Blackhorse still fighting
Washington nickname far from enough
It is a cruel truth that for years, each time Amanda Blackhorse went to directly call out the Washington NFL football team for using a slur as its nickname, she had to type out the slur herself. A slur that demeans her own being, her own people.
It is painful enough to hear, to see, to read it. It is a deeper pain to constantly type it, your own fingers spelling out the very word meant to deride your own skin.
"I hate it every single time I have to do it," Blackhorse told The Arizona Republic. "But that's the only way that we can get their attention on Twitter. So I make exceptions."
"It's just very ... It's not a good feeling to have to see that and type it constantly."
Blackhorse, a Diné activist, a member of the Navajo Nation and the lead
plaintiff in Blackhorse v. Pro-Football, Inc., has been doing this for years, long before Monday's announcement that the Washington football team will be dropping the name and logo.
Now, with her days of typing the slur dwindling, she finds herself facing conflicting feelings. She is heartened by this step. She does not think it is enough. She is glad for more attention. She is frustrated that it follows years of erasure.
'They beat you down'
When Blackhorse spoke to The Republic a few days ahead of the announcement, she cycled back to the same feeling: cautious, cautious, cautious. It was too soon to give in to hope. For years, she saw Washington owner Dan Snyder and the team ignore — if not actively push back against — the demand: The mascot needed to go.
It was not too late for Snyder to change the name, but there was nothing proactive about his decision.
"Do I think that he will make the right decision?" Blackhorse pondered just a few days earlier. "I don't know. History tells me: No, he will not."
Seven years ago, Snyder said that he would "NEVER" change it. On Monday, many Native activists threw the world "NEVER" right back at him: That NEVER is now.
Blackhorse's lawsuit began in 2006, preceded by Harjo et al v. Pro Football, Inc., which began in 1992, with Suzan Harjo as lead plaintiff. Each case had multiple co-plaintiffs across various tribes.
And over those years, there were moments when "NEVER" felt like the reality to Blackhorse.
"Of course I've always been hopeful," she said Monday. "But Suzan (Harjo) said, 'It's OK sometimes to feel like change will never happen, because
They beat you down. And they make you feel like you're completely invisible and that your voice doesn't matter.'
"And that's what they've done to us all of these years. So sometimes it's easy to just lose hope and say, 'Maybe this will never happen.' But we have those moments, but we keep pushing. And that's kind of where we're at today."
Snyder's decision came after mounting economic pressure, instead of in direct response to years of pressure from activists like Blackhorse, Harjo and countless others. There again lies a cruel truth: The change would not have happened with their tireless work, and yet hearing those stories firsthand was not enough for Snyder. Sponsors did not raise this level of concern in the past. To focus on that is to once again erase indigenous voices, Blackhorse points out.
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez released a statement on Monday pointing to the years of work that forced a change Snyder never welcomed.
"This change did not come about willingly by the team’s owners, but by the mounting pressure and advocacy of Indigenous peoples such as Amanda Blackhorse, and many other warriors who fought long and hard for this change," Nez said in the statement.
Many people quickly pointed out that Monday's five-sentence statement from the Washington team, which used the R-word and logo multiple times, listed "our sponsors" ahead of "fans and community" not once, but twice.
"I'm not going to thank Snyder or anyone else with the franchise, because I don't feel like they're doing this because they truly have a change of heart," Blackhorse said. "I think they're doing it because they have to, and they are going to say the word as much as they can, probably forever. They haven't learned anything."
A need to reckon
Blackhorse was further concerned that the statement did not explicitly say whether Washington's next name and logo will still use Native imagery, more opportunities to slip on her culture as game-day attire. But a rebrand, while an important step, does not erase 87 years of the name. Blackhorse says there is more to be done.
"Dan Snyder and the team also need to reckon with the fact that they have caused Native people so much harm for decades," Blackhorse said last week. "And I know Dan Snyder's only been there since 1999, but in his tenure there, what has he done? And how has he furthered racism towards Native people? That's something that they need to deal with. And that's something that we need to have a discussion about if we want to talk about reconciliation. And I think what they're trying to do is just kind of say, 'OK, we're going to change the name then, fine, here you go.' And it's done with. But yet, I spent 15 years of my life in a lawsuit with them, and they appealed and appealed and they appealed.
"And they can afford to do that because they have the resources to do that. Whereas I don't; I only have time. And we're running out of time. I can't commit another 15 years to another lawsuit. And not only that, the people that came before me, people who have passed away, who are no longer here are not able to see this moment.
"So there's a lot of hurt that happened, and a lot of distrust still there, that they should actively work towards addressing. That would be a full victory."
'It didn't begin with anyone living'
On July 8, just five days before the team's announcement, IllumiNative, the NDN Collective and the Native Organizers Alliance co-hosted "The Time Is Now: A Native Town Hall," a remote panel about systemic racism, which included a discussion on Native mascots.
Harjo, a Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee woman whom Blackhorse and others call "the mother of the movement," spoke about looking at the progress from a long lens.
"It didn't begin with anyone living," said Harjo, who has been fighting the team name since 1962. "It began with our ancestors, a very long time ago, at first contact. When people treated us badly after we welcomed them. And after we fed them. And after we saw them through the winters.
"This is something that we are continuing so that our children and our grandchildren don't have to deal with the harshness that was dealt to our people in the sorriest times of the history of the nation."
The connections to the past and for the future are especially notable in this moment for Blackhorse, who is pregnant with her third child, one who could come "any day now." She's heartened that this child will come into the world with one less team using the R-word, and the most notable case at that.
"I love that part," she said, "that my baby will be able to be born into a world where there's no R-word on a franchise team."
In the coming days, she will welcome that child. And through all that, the work continues.
An end to all appropriation
Blackhorse is constantly updating NoMoreNativeMascots.org to include a growing number petitions for teams and schools around the country to change their names. While some cases might not be defined as a slur, they still are forms of appropriation.
"Those teams aren't left off the hook here," she said in the panel. "I think we're talking about everything in this. We're talking about getting rid of mascots and getting rid of negative Native imagery. So it includes everything."
This surge of action comes at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement has pushed all pockets of the country to grapple with systemic racism. And it comes amid a global pandemic that has disproportionately affected minorities.
Coronavirus hit the Navajo Nation especially hard, and as the numbers climbed there, the reopening of Arizona has frustrated Blackhorse.
"It's like a slap in the face, basically, to Native people, and to other people in the state as well, because I feel like we don't have that protection," she said.
And as those concerns weigh on Blackhorse both individually and out of concern for her community, they come coupled with the grating call from critics that challenge her approach.
Blackhorse quickly notes that quite often, the people who say she should be fighting a different battle aren't doing any fighting themselves. That they will critique her endlessly without doing anything of their own to dismantle racist systems.
But more than that, it's disingenuous to look at the name change as superficial when the name and the logo causes real, pervasive harm. Blackhorse points to the framing of Dr. Stephanie Fryberg, a Tulalip psychologist, who said the mascot issue should not be looked at as a matter of public opinion. It is, instead, a matter of public health.
"When we look at the individual level, being used as mascots lower self esteem, increases depression, suicide ideation, lowers achievement related future goals," Fryberg said in the panel. "And also, it lowers our children's belief that they can positively impact their tribal community."
Weaving Native names into pop culture through mascots normalizes that. Harjo estimates that there are still 900 to go. In interviews, Harjo has pointed to a metaphor any football fan can appreciate: There is a danger in celebrating before you reach the end zone.
And after years and years of legal battles, death threats and being ignored, Blackhorse is still questioning the motives of Washington's decision.
"They actually have not learned anything throughout this entire process," she said. "They are still ignoring Native people and pushing us back in the corner and just completely ignoring us. So it's just really frustrating."
As of Saturday, the team has not reached out to Blackhorse.