I’d just like to start this extra blog by saying that seeing those Redskins flags in the foreground of the Museum of the American Indian was a little uncanny. Back to the point, I think that it’s clear simply by the name of the football team, the Redskins, that that this particular representation is definitely less acceptable than that representation as seen in the Museum of the American Indian.
The Museum of the American Indian is a more acceptable representation of the American Indian population because the very population that is being represented helped to create it. This is in sharp contrast to the names given to sports teams that invoke American Indian names or images. The American Indian population had some say as to what went into the museum that represents them on the Mall, this is the biggest reason that I feel the Museum is a better representation of “Indians”.
However, I do see an aspect of this that relates back to what we talked about in class briefly, the need to be sensitive because of a feeling of guilt. Think for a moment of all the sports teams that use other cultural or racial groups for example, the Fighting Irish. I’ve never heard of anyone take offense at the use of this as a name for a sports team (if you have please let me know). I think that many people take issue with the use of the Redskins or the Fighting Sioux for team names because we do have a sense of guilt because of the calculated annihilation that our fore fathers carried out against this specific group of people.
In the end I do take issue with the use of the name the Redskins or the Fighting Sioux. I feel that it can be a misrepresentation of a group of people as a whole. The term “redskin” in and of itself reeks of negative racial undertones and the Sioux, as a nation, were never extraordinarily violent. My qualms lie in this, the purely inaccurate representation that these team names take on and emphasize.
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