Economic pressure pushed NFL owner to act
Kevin Draper and Gillian R. Brassil
Activists have spent decades pressuring professional sports leagues, college programs and high schools to abandon Native American names and imagery for their teams.
The first domino fell in 1970, when Oklahoma retired its mascot, a Native American named “Little Red.” Over the years, other Division I universities, including Stanford, Dartmouth and Syracuse — and thousands of high schools — dropped their mascots or changed their names.
But the biggest lightning rod was always Washington’s NFL team, the Redskins.
Its owner, Daniel Snyder, had been recalcitrant about changing the name of one of football’s oldest and most valuable franchises, even though its name does not just appropriate Native American imagery — as do the NFL’S Kansas City Chiefs or NHL’S Chicago Blackhawks — but is considered by many to be a slur itself.
On Monday, those at the forefront of the fight finally won. The Washington team announced that it would soon drop its 87-year-old name and its logo for a yetto-be revealed new name, becoming the oldest NFL team name to ever be retired.
“This is part of a much larger movement going on that indigenous peoples are situated in, and it is a long time coming,” said Carla Fredericks, the director of First Peoples Worldwide and a longtime advocate against Native American mascots. “For anyone that is associated with the movement for racial justice, this is a significant gain.”
Despite the collective power of formerly disparate movements and a halfcentury of activist pressure, what finally triggered the name change was not an acknowledgment of Native people’s concerns or a rumination on the name’s offense.
Instead, Snyder, the owner of the team for more than 20 years, was seemingly driven by a simpler motivation: money.
In a letter sent to the team dated July 2, Fedex, which pays about $8 million a year for the naming rights to the home stadium, said if the name wasn’t changed, it would back out of the deal. The threat carried extra weight, considering that Fedex chairman Frederick Smith owns a minority stake in the NFL franchise.
Fedex was among several corporate heavyweights to take action to persuade Snyder to act. Bank of America, Pepsi, Nike and other NFL sponsors issued statements asking for a name change, and retailers including Walmart, Amazon and Target stopped selling the team’s merchandise on their websites and in their stores.
Suzan Shown Harjo, formerly the president of the National Council of American Indians and a well-known activist against Native American team names, was cleareyed about the order of concerns for Snyder.
“He had to satisfy first his Fedex and other managerial and promotion partners,’’ she said. “Second, his merch partners. Third, the franchise’s 40% owners.”
But ultimately the credit belongs to “the longevity and persistence of our no-mascot movement,’’ Harjo said.
Now that their biggest target has budged, activists are pushing for additional changes.
Earlier this month, a letter signed by nearly every American Indian group and representatives from more than 150 federally recognized tribes was sent to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
Besides demanding the cessation of “racialized Native American branding,” the letter called for a change of Washington’s burgundy and gold color scheme.
“There can be a faction of fans that refuse to retreat from stereotypical names and logos, and not changing the colors would allow for that behavior,” Fredericks said.
In other words, changing the name and logo doesn’t mean as much if thousands of fans stream into Fedex Field wearing their old team gear, including headdresses, war paint and other stereotypical imagery.