page_title: Washington Redskins name controversy
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Washington Redskins name controversy / History
caption_attribution_description: 1935 Buffalo Nickel, photo taken by user Bobby131313 with an Olympus C-750 Ultra Zoom Bobby 04:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
context_page_description: The Washington Redskins name controversy involves the name and logo used from 1933 to 2020 by the National Football League franchise located in the Washington metropolitan area. Native American groups have questioned the use of the "Redskins" name and image since the 1960s; the topic began receiving widespread public attention in the 1990s. In July 2020, following a wave of racial awareness and reforms in wake of national protests after the killing of George Floyd, major sponsors of the league and team threatened to stop supporting them until the name was changed. The team initiated a review which resulted in the decision to retire the name and the logo for the 2020 season, playing as the Washington Football Team pending adoption of a permanent name.
  Native Americans demanding a name change included tribal nations, national tribal organizations, civil rights organizations, and individuals. The largest of these organizations, the National Congress of American Indians, counted the enrollment of its member tribes as totaling 1.2 million individuals in 2013.
context_section_description: In 1933, the football team that shared both the name and playing field with the Boston Braves baseball team moved to Fenway Park, already home to the Boston Red Sox. Co-owner George Preston Marshall changed the name to the Redskins, more likely to avoid confusion while retaining the Native American imagery of the team than to honor coach William Henry "Lone Star" Dietz, whose identity as a Native American was debated. The logo for the NFL Braves was similar to the Redskins logo, a Native American head in profile with braids and trailing feathers. A redesigned logo introduced in 1972 was proposed by Walter Wetzel, a former Blackfeet tribal chairman and past president of the National Congress of American Indians, and was modeled after the likeness on the Buffalo nickel. Members of the Blackfeet tribe express a range of opinions, from support to indifference to strong opposition to the Redskins name based upon their personal experiences.
  Advocates of changing the team's name said that stereotypes of Native Americans had to be understood in the context of a history that includes conquest, forced relocation, and organized efforts by federal and state governments to eradicate native cultures, such as the boarding schools of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
  "Since the first Europeans made landfall in North America, native peoples have suffered under a weltering array of stereotypes, misconceptions and caricatures. Whether portrayed as noble savages, ignoble savages, teary-eyed environmentalists or, most recently, simply as casino-rich, native peoples find their efforts to be treated with a measure of respect and integrity undermined by images that flatten complex tribal, historical and personal experience into one-dimensional representations that tells us more about the depicters than about the depicted."
caption: The obverse side of a Buffalo nickel, featuring the head of a Native American, was used as a model for the Redskins logo.
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