Editor’s note:
Suzan Harjo was lead plaintiff of the first group of Native people to file a lawsuit against the Washington NFL team in 1992 for its team name, the R-word. ICT does not repeat dictionary defined slurs, not even in quotes, on its platforms.
Suzan Harjo
Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee
He’s out of his closet campaign to revive the vile (R-word) and is now openly trying to pressure the NFL owners and the DC government to take a ginormous step back into bigotry. This comes just as the Commanders are playing like champions, without carrying that burden of bad karma.
Remember, under the R-word owners — awash in their claimed privilege to call us hateful names, mock our cultures and rewrite history — the team’s last Super Bowl was in 1992 (for the 1991 season). That’s 33 years ago! I remember it well because it was 33 years ago on September 10, 1992 that our first Native suit was filed and lasted for 17 years (all three consistent, overlapping cases totaled 25 years, a quarter-century of litigation and public education) against the federal sanctioning of the Washington pro ball club disparaging us and holding us up to public contempt and ridicule. I don’t claim that we did anything to make the owners fall out with each other or the team claw their way to last year’s winning season — although you gotta say it’s a heck of a coincidence — but it’s a good example of how long it takes to shake really bad karma!
For those who are new to this story, 33 years years ago, Donald Trump was still crying around to Congress to stop tribal gaming operations, claiming that a tribal casino in Connecticut caused his casino in Atlantic City to go bankrupt, and saying that the Native Peoples with casinos “don’t look Indian….I look more Indian than they do.” First, only his businesses (yes, more than one) went bust, while other casinos on the boardwalk were doing well. Second, he was throwing around racist terms and trying to judge us on the basis of appearance, without understanding that our civil, human and treaty rights derive from our political and policy status as Native peoples (in terms of nationhood and citizenship). He thought then (and may still think now) that, because he took a racist position against us, that our status is race-based, rather than politically based. He, like many others who sling racial slurs, jump to the conclusion that we object to the color red — although it would be invidious discrimination to reference only Native peoples in sports, especially when there are no Whiteskins, Blackskins, Brownskins or Yellowskins in American sports and never have been.
It’s the heinous practice of skinning Native people for fun, trophy-collecting and the business of bounties for the skins (scalps and genitalia) and other body parts as proof of death of a tribal man, woman or child. That’s the sorry chapter of history we do not want to go back to and where race supremacists try to keep us with these “Indian” names, images, symbols, mascots, logos and such behaviors as the tomahawk or arrowhead chop, as those dehumanizing wahoo-ish caricatures and as the horseback “Osceola” mascot throwing a flaming spear at an “Indian” head. Is that the era to which his race-supremacy movement wants to return? Make America Racist Again? Make America Bigoted Again? Their cult leader (including his former and closeted advisors) spawned an idiot child, nāga, that has a few pockets of actual Native persons, who usually have a Trump advisor or one handful of “Natives” speak for them, and tried to sue the Commanders’ owners to reinstate the R-word name, using the history laid out in our lawsuits to justify their hilarious claim that, with all the bad things actual Native ancestors endured, the team owners should not take away naga’s precious (R-word) name. Happily, their case lasted only a hot minute before being laughed out of court.
This is the White House adding insult to injuries already proposed and inflicted, using the historic tactic of “starving out the Indians.” Today’s version is slashing the federal budget’s programs and services that are guaranteed perpetually for the vast land we ceded and in which we retain ancestral rights — our lands that now make up the United States. None of the race supremacists are proposing that they return our lands, from which they continue to benefit.
In his post, the cult leader strikes a glancing blow at the owners of the Cleveland pro baseball team, urging them and the Commanders’ owners to make these changes immediately, which he writes as a bratty toddler might scream, “Now, I want it NOW!”
Commanders, keep up the good work. Keep on the path of righteousness and don’t let any shiny objects distract you! Guardians, you were right to dump “Chief Wahoo” and to scrap the “Indians” name and egregious behaviors. He is right that the country has changed, meaning that race supremacists are in charge, but he doesn’t realize that there are fewer bigots in America after maturing and dumping the bigoted sports references, even though the bigots have the loudest voices and the biggest bully of a bully pulpit in a long, long time.
Suzan Shown Harjo, a Cheyenne citizen and also raised Hodulgee Muscogee, is a writer, curator and policy advocate, who has helped Native Peoples protect and recover sacred places and over one million acres of lands. Guest Curator and Editor of the award-winning exhibition (2014-2021) and book (2014), Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations, she has been awarded a 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian honor.
