UK Black groups demand NFL 'Redskins' name change

As eighty five thousand US National Football League fans descended once again on London's Wembley Stadium, and many millions on TV  to watch and support their national game-American Football, Black groups such as Operation Black Vote, showed solidarity to US Native Americans by calling for a name change to the 'Washington Redskins'. The DC team were there, last Sunday to play the 'Cincinnati Tigers', but campaigners in the US have sought international solidarity in the UK  for their plight to force the Washington team to drop the pejorative term, 'Redskins'.

The history of the word, 'Redskins', is deeply problematic to most Native Americans, as it was used more than 150 years ago when bounty hunters where offered some $200 for a 'Redskin'; a bloody scalp of a native American. For example, in 1863, a Winona newspaper, the Daily Republican, printed an announcement: "The state reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory. In another news story published by the Atchison Daily Champion in Atchison, Kansas on October 9, 1885, tells of the settlers "hunt for redskins, with a view of obtaining their scalps" valued at $250.

Although the vast majority of Washington DC football fans see the term as endearing and not negative, native American scholars have rightly stated that:

"white society does not get to decide what is and isn't offensive to the majority of Native Americans."

The best comparison we can draw upon here in the UK would be the controversial word, doll and symbol, 'Golliwog', which for a long time was an emblem for a mainstream jam manufacturer. For a long time UK society viewed the Black caricatured doll as endearing, , however, for the Black Britons it has always  been seen as a vulgar stereotype that was too often used as a term of abuse, and after much lobbying it has largely been consigned to history.

The Washington Football team should have a similar process: They may want to keep the proud symbol of the Native American but simply change the offending word.

Of course, some would argue it's not the biggest priority for Native Americans today, whose  Rights and opportunities  across the US still suffer from the legacy of a brutal colonial past, nevertheless, it is  an important part of the healing process that must continue in the US.

Simon Woolley