WHAT’S IN A NAME? EVERYTHING
Inuit Canadians should not be demeaned with derogatory football team moniker
If the Canadian Football League launched an expansion franchise in Edmonton today, governors would surely reject Eskimos as a potential name for the team.
You wouldn’t see Braves, Indians, Chiefs or Redskins approved, either, because they conflate an identifiable group of people with the demeaning role of sports team mascot and as such, all five of those names can rightly be viewed as derogatory, offensive or straight-up racist.
In the spring of 2020, in the wake of a Black Lives Matter awakening that has shone a harsh spotlight on systemic social inequality and racism, that ought to be clear.
However, there is still a disconnect between the negative connotation of its name and the values the Edmonton franchise holds dear — inclusion, respect and diversity — as a member of the CFL and the larger Canadian community. Perhaps the leadership is mere weeks away from that realization.
“We acknowledge and appreciate the feedback and input regarding our name,” the team said in a statement on Wednesday. “We take this issue seriously as has been demonstrated by the three years we’ve spent engaging in Canada’s north and conducting research related to our name.
“We recognize that a lot has occurred since this information was gathered, and as a result, we are accelerating our ongoing process of review. We will be seeking further input from the Inuit, our partners and other stakeholders to inform our decisions moving forward. We’ll continue to listen carefully and with an open mind. We intend to complete our review as quickly as possible and will provide an update on these discussions by the end of this month.”
That statement followed one published earlier in the week by Belairdirect, one of the team’s corporate sponsors.
“At Belairdirect one of our core values is respect, which is founded on seeing diversity as a strength, being inclusive and collaborative. In order for us to move forward and continue on with our partnership with the Edmonton Eskimos, we will need to see concrete action in the near future including a name change. We have shared our position with the team.”
How long before The Brick, Telus, Boston Pizza, Servus Credit Union and others join the chorus? If it takes corporate pressure to enlighten the franchise, so be it. Because, even as recently as February, the team was hanging tight. The organization conducted a survey as part of its engagement in the north and said it didn’t elicit a consensus opinion on acceptance of the term. So they didn’t act. They could just as easily have decided that because their name offends some Indigenous people, it was time to go.
Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, the 26-year-old NDP member of Parliament for Nunavut, is clearly on the side of change. She presents a reasoned case.
“We know that there were identification discs distributed to Inuit for a certain period of time because the federal government had no interest in learning the language or how to say our names properly,” Qaqqaq said. “It was easier to give people a number.”
Those discs were labelled Eskimo Identification. She published a picture of one of them on her Twitter feed recently. If you were looking for reasons to change the name of a football team, that would be one of them.
Fact is, though, her constituents have way bigger concerns: alarming rates of poverty, domestic violence, suicide, limited access to clean drinking water and affordable food and housing.
Qaqqaq is focused sharply on changing those circumstances, so the name of a football team matters less. But it offends her, and she can’t quite believe she has to present reasons why it offends her, in the same way she could not fathom having to see a team bear the name Edmonton Caucasians or Edmonton Blacks.
“That is not a conversation we would be having in this day and age in Canada. So why is it OK to do that with a group of Indigenous people who are well known?” she said.
“I think the term Eskimo has always been derogatory and the team never should have had the name in the first place. We didn’t have our Inuk leaders fight so hard to be nationally recognized as Inuit instead of Eskimo for no reason. Where else in Canada are we having this conversation? Why are we in 2020 having this conversation?”
It is not an issue of tradition, of 1949. It’s an issue of self-determination, as Inuit leader Natan Obed wrote in a 2015 op-ed published by the Nunatsiaq News.
“We are not mascots or emblems. In a time when we still struggle to be heard, where there is vast indifference to our socio-economic condition, where we still fight for acceptance and respect from Canadians every day, dominant society continues to use us, a minority Indigenous people, as their mascots for their sports entertainment. Allowing this practice is a fundamental departure from how we wish to be treated in all other conversations we have with Canada,” he wrote.
It’s well past time to listen.