(Boston, MA) Today the Mass Joint Committee on Education will be hearing testimony on a bill eliminating Native American mascots. The bill has been reintroduced by Senator Jo Comerford and Representative Brandy Fluker Oakley who have worked with tribal representatives and social science researchers to compile the impacts on Native populations, especially students. Melissa Ferretti, Chair of the Herring Pond Wampanoag, has said that the mascots are part of the erasure of “Native identities and silencing Native accounts” of their histories.