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Native American mascots have long been a hot-button issue, but the subject seems to be reaching a tipping point if it hasn t already. The Native American mascot controversy dates back several decades. Professional, semi-pro, college, and high school teams across the country have adopted names, logos, and imagery that portray Native Americans in a certain light. As the argument goes, these images and terminology promote and sustain the marginalization and cultural appropriation of Native cultures. There s a case to be made that they consitute microaggressions toward individuals descendant of those who owned North American land long before The United States of America ever existed.
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Ahead of the kickoff for Super Bowl LV on Sunday, a local group staged a protest at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Raymond James Stadium to urge the team to ditch the Kansas City Chiefs mascot out of respect for Native Americans.
The St. Petersburg-based Florida Indigenous Rights and Environmental Equality, or FIREE, gathered at the stadium at 4 p.m. E.S.T. The details were released shortly before the game on a Facebook page the group created for the event, which is called “WHERE IS THE HONOR?”
“As we move through the 21st century it is time America began to respect the Indigenous Peoples. No other group of human beings suffers the weekly indignity of both racial and spiritual stereotypes trivializing and degrading their culture in a circus-like atmosphere. No other groups are racially trivialized into a mascot,” the group said.
2 months ago in Sports schristian
FILE - In this Dec. 13, 2018, photo, Kansas City Chiefs fans chant and do the chop during the second half of the team s NFL football game against the Los Angeles Chargers in Kansas City, Mo. The Kansas City Chiefs have since barred headdresses and war paint amid the nationwide push for racial justice, but its effort to make its popular “war chant” more palatable is getting a fresh round of scrutiny from Native American groups as the team prepares to make its second straight Super Bowl appearance. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File) Photo: Associated Press
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH Associated Press
Chiefs under pressure to ditch the tomahawk chop celebration sfgate.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sfgate.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A pedestrian walks past a downtown Kansas City mural painted in support of the Kansas City Chiefs ahead of Super Bowl LV. Pressure is mounting for the team to abandon a popular tradition in which fans break into a “war chant” while making a chopping hand motion.
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Pressure is mounting for the Super Bowl-bound Kansas City Chiefs to abandon a popular tradition in which fans break into a “war chant” while making a chopping hand motion designed to mimic the Native American tomahawk.
Local groups have long argued that the team’s chop tradition and even its name itself are derogatory to American Indians, yet the national attention focused for years on the Washington football team’s name, and the cartoonish Chief Wahoo logo, long the emblem for the Cleveland Indians baseball team. But in the past year, those teams have decided to ditch their Native American-themed monikers, and the defending champion Chiefs are generating more attention due to a second consecutive appeara