After half a century of activism, many Native Americans thought the fierce debate over the capital’s football mascot was over two years ago, when the team was renamed the Washington Commanders.
The organization dropped the racist term “redskins” as its name and withdrew the logo closely associated with that name: a profile of an indigenous man with long hair and two feathers.
Now, a white Republican U.S. senator from Montana is reigniting the debate by blocking a bill that would fund the revitalization of the dilapidated RFK Stadium for the Commanders, who play miles away in Maryland. Sen. Steve Daines says he will block the legislation until the NFL and the Commanders somehow honor the former logo.
Daines declined requests from the Associated Press to explain his position or respond to criticism from indigenous peoples who say such efforts are rooted in racism.
The complicated history of a logo
The original logo was designed by a member of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. Some tribal members are proud of it and the legacy of the man who helped design it in the early 1970s — Walter “Blackie” Wetzel, a former tribal chairman of the Blackfeet Nation and past president of the National Congress of the American Indian, the nation’s oldest Native American and Alaska Native advocacy organization.
According to Wetzel’s family, a friendship developed between Daines and Wetzel’s son Don, who died last year at age 74, which may have prompted the senator’s fight for the logo.
Indian Country is typically a bipartisan issue in Congress.
Daines serves on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and has worked with Democratic colleagues on access to clean water for tribal communities. He has supported the passage of a Truth and Healing Commission to investigate the history of Native American boarding schools, a bill introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat.
Daines has also used this policy area to criticize the Biden administration and was one of the fiercest opponents of the nomination of Deb Haaland, the first Native American to lead the Interior Department.
He accused her of being hostile to the energy and resource extraction industries and said she would use the appointment to “negatively impact the Montana way of life.” In May, he blocked the nomination of the woman seeking to become Montana’s first Native American federal district judge. Daines said the Biden administration had not consulted his office about the nomination, a claim the White House disputes.
Painful symbolism?
Daines said in a prepared statement that he would suspend the stadium legislation until representatives of the Washington Commanders and the NFL demonstrate they are working with the Wetzel family and leaders of the Blackfeet Nation to find a way to “honor the history of the logo and our tribes’ heritage and repurpose the organization as an advocate for Indian Country.”
For many indigenous peoples, the team’s original name and logo represent an ugly history of racial discrimination and violence, as well as modern battles over the ethical representation of Native Americans in popular culture. The National Congress of the American Indian, the organization Walter Wetzel once led, has been fighting to remove mascots like this one since 1968. Numerous psychological studies have documented the damaging impact Native American mascots have on children.
A divided family
The football team was founded in Boston in 1932 and had a Native American man as its mascot. However, after moving to Washington DC in 1937, the logo was changed to a spear, and later to an “R” with two feathers.
Walter Wetzel worked for the Department of Labor to address housing and employment inequality in Indian Country and worked closely with President John F. Kennedy, and was friends with him and Robert Kennedy. Wetzel worked with the football team to redesign its logo. He felt that if the team was going to have a Native American-themed mascot, it should at least be a representative one, said his grandson Ryan Wetzel.
Walter Wetzel proposed a profile of a former Blackfeet leader, John Two Guns White Calf. A likeness of that image would be used from the 1972 season until it was discontinued in 2020.
“I understand the controversy of the name, I get it,” Ryan Wetzel said. “I come from a family that’s divided over the name. But the logo, how do we preserve that and use that going forward?”
Ryan Wetzel said his father, Don, had a leg amputated in his final years but still made regular appearances on Capitol Hill to drum up support for saving the logo, and Daines took up that cause. Daines reached out to Ryan Wetzel after his father died last year to see if he could help revive the effort to restore the logo in some way.
A “dog whistle”?
A spokesman for Daines said discussions with the Washington Commanders about a way to honor the Wetzel family are ongoing and productive. In his statements during a May committee hearing on the RFK stadium bill, Daines suggested that the logo could be revived to sell merchandise, with a portion of the profits going to issues like the epidemic of missing and murdered Native women.
But Native American advocates and researchers say the use of the old logo is an inappropriate and harmful way to achieve justice and equality for indigenous peoples. However the image was chosen, it cannot be separated from the racial slur it once promoted, said Crystal Echohawk, a member of the Pawnee Nation and founder and CEO of Illuminative, a nonprofit organization that works to increase Native American visibility. She called the old logo a “dog whistle” for the team’s old name.
“The science underscores the damaging impact these images have on Indigenous peoples,” said Dr. Stephanie Fryberg, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan and one of the nation’s leading experts on the subject.
Fryberg, who is a member of the Tulalip Tribe in Washington state, said the use of these mascots has led to increased rates of depression, self-harm, substance abuse and suicidal thoughts, especially among children.
“The continued use of these racist images prevents Native Americans from existing and being honored within contemporary social contexts,” she said.
What did the Blackfeet nation get?
In Montana, some Blackfeet Nation council members are asking why so little of the millions of dollars the football team generated from the White Calf statue, designed by a former Blackfeet Nation chairman, never made it to the Blackfeet people.
Decades ago, the football team donated a pair of vans to help transport Blackfeet elders to a nearby VA facility, Blackfeet Nation Councilman Everett Armstrong said, but he was not aware of any other funds or revenue shared with the tribe. A spokesman for the Washington Commanders could not provide other examples but said the team is in discussions with the Wetzel family.
There are strong feelings about the logo and its legacy on the reservation, Armstrong said. But one group feels completely left out of the discussion: the descendants of White Calf.
Armstrong, himself a descendant of White Calf, said they were not asked for advice about the use of his image in the 1970s and have never been asked about it since.
“They want a seat at the table,” he said.
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Brewer is a member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team, based in Oklahoma City.
