Quote Originally Posted by SteelCurtain74 View Post
The simplest solution would be to name them the Braves, which was their original mascot when the team was in Boston. They changed the name to Redskins so as not to cause confusion with the Boston Braves baseball team. They moved to D.C. a few years after the name change and they kept the Redskins as their mascot.

The fact is that there have been calls to change the name since the early 70's. Most don't remember that there were thousands of protestors outside the Super Bowl in 92 when Washington played Buffalo, demanding they change their name.

On the flip side of the issue, a poll in the Washington Post came out in 2016 in which 9 out of 10 Native Americans weren't offended by the name. There was a poll in 2004 that had basically the same results. Now it's quite possible that the attitudes among Native Americans have changed in the last 5 years but I haven't seen anything come out to support that. At the end of the day, that is the community that should have the loudest voice on the issue, not corporate interests especially those who have their own work to do to have more diversity in their executive leadership.
Good post, dude. Some good info here.

Glad you also mentioned the WaPo poll, which I always found interesting. It brings up several thoughts. For one, there are a lot of politics of which tribes are actually recognized by all the other tribes, but that's not necessarily apropos to this conversation. 2nd, were these NA's actually ones living on reservations, or separated from their tribes, or just folks who said "yeah, my mammy said we're 1/4th Indian, so I've got an opinion on this matter" (which has been expressed several times on this board, sadly enough)? All that being said, I'm curious to see the actual data of who participated in the poll.

Truthfully, though, I can see this topic not registering with the majority of NA's living on reservations in this country, whether in Oklahoma, S. Dakota, Mississippi, etc.,....because the sad fact is, those Native Americans are too busy dying, more proportionally than any other ethnic/racial group in this country, from suicide, alcoholism, drug abuse, heart disease, etc. If you've ever been on a reservation, you'd see it's like a visiting a 3rd world country, but one within our own borders. These communities have the lowest percentages of home heating, phone service, clean water, access to healthcare, etc. than anywhere else in the country. It's truly shameful. The kind of thing that makes you feel ill.

Granted, there will be folks who mention the glitz, glamor, and money of the casinos as if that's representative of life on the res; trust me, it's not.