Native Americans grapple with Chiefs celebrations

KANSAS CITY, MO. » Moontee Sinquah spent only one minute onstage inside the Footprint Center in downtown Phoenix during the NFL’s Super Bowl Opening Night. But it’s a minute that will remain unforgettable.

The Native American hoop dancer had never been that close to football players and coaches about to compete in the league’s biggest game. As he and other Indigenous performers sang and danced, they heard elated whoops from Indigenous people in the audience. It gave Sinquah chills.

“I’m just really grateful that they did highlight our people because I think it’s really important,” said Sinquah, who is a member of the Hopi-Tewa and Choctaw nations. But when he thinks of that inclusion coupled with Super Bowl cameras panning to Kansas City Chiefs fans doing the maligned “tomahawk chop,” Sinquah says that juxtaposition leaves him “perplexed.”

“I think that’s the only thing that really bothers me about that whole thing is that, and I don’t know where it came from. And I don’t really fully understand it, but it is almost like a mockery,” Sinquah said.

The Super Bowl-winning Chiefs embarked on their victory lap Wednesday, with players and fans alike doing the “chop” during a raucous parade and rally. Indigenous people are grappling with the national spotlight once again falling on the team’s mascot and fan “war chant” — which they deem racist.

There were plenty performing the chop in a red sea of fans in Chiefs gear along the parade route and in front of Kansas City’s Union Station, where the parade ended. The team then closed out the rally by doing the “chop” in unison in a slurry of confetti.

Andrea Robinson, an 18-year-old psychology major at the University of Kansas, hollered while doing the open-handed chop with the crowd. “I think we should keep it,” Robinson said. “I mean we need to be respectful about it. I understand but I mean it’s a tradition.”

James Simermeyer, a member of the Coharie Tribe based in North Carolina, watched most of the game from his home in Baltimore. He appreciated the involvement of Sinquah’s dance troupe and a University of Arizona student who is Navajo and deaf using Native American sign language during “America the Beautiful” before the game. At the same time, it felt like “one step forward two steps back” when he heard the chant Kansas City fans do during the chop.