The Washington Redskins were the subject of controversy for years due to their supposedly offensive name. And yet, the controversy was not primarily driven by outrage from Native Americans, but from non-Native American sports media reporters who capitalized on Black Lives Matter. This was an attempt to erase Native Americans not just from our sports culture, but from our culture as a whole.
President Donald Trump has revived the debate over the Redskins’ name, calling for the NFL team and MLB’s Cleveland Indians to return to their old names. Washington axed the name in 2020, temporarily playing as the “Washington Football Team” before choosing the uninspiring “Commanders” name they go by now. The Indians quickly followed, adopting the equally uninspiring “Guardians” name. Trump has threatened to block the Commanders’ new stadium deal in Washington, D.C., if the team doesn’t return to its Redskins name and imagery.
The Redskins name change was a focus for years leading up to 2020, and all the while it was clear that there was no real momentum to actually change the name. While activists and sports media declared that “Redskins” was a slur, polling of Native Americans came back with different results. The Washington Post in 2016 found that nine in ten Native Americans did not consider the name to be offensive.
The poll had been so jarring to the biased liberal media discourse that then-Washington Post columnist Robert McCartney declared, “I’m dropping my protest of Washington’s football team name.” (Several sports journalists had “protested” the Redskins name by refusing to use it in their work, insisting on only calling the team “Washington”). A 2019 poll led by marketing research firm Wolvereye found that 68% of Native Americans were not offended by the name. In fact, they were asked to choose a word that best described how the name made them feel. The most selected word from the given list? “Proud.”
It isn’t hard to see why. The team’s fight song was “Hail to the Redskins,” and the logo was a regal representation of Two Guns White Calf, who, as my colleague Jeremiah Poff wrote, “was the last chief of the Blackfoot Tribe and was one of the most photographed Native Americans of his time until his death in 1934.” The logo was designed by another Native American, Walter “Blackie” Wetzel, who was raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. Even the prominent Native American groups that bought into the “Redskins is a slur” argument, such as the Navajo Nation, asked that the team keep its Native American imagery and representation. (The Navajo Nation wanted the new team to be the Washington Code Talkers).
But when a white police officer killed a black man in Minneapolis, the game was over. Liberal journalists had been trying to force the Redskins to lose the name for years, and George Floyd’s death gave them the emotional blackmail they needed to wield against the team’s sponsors. Ultimately, FedEx dealt the death blow, threatening to withhold its brand from the team’s stadium, FedEx Field. (FedEx then opted out of its naming rights deal four years later).
Native Americans were entirely erased from Washington’s legacy as a result. The Native American logo designed by a Native American was ultimately replaced by a generic “W.” The iconic Native American imagery associated with the Redskins was replaced by the generic block designs of the generically-named Commanders. NBC even erased the Redskins logo from history when revisiting the team’s past. The team that highlighted Native American history and customs through its imagery and pregame festivities no longer has any reason to revisit or honor Native Americans and their contributions to our history.
The same could be said of the Indians, who abandoned their name after more than 100 years and erased Native Americans from Major League Baseball in favor of the generic “Guardians” naming and branding. Other ethnic groups whose history is honored by sports teams, such as the Minnesota Vikings or the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, and no widespread social justice movements trying to rename them.
The issue was never the Redskins name being a slur or the Indians’ “Chief Wahoo” logo being a racial caricature. The issue has always been the left-wing assumption that any representation of Native Americans in sports must be erased. That has been evident with the remaining NFL and MLB teams with Native American imagery: the Kansas City Chiefs and the Atlanta Braves.
The Braves have had an advertising agreement with the Eastern Cherokee tribe going back to 2001, and have worked more closely with the tribe in recent years to continue to do justice to its representation of Native Americans. Kansas City adopted its “Chiefs” nickname for the city’s mayor, who was nicknamed “Chief.” And yet, the use of Native American imagery has practically erased that from history, with the Chiefs honoring local tribes and introducing fans to Native American traditions.
That hasn’t stopped the attempts to erase Native American imagery from both teams, from banning headdresses from fans, retiring live horse mascots, and regulating the “Tomahawk chop,” an imposing chant that unites home fans. The Florida State Seminoles, who have the support of Florida’s Seminole Tribe, still use the Tomahawk Chop loudly and proudly during games, showing just how ridiculous it is to brand it as an “offensive” chant.
In the case of both the Chiefs and the Braves, liberal sports media have continued to pressure the teams to rename as the Redskins and Indians have done before them. While they haven’t succeeded, they have forced both teams to further sanitize their franchises of Native American imagery, slowly breaking them down to nothing more than sterilized, generic teams that happen to have a name that could be loosely associated with Native Americans. While the erasure has not taken the team’s identities yet, it has continued to slowly move its way through both franchises’ traditions.
It has continued down to even the high school level, where California forcibly renamed high schools across the state to eliminate “offensive” names. One such school was Tulare Union High School, which introduced students to Native American history and traditions that they would not otherwise learn about had the franchise not embraced Native American imagery. The local Lakota tribe objected to the state law renaming the school, as Tulare Union had always carefully honored Native American history.
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Tulare Union renamed to the “Tribe” in order to keep as close as possible to its history and iconography. The school will be forced to rename again soon, as “Tribe” has been added to the ban list. Other schools forced to rename include the historic Sanger High Apaches and the Lompoc Braves.
The erasure of these “offensive” names that are, at best, considered a topic of debate among the wide variety of Native American tribes and groups, has a peculiar side effect. Outside of sports, Native American presence in national culture is limited to a history book chapter about the Trail of Tears and to casinos. Native Americans have been shoved in the corner of American history and culture, and are being further buried with each renaming and rebranding of professional, collegiate, and high school sports teams. The only concern those in sports media have for them is the renaming, and they become forgotten once again as soon as teams rebrand themselves with generic monikers like the “Commanders” or the “Guardians.”