Two major league teams, the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs and the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks, continue to resist calls to change their names. The Chiefs have banned fans from wearing headdresses or face paint meant to depict Native Americans at games but has resisted prohibiting the use of the ‘’tomahawk chop’’, which critics have long called derogatory.
More than 1,500 grade schools across the country — a decrease over the past few years — still use Native mascots, according to the National Congress of American Indians, using names like ‘’Savages’’ as well as the slur that Trump aims to bring back to the Washington team.
Experts say Native mascots reinforce racial bias
Native American people, activists, and leaders have been asking for the retirement of Native mascots for generations. Popular arguments defending the mascots have been that they ‘’honor’’ Native people or that it simply boiled down to people being ‘’offended,” said Steph Cross, a professor of psychology and researcher at the University of Oklahoma and a citizen of the Comanche Nation. But now we have decades of data that agrees on the negative mental health impacts, she said.
‘’Being offended is not even really the problem. That’s a symptom,’’ Cross said.
She noted that Native mascots aren’t just harmful to Indigenous peoples, they also reinforce racial prejudices among non-Natives, including people who will work directly with Native people like health care professionals and teachers.
