"Redskins" name dehumanizing Natives

By Shine Salt

When you think of Redskins, you think of the Washington football team. For most Native Americans, however, it’s not about sports. It’s about life and death in the 1800s.

Bounties were hired and paid by the government to scalp Indians. And federal offerings for braves (men) were $100, $50 for squaws (women) and $25 for children.

“One thing that people say is the red refers to the blood because when you take a scalp there’s blood. I mean you’re taking skin and hair,” said Myla Carpio, Ph.D. Associate Professor of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University. “With traders, they would talk about redskins almost as if they hunted a deer for their hide.”

According to The Washington Post, Redskins owner, Dan Snyder claimed the name honors Native Americans, but few agree.

“How do you honor with an offensive term?” asked Carpio. “That’s an oxymoron. It’s not honoring.”

Carpio called it “violence against native people.” She said the term is derogatory toward the people and can be offensive. But Carpio knew of the team’s problematic background when it came to racism and segregation.

“They were one of the last holdouts of being a segregated team because they wouldn’t allow African American players,” Carpio said. “When they pushed for desegregation, President Kennedy said they couldn’t use that football stadium because it’s on federal land. If they continued to be a segregated team, they couldn’t use the stadium so that’s the only reason why they desegregated and finally allowed Africans to be on the team.”

But the original name for the team was Boston Braves until the co-owner George Preston Marshall renamed the team to Redskins in 1933. The original intent for the name was to honor former coach, William “Lone Star” Dietz who said he’s Lakota. The name then followed the team when it relocated to Washington.

An ASU student studying for Justice Studies and American Indian Studies asks his family not to watch Washington’s games. Rudy Anaya even extends his appeal when the team is playing against his favorite NFL team, The Arizona Cardinals.

“It’s not just because I’m Native. For me, it’s more about allowing people to acknowledge what has happened to Natives,” Anaya said. “By using that term, people are deliberately ignoring the historical development of the U.S.”

Carpio agrees.

“We’ve been erased in history and people don’t understand native people,” Carpio said. “The history of native people is that we’re savages and we were barriers to western expansion and we had to be put onto reservations.”

Native people have been marginalized as humans, dehumanized and put into an image of fantasy, Anaya and Carpio said.

But racism doesn’t have boundaries. Even a generous amount of natives support the name, wear the logo and find it appropriate.

One recent event was the team honoring four Navajo Code Talkers during a game against the San Francisco 49ers.

According to ABC News, Roy Hawthorne, the vice president of the Navajo Code Talkers Associate said, “My opinion is that’s a name that not only the team should keep, but that’s a name that’s American.”

Carpio argues it’s a ripple effect when natives support derogatory images. They become a spokesperson for the team or imagery.

“It’s problematic because the tribe is saying, go ahead and use our names and imagery, but what they’re doing is losing control of these stereotypes we’re trying to fight off,” Carpio said. “All of a sudden there’s this tomahawk chop and fake Indian music then it plays back into this stereotype of native people. Then it reinforces back onto native people where non-Indians will think, “Oh, it’s okay. The natives said it’s fine.”’

The derogatory and stereotype images and names can plant a harmful seed.

Anaya grew up in the city rather than the reservation and he recalls watching western films as a child—films that portrayed Indians acting a “certain way.”

“Over-and-over a picture of a savage, warrior Indian would appear on the screen,” said Anaya. “I picked up that persona and it stuck with me. I thought that it’s how Indians were, as savage people.”

A study done by Stephanie A. Fryberg, who’s a scholar at University of Arizona, examined the consequences of Indian mascots. She showed college students, non-Indians and Indians, images to view their community self-efficacy.

“When natives looked at the images, their community self-efficacy declined,” Carpio said. “The fascinating part of the study is she did the same thing to euro American students and theirs increased. So they’re benefitting from these stereotypes.”

To Carpio, it is clear what’s going on and if people get a boost of self-esteem from the term Redskins, then the name won’t change.

She said there are different layers to the issue and it keeps building. It’s not only one. It even affects sports teams on reservations that hold a native imagery. Like Tuba City Warriors and Window Rock Scouts located on the Navajo reservation.

“Some of these terms have become so normalized that they are not being questioned and they need to be,” Carpio said.

In 1999, the United States Justice Department launched an investigation on North Carolina High School. The girls’ team was named Squaws. The terminology for squaws can be vulgar. It can be defined as prostitute and genitalia.

Carpio laughed and shook her head. “We’re so invisible in history. We’ve been so erased and it allows for people to recreate us in these imageries and that’s what’s happening here,” she said.

For years, natives have been challenging the trademark of Redskins, but Snyder refuses to change the name.

“I’m not sure why people support it,” Carpio said. “In some ways, there are so few images or things that we can grab onto that we don’t think critically enough about. We’re not taking things for ourselves. We’re taking what other people create for us.”