Eskimo name has to go
The Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League will one day have a different name. Bank on it. It’s a mere matter of time, the inevitable result of Canada’s ongoing social evolution.
Edmonton Elks (as the team was once called). Edmonton Eagles. Edmonton Elite. Something that will leave the famous doubleE logo intact. But change will happen. The socially enlightened views of younger Canadians -- who wouldn’t dream of using the term “Eskimo” — will demand it.
For a few minutes during this year’s Grey Cup game all Canadian football fans should — as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and the mayors of Edmonton and Winnipeg have recently suggested — give some thought to the propriety of maintaining as a sporting team’s nickname a term used as a racial epithet to describe a marginalized people.
Whatever its etymology -— whether, as scholars have said, “Eskimo” originally meant “eaters of raw meat” or people “wearing snowshoes” — it was never meant as a term of respect.
Natan Obed, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national Inuit organization representing 60,000 people, has said the term is offensive and derogatory and has officially requested that it be changed.
Sen. Murray Sinclair, who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said two years ago it was past time to get rid of offensive names and mascots that would not be tolerated if they targeted any other cultural group. Tanya Tagaq, an award-winning Inuk singer from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, has said on social media it would be “a glorious message” if the Edmonton team changed its name. “It would set a new precedent of respect.” Respect is precisely what the debate is about, and exactly what appropriate action requires. Not doing to another group what you would consider hateful if done to yours. All the rest — as Rabbi Hillel has noted of the Torah — is commentary. During an era of purported reconciliation with Indigenous Canadians, it would seem that the basic decency of abandoning such remnants of colonialism -- the Washington Redskins, the Cleveland Indians with their “Chief Wahoo,” the Atlanta Braves and their “Tomahawk chop” among the more egregious examples -- is the lowest-hanging of fruit. Increasingly, sports broadcasters are refusing even to use the term “Indians” or “Redskins” when calling games involving those teams.
Listening and “understanding what habits of the past need to change” is a large part of reconciliation, the prime minister recently said.
All across North America, reasonable people have done that and are doing so. And it’s not for nothing that those leading the way are often the students of grade-school or highschool age.
They have grown up in more diverse, more tolerant, less casually racist times. They are the future. Their message is clear. It’s no longer even revolutionary or new.
It’s been 45 years, after all, since Stanford University dropped “Indians” as its nickname and the University of Massachusetts switched from “Redmen” to Minutemen.
In 2015, Adidas offered free design help and financial assistance to any high schools wishing to change their logo or mascot from Native American imagery or symbolism. Two years ago, the state of California passed a law prohibiting public schools from using the term “Redskins” as a team name or mascot.
In Canada, over the last several years, Western Canada High School dropped in Calgary “Redmen” for Redhawks.
In Peel Region, Chinguacousy Secondary School changed its team name from the “Chiefs,” while Port Credit Secondary School altered a logo offensive to some First Nations people.
Almost a year ago, Ontario Education Minister Mitzie Hunter sent a memo to school boards across the province asking to take the lead on consulting Indigenous communities to determine if names, mascots or logos were offensive.
Yet in Edmonton, team ownership has given no sign of mustering the courage to change. And recent polls have suggested Albertans are happy as things are, while across the country there is actually considerable support for retaining the current Edmonton nickname.
But those days are numbered. Count on that. Names and identities are precious things. Caricaturing them for sport is a game whose time is passing.
In Edmonton, Mayor Don Iveson, who clearly understands the power of words, favours changing the team’s name. And, as he has said, “I don’t think this issue is going to go away.”
Right on both counts.