Let reason prevail in debate over names

The debate over a Saskatoon high school’s team name raises interesting issues of race, tolerance, minority pushback and a community that genuinely wants to do the right thing for the right reasons.

Nearly 100 years ago, one of Saskatoon’s oldest schools, Bedford Road, chose Redmen as a foil to the Double Blue of their nemesis Nutana Collegiate, just as Regina’s Balfour Redmen did the same to push against the Blues of rival Scott Collegiate.

But along the way Bedford Road adopted an Indian head logo similar to the iconic Chicago Blackhawks design while Balfour uses a stylized “B” logo with the word Redmen alongside.

Therein lies the problem. “Redmen” to describe a team that dresses in red is altogether different from looking at an aboriginal person as a red man.

For years, Bedford Road’s name and logo have bugged me. There are many good and respectful reasons to commemorate Indian culture in sports — particularly around here — but naming a team after skin colour makes no sense. Ditto for Redskins.

But if the mere word “Red” is racist, as some suggest, the CFL’s newest team, the Ottawa Red Blacks, is in for a very tough run on a couple of fronts.

The names, mascots and icons issue has been around since the activist American Indian Movement sprouted in the 1970s.

Every decade since, the argument is made that anything at the hand of a white person depicting indigenous people is oppressive, unhealthy, harmful and racist.

The rule of the activists is simple: no one, anywhere — without their permission — is allowed to use any imagery related to indigenous people.

This staunchly forbids any names even remotely associated with aboriginal people and nixes all logos or designs depicting arrows, arrowheads, lances, tipis, images of Indian people, dream catchers or anything else. This rather touchy, absolute-zero policy doesn’t have a lot of supporters beyond the hardcore activists and certain universities, which are always happy to be the first to jump on (or under) the bus of political correctness.

There’s a world of difference between referring to someone by their skin colour and banning team names like Arrows, Apaches, Aztecs, Braves, Cherokees, Chiefs, Chieftains, Chickasaws, Comanches, Eskimos, Indians, Mohawks, Mohicans, Red Raiders, Renegades, Savages, Seminoles, Sioux, Thunderbirds, Tribe or Warriors.

But according to today’s generation of activists — many propelled by a constant sense of outrage and grievance collecting — all of this must go.

The over-sensitivity, touchiness and self-centred nature of this debate gets tiring. What passes for indigenous pride among many of our newest wave of activists is little more than a confused and revisionist understanding of history and wanting to settle scores with white oppressors and settlers who they see around every corner.

Talking a good game, too, on white supremacy and genocide, some of these self-satisfied and smug crusaders chortle that they no longer stand for the national anthem or want to sing a song glorifying a Canada full of colonizers.

Some of them also think it’s clever to wear a sweatshirt equating modern land ownership with “thanking an Indian” and not figuring out that they’re often advertising themselves as little more than intolerant bigots.

Doing the right thing is rarely an all-or-nothing proposition. If people and their legitimate aspirations are hurt by words, then change them. But if grandstanding is the goal, give us a break.

Aboriginal and otherwise, most of us are too busy trying to build a better Saskatchewan.