Since 1927, McGill's athletic teams have been nicknamed the Redmen. Nearly a century later, 80 percent of McGill's student body voted in favor of a name change.
Tomas Jirousek is a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy, a group of Indigenous tribes in western Canada. About 25 percent of his hometown of Whitehorse, Yukon is Indigenous. But when Jirousek first arrived at McGill University in the fall of 2016, he was one of only about 150 Indigenous students out of nearly 28,000 undergrads.
"There were these pockets where I saw myself reflected," Jirousek says. "But it almost felt more isolating, now that I think about it, to know that the only spaces where you are really reflected are, you know, the First Peoples' House, the Indigenous studies program, within the few Indigenous student groups that we have. I had never really felt as othered as I did here at McGill."
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