Atlanta Braves: Why it’s Time to Get Rid of Tomahawk Chop

Atlanta Braves – Pro Sports Teams Under Fire from Suzan Shown Harjo

The Kansas City Chiefs still routinely have white people show up to the stadium in redface with mock headdresses while performing the Arrowhead Chop. The Indians just recently parted ways with the caricature Chief Wahoo mascot, yet their team name is still “Indians.”

Then, of course, there’s the Washington Redskins. The team is named after a pejorative term describing a skin color of a race of people.

Suzan Shown Harjo is a prominent leader in the Native American civil rights movement. She’s been battling for decades. This is not some recent “cancel culture” issue. For her, this is hundreds of years of blatant disregard for her people.

Kevin Blackistone of the Washington Post recounted the story of when Harjo was a second-grader in Oklahoma and she questioned her white teacher about why the Battle of Little Bighorn is known more for its loser, George Custar, rather than the American Indians who actually won the battle.

The white teacher was so fed up with her questioning of the version of history he was teaching that he called her a “dirty redskin” and threw her out of a second-story window. Yes, you read that correctly, he defenestrated her from the second floor of a school.

This amazing woman would go on to earn a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014 and would be one of the primary faces of the Native American Civil Rights movement and the face of the lawsuit against the Washington Redskins.

She was also on the panel in the conversation that was had on the previously referenced 1992 episode of Oprah. In the program, she explained that the term “redskin” used to be utilized when bounty hunters ran out of room on their wagons to carry the slain bodies and skulls of American Indians, so they began accepting the skins of the fallen Indians in exchange for the bounties.

Her work has helped bring a wave of legislation across the country attempting to limit or restrict public funding to teams that make use of racially insensitive American Indian mascots. Maine has a statewide ban.

Here’s what she had to say in an ESPN chat with sports fans in 1999 when asked specifically about why she’s suing the Redskins and not the Atlanta Braves:

"“Because the r-word is the most derogatory thing Native Peoples can be called in the English language.”"

Then she was asked if there are any instances where Native American inspired mascots are acceptable. She had a one-word response.

"“Nope.”"