After a years-long battle to jettison the widely attacked “Redskins” name from Washington’s NFL team, a Republican senator is battling to revive the old logo featuring a depiction of a Native American chief and feathers.
“We have had good discussions with the NFL and with the Commanders. There’s good faith ... negotiations going forward that’s going to allow this logo to be used again,” Montana Sen. Steve Daines insisted in an interview.
The team is now known as the Washington Commanders after its “Redskins” name and logo dumped when it was attacked by Native Americans, supporters and sponsors as racist. President-elect Donald Trump mocked the name-changing move at the time as ridiculously “politically correct.”
Daines’s push to revive the logo has emerged in the wake of a bipartisan bill supported by the Commanders and District of Columbia officials aimed at revitalizing the shuttered RFK stadium in D.C. to bring the team back from its current home in the nearby suburb of Landover, Maryland.
Daines finally voted to move the bill from the Energy & Natural Resources Committee to the full Senate, previously holding it up as he called for a return of the logo. He suggested that any future controversy over a revived logo might be eased with money used to “honor Indian Country.”
“Perhaps revenues [could go] to a foundation that could help Native Americans in sports and so forth,” Daines told Fox News last week.
In a post on X, Daines slammed the move to drop the Commanders’ former name and logo as “woke gone wrong.”
The “irony” is that the battle by the “diversity, equity and inclusion movement“ went “way too far” and ended up “canceling Native American culture,” he complained to Fox.
Some fans have called on Donald Trump on social media to order the team’s name changed back once he’s back in the White House
Opponents battling the team’s old name and logo attacked it as an insulting “slur” that also demeaned Native Americans as mere “mascots” of a football team.
Native American Angelina Newsom wrote in The Independent when the name and logo were dropped : “Dear white people, stop telling Native Americans like me whether we’re offended by the Washington Redskins.” She called the name a “derogatory term coined by colonialists often historically used interchangeably with ‘savages.’”
Daines called the logo depicting Blackfeet Chief Two Guns White Calf an “honor” to him. It was designed by the late Blackie Wetzel, a Blackfeet tribal member once prominent in Indian affairs in Washington, D.C.
At least one organization that addresses indigenous issues has already attacked Daines’ proposal.
“The decision to change the name and mascot came after years of organizing from Native communities and allies, and billions of dollars from investors in the ‘Change The Name’ movement. Going back on this commitment should be a non-starter,” Angel Charley, executive director of IllumiNative, said in a statement.
“Native peoples are not mascots for sport and entertainment. It is impossible to heal from the decades of racism inflicted on us by way of the team’s fan traditions and former name if we must continue making this point,” she added.
Commanders owner Josh Harris said at a press conference in August that the team would not return to its old name.
“We’ve been very clear … for obvious reasons, the old name can’t come back,” he said. “The first objective is we got to start winning football games, and we need everyone supporting the team and not things that might, you know, drive people apart.”
