Revivng the debate over Native American team names

The Washington Football Team is set to take the field this coming Sunday for their season opener with a very bland new look. No nickname. No iconic logo.

The franchise is two months removed from retiring its "Redskins" nickname, a term considered a racial slur against Native Americans, and its Indian head logo. Until a new one is found, players will simply don simple red and gold uniforms, with player numbers in place of team iconography on their helmet.

Washington's game against the Philadelphia Eagles will be a historic moment for Native American advocates. Long had they fought for the US capital team to drop its controversial nickname and logo. In July, Washington finally obliged, knuckling under mounting pressure from local politicians and big-name sponsors. 

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"It was a surreal experience," Paul Chaat Smith, a Comanche author and an associate curator at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, told DW. "It's a huge victory for the activists that have been part of this movement."

Joe Podlasek, the CEO of the Trickster Cultural Center in Chicago and a member of the Ojibwe tribe, told DW that the change was "long, long overdue."

But although the NFL franchise's decision was monumental, it remains a singular case in the broader debate of Native American appropriations in US sports — one in which even American Indians disagree.

Drawing the line

With Washington's rebrand, only four US professional sports teams possessing Native American inspired nicknames remain: the defending NFL champion Kansas City Chiefs, the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team and the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians baseball teams,

The Indians announced in July that, like Washington, it would also review its name. The baseball club has already dropped its controversial "Chief Wahoo" moniker last year. But the Braves, Blackhawks and Chiefs remained committed to their names.

In 2013, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) called for all Native American appropriations in sports to be scrapped, arguing that they propagated stereotypes that exacerbated racial inequality.

Podlasek prefers a case-by-case approach to the issue because he feels differently about different teams.

"A lot of protesters just are lumping them all into one. If there are Native mascots or Native imagery, they should go. I don't believe that," he said.

"I believe in understanding both sides. I may not agree, but I need to understand what their thinking is."

But Smith believes it's better to scrap them all, arguing that, given the current political climate in the United States, newly established sports teams would want nothing to do with Native American imagery.

"A new team would never go anywhere near any of these names," Smith said. "So you're defending something because it already existed, and it's just not a good enough reason anymore."

Smith added that, in general, the National Museum of the American Indian wants to move away from being prescriptive on sports names.

"We're trying to get away from the idea of this one's horrible, but this one's kind of okay," he said. "We want to get out of the business of being involved in it at all."

Change over time?

Though their nicknames remain off limits for now, the Braves, Blackhawks and Chiefs adopted or considered measures such as banning Indian-inspired headdresses in stadiums or doing away with the tomahawk chop chant.

Podlasek, who worked closely with the Blackhawks when he headed the American Indian Center of Chicago, said change takes time. He explained that hundreds of Blackhawks fans would wear headdresses and face paint to games a decade ago, but that number has now dropped to just a handful. But he maintained cultural education is also an important part of the process.

"If we say, 'Okay, the tomahawk chop is way out of bounds, let's get rid of it.' This is how we do it from a Native community perspective, but we have to help educate why that's not right," Podlasek said.

But Smith believes that, as long as the nicknames and logos persist, there will be still a small percentage of fans who will act in an inappropriately stereotypical way.

"Any Indian theme, no matter how what the word is, or the intent is always going to bring it is always going to support these stereotypical notions," Smith said. "There are always going to be some fans who will act atrociously."