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Nfl Should End Racist Exploitation of Native Americans

Floor Speech

Date: Oct. 23, 2019
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Indigenous Peoples Arts, Entertainment, and History

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Ms. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, the National Football League is celebrating its 100th anniversary, and its popularity and economic success is indisputable. Millions of fans watched the NFL last year, and the league's 32 teams split more than $16 billion in revenue.

One team, the Washington franchise, exploits a racist slur and a racist mascot that insults and demeans Native Americans to help generate profits for the NFL owners.

In the 21st century, we should rightly condemn the use of racial slurs that disparage African Americans, Latinos, Asians, or anyone. And there is no doubt about it. The term ``redskin,'' in fact, was used in conjunction with scalp hunting in the 19th century.

In 1863, in Winona, Minnesota, my home State, a newspaper, the Winona Daily Republican, printed an announcement: ``The State reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every redskin sent to purgatory. This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth.''

A news story published in the Atchison Daily Champion in Atchison, Kansas, on October 9, 1985, told the stories of settlers' ``hunt for redskins, with a view of obtaining their scalps.''

No doubt about it, this is a negative word. This is a slur. So it is remarkable that the NFL commissioners and owners continue to sanction the racist and shameful use of the term ``redskin'' to describe Native Americans and then profit from it.

There are millions of Native Americans in this country whose ancestors endured forced removal from their lands, suppression of their culture, and state-sponsored campaigns of ethnic cleansing.

The NFL racist mascot mocks this painful history.

Tomorrow night, the Washington team and its racist mascot will be in Minnesota, the home of 11 proud sovereign Tribal nations. I will be joining Tribal leaders, elected officials, and other Minnesotans gathering outside the stadium. We will be speaking out against racism and exploitation. We will stand proudly with our Native American brothers and sisters. With one voice, we will be calling on the NFL to end its racist exploitation of Native Americans and to do one thing: Change the mascot.

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