Before Santa Maria’s District logo would be an image of Columbus Ship. This logo has come offensive towards many people specifically Indigenous people.

The district having the Columbus Ship logo tells people this town supports Columbus; many do not agree.

This has caused many countries, cities, and towns to even change Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day.

The Columbus ship was adopted by Santa Maria in 1971. The ship is on city’s logo and can be seen all over town, as they put the logo onto hats, business cards, mastheads, and other supplies. Ever since, the Columbus ship has been the districts’ and the city’s logo for decades.

Christopher Columbus was known to “discover” America, the new land, but he was not the first person to see the land. He had never set foot in America.

When he had set foot in Hispaniola, he noticed a population of Indigenous people and had forced them into slavery. In his dairy he had written, “They were very well built, with very handsome bodies and very good faces. They do not carry arms or know them…They should be good servants.” The Indigenous people were treated horrible; if they did not get enough gold for Columbus, he would punish in serval ways.  They would be losing limbs or be killed. He took away their land, women were being raped, children were kidnapped, and treaties were lost. Columbus and his men carried new vines and diseases to the new land, many got ill and lead to many deaths.

Today

In the Santa Maria Times, “Santa Maria high school district to develop new logo, branding vision with consulting firm” they included: “‘The company we’re hiring and the money we’re spending is not just to design the logo; it’s to identify what this district means and then to brand that so everybody in this community feels really good about it,’ board member Dominick Palera said.”

With the new design the only problem is, “…whether the design would still be relevant years down the road.”