Washington, DC-On July 13, the Washington National Football League team retired their infamous team name: The Washington Redskins. The interim name for the 2020 season, while they choose a new moniker and logo, is the Washington Football Team.
The Redskins name first came to be in 1933 when co-owner George Preston Marshall changed the name from the Braves to the Redskins while the team was sharing a playing field with the Boston Braves baseball team.
Some sources say he renamed the team to maintain Native American imagery; others say he may have been honoring the coach, who may have been Native American. The original logo for the NFL Braves resembled the current logo, the profile of a Native American head with braids and trailing feathers, which was proposed by Walter Wetzel, a former Blackfeet tribal chairman and past president of the National Congress of American Indians. The current logo was introduced in 1972 and is modeled after the likeness on the Buffalo nickel.
Native Americans began questioning the use of the name and image in the 1960s, along with names and logos of other sports teams. In 1970, the University of Oklahoma retired its mascot, a Native American named "Little Red." Many Division I schools, such as Stanford, Dartmouth, and Syracuse, along with hundreds of high schools, dropped questionable mascots or changed team names.
The Washintgon Redskins have had what is considered the most contentious name in professional sports because the franchise is considered to not only have appropriated Native American imagery, as do other teams, but the name is considered by many to be a slur itself.
Supporters have said the name honors the achievements and virtues of Native Americans, and that it was not intended in a negative manner. According to The Washington Post, a 2016 poll found that nine in ten Native Americans were not offended by the name. However, a 2019 poll by UC Berkeley found that 49 percent of Native Americans found the name offensive, rising to 67 percent of those who said they regularly participated in native or tribal culture.
The announcement for the name change was precluded by pressure on the franchise from sponsoring and retail partnerships. In a July 2 letter sent to the Washington team, FedEx, which pays about $8 million a year for the naming rights to the team's stadium said if the name wasn't changed, it would back out of the deal. Bank of America, Pepsi, Nike and other NFL sponsors issued statements asking the team for a name change, and retailers like Walmart, Amazon and Target stopped selling the team's merchandise on their websites and in their stores.
"Today is a day for all Native people to celebrate. We thank the generations of tribal nations, leaders, and activists who worked for decades to make this day possible. We commend the Washington NFL team for eliminating a brand that disrespected, demeaned, and stereotyped all Native people, and we call on all other sports teams and corporate brands to retire all caricatures of Native Americans that they use as their mascots. We are not mascots-we are Native people, citizens of more than 500 tribal nations who have stood strong for millennia and overcome countless challenges to reach this pivotal moment in time when we can help transform America into the just, equitable, and compassionate country our children deserve," says the National Congress of American Indians, which counted the enrollment of its member tribes as totaling 1.2 million individuals in 2013, and applauded the decision in a statement. "Fifty years is a long time to be fighting for one issue, to get so far but also to have so far to go. The Chiefs, Blackhawks, and Major League Baseball's Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves still exist, and more than 2,200 high schools still use some form of Native American imagery. Those that have been in this fight made it clear that it was always about the future, never the present or past."
The Cleveland Indians will consult with Native American groups as the team considers changing its name for the first time since 1915. Cleveland removed the contentious Chief Wahoo logo from its game caps and jerseys after the 2018 season. The caricature had been part of the team's history since the 1930s.
"I am invested in engaging our community and appropriate stakeholders to help determine the best path forward with regard to our team name. In the coming weeks, we will engage Native American leaders to better understand their perspectives, meet with local civic leaders, and continue to listen to the perceptions of our players, fans, partners and employees," Cleveland's owner Paul Dolan told the Associated Press.
