The portrait below is of the Indian hero who was the inspiration for the Redskins. His family want his name and likeness restored to the Washington Redskins.
The Commanders is such a stupid name.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s still Redskins. I’ve only called it the Redskins, and will never call it Commanders.
Blackfeet Chief Two Guns White Calf was my great uncle and a great American icon. Americans know his face: he was the face of the Washington Redskins for 48 years, until he was cancelled in 2020.
Americans once knew his story.
White Calf defended tribal traditions in our Blackfeet homeland in Montana, where many of us still live today. He went to Washington D.C. where he forced the U.S. government to honor Indian treaties. He served as a model for the U.S. Mint’s famous 1913 “Indian head” nickel. White Calf’s face is still a collector’s item. [Also known as the Buffalo Nickel.]
Uncle Two Guns was friends with Teddy Roosevelt Jr., New York Gov. Al Smith and made President Calvin Coolidge a member of the Blackfeet Nation. White Calf was so famous in his era that his death in 1934 was front-page news across the country.
White Calf became the proud warrior face of the Redskins in 1972, championed by Blackfeet leader Blackie Wetzel and with support of Native Americans across the country.
Cancel-culture racists decided at some point they wanted to get rid of Indian images in the public domain. The Redskins and Two Guns were their No. 1 target.
White Calf’s name was dropped from the Redskins narrative. His life story was erased from history. Even worse: Uncle Two Guns was dehumanized. He was ridiculed as a “savage and clownish mascot.”
…
We ask that the Washington Redskins — still the Redskins to us — work with President Trump to reclaim their rightful name and their proud image of American hero John Two Guns White Calf.
We ask that the White Calf family be given a seat at the table
Read the rest at the NY Post.
He is right about how this went down. Extremist racists erased the history.
Sign the Petition
In 2023, a Native American group called the Native American Guardians Association (NAGA) has threatened to boycott the NFL’s “Washington Commanders” football team if the team does not revert back to its historic name as the “Washington Redskins”.
The organization’s website is looking for both petition signatures and donations to further its mission to change team names back to Native American team names from professional sports down to grade schools in America. They see their goal as to “educate, not eradicate.”
The organization sees what has been going on in America as a “perversion through Ideology and political correctness,” and they are not wrong.
In the three-page letter, NAGA cites lawsuits, polls, and general sentiment supporting their argument that Native Americans don’t find the term “Redskin” to be derogatory. To close its letter, the organization punctuated its meeting invitation by threatening a boycott if their requests continued to go without response.
“Should we need to encourage a national boycott similar to what happened with Anheuser Busch, which is now down $27 billion (note, not one brick thrown, not one highway blocked, not one bridge burned) – WE WILL DO JUST THAT,” the letter read from the NAGA last week.
NAGA’s President of Global Impact Campaigns, Healy Baumgardner, told The National Desk the organization has repeatedly been ignored with such meeting requests.
“We attempted to have an open dialogue with the now Washington Commanders since they made the name change several years ago with no response by them to have a conversation,” she said. “We felt that it was time to apply public pressure.”
“In terms of changing the name Redskins, the Native American community was never asked how they felt about it,” Baumgardner said. “Once again, we are met by closed doors and no open dialogue with the Commander’s leadership or the executives.”
The group’s boycott threat comes after Anheuser-Busch, the owner of Bud Light and other beer brands, reported a nearly $400 million loss in the second quarter of this year.
The loss in revenue was the result of a boycott of Anheuser-Busch products following their partnership with an online transgender activist influencer named Dylan Mulvaney on his 365th day as a man acting as a woman.
This letter is the latest step in the organization’s “Reclaim the Name” campaign, which aims to bring back the team’s previously retired “Redskins” moniker. A petition supporting the effort now has almost 100,000 signatures in just a week.
You can sign the petition yourself here.
In its letter to the Commanders, the group’s founder and president, Eunice Davidson, notes the group’s own poll found that 90% of Native Americans did not find the Redskins name offensive.
Nice to see he’s stepping up. Wouldn’t it be great to see other families speaking up as well Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, etc.