Native Americans Fighting for a Return to the Washington Redskins Name

The National Football League, with its regular season just weeks away, is facing a blitz from the Native American Guardians Association, which says its “culture is under attack” and — vowing “to protect it, to defend it, and to save it” — demanding the that the new owners of Washington franchise restore its original name, Redskins.NAGA has launched a campaign to “reclaim the name Washington Redskins.” Backed by more than 120,000 signatures on a Change.org petition and funded by donations at GiveSendGo, they sent a letter to the team’s new team owner, Josh Harris, who has yet to respond.“We are formally requesting,” the letter says, “that the team revitalize its relationship with the American Indian community by changing the name back to the Redskins, which recognizes America’s original inhabitants and using the team’s historic name and legacy to encourage Americans to learn about and not cancel the history of America’s tribes and our role in the founding of this great nation.”NAGA’s Midwest director, Billy Dieckman, a Marine and “100% Native American” of the Kiowa Tribe, tells me that new ownership “has a chance at a fresh start and an opportunity to apologize to Native America,” while protecting “themselves from the toxic cancel culture that tarnishes everything that it touches.”Citing a 2016 Washington Post poll that found 90 percent of Native Americans weren’t offended by the name — matching the results of an Annenberg poll from 2004 — Mr. Dieckman suggested that Mr. Harris focus on that overwhelming majority “and the hundreds of thousands of fans worldwide that want their Redskin team back.”Mr. Dieckman described NAGA as “a grassroots effort to tell the truth and facts against a full-on assault by cancel culture” and press “sensationalism.” He says that the group is “fighting to preserve and reinstate our culture where it’s been erased and eradicated.”NAGA’s goal, Mr. Dieckman says, “is to change the narrative that America has right now that says any Native imagery is racist and needs to be erased immediately. We need to be respected and heard; that’s finally beginning to happen,” with new ownership.In 2020, after complaints and boycotts from groups presuming to speak for indigenous people, Washington retired the Redskins name under which it had played since 1933, winning three Super Bowls and two NFL championships along the way. They hit the gridiron last season with the milquetoast moniker the Commanders.Mr. Dieckman called it a “horrible decision to cave … and abandon the name ‘Redskin’ which is steeped in deep honor and is the status symbol of proven, elite warriors that were allowed to participate in the cleansing bloodroot of painting one’s skin red for battle” as celebrated in the Redskin Fight Song with the words, “Braves on the warpath.”The iconic Redskins logo, Mr. Dieckman said, “is not a mascot,” but “a real person,” Chief Whitecalf, “a true American badass” whose likeness “was gifted from the Blackfoot Tribe,” a “forever gift” that’s “never to be relinquished.”The illustration of Chief Whitecalf in profile, which debuted in 1971, was designed by Walter “Blackie” Wetzel, an indigenous artist who based it on portraits of the Blackfeet leader. After the logo was stripped along with the name, his grandson, William Wetzel, wrote a defense in the Great Falls Tribune.“It always really bothered me,” Mr. Wetzel said, “that because of his association with a logo his name has been so conflated with a racial slur.” He noted that his grandfather was Blackfeet Tribal chairman, president of the National Congress of American Indians, “and spent his life working to advance civil rights.”Mr. Wetzel called changing the Redskins brand “the right thing to do,” saying, “People might miss it, but we will all be fine.” However, many indigenous fans took pride in rooting for the likeness of Chief Whitecalf on any given Sunday and are not willing to surrender it.After the Commanders name debuted, a Washington Post poll of district residents found that “about half of fans ‘dislike’ or ‘hate’” it “and very few ‘love’ it.” They’re encouraging numbers for NAGA’s campaign to restore the beloved Redskins name, singing the words of their old team song, “Fight on, fight On, ’til you have won, sons of Washington.”

Native Americans Fighting for a Return to the Washington Redskins Name

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