National Post (National Edition)

FIGHT ON, ESKIMOS. BUT GAME’S OVER

EDMONTON’S FAMILIAR CFL NICKNAME IN A LOSING RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK

- COLBY COSH National Post

As a lifelong fan of the Canadian Football League’s Edmonton Eskimos, I will admit it: in my heart I have already said farewell to the team’s nickname. Edmonton-area sports teams have been calling themselves the “Eskimos” for well over a century — long enough, in fact, that they were doing so when the spelling “Esquimaux” still had a toehold in English. The franchise itself, which is community-owned, insists that it has no plans to surrender to those who think calling a football team “the Eskimos” is offensive or unkind.

You can see the problem: even a word like “surrender” is fraught with contentiou­s implicatio­ns. But this seems like an impossible battle for the team to win — an argument you lose in the act of making it, if you are not Inuit. I strongly suspect the leadership of the football Eskimos realizes this.

The debate over the Edmonton Eskimos resurfaced this week when the mayor of Winnipeg, Brian Bowman, said he would like to see the nickname changed as his city prepares to host Capital of Alberta Football Club in a playoff game. Instead of dismissing this request as a distractin­g competitiv­e ploy, Edmonton’s mayor, Don Iveson, agreed with Bowman. He even suggested the name change should happen before Edmonton hosts the CFL championsh­ip game in 2018.

I see the Eskimos’ front office as playing for time. (The team’s marketing, I notice, places increasing­ly strong emphasis on the word “Empire.”) It seems careless for Iveson to inject a fake deadline into this subtle process in order to earn applause, even if you agree with him. As operators of a community business in Iveson’s city, the Eskimos’ executives are in a tricky position. Some Eskimo supporters — coowners — will be furious if the name is changed, no matter what. And there will be hard financial costs to a change.

But one cannot talk about the strong feelings of Edmonton toward its football team and then dismiss or downplay the feelings of the Inuit about the word “Eskimo.” No, this is not a case like that of the Washington Redskins, where the name of the team is uncontrove­rsially and clearly an ethnic slur. The football Eskimos have been better at avoiding insulting caricature than, say, the Cleveland Indians. Ethnograph­ically, “Eskimo” is not even equivalent to “Inuit”: there are non-Inuit peoples who call themselves Eskimos.

And while I wish this was recognized by people who write about the debate, as a matter of accuracy and fairness, it does not add up to much as an argument for keeping the team name in the face of anybody’s bad feelings about it. “Eskimo” is a term that has been applied to the Inuit; whatever the word’s precise denotation, it is not the preferred cognomen of the Inuit for themselves; and some of them obviously associate it with a history of racism and government mistreatme­nt. It is not really for anyone else — bluntly, it is not for me — to tell the Inuit that these associatio­ns are imaginary or inconseque­ntial.

The head of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Natan Obed, is a determined advocate of changing the football team’s name. It seems to be the case that some Inuit are comfortabl­e with the name of the CFL Eskimos, and think that Obed’s position is contrived attentiong­rabbing. Opinion among the Inuit could hardly be other than divided: hell, it is not too hard to find American aboriginal people who think “Washington Redskins” is just fine.

What strikes me is that Tapiriit and its leaders have to be taken pretty seriously as an envoy of the Inuit people. It is not a government, but it has a lot of the characteri­stics pertaining to one for the purpose of this discussion: for one, Obed is an elected representa­tive. Both those words are important. So if we are tempted to say that he doesn’t speak for Canada’s Inuit, and start nose-counting among the people that chose him collective­ly, we are ... well, maybe the appropriat­e metaphor is a football one: “moving the goalposts.”

Of course the team should consult widely among the Inuit, as it assures us it is already doing. But speaking for myself, I have watched white journalist­s raise questions about the Eskimos nickname for a long time, and my question was always, “Very well, but what do the Inuit as a group really make of it?”

As attached as I am to the “Edmonton Eskimos” brand — which is, in the end, just a brand — it would not be fair for me to now say, “Gosh, I guess I just don’t like Obed’s answer.” And I see no real prospect of his answer being reversed or opposed by a wave of passionate positive support from northern Eskies fans of Inuit ethnicity.

It might be one thing if changing “Eskimos” required an expensive redesign of uniforms and other football parapherna­lia, but the costs, while real, will be limited. The team has been downplayin­g the ethnic-signifier aspect of “Eskimos” for decades: it doesn’t even need to change helmets as long as the new nickname starts with an E.

Stationery isn’t that expensive. And goodwill counts too: it is real enough to businesses to appear on balance sheets. I will miss my familiar Edmonton Eskimos, and I don’t know what we’ll do about the fight song, but I am ready.

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