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Often, the most die-hard supporters of Native American appropriation in team names and mascots argue that the names, mascots, and caricatures are meant to be an honor. They argue that names such as Major League Baseball's Atlanta Braves, the National Football League's Kansas City Chiefs, or the college football powerhouse Florida State Seminoles are all intended to extol the bravery, fighting spirits, or prowess of the American Indian. They further argue that efforts to cancel the names and images are nothing more than political correctness masquerading as morality.

However, Native American activists reject this notion on its face, arguing that all stereotypes are inevitably steeped in bias and are harmful-even those that attempt to romanticize an image or appear to be steeped in good intentions.

So even as professional sports teams have begun to shed "Indian" themed mascots or team names-such as the NFL's Washington Redskins that changed its name to the Washington Football Team in 2020, or the Cleveland Indians, which starting next baseball season will be called the Cleveland Guardians-the fight of Native American elders and social justice advocates remains far from finished.

As millions of American school children returned to classrooms or virtual learning this month, many returned to schools that use "Indian" names. More than 1,000 K-12 schools continue to use Native "themed" mascots or names, including Redskins, Indians, or Chiefs.

Clyde Bellecourt, a noted Native American activist and the last surviving co-founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM), was recently visiting with his grandchildren when he offered his opinion on the decision of Cleveland's professional baseball team to change its name from the Cleveland Indians to the Cleveland Guardians.

"No, I'm not celebrating the business decision of the Cleveland team to change that derogatory name," Bellecourt, 85, said from his home near Minneapolis, Minnesota.

AIM was founded in 1968 by Bellecourt, his older brother, Vernon Bellecourt, Dennis Banks, and Russell Means. The organization was created to fight Native American racism and advance social justice issues. AIM deployed bold tactics to bring attention to the historical mistreatment and misrepresentation of American Indians, including the casual use of slurs and stereotypes built into American culture and social institutions such as schools. The group famously radicalized the Native American protest movement, notably with an armed occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973, and a seven-day sit-in at the Bureau of Indian Affairs a year earlier. The group also vigorously challenged the way American Indians were portrayed in film and in the nation's sporting landscape.

Cleveland's major league baseball team had long been on AIM's radar-especially the Bellecourt brothers. The two were often among the scores of local and national Native American activists who for years descended on Cleveland, Ohio, each Opening Day to stage demonstrations at the downtown stadium where the team played. Vernon Bellecourt was arrested in Cleveland during the 1997 World Series and again in 1998 during protests focused on the Cleveland mascot, Chief Wahoo, which the team dropped in 2018.

The long-running protests against the team's name appeared to bear fruit last summer when Cleveland Indians owner, Paul Dolan, asked his leadership team to earnestly explore the idea of changing the name.

"It was the right thing to do," Dolan said at a press conference in July announcing the name change. He also acknowledged that the change would not go well with some. "I'm 63 years old. They've been the Indians since I was aware of them, probably four or five years old. We're not asking anybody to give up their memories or the history of the franchise," Dolan said.

For Bellecourt, Dolan's explanation for the name change was a missed opportunity. The aging activist said the apparent social awakening that the nation is currently experiencing continues to lack an honest conversation about the historical mistreatment of Native Americans and the damaging misappropriation of their imagery.

"It would have been enlightened if the Cleveland team had fully explained why they changed the name. If the team had explained how the history of the Indigenous people has largely been erased, ignored, misused, or distorted. It could have been an educational moment for the nation, which continues to misappropriate the culture and dignity of Indigenous people," said Bellecourt.

David Glass, an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation and president of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media (NCRSM), which is comprised of academics and Native American activists, including Bellecourt, was more charitable. Glass told me that he was happy that the Cleveland baseball team had decided to change its name. While there has been movement in recent years for some teams and schools to examine and, in some cases, to change offensive names, Glass said such change generally doesn't come easy.

"We routinely get requests from communities to explain why the imagery and names are bad or harmful," said Glass. "We welcome those opportunities. We try to work behind the scenes. It's not about tearing communities apart. When we explain how racism and bigotry is often based in ignorance, people are more open for a conversation."

Deb Haaland, who in March 2021 became the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary when the United States Senate confirmed her appointment as Secretary of the Interior, has long railed against the stereotyping of Indigenous people in sporting imagery and organizational names. She has occasionally taken to Twitter to voice her concerns on this issue.

"The sooner we recognize the damage that Native American mascots do to perpetuate harmful stereotypes, the sooner we can address longstanding misunderstanding and racism toward Native communities," Haaland tweeted in May 2019, while then serving as a U.S. Representative from New Mexico.

Perhaps no sporting team in the nation's history better exemplifies the resistance to change than the team formerly known as the Washington Redskins. In 1937, the team was formed after the Boston Redskins decided to relocate to the nation's capital.

Some 35 years later, the Washington football team changed its fight song to remove the words "scalp 'um" after Native American leaders protested the song's lyrics and the team's name.

In 1992 a petition to revoke Redskins trademarks for disparaging Native Americans was filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The petition lingered for 17 years before ultimately being denied.

In 2013 Daniel Snyder, the team's owner, said in an interview with USA Today: "We'll never change the name. It's that simple. NEVER-you can use caps," he told the newspaper.

Fast-forward to May 2020 when George Floyd was killed while in police custody in Minneapolis. The protests following the murder almost instantly changed the way America looked at itself and how corporate leaders viewed their brands. Less than six weeks after Floyd's murder, investors reportedly worth over $620 billion sent letters to Nike, Pepsi, and FedEx demanding that they end their sponsorship of the Redskins. That same week FedEx, which holds naming rights to the team's stadium, asked the Redskins to change the name.

Ten days later Snyder's team announced that it was immediately changing its name and logo. The Redskins would henceforth go by the moniker Washington Football Team until a permanent name was created.

"When Washington changed its name, it wasn't because Dan Snyder heard our voice," said Glass with the NCRSM. "It was the sponsors who finally got it and put pressure on that ownership to make a change."

"The world has taken a dramatic turn in recent days. Many young people are starting to question what they've been taught and the historical images that they have inherited. That represents social progress. Just as important, sponsors are now more concerned with how their money is spent and with whom," Glass added.

Much work lies ahead in the effort for social justice. A little over a year after the Washington football team changed its name, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) issued a statement in July raising awareness about the continuing use of Native "themed" mascots or names at schools across America. In August, NCAI announced that it launched a state tracker to monitor and share updates on the movement to end Native themed school mascots. At least one school district has taken action. Last month, Ohio's Cuyahoga Heights School Board voted unanimously to remove "Redskins" as a mascot and logo.

"Once this country makes a concerted effort to start teaching the true history of who we are," said Glass, "is when this country will further evolve into true greatness."

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Will U.S. schools follow the big leagues and leave behind Native American mascots?

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Often, the most die-hard supporters of Native American appropriation in team names and mascots argue that the names, mascots, and caricatures are meant to be an honor. They argue that names such as Major League Baseball's Atlanta Braves, the National Football League's Kansas City Chiefs, or the college football powerhouse Florida State Seminoles are all intended to extol the bravery, fighting spirits, or prowess of the American Indian.

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Prior to these developments, Maine was the only state that prohibited public schools from using Native American mascots, with the appropriate legislative measure being enacted in 2019, the media outlet points out.

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US Lawmakers Reportedly Crack Down on Use of Native American Mascots by Public Schools

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An attorney at the Native American Rights Fund explained that the debate regarding the use of the Native American mascots was apparently impacted by the Washington Football Team's decision to drop their former name - Washington Redskins.

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Nine in 10 Native Americans say they are not offended by the Washington Redskins name, according to a new Washington Post poll that shows how few ordinary Indians have been persuaded by a national movement to change the football team's moniker.

The survey of 504 people across every state and the District reveals that the minds of Native Americans have remained unchanged since a 2004 poll by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found the same result. Responses to The Post's questions about the issue were broadly consistent regardless of age, income, education, political party or proximity to reservations.

[12 Native Americans talk about the furor over the Redskins name]

Among the Native Americans reached over a five-month period ending in April, more than 7 in 10 said they did not feel the word "Redskin" was disrespectful to Indians. An even higher number - 8 in 10 - said they would not be offended if a non-native called them that name.

The results - immediately celebrated by team owner Daniel Snyder and denounced by prominent Native American leaders - could make it that much harder for anti-name activists to pressure Redskins officials, who are already using the poll as further justification to retain the moniker. Beyond that, the findings might impact the ongoing legal battle over the team's federal trademark registrations and the eventual destination of the next stadium. The name controversy has clouded talks between the team and the District, widely considered Snyder's desired destination.

[Native Americans' indifference on Redskins name could reset D.C. stadium talks]

"The Washington Redskins team, our fans and community have always believed our name represents honor, respect and pride," the owner said in a statement. "Today's Washington Post polling shows Native Americans agree. We are gratified by this overwhelming support from the Native American community, and the team will proudly carry the Redskins name."

But Suzan Harjo, the lead plaintiff in the first case challenging the team's trademark protections, dismissed The Post's findings.

"I just reject the results," said Harjo, 70, who belongs to the Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee tribes. "I don't agree with them, and I don't agree that this is a valid way of surveying public opinion in Indian Country."

Two other key leaders in the name-change movement did not challenge the validity of the poll, and instead issued a joint statement calling the responses from Indians "encouraging."

"Native Americans are resilient and have not allowed the NFL's decades-long denigration of us to define our own self-image," wrote Oneida Nation Representative Ray Halbritter and National Congress of American Indians Executive Director Jacqueline Pata. "However, that proud resilience does not give the NFL a license to continue marketing, promoting, and profiting off of a dictionary-defined racial slur - one that tells people outside of our community to view us as mascots."

[How The Post conducted the survey on the Redskins name]

Since the nearly half-century-old debate regained national attention in 2013, opponents of the name have won a string of high-profile victories, garnering support from President Obama, 50 Democratic U.S. senators, dozens of sports broadcasters and columnists, several newspaper editorial boards (including The Post's), a civil rights organization that works closely with the National Football League and tribal leaders throughout Indian Country.

In response, Snyder vowed never to change the moniker and used the 12-year-old Annenberg poll to defend his position. Activists, however, have argued that the billionaire must act if even a small minority of Indians are insulted by the term. They have also maintained that opinions have evolved as his unyielding stance has been subjected to a barrage of condemnation by critics ranging from "South Park" to the United Church of Christ.

But for more than a decade, no one has measured what the country's 5.4 million Native Americans think about the controversy. Their responses to The Post poll were unambiguous: Few objected to the name, and some voiced admiration.

"I'm proud of being Native American and of the Redskins," said Barbara Bruce, a Chippewa teacher who has lived on a North Dakota reservation most of her life. "I'm not ashamed of that at all. I like that name."

Bruce, 70, has for four decades taught her community's schoolchildren, dozens of whom have gone on to play for the Turtle Mountain Community High School Braves. She and many others surveyed embrace native imagery in sports because it offers them some measure of attention in a society where they are seldom represented. Just 8 percent of those canvassed say such depictions bother them.

[A brief history of the word 'redskin' and how it became controversial]

Even as the name-change movement gained momentum among influential people, The Post's survey and more than two dozen subsequent interviews make clear that the effort failed to have anywhere near the same impact on Indians.

Across every demographic group, the vast majority of Native Americans say the team's name does not offend them, including 80 percent who identify as politically liberal, 85 percent of college graduates, 90 percent of those enrolled in a tribe, 90 percent of non-football fans and 91 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 39.

Even 9 in 10 of those who have heard a great deal about the controversy say they are not bothered by the name.

What makes those attitudes more striking: The general public appears to object more strongly to the name than Indians do.

In a 2014 national ESPN poll, 23 percent of those reached called for "Redskins" to be retired because of its offensiveness to Native Americans - more than double the 9 percent of actual Native Americans who now say they are offended by it.

A 2013 Post poll found that a higher proportion of Washington-area residents - 28 percent - wanted the moniker changed.

[Column: In complex Redskins name debate, poll should give both sides pause]

Halbritter, a key figure and financier in the fight against Snyder, has described the issue as one of the most important facing his people.

"It is critical," he wrote in a 2013 Post op-ed. "Indeed, precisely because it is so critical, this campaign is not going away, no matter how much the NFL or Snyder wants it to."

But an overwhelming majority of Native Americans disagree, with just 1 in 10 saying they consider the issue "very important."

"I really don't mind it. I like it. . . . We call other natives 'skins,' too," said Gabriel Nez, a 29-year-old Navajo who left his reservation last year to study criminal justice at a college in New Mexico.

"The name is nothing to me," said Jarvis Michael Horn, a 39-year-old member of the Winnebago Tribe who works at a corner grocery store in Iowa.

"For me, it doesn't make any difference," said Charles Moore, a 73-year-old Oneida of Wisconsin who as a physician treated patients for four decades before retiring in Minnesota.

The poll, which has a 5.5 percentage-point margin of sampling error, was conducted by randomly calling cellular and landline phones. It asked questions only of people who identified themselves as Native American, after being asked about their ethnicity or heritage.

Those interviewed highlighted again and again other challenges to their communities that they consider much more urgent than an NFL team's name: substandard schools, substance abuse, unemployment.

"Let's start taking care of our people and quit worrying about names like Washington Redskins," said Randy Whitworth, 58, who lives on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana.

[Dan Snyder pleased with poll, former player upset]

But Harjo questioned the validity of the poll results and said they do not reflect what she has seen during her decades of involvement with the issue.

"I don't accept self-identification. People say they're native, and they are not native, for all sorts of reasons," she said. "Those of us who are leaders in Indian Country... know who we are representing. We also know if we are representing a minority view. And this is not the case here. Our experience is completely the opposite of the Annenberg poll and this one. I just reject the whole thing."

Others, including Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) and veteran NBC broadcaster Bob Costas, said The Post's findings would not alter their view that the name is offensive.

It remains uncertain how the poll will affect either the stadium discussion or the trademark case.

Although the Redskins have a lease at FedEx Field in Landover, Md., until 2027, team officials have acknowledged that they hope to relocate well before then.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and Washington Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) have all expressed interest in making a deal with the team. Hogan has defended the moniker, while McAuliffe has avoided criticizing it. Bowser and some D.C. Council members have publicly condemned it as "racist and derogatory."

On Thursday, a spokesman for the mayor told The Post that "the concern about the team name is well documented and far reaching - from the Oval Office to the halls of Congress to the D.C. Council chambers."

But news that such a large percentage of Native Americans do not care about the name could provide the necessary political cover for District leaders to welcome Snyder's club to return to the site of RFK Stadium, where the Redskins used to play.

The federal government, however, would also have to approve because RFK stands on National Park Service land controlled by the Interior Department. The current secretary, Sally Jewell, has echoed Obama's opposition to the name.

Attorneys for the Redskins and Native American activists declined on Thursday to discuss the poll's potential impact on the trademark case. Some experts say the survey's results could help the team, but others argue that the data cannot be admitted as evidence because the case is no longer at the trial level.

Lower courts have said that Indians' opinions on the term matters only between 1967 and 1990, when the team's trademarks were registered.

Two years ago, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's appeal board ruled that "Redskins" offended a substantial number of Native Americans at the relevant time, violating the Lanham Act, which bars potentially disparaging names from trademark protection. A federal district judge upheld the order last summer. Now, the Redskins have petitioned the Supreme Court to weigh in, arguing that, regardless of whether the name offends Native Americans, the Lanham Act violates the team's free-speech rights.

Amid the legal maneuvering and name-change push, some Indians interviewed by The Post voiced resentment toward the activists. A small percentage of their community had, in their minds, spoken for the majority.

"It's 100 people okay with the situation, and one person has a problem with it, and all of a sudden everyone has to conform," said New York resident Judy Ann Joyner, 64, a retired nurse whose grandmother was part-Shawnee and part-Wyandot. "You'll find people who don't like puppies and kittens and Santa Claus. It doesn't mean we're going to wipe them off the face of the earth."

But an important question remains: Is it appropriate for the name of a professional sports team to insult any percentage of a population that has historically been so mistreated by this country's majority?

Tara Houska, a tribal attorney who lives in the District and has organized protests against the name, argued that neither a majority opinion nor a fan's passion should matter if the imagery hurts the psyches of young natives - and research shows that it does.

"A tomahawk chop and a bunch of people wearing redface does not honor me in any sense of the word, and it certainly does not honor Native American children," said Houska, a member of the Couchiching First Nation. "To me, it doesn't matter if my feelings are hurt. Yes, it is offensive, and I don't like seeing it everywhere. But what really matters is how this affects our youth."

Nowhere are the nuances of this complex debate more apparent than in a mobile home amid the mountains, rivers and forests on Montana's Flathead Indian Reservation, where Rusty Whitworth lives with his wife, Anita.

Whitworth is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. A laborer who has worked on ranches most of his life, he said he does not mind the name.

"Just let them keep it," he said of the team. "It ain't hurting nobody."

Anita Whitworth, 62, also belongs to the confederation. A mother of five who worked for years as a chemical-dependency counselor, she hates the name.

She views it much the same way that many activists do. They argue that the central problems ravaging native communities - poverty, violence and addiction - can only be fixed if young people take pride in who they are.

Her youngest, Whitworth said, is a dark-skinned 13-year-old who attends an almost entirely non-native school in a region long plagued by racial tension.

When she looks at him, Whitworth thinks back to the years of disparagement she's endured.

She has seen store employees follow her because they suspect she will steal something. She has heard derogatory comments in restaurants.

She has also been called a "Redskin."

"I don't want to ever have my son experience anything like that," she said. "It's time to change. It's time to move on."

Ian Shapira, Emily Guskin, Jonathan O'Connell, Aaron C. Davis and Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.

Read more:

In Arizona, a Navajo high school emerges as a defender of the Washington Redskins

Meet the tiny tribe taking on the NFL and Dan Snyder over the Redskins name

Redskins owner Dan Snyder makes visits to Indian Country amid name-change pressure

The Daily Show springs tense showdown with Native Americans on Redskins fans

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New poll finds 9 in 10 Native Americans aren't offended by Redskins name

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Nine in 10 Native Americans say they are not offended by the Washington Redskins name, according to a new Washington Post poll that shows how few ordinary Indians have been persuaded by a national movement to change the football team's moniker.

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ANN ARBOR-The tomahawk chop and war chant by fans of the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs may seem like harmless fun, but roughly two-thirds of Native Americans who frequently engage in tribal and cultural practices take offense at such actions.

New University of Michigan research reveals high rates of opposition to not only the use of gestures and chants, but also to Native American mascots and team names like the NFL's Washington Redskins.

The results run contrary to polls reported by national news outlets, which suggest that as few as 10% of Native peoples are offended by Native mascots and, specifically, the Redskins team name.

The study, which involved researchers at U-M and University of California, Berkeley, found that about half of the respondents in the sample of 1,000 Native Americans-the largest of its kind to date-are offended by the tomahawk chop or mascots in chief headdresses.

But opposition is even higher among people who most strongly identify with being Native American. For example, among Native Americans who frequently engage in tribal/cultural practices, 67% find the Redskins team name offensive; 70% find sports fans wearing chief headdresses offensive; 65% find sports fans chanting the tomahawk chop offensive; and 73% find sports fans imitating Native American dances offensive.

The ongoing debate about Native mascots has divided sports fans. On one side, Native people and organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians openly oppose and protest the use of Native mascots. On the other side, often citing nonacademic opinion polls, contend their mascots are not racist.

"The data from previous opinion polls is often used to silence Native people, but our study, which captures a broad diversity of Native peoples and experiences, shows high rates of opposition," said U-M psychology professor Stephanie Fryberg, a member of the Tulalip Tribes of Washington State and a co-lead author of the study. "As researchers and consumers of information, we need to be very careful about whose voices we claim to be representing."

The psychological research is clear-the use of Native mascots is detrimental for Native people, said study co-author Arianne Eason, assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley. These mascots decrease Native individuals' self-esteem, community worth and achievement-related aspirations, she said.

"The results highlight the importance of considering the unique and multifaceted aspects of identity, particularly when seeking to understand Native people's attitudes and experiences," the researchers wrote.

The study also suggests that the mascot debate is far from resolved as 60% of young people were offended by Native American mascots, in general, and the Redskins team name, in particular.

The findings will appear in February in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. The study's other co-authors are Laura Brady, Nadia Jessop and Julisa Lopez of the U-M Department of Psychology.
More information

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Native American mascots, names, chants: More offensive than previously reported

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ANN ARBOR-The tomahawk chop and war chant by fans of the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs may seem like harmless fun, but roughly two-thirds of Native Americans who frequently engage in tribal and cultural practices take offense at such actions. New University of Michigan research reveals h

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Is It Offensive for Sports Teams and Their Fans to Use Native American Names, Imagery and Gestures? (Published 2020)

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The Kansas City Chiefs will face the San Francisco 49ers for Super Bowl LIV. Chiefs fans regularly use a "tomahawk chop" to urge on their beloved team: Is it offensive?

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Racist team mascots persist all over the country

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Using Native American symbols as mascots gives people the "sense that Native folks and peoples are a thing of the past or are to be caricatured," experts say.

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Chiefs fans have relished doing the tomahawk chop since the early 1990s. But to many Native Americans and others, the gesture is an offensive mockery of the nation's first people.

The Chiefs organization has worked with Native Americans over the past six years to reconsider some of its traditions, including fans' dressing in Indian regalia. But the team has shown little appetite for preventing its supporters from doing the tomahawk chop. Credit... Jamie Squire/Getty Images

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The tomahawk chop is also called the Arrowhead Chop, a reference to the Chiefs' stadium. Credit... Reed Hoffmann/Associated Press

In interviews this week, several players praised the tomahawk chop and chant for pumping them up.

"I love it," Jordan Lucas, a Chiefs safety, said. Asked about concerns that it is offensive, he said, "I can't even speak on that, because I have nothing to do with that and I don't know anything about that."

"Anybody who knows Kansas City, anybody who's been to Arrowhead Stadium, knows us to be a good place," Kansas City's mayor, Quinton Lucas, said. Credit... David Eulitt/Getty Images

Joyce Parker, 65, cringed as she admitted that she does the chop at games.

"It's just that caught-up-in-the-moment group joy," said Parker, a fan from Prairie Village, Kan., a suburb that is a 10-minute drive southwest of Kansas City. "Yes, I feel bad about it."

But Brian Shirley, a 46-year-old warehouse manager, thinks the chop should stay.

"I don't think they should take offense," Shirley said. "I enjoy going to the stadium and doing it."

"Anybody who knows Kansas City, anybody who's been to Arrowhead Stadium, knows us to be a good place," Lucas said.

Ken Belson and Ben Shpigel contributed reporting.

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Celebrating the Kansas City Chiefs, the Chop Divides

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Chiefs fans have relished doing the tomahawk chop since the early 1990s. But to many Native Americans and others, the gesture is an offensive mockery of the nation's first people. In interviews this week, several players praised the tomahawk chop and chant for pumping them up.

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Should ALL Native American Mascots be BANNED? | Decoded | MTV News

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Often, we will hear people insist that this controversy is new and a result of “PC culture.” This list of sports teams that have retired Native mascots and nicknames over the last half century can help illustrate how long this conversation has been happening, as well as the viability of sports teams moving beyond this “tradition.”

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NFL News, Scores, Schedules & Standings | Sporting News

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Read NFL News, Scores, Schedules & Standings | Sporting News, and learn all the latest sporting news

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When Samuel Henry was a kid growing up in D.C. in the late 1950s, he and his friends were devoted Washington Redskins fans - they had the jerseys and knew the lore. And as the lore had it, the "reddish-brown tint" of paint on the team's downtown D.C. headquarters came from the blood of Native Americans. "When I was a kid, me and my friends, we really thought that they had captured and killed Native Americans and pasted them all over the building," Henry said. "We were just kids, we didn't know any better. But we really, honestly believed that."

Now, almost 60 years later, the Redskins are enmeshed in a debate about whether their name is a racist epithet and should be changed. Advocates for keeping the name reference its origins: In 1937, owner George Preston Marshall changed the team name from the Braves to the Redskins. Marshall said the change was in honor of the head coach at the time, William Henry Dietz, who claimed to be part Sioux (although that claim is suspect). Critics including Henry say its origins are irrelevant and that the name is racist and demeaning. "I'd love to see a boycott of all things Redskins," he said.

Dan Snyder, the current owner, purchased the team in 1999, when it was fighting its first legal battle over the name. The lawsuits have continued, and earlier this year, the Trademark Trials and Appeal Board canceled the franchise trademark because "a substantial composite of Native Americans found the term Redskins to be disparaging." Snyder has faced mounting pressure to change the name, even from President Obama and George Preston Marshall's granddaughter. But Snyder plans to appeal the trademark decision and says he will "NEVER" change the name. Polling suggests Snyder has the backing to ignore the calls; most NFL fans (and Redskins fans in particular) oppose a name change.

What's considered an outrage in the NFL is embraced or at least tolerated all over the country. While we've been consumed by the debate about the Washington Redskins, we've overlooked thousands of team names and mascots depicting Native Americans, often stereotypically. These teams are not feeling the kind of pressure that Snyder is. To understand the Washington Redskins, we have to understand the Estelline Redmen, the Natick Redmen, and the Molalla Indians, too.

Terry Borning, the proprietor of MascotDB, has kept a database of the nation's mascots since 2006. He gathers his data from a variety of sources, including state high school athletic associations, websites and local newspapers. Borning's database doesn't have every high school, college and pro team in the country, but it does have 42,624 of them. Looking at MascotDB is as close as we can get to understanding how prevalent Native American team names and mascots are across the country.

"There were a lot of interesting mascots where I lived growing up," Borning said. "But those have mostly fallen by the wayside. Some of those things of the past were definitely offensive, but also more interesting than the generic mascots we have now."

I searched the database and found 2,129 sports teams that reference Braves, Chiefs, Indians, Orangemen, Raiders, Redmen, Reds, Redskins, Savages, Squaws, Tribe and Warriors, as well as tribe names such as Apaches, Arapahoe, Aztecs, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Chinooks, Chippewas, Choctaws, Comanches, Eskimos, Mohawks, Mohicans, Seminoles, Sioux and Utes. (Not all teams with the names "Raiders" and "Warriors" are referencing Native Americans, but we spot-checked 20 schools with each name and a majority of each did.)

Some 92 percent of those 2,129 team names belong to high schools (the rest were college, semi-pro, pro and amateur league teams). Of all the active high schools in the database, 8.2 percent have Native American team names.

I reached out to about a dozen of those high schools, and most didn't want to comment on a controversy that hadn't yet arrived. But the conversations I did have suggested that the way communities regard their teams' Native American names and mascots depends on the makeup of the communities themselves.

Estelline High, home of the Redmen, is located in a small town in South Dakota, 24 miles west of the Minnesota border. South Dakota has the third-largest Native American population share in the country, but Estelline hasn't seen the kinds of protests directed at the Washington Redskins. The town has experienced little, if any, controversy over the Redmen name.

The mascot dates back to sometime between 1915 and 1920, when a local newspaper referred to the Estelline athletic team by the color of its uniforms - "the men in red." The name wasn't officially adopted, but the team soon became known by its unofficial moniker, the Redmen. According to Estelline superintendent and high school principal Patrick Kraning, the association with Native Americans didn't come until around 1930. Estelline followed with its own depiction of a "Redman" as a stereotype of a Native American chief wearing a headdress. Events such as the annual naming of a "Moon Princess" and "Big Chief" at homecoming became part of the tradition.

"There's been very little controversy over the team name," Kraning said. "In the '90s there was some discussion about changing the name for a series of schools [throughout southeastern South Dakota] that still referred to themselves as 'Redmen.' But in the end, a lot of us - Estelline included - decided to keep the name and just keep away from any Native American imagery associated with it."

Since then, the only symbol associated with the Estelline Redmen is a logo of an E with two feathers attached. Kraning believes that this change, combined with the fact that Estelline doesn't have a significant Native American population, is why there hasn't been much local debate on the topic.

"There's a community feeling that since the origin of the nickname was not a Native American reference, there's not a desire for change," he said. "If there were a discussion, most people would probably view it as going against 80 or 90 years of tradition."

Natick, Massachusetts, did go against tradition. In 2007, the school board dropped its high school mascot - also the "Redmen" - after an alumna of Native American descent came to the board and said she was offended by the activities surrounding the team she had experienced at Natick High School. The historian for the local Nipmuc tribe told me that the logo and mascot used by the school depicted a "stereotypical northern Native with a headdress," but that depiction bore no resemblance to the actual indigenous people who lived in the Natick area. Nevertheless, protest groups soon sprouted up, claiming that the Natick Redmen honored Native Americans and were an important tradition.

Soon after the change, school board meetings and a town-wide referendum turned the issue into a much broader discussion. The main critique came from the Redmen Forever Committee, a self-described grassroots effort that sought to influence the non-binding referendum. "We added a question to the referendum asking if townspeople wanted the Redmen name restored," said Erich Thalheimer, co-founder of the Redmen Forever Committee. "It won overwhelmingly, but the school committee didn't abide by the town's wishes."

"If it were decided by popular vote, we would have the name," said Anne Blanchard, a member of the Natick School Board. "But we had to take into account our nondiscrimination policy, as well as minority and majority interests."

The Redmen Forever Committee says it won't give up the fight. "We chose the name of our committee very intentionally, very purposefully," Thalheimer said. "This is our town. We're going to live here until we die. We will forever try to re-establish the Redmen name."

While the controversy in Natick stemmed from a decision that affected one school, several states have taken a grievance from a single school and used it to forbid Native American mascots. One of the more sweeping bans so far was implemented with the help of Samuel Henry, the man who grew up earnestly believing that the Washington Redskins had painted their downtown D.C. headquarters with the blood of Native Americans. Henry is currently the chair of Oregon's Board of Education, which instituted a statewide ban on Native American mascots and team names in 2012.

The story goes back to 2006, when Che Butler, a member of the Siletz tribe and a student at Taft High School, raised the issue before the board. Butler said he was offended by the stereotypical and inauthentic manner in which the mascot of a rival school, the Molalla Indians, portrayed Native Americans. He and fellow Taft student Luhui Whitebear, a member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Tribe, made a presentation at a board meeting asking for a statewide ban on mascots that "misrepresent" Native people, who instead "should be represented with true honor and respect."

According to Henry, the board agreed that "having Native American mascots did not seem like a good idea," but decided to defer the decision.

The grievance was taken up again six years later, when the director of public instruction decided to put it back on the board's agenda. This time around, after some member turnover, the board agreed to ask its chief attorney to draft a proposal for a ban on the use of Native American mascots in public schools. The only dissenting vote came from a woman who claimed that it was too selective, and that devils and saints should be banned as well.

As in Natick, one of the major arguments against the ban came from people who said that the mascots didn't disparage Native Americans, but honored them. Many of these opponents knew little of Native American culture, Henry said. "I asked one of the students who made that argument what the name of the local Native American tribe was, and she didn't know," he said. "To me, that indicated that her reliance on saying that they were honoring Native Americans - that the support for that argument was pretty thin at best."

For high schools, a statewide ban is about as sweeping as it gets. Graduate to the next level, though, and schools have broader authorities to answer to. In 2005, the NCAA implemented its own de facto ban on Native American mascots for all NCAA colleges. The ban focused on a specific list of schools whose mascots were deemed "hostile or abusive," and precluded them from participating in postseason play if those nicknames or mascots appeared on any team uniforms or clothing.

The NCAA had already taken a stand on a similar issue: the use of Confederate flags. In 2001, the organization banned arenas in South Carolina and Mississippi from hosting postseason championships because the Confederate flag flew proudly on their statehouse grounds. After that decision, the president of St. Cloud State University in Minnesota asked the NCAA to impose a ban on Native American mascots.

The NCAA called on 18 schools (out of 1,046 total member schools at the time, or 1.7 percent) to drop their mascots.

Not all of the targeted schools felt that their nicknames or mascots were "hostile or abusive," and the ban was followed by a surge of criticism.

"I must have gotten 2,000 emails from people just complaining about it," the NCAA's executive committee chairperson at the time, Walter Harrison, said. Even almost 10 years later, he still remembers one persistent caller. "He, or she, I don't know if it was a man or a woman, would call my office phone at four in the morning and just play their school's chant until the answering machine cut off," he said.

But the more serious backlash came in the form of appeals. One came from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and its Fighting Illini. The Fighting Illini were portrayed at halftime performances by a student dressed in full Lakota regalia, including face paint and a headdress. He went by the name "Chief Illiniwek," and became the focus of the university's fight against the ban.

Controversy surrounding Chief Illiniwek predated the NCAA's ruling by decades. The university's board of trustees had been quietly in the process of considering a potential mascot change since 2001, and the publicity surrounding the nationwide ban reignited already-existing tension among students and alumni. Lawrence Eppley, who was the chair of the university's board of trustees at the time, said he received hundreds of comments from foundations and alumni organizations threatening to withhold donations. He and the rest of the board figured the only option was to strike a compromise to keep both sides - passionate students and alumni and the NCAA - happy.

Through its appeal, the school was allowed to keep its team name, but not its mascot. Chief Illiniwek portrayers, who had been a part of an official student organization called the Council of Chiefs, could continue the tradition as long as the group no longer had any official affiliation with the university. "One of the things that made it tough to retire it was making sure the fans knew that, if you loved the chief, that was nothing to feel guilty about," Eppley said. "It's just that times change, and there's not much we can do about that."

Ivan Dozier, who currently portrays Chief Illiniwek, said that officially retiring the mascot was the wrong way for the university to respond. He believes that Native American mascots are a way to reach and educate an audience that wouldn't normally be knowledgeable about Native American culture or history. "What concerns me is if you eliminate all references to Native American culture, people aren't asking questions anymore," he said. "Sports fans here are the vocal majority. They're the ones who need this information the most, and now they have no way to go about getting it."

Eight of the schools on the NCAA's list secured vocal support from local Native American tribes to successfully appeal and retain their team names and mascots. Eight others have changed their names and one dropped the use of a mascot entirely. Carthage College changed its team name from the Redmen to the Red Men and dropped all Native American imagery, which satisfied the NCAA's requirements.

Turning the Washington Redskins into the Red Skins is unlikely to appease the team's critics, though. Given that the name is racist by definition and no tribe has come out in support of Snyder, it probably wouldn't pass the NCAA's grounds for appeal, and it certainly doesn't pass in the court of Native American opinion.

But even if the Redskins became the Red Skins or the Red Flyers or the Red Snyders, there would still be thousands of other teams that reference Native American imagery. Whatever happens with the Redskins, there will still be the Estelline Redmen, Chief Illiniwek, and the West Texas Comanches, each upholding the questionable legacy of Native American sports names.

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The 2,128 Native American Mascots People Aren't Talking About

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When Samuel Henry was a kid growing up in D.C. in the late 1950s, he and his friends were devoted Washington Redskins fans - they had the jerseys and knew the lore. And as the lore had it, the "reddish-brown tint" of paint on the team's downtown D.C.

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The chant has been a staple of pro and amateur sports for decades-much to the ire of Native Americans.

Amidst all the ref-working, bad faith arguments, false equivalencies, and targeted attacks on reporters by the far right since videos showing a group of teens from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky hooting, jeering, and mocking a Native American elder were made public, one piece of evidence can't be hand-waved away or pettifogged until the truth is unrecognizable: the Tomahawk Chop.

In multiple videos, the students-some of whom, prior to gathering at the Lincoln Memorial, were allegedly howling "MAGA!" at random female passers-by-can be seen engaging in the familiar chant, bringing their arm downward as if wielding a tomahawk while belting out a crude version of traditional Native American songs. Fans of the Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Chiefs, Florida State University, and numerous high schools with Native American mascots have been chopping away for decades. But make no mistake: The chant in and of itself is considered a slur by Native Americans and advocacy groups have plaintively asked sports teams to stop rubber-stamping this behavior since it first gained prominence.

The Daily Beast contacted representatives of three pro teams and FSU to see if they cared to comment now that the chant is openly being used to taunt and ridicule an indigenous person, or whether they intended to discourage their fans from doing so going forward. No American teams responded prior to publication. A spokesman for the Exeter Chiefs, an English pro rugby team that has adopted the Tomahawk Chop, said via email: "Exeter Rugby Club have no comment to make on this matter."

Amanda Blackhorse, a member of the Diné tribe and founder of the group Arizona To Rally Against Native Mascots, saw the silence by the aforementioned teams as both predictable and deafening. "They need to be called out," she said when reached by phone.

Blackhorse is all-too-familiar with the struggle to get pro teams with Native mascots to actually listen to indigenous people. For over 10 years, Blackhorse spearheaded a lawsuit in an attempt to force the Washington Redskins to ditch their racist slur of a nickname. (Initially, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office agreed, removing the team's trademark protections, but the Supreme Court overturned the decision in 2017.)

She'd spent the weekend in Washington, D.C. participating in the Indigenous Peoples March, calling for action on a slew of issues pertaining to Native Americans-though she was not present when Nathan Phillips, a 64-year-old Vietnam-era veteran and elder, says he tried to diffuse the tension between the Covington Catholic students and the Black Hebrew Israelites. True to form, the Black Hebrew Israelites were spewing their own particular toxic mix of conspiracy theories and prejudiced nonsense.

The irony, though, was striking to Blackhorse. That their protest was held "in a place where the team is called literally a racial slur, and we're there, asking for visibility when we're really not visible," she said, "It just reiterates how much we are discounted."

Jacqueline Keeler, a member of the Navajo tribe, journalist, and author, is currently in Covington, Kentucky, hoping to gain an audience with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington. By phone, she explained that people of color are constantly forced to consider the impact of their speech, behavior, and even clothing, especially when they find themselves in majority-white spaces. That the Covington Catholic students seemingly never wondered if the Tomahawk Chop or their MAGA hats would provoke a response in a diverse city far from their Kentucky home cuts to the very definition of white privilege.

While she made it clear that she unequivocally supported their right to free expression, "the idea that young white men would be expected to think about how they conduct themselves is not an extreme request," Keeler said.

Nor was Blackhorse surprised that some of the boys immediately thought of the Tomahawk Chop when face-to-face with a Native American, possibly for the first time. She cited a 2008 study conducted by Stephanie Fryberg examining the impact of Native American stereotypes in popular culture. In the study, Native youths were exposed to stereotypical images of native people, including sports mascots. The result? Native youths saw a dramatic decrease in self-esteem while the converse was true for non-Natives. A 2014 study by the Center for American Progress came to a similar conclusion. "[Non-Natives] think it's fun. They think it's a part of sports," Blackhorse said. "[Native Americans] suffer the consequences."

"Native people have been calling for the end of the Tomahawk Chop for decades."

She continued: "Native people have been calling for the end of the Tomahawk Chop for decades. This is not something new."

It isn't. Though it may seem as if the chant has been a permanent fixture in sports culture, it only dates back to the early 1980s, when the FSU marching band came up with the idea. Another FSU alumnus and historian ascribed its origin to an FSU booster group called the "Scalphunters" who invented the chant as a counter to rival the University of Florida's "Gator chomp."

At FSU's website, the Tomahawk Chop goes unmentioned, despite ample evidence that fans consider it part and parcel of the in-game festivities.

Instead, the site outlines the ways in which the school has transitioned away from openly cartoonish and offensive mascots, and has worked in conjunction with the Seminole Tribe of Florida to maintain a sense of "dignity and propriety" and "celebrat[e] diversity." On Martin Luther King Day, FSU briefly tweeted out a manipulated image portraying Dr. King as if he were joining in on the Tomahawk Chop. It was quickly deleted, and the school subsequently apologized.

The Atlanta Braves were next to take up the chant in 1991, when star cornerback Deion Sanders decided to try his hand at baseball. (Sanders attended-but did not graduate from-FSU, and so during spring training a group of fans imported the FSU chant as a way of welcoming him into the fold.) The chant caught on. Fans began bringing toy tomahawks into the stadium, and the team's marketing department decided to get in on this potential gravy train, selling foam rubber red tomahawks by the boatload. Still, the trend might have died on the vine, but after years of futility, the Braves won their first division title since 1969. When they reached the World Series, the Tomahawk Chop was given a national spotlight.

As Blackhorse noted, Native American groups took umbrage, but the team ignored them, per The New York Times, insisting the chant was "a proud expression of unification and family." Amazingly, even former President Jimmy Carter, a long-time Braves fan, glibly dismissed the protesters' complaints.

"With the Braves on top, we have a brave, courageous and successful team, and I think we can look on the American Indians as brave, successful and attractive," Carter said. "So I don't look on it as an insult."

This line of argument has been very much the norm for teams when confronted about the use of these tired racial stereotypes. Because no insult is intended and scores of fans consider Native mascots a beloved part of their shared traditions-seriously-it's Native Americans who are making outlandish demands. Daniel Snyder, the Washington Redskins owner, incessantly defended the team's legacy, as if being founded by an out-and-out racist were a point of pride.

Similarly, the Cleveland Indians would hammer away about "tradition" when defending the ongoing existence of their grinning, red-faced caricature of a logo, Chief Wahoo. Wahoo finally will be removed from Cleveland's official uniform next season, but the team will continue to offer Chief Wahoo-branded merchandise for sale, because of course they will.

Anyway, back in 1991, Kansas City Chiefs fans got giddy at the popularity of the Tomahawk Chop and jumped on the bandwagon. Of late, the team has consulted with indigenous groups on how they might transition away from some of the more derogatory imagery and language. But the Chiefs have yet to formally ban the wearing of Native American garb by fans at the stadium, let alone the Tomahawk Chop. (Arrowhead Stadium cranks the accompanying music up to full blast whenever the chant kicks into gear.) In 2014, Blackhorse told kansascity.com it would be impossible to eradicate the cosplaying. The nickname by definition was a diminishment of Native culture, and the only solution is to get rid of it altogether.

To her point, on Sunday night, while the images of the jeering students were still reverberating, Kansas City was locked in a thrilling back-and-forth AFC Championship game against the New England Patriots. When CBS' cameras panned to the crowd, they routinely captured 76,000-plus diehards Tomahawk Chop-ing to beat the band.

What still lingers for Blackhorse is the expression on Nicholas Sandmann's face. (With the help of a top-shelf crisis PR firm, Sandmann denied he bore any animus toward Phillips.)

It's one she's encountered while protesting outside the Redskins home stadium. Fans, when they're not hurling epithets or splattering her with beer, will simply smile, confident that Native Americans' justifiable outrage can be dismissed entirely. The idea they'd face any kind of backlash is beyond their imagination. And even if their behavior was met with condemnation, powerful forces would stand by their side

"That smirk on that boy's face was the face I've seen thousands of times," said Blackhorse. "They know they're doing something wrong; they just don't care."

Amidst all the ref-working, bad faith arguments, false equivalencies, and targeted attacks on reporters by the far right since videos showing a group of teens from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky hooting, jeering, and mocking a Native American elder were made public, one piece of evidence can't be hand-waved away or pettifogged until the truth is unrecognizable: the Tomahawk Chop.

In multiple videos, the students-some of whom, prior to gathering at the Lincoln Memorial, were allegedly howling "MAGA!" at random female passers-by-can be seen engaging in the familiar chant, bringing their arm downward as if wielding a tomahawk while belting out a crude version of traditional Native American songs. Fans of the Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Chiefs, Florida State University, and numerous high schools with Native American mascots have been chopping away for decades. But make no mistake: The chant in and of itself is considered a slur by Native Americans and advocacy groups have plaintively asked sports teams to stop rubber-stamping this behavior since it first gained prominence.

The Daily Beast contacted representatives of three pro teams and FSU to see if they cared to comment now that the chant is openly being used to taunt and ridicule an indigenous person, or whether they intended to discourage their fans from doing so going forward. No American teams responded prior to publication. A spokesman for the Exeter Chiefs, an English pro rugby team that has adopted the Tomahawk Chop, said via email: "Exeter Rugby Club have no comment to make on this matter."

Amanda Blackhorse, a member of the Diné tribe and founder of the group Arizona To Rally Against Native Mascots, saw the silence by the aforementioned teams as both predictable and deafening. "They need to be called out," she said when reached by phone.

Blackhorse is all-too-familiar with the struggle to get pro teams with Native mascots to actually listen to indigenous people. For over 10 years, Blackhorse spearheaded a lawsuit in an attempt to force the Washington Redskins to ditch their racist slur of a nickname. (Initially, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office agreed, removing the team's trademark protections, but the Supreme Court overturned the decision in 2017.)

She'd spent the weekend in Washington, D.C. participating in the Indigenous Peoples March, calling for action on a slew of issues pertaining to Native Americans-though she was not present when Nathan Phillips, a 64-year-old Vietnam-era veteran and elder, says he tried to diffuse the tension between the Covington Catholic students and the Black Hebrew Israelites. True to form, the Black Hebrew Israelites were spewing their own particular toxic mix of conspiracy theories and prejudiced nonsense.

The irony, though, was striking to Blackhorse. That their protest was held "in a place where the team is called literally a racial slur, and we're there, asking for visibility when we're really not visible," she said, "It just reiterates how much we are discounted."

Jacqueline Keeler, a member of the Navajo tribe, journalist, and author, is currently in Covington, Kentucky, hoping to gain an audience with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington. By phone, she explained that people of color are constantly forced to consider the impact of their speech, behavior, and even clothing, especially when they find themselves in majority-white spaces. That the Covington Catholic students seemingly never wondered if the Tomahawk Chop or their MAGA hats would provoke a response in a diverse city far from their Kentucky home cuts to the very definition of white privilege.

While she made it clear that she unequivocally supported their right to free expression, "the idea that young white men would be expected to think about how they conduct themselves is not an extreme request," Keeler said.

Nor was Blackhorse surprised that some of the boys immediately thought of the Tomahawk Chop when face-to-face with a Native American, possibly for the first time. She cited a 2008 study conducted by Stephanie Fryberg examining the impact of Native American stereotypes in popular culture. In the study, Native youths were exposed to stereotypical images of native people, including sports mascots. The result? Native youths saw a dramatic decrease in self-esteem while the converse was true for non-Natives. A 2014 study by the Center for American Progress came to a similar conclusion. "[Non-Natives] think it's fun. They think it's a part of sports," Blackhorse said. "[Native Americans] suffer the consequences."

"Native people have been calling for the end of the Tomahawk Chop for decades."

She continued: "Native people have been calling for the end of the Tomahawk Chop for decades. This is not something new."

It isn't. Though it may seem as if the chant has been a permanent fixture in sports culture, it only dates back to the early 1980s, when the FSU marching band came up with the idea. Another FSU alumnus and historian ascribed its origin to an FSU booster group called the "Scalphunters" who invented the chant as a counter to rival the University of Florida's "Gator chomp."

At FSU's website, the Tomahawk Chop goes unmentioned, despite ample evidence that fans consider it part and parcel of the in-game festivities.

Instead, the site outlines the ways in which the school has transitioned away from openly cartoonish and offensive mascots, and has worked in conjunction with the Seminole Tribe of Florida to maintain a sense of "dignity and propriety" and "celebrat[e] diversity." On Martin Luther King Day, FSU briefly tweeted out a manipulated image portraying Dr. King as if he were joining in on the Tomahawk Chop. It was quickly deleted, and the school subsequently apologized.

The Atlanta Braves were next to take up the chant in 1991, when star cornerback Deion Sanders decided to try his hand at baseball. (Sanders attended-but did not graduate from-FSU, and so during spring training a group of fans imported the FSU chant as a way of welcoming him into the fold.) The chant caught on. Fans began bringing toy tomahawks into the stadium, and the team's marketing department decided to get in on this potential gravy train, selling foam rubber red tomahawks by the boatload. Still, the trend might have died on the vine, but after years of futility, the Braves won their first division title since 1969. When they reached the World Series, the Tomahawk Chop was given a national spotlight.

As Blackhorse noted, Native American groups took umbrage, but the team ignored them, per The New York Times, insisting the chant was "a proud expression of unification and family." Amazingly, even former President Jimmy Carter, a long-time Braves fan, glibly dismissed the protesters' complaints.

"With the Braves on top, we have a brave, courageous and successful team, and I think we can look on the American Indians as brave, successful and attractive," Carter said. "So I don't look on it as an insult."

This line of argument has been very much the norm for teams when confronted about the use of these tired racial stereotypes. Because no insult is intended and scores of fans consider Native mascots a beloved part of their shared traditions-seriously-it's Native Americans who are making outlandish demands. Daniel Snyder, the Washington Redskins owner, incessantly defended the team's legacy, as if being founded by an out-and-out racist were a point of pride.

Similarly, the Cleveland Indians would hammer away about "tradition" when defending the ongoing existence of their grinning, red-faced caricature of a logo, Chief Wahoo. Wahoo finally will be removed from Cleveland's official uniform next season, but the team will continue to offer Chief Wahoo-branded merchandise for sale, because of course they will.

Anyway, back in 1991, Kansas City Chiefs fans got giddy at the popularity of the Tomahawk Chop and jumped on the bandwagon. Of late, the team has consulted with indigenous groups on how they might transition away from some of the more derogatory imagery and language. But the Chiefs have yet to formally ban the wearing of Native American garb by fans at the stadium, let alone the Tomahawk Chop. (Arrowhead Stadium cranks the accompanying music up to full blast whenever the chant kicks into gear.) In 2014, Blackhorse told kansascity.com it would be impossible to eradicate the cosplaying. The nickname by definition was a diminishment of Native culture, and the only solution is to get rid of it altogether.

To her point, on Sunday night, while the images of the jeering students were still reverberating, Kansas City was locked in a thrilling back-and-forth AFC Championship game against the New England Patriots. When CBS' cameras panned to the crowd, they routinely captured 76,000-plus diehards Tomahawk Chop-ing to beat the band.

What still lingers for Blackhorse is the expression on Nicholas Sandmann's face. (With the help of a top-shelf crisis PR firm, Sandmann denied he bore any animus toward Phillips.)

It's one she's encountered while protesting outside the Redskins home stadium. Fans, when they're not hurling epithets or splattering her with beer, will simply smile, confident that Native Americans' justifiable outrage can be dismissed entirely. The idea they'd face any kind of backlash is beyond their imagination. And even if their behavior was met with condemnation, powerful forces would stand by their side

"That smirk on that boy's face was the face I've seen thousands of times," said Blackhorse. "They know they're doing something wrong; they just don't care."

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The History of the Covington MAGA Teens' Racist 'Tomahawk Chop'

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The chant has been a staple of pro and amateur sports for decades-much to the ire of Native Americans. Amidst all the ref-working, bad faith arguments, false equivalencies, and targeted attacks on reporters by the far right since videos showing a group of teens from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky hooting, jeering, and mocking a Native American elder were made public, one piece of evidence can't be hand-waved away or pettifogged until the truth is unrecognizable: the Tomahawk Chop.

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https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/indian-mascots

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In our series of articles on the Boy Scouts, three factions or offshoot groups came about as a result of the initial organization based on the young men's group of Woodcraft Indians by Ernest Thompson Seton.

These three organizations are the Order of the Arrow, which is more of a secret-based honor society of the Boy Scouts of America, the tribe of Mic-O-Say, which is a "tribe" of sorts with specific regalia, adornments and paint styles that has specific traveling dance groups, and the Koshare, which is a Boy Scout Troop with a museum and dancers based in La Junta, Colorado.

The creation of the Mic-O-Say by Harold Roe Bartle, a non-Native man with a 25-cigar-a-day habit and a booming voice, was the man behind the catalyst leading to the eventual creation of the name for the Kansas City football team, the Chiefs.
(Related: The Tribe of Mic-O-Say dance teams regularly perform' in 'Native-style regalia')
As previously reported in Indian Country Today, the Mic-O-Say was founded in 1925, under the leadership of Harold Roe Bartle, a former Scouting leader for the Cheyenne Council of Boy Scouts in Casper, Wyoming.

H. Roe Bartle and a group of scouts. (Video screen capture)

Bartle claimed he was inducted into a local tribe of the Arapaho people and according to another "traditional Mic-O-Say legend," Bartle was also given the name Lone Bear by an Arapaho chief. Thus he went by the name Chief Lone Bear in his Mic-O-Say organization.

As chief, Bartle conducted ceremonies on new members by placing an eagle claw around their necks and giving them a 'Native name.'

The Mic-O-Say became wildly popular and increased camp attendance in scout summer camps by young men who wished to incorporate Native American traditions into their scout activities. In 1928, Bartle was named the Scout Executive of the Kansas City area council, and Mic-O-Say had become so successful, other Mic-O-Say camps were formed.

Bartle's Mic-O-Say camp in Osceola, Missouri, now called the 'Bartle Scout Reservation" still exists today

Mic-O-Say and Kansas City Chiefs connection

Kansas City Chiefs fans wear indian headdresses during the NFL week 9 football game against the San Diego Chargers on Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012 in San Diego. (AP Photo/Paul Spinelli)

Bartle, who was known in many of his circles as 'chief' served as mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, for two terms and in 1962 he helped to persuade Lamar Hunt, the owner of Dallas Texans football team to bring his team to Kansas City.

As written about in a 2016 Kansas City Star article by Rick Montgomery:

"Bartle learned on a business trip that Hunt was thinking about relocating his American Football League franchise. Not yet ready to sever his football ties in Texas, Hunt originally declined the mayor's invitation to check out Kansas City.

"So Bartle promised total secrecy, which included mailing papers to Hunt from a location outside City Hall.

"When Hunt visited, Bartle introduced him as 'Mr. Lamar' and referred to Steadman as "Jack X."

Team owner of the Dallas Texans Lamar Hunt who was also the founder of the American Football League met with Bartle under a veil of secrecy that he truly enjoyed according to the article, and after what then Kansas City Star sports columnist Joe McGuff cited as "a remarkable selling job on Lamar Hunt," the team owner agreed to have his team named the Kansas City Chiefs after Bartle.

In 1963, after Hunt had moved his Dallas Texans to Kansas City, the name 'Chiefs' "popped up time and again in a name-the-team contest." Lamar Hunt's general manager had stated years later, "I finally told Lamar, 'There's just no other name we can select.'"

The Kansas City Chiefs were not named for a Native American, but for Bartle's namesake and his involvement with Mic-O-Say.

---
RELATED COVERAGE: Follow Indian Country Today's associate editor Vincent Schilling (Akwesasne Mohawk) on Twitter - @VinceSchilling and Instagram - @VinceSchilling. Email - vschilling@indiancountrytoday.com

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How the Kansas City Chiefs got their name and the Boy Scout Tribe of Mic-O-Say

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In our series of articles on the Boy Scouts, three factions or offshoot groups came about as a result of the initial organization based on the young men's group of Woodcraft Indians by Ernest Thompson Seton.

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The following list represents Native American related mascots in our database that are or have been used by high school, college or professional teams. This list may not be complete, and not all names in this list may be considered offensive or derogatory.

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Native American-related mascots - from Redskins and Indians to Warriors and Chiefs

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The Battle of Little Bighorn marks the moment that
Plains Indians, once a feared enemy, became a
symbol of the country itself. In the decades following
Little Bighorn, the very Indians who crushed the 7th
Calvary became celebrities, and beloved Americans.
As printing technology advanced, images of Indians
representing valor, freedom, and skilled combat
appeared everywhere in American life. Advertising
took off, and the images were used to sell all manner
of products. The Plains Indian headdress became
famous around the world. With each advance in movie
technology came new styles and attitudes toward
depicting the West and American Indians. But through
it all Plains Indian imagery remained stuck in the past.
Very few Lakota men ever earned the honor of
wearing the wapaha (wah-PAH-hah), or eagle-feather
headdress. For a man to wear one, his elders and peers
had to see in him fortitude, perseverance, generosity,
and bravery. When wearing the wapaha, a man always
thought of his people.