A season of opposition to the name of Washington’s NFL team will be capped on Super Bowl Sunday by a protest march and rally in downtown Phoenix the morning of the game.
The march is just one of several activities planned for the weekend leading up to Sunday’s game, and follows a year of protest highlighted by the June cancelation of the team’s trademark registration by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office because the name is considered a slur.
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Native American activists, including march organizers, look back at the past season as a significant step forward in their decades-long quest to eliminate the use of their people as team mascots — especially ones that use the name "Redskins" as the NFL team does.
“We’re really making a lot of people understand why what mascots promote is really dangerous,’’ said Jacqueline Keeler, a Navajo and Sioux author and founder of Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry.
The timing of the Super Bowl site could not be better, she added: Arizona has the third-largest native population of any state, and Phoenix the third-largest of any American city.
The theme of this march, Keeler said, is to tie the use of stereotyped mascots and images to the epidemic of domestic violence involving Native American women — not a coincidental connection, she said, in light of the NFL’s struggles to handle its domestic violence issues this season.
“People usually stop at the mascot, and that’s all they know about us, something that’s a relic of the past,’’ she said.
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There also will be a vigil downtown Saturday night, and on Friday Phoenix’s Heard Museum of American Indian Art and History hosts a forum on the topic, with Suzan Harjo, one of the original plaintiffs in the trademark case, and Amanda Blackhorse, a plaintiff in the re-filed suit that won last year, as panelists.
Blackhorse will also speak on a panel Saturday at Arizona State University’s Phoenix campus, which addresses the ties between stereotypical sports mascots and violence against women.
Harjo is encouraged by the signs of progress in the past year, which included protests at several Washington road games and at their final home game, a fresh round of radio and television commercials and a growing number of social media campaigns. March organizers are promoting the hashtag #StereotypesNoMore.
“There are lots and lots of people working on this. For a long, long time, it was something only a few people were pushing along,’’ said Harjo, whose original trademark suit was filed in 1992. She singled out the Change the Mascot campaign by the Oneida Nation and the National Congress of American Indians, among others who have steered more attention to their cause in the past year.
“Lots of people are doing things that are very creative and very innovative, and that’s been beautiful,’’ Harjo said.
Last week, Change the Mascot released another 30-second YouTube spot, dubbed “Take It Away,” featuring Robert Griffin III’s 2012 touchdown run against the Vikings, but with all images of the team logo erased.
The timing, the eve of Super Bowl week, was no accident, Oneida Nation spokesman Joel Barkin said. Last year, they produced a memorable video that aired in select cities during the NBA Finals, titled “Proud to Be."
“The goal was to start a national dialogue on the issue, educate Americans about what that word really means,’’ Barkin said. “From that perspective, it’s been a tremendous success.’’
The trademark ruling was a game-changer, he added, and so was the growing support from political and civil rights figures — including the Fritz Pollard Alliance, the group that works with the NFL on hiring issues. A week and a half ago the alliance, led by former NFL lineman John Wooten, called on the league to change the name of Washington’s team.
One clear reminder of how much resistance they still face, activists agree, is that the last time anyone from the NFL or the team met with them was October 2013. The team has appealed the trademark ruling.
Still, Harjo said, “People are educating themselves in ways that are really progressive, and I mean that in the true meaning of the word — making progress, step by step.’’