Native American mascot controversy | Debate, Changes, & Teams

Background

With the growth of professional sports leagues in the United States in the early 20th century, it became common for teams to name themselves after Native peoples and to adopt Native-themed mascots and logos. A significant number of those names and images remain in use today. These teams and some of their fans have claimed that their Native themes are meant to honour Native peoples, but many Native peoples strongly disagree. They argue that Native-themed mascots and logos are a harmful relic of the country’s long history of racism and discrimination against Native peoples. In the 1960s Native activists began a movement to end the use of Native-themed names, mascots, and logos in American sports. The movement has achieved many successes, and its efforts continue today.

Activism and progress

In 1968 the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) began a campaign against the use of Native stereotypes in popular culture, including sports. Other Native rights groups—including the American Indian Movement (AIM)—also took up the cause. For many years the NCAI focused mainly on lobbying professional sports teams to discontinue their use of Native-themed names and symbols. Activists held protests, filed lawsuits, and pressured corporations to end their support of teams with offensive names and symbols. However, strong resistance from team owners and fans delayed change for decades.

Meanwhile, schools at the university and lower levels made progress in changing Native-themed team names and mascots. The University of Oklahoma retired its Native mascot, known as “Little Red,” in 1970. Within the next few years Stanford University and Dartmouth College dropped the nickname Indians and their Native mascots. These schools set an example that many other universities, colleges, and high schools followed over the decades to come. In 2005 the National Collegiate Athletic Association banned teams that use Native-themed names, logos, and mascots from its championship tournaments.

State governments also took action to curb the use of Native mascots and logos. By 2022 more than 20 states had taken steps to address the use of Native-themed mascots in public high schools and elementary schools. In 2019 Maine became the first state to pass a full ban on the use of Native mascots in public schools. In 2023 New York state ruled that schools that did not retire their Native mascots by 2025 risked losing state funding.

Continuing pressure finally helped bring about progress in professional sports beginning in the 2010s. One major success came in Cleveland. The city’s Major League Baseball (MLB) team was named the Cleveland Indians in 1915, and in the 1940s it adopted a logo known as Chief Wahoo. The logo was a red-faced cartoon figure that was widely criticized as a racist caricature of a Native man. Protests against Chief Wahoo began in the 1970s, but it was not until the 2010s that the team began phasing out the logo. It was officially retired in 2018. Before the 2022 season the team changed its name to the Cleveland Guardians.

Another long-standing target of Native activists was the National Football League (NFL) team from Washington, D.C. Since 1933 the team had been playing as the Redskins, a word generally ranked among the worst racial slurs that could be used against Native people. The team logo featured a profile of a Native man with feathers in his hair. Activists, including Suzan Shown Harjo, filed a lawsuit against the team in 1992, but for almost three decades the team’s owners refused to change the name. In 2020, under pressure from corporate sponsors, the owners finally agreed to drop the offensive term. The club played as the Washington Football Team during the 2020 and 2021 seasons before adopting the name Commanders in 2022.

Ongoing efforts

The NCAI and other groups continue to pressure other professional teams to change their names, logos, and mascots. For example, the logo of the Atlanta Braves MLB team is a tomahawk, an ax historically used as a weapon by some Native Americans. Fans of the team perform what they call the “tomahawk chop”—an arm movement that is accompanied by a mock “war chant.” Both the team and the MLB have endorsed the continuation of the practice. Other teams have not moved to change their names but have taken small steps to try to be more sensitive to Native peoples. For instance, the Kansas City Chiefs of the NFL and the Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League no longer allow fans to wear Native headdresses to games. The Chiefs also banned face paint that references Native people or culture.

Activists continue their work at the local level as well. Although professional teams have received the most attention, owing to their massive audiences and extensive media reach, most Native-themed names and mascots are used in schools. The NCAI keeps a database of elementary, middle, and high schools with teams that have Native-themed mascots. In 2023 the database still included some 1,900 schools—mostly high schools—throughout the United States.

The impact that Native-themed mascots and stereotypes have had on the Native population is explored in the documentary Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting (2021).