Senator Wants Washington Commanders to Pay Honor to an Ancient Logo That Offends Many Indigenous People

After a half-century of advocacy, many Native Americans believed the acrimonious argument over the capital’s football mascot had ended two years ago, when the team became the Washington Commanders.

The organization dropped the racist epithet “redskins” from its name and discarded the insignia associated with it: a profile of a Native man with long hair and two feathers.

Now, a white Republican senator from Montana is reigniting the topic by opposing a bill to revitalize the aging RFK Stadium for the Commanders, who have been playing miles away in Maryland. Sen. Steve Daines has stated that he will oppose the proposal until the NFL and the Commanders recognize the prior emblem in some fashion.

Daines rebuffed Associated Press demands to explain his position or answer to criticism from Indigenous peoples who claim such actions are racist.

A logo’s complex history

A Blackfeet Nation member from Montana designed the initial logo. Some tribal members are proud of it, as is the legacy of Walter “Blackie” Wetzel, a former Blackfeet Nation tribal chairman and president of the National Congress of the American Indian, the country’s oldest Native American and Alaska Native advocacy organization.

According to Wetzel’s family, Daines and his son Don, who died last year at the age of 74, built a connection, which may be fuelling the senator’s struggle for the logo.

Indian country is often a bipartisan issue in Congress.

Daines serves on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and has collaborated with Democratic colleagues to improve tribal populations’ access to potable water. He has backed the creation of a truth-and-healing commission to explore the history of Indian boarding schools, a bill sponsored by Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Daines has also used policy to criticize the Biden administration, and he was a vocal opponent of Deb Haaland’s candidacy as the first Native American to lead the Department of Interior.

He accused her of being antagonistic to the energy and natural-resource extraction sectors, claiming she would use her appointment to “negatively impact the Montana way of life.” In May, he opposed the nomination of a woman to be Montana’s first Native American federal district court judge. Daines claimed that the Biden administration did not engage with his office regarding the nomination, something the White House disputes.

Painful symbolism?

Daines said in a prepared statement that he would halt stadium legislation until representatives from the Washington Commanders and the NFL demonstrate that they are working with the Wetzel family and Blackfeet Nation leaders to find a way to “honor the history of the logo and heritage of our tribal nations and to rededicate the organization as an advocate for Indian Country.”

For many Indigenous peoples, the team’s original name and logo signify a dark history of racial injustice and bloodshed, as well as contemporary debates over the ethical representation of Native Americans in popular media. Since 1968, the National Congress of the American Indian, which Walter Wetzel once led, has pushed to get such mascots removed. Numerous psychology research have demonstrated the negative effects Native American mascots have on youngsters.

A split family.

The football club was founded in Boston in 1932 with a Native American man as its mascot, but after relocation to Washington, D.C. in 1937, the emblem was modified to a spear, followed by a “R” ornamented with two feathers.

Walter Wetzel worked for the Department of Labor to solve housing and job inequities in Indian Country, and he was friends with both President John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. Wetzel collaborated with the football team to revamp their logo. He believed that if the team was going to have a Native American-themed mascot, it should be a representative image, according to his grandson Ryan Wetzel.

Walter Wetzel suggested creating a profile of John Two Guns White Calf, a former Blackfeet leader. A version of that graphic would be used from the 1972 season until it was withdrawn in 2020.

“I understand the controversy surrounding the name,” Ryan Wetzel stated. “I come from a family split by the name. But what about the logo? How can we maintain and use it going forward?

Ryan Wetzel stated that in his later years, his father Don had an amputated leg but still turned up on Capitol Hill to rally support for the logo’s preservation, and Daines took up the fight. Daines contacted Ryan Wetzel after his father died last year to see if he could assist renew the campaign to restore the logo in any way.

Was that a “dog whistle” ?

Daines’ spokeswoman stated that negotiations with the Washington Commanders about how to honor the Wetzel family are ongoing and positive. During a May committee hearing on the RFK stadium plan, Daines offered that the logo be resurrected to sell items, with a portion of the proceeds going toward topics such as the missing and murdered Indigenous women.

However, Native American campaigners and experts argue that using the old emblem is an inappropriate and destructive approach to attaining justice and equity for Indigenous peoples. No matter how the image was picked, it is inextricably linked to the racial slur it originally promoted, according to Crystal Echo Hawk, a Pawnee Nation member and the founder and CEO of IllumiNative, an organization dedicated to increasing Native American awareness. She described the earlier emblem as a “dog whistle” to the team’s previous name.

“The science underscores the detrimental impact these images have on Indigenous peoples,” stated Dr. Stephanie Fryberg, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan and one of the country’s leading specialists on the subject.

Fryberg, a member of the Tulalip Tribe in Washington State, claims that using these mascots increases the risk of depression, self-harm, substance misuse, and suicidal ideation, especially among youth.

“The continued use of these racist images prevents Native Americans from existing and being honored within contemporary social contexts,” she told me.

What did the Blackfeet Nation receive?

In Montana, several Blackfeet Nation council members are perplexed as to why so few of the millions of money gained by the football team’s use of the image of White Calf, which was developed by a former Blackfeet Nation chairman, were returned to the people.

According to Blackfeet Nation Councilman Everett Armstrong, the football club provided a handful of vans to help transport Blackfeet seniors to a nearby VA facility decades ago, but he was unaware of any more resources or earnings shared with the tribe since then. A Washington Commanders representative declined to share any other instances but stated that the team is in contact with the Wetzel family.

Armstrong stated that the emblem and its legacy elicit significant reactions on the reservation. However, the descendants of White Calf believe they have been completely excluded from the conversation.

According to Armstrong, a descendant of White Calf, they were not consulted about the usage of his image in the 1970s and have never been questioned about it again.

“They’d like a seat at the table,” he told them.

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