The Washington Redskins experienced an interesting array of events this past weekend in Minnesota. Robert Griffin III started his first game since suffering an ankle injury on Sept. 14, one of the team’s buses crashed into the other and Native Americans actively but peacefully staged the largest protest to date (over 3,500 people, according to Minneapolis police) against the District of Columbia football team’s nickname.
Unlike almost all other NFL cities, Minneapolis has a strong Native American presence. The University of Minnesota, the host of Sunday afternoon’s game, has combatted the use of Native American names and mascots in sports for decades. Further, the University tried to block the use of the name “Redskins” on campus, however their bid was unsuccessful.
Plenty of other professional sports teams exploit Native Americans in their logos and nicknames. It seems, though, that only the Redskins are harassed and pressured to change their name. If the Redskins were to change their name, there does not seem to be a reason that they would necessarily have to change their logo, colors, uniforms or anything of the sort.
Many fans consider the Chicago Blackhawks to have the best sweater in the NHL — it has gone virtually unchanged since the mid 1960s. Despite possessing a logo strikingly similar to that of the Redskins for nearly a century, though, the Blackhawks have faced very little backlash.
The MLB hosts two teams with Native American names: the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians. The Atlanta Braves incorporated the head of a Native American from 1912 to 1989. In 1990, though, the team changed its logo to a tomahawk above the word “Braves” in cursive writing. The “Tomahawk Chop” still frequently occurs at Braves games. This particular chant is very hard to explain, but it certainly seems like it could be offensive.
The Cleveland Indians, still place “Chief Wahoo,” a caricature of a wide-smiling, red-faced man, on the sleeve of their home and away uniforms. The “Chief,” as many Cleveland fans refer to it, was the primary logo for the team since the 1940s. However, this past season, he was stripped from his spot on the team’s cap, and replaced with a block letter “C.”
Cleveland is not removing The Chief entirely, as many die-hard fans would be devastated, however, the organization is lowering the Chief’s presence, to show sincerity toward any groups offend by the logo.
I had suspected the Braves, for their continuation of the “Tomahawk Chop” and Cleveland, for adorning their jerseys with a cartoonish Indian head, to face harsh, frequent criticisms from Native Americans and their supporters. However, the two teams have faced very little opposition.
The NCAA removed the nickname “Fighting Sioux,” and the logo from the University of North Dakota in 2012. As a result, UND went nameless during last year’s Frozen Four hockey tournament in Philadelphia. The main difference between the UND case and the Redskins case, though, is that the majority of Native Americans in North Dakota supported the “Sioux” nickname.
Despite the ramifications faced by UND, the Florida State University Seminoles have yet to meet such a fate. The reigning NCAA Football Champions have a logo that outstandingly resembles that of the Redskins, yet have not received the same level of backlash.
Though I obviously cannot speak for Native Americans, based on my research, it seems that a given team’s nickname is what proves to be the most offensive aspect, and not necessarily the team’s logo. The Blackhawks and Seminoles both have logos remarkably similar to the Redskins, but face virtually no criticism from Native Americans.
The word “Redskin” has a very ambiguous origin. The Oxford dictionary defines a Redskin simply as a Native American.
According to dozens of sources (most reliably of which is protesting Native Americans), the term refers to the scalp of a Native American sold for cash, like an animal pelt. This particular definition is morbid. If there is any chance that the term Redskin refers to the severed scalp of a human being, then the name of the District of Columbia’s football team should be stripped immediately.
Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has vehemently defended his team’s nickname, saying that the term “Redskin” refers to “honor and respect.” Even after the United States Patent and Trademark Office revoked the Redskins’ trademark, Snyder has unwaveringly supported his team’s name.
The issue of changing the Redskins name is far from over, and it isn’t going away any time soon. Protests intensified after Washington won Super Bowl XXII in 1988, and though they have simmered down occasionally since then, the topic always returns.
Washington’s football team will eventually change its name. It is unknown how the change will come about, but the name “Redskins” is no longer welcome in the NFL. If other teams, both collegiate and professional, can have Native American logos, though, there should be no reason that Washington should change their logo.
I’ve been researching team names and mascots for eleven years before publishing “Naming Rites: A Biographical History of North American Team Names.” I recently posted blogs about the twisted histories of the UND ‘Fighting Sioux’ and Washgington ‘Redskins’ nicknames. As I recently said on my author site:
The Daily Republican in Winona, Minnesota posts this announcement: “The State reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory. This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth.” When this story is uncovered in November 2013, the anti-Redskin faction says it’s the smoking gun that proves redskin is derived from the description of bloody [red] scalps turned in by white bounty hunters. While the post certainly indicates a murderous disrespect for the region’s indigenous people (in this case, the Dakotas), Purgatory is a non-physical waiting room for souls; you do not send a bloody scalp there. It’s therefore easier to argue that the passage proves that red-skin is not a reference to a body part but to a person’s incorporeal essence. Again, any person who sees economic opportunity in Minnesota’s dead-Indian bounty it is a bastard, but the word Jew doesn’t get granted a false etymology and it doesn’t gain a pejorative meaning just because Hitler & Co. set out to slaughter “the Jews.”
Read the whole post:
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/7289436-the-washington-redskins-nickname-a-timeline