo is one of four Athletics-based action items in the 2025 ISP Progress Report. However, none of the actions listed in the progress report or noted by Toor are rooted in systemic reforms. And Toor knows there is still more work to be done.

“We understand reconciling our collective colonial history will require enormous efforts by all of us,” he said.

And although Miles had ideas for how UBC Athletics could make progress on their reconciliation efforts, she was adamant about applying a strength-based approach. Continuing to use a deficit- and shame-based approach to decolonization and reconciliation won’t move things along any more smoothly than they are now. Negativity doesn’t help. To move forward, she said, we should look to the present and the future and determine how we can expand what is going well.

“There are some things that do need to change, still continue to change, but,” Miles said, “I have hope.”

First online Nov. 8, 2025, midnight

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