Blog post for arts 130

Are the Washington Redskins culturally appropriating Native American culture?

Those who are even remotely interested in sports have no doubt heard about the controversy that
erupted surrounding the Washington Redskins’ name and logo. The logo (as pictured above)
depicts a bust of a Native American man with his hair braided to one side and feathers in his hair,
surrounded by a yellow circle with two feathers dipped in gold attached on the left. The man in
the logo is, in a continuation of a tradition that began with the first explorers who landed in the
Americas, colored a dark red. This was a common stereotype of Native Americans that was
perpetuated throughout United States history and came to its highest prominence during the late
19th and early 20th century. Some examples of this red coloration of Native Americans can be
seen in the Disney film Peter Pan, where a song entitled “What Makes the Red Man Red”
(which includes such tasteful lyrics as “Let's go back a million years/To the very first Injun
prince/He kissed a maid and start to blush/And we've all been blushin' since”) is sung, or in
another Disney film Pocahontas, in which many of the members of the Native American tribe
were seen with dark red skin. The first campaigns against the Washington Redskins’ name and
logo began sometime during the 1940’s, a time when racism was a very public practice against
all minority groups. The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) began a movement to
remove any sort of stereotypes of Native Americans in public media, primarily focusing on ones
that portrayed their traditions and rituals in a negative light. While the campaign hasn’t stopped
since the 40’s, it began to pick up steam again in 2013 when the NCAI wrote a report about their
opposition towards the Washington Redskins, which was met by a letter from the owner of the
Redskins, Dan Snyder, in which he defended the use of the name and logo as a matter of
preserving the tradition of the team. The irony was almost palpable.

The primary problem with the team’s name is that it is a racial slur. There is no way to
deny this or justify its use; “Redskin” is a racial slur which is meant to demean and belittle
Native American and First Nations people. Despite the defense provided by the team’s owner,
the only difference between the name “Washington Redskins” and a hypothetical team named
the “Cleveland Faggots” is that the use of the word ‘faggot’ seems much more offensive from a
modern perspective, despite having a similar background as the word ‘redskin’. As a bisexual
man myself, I would find it incredibly offensive and disrespectful if the word ‘faggot’ was used
as a team name, so the offense taken to the use of ‘redskin’ is understandable for me. The
secondary problem is the disrespect for culture. The logo itself degrades thousands of years of
culture into one small and inaccurate image. Anyone who’s seen any actual footage of events
held on Native American reservations knows that the icon, name, and mascot of the Washington
Redskins is not respectful of the culture whatsoever. In fact, it’s so far removed from reality that
I hesitate to call it cultural appropriation, but that’s what it is.