Sad News: Washington Commanders Legend Dies At Age 67

After a half century of activism, many Native Americans thought a bitter debate over the capital’s football mascot was over two years ago when the team became the Washington Commanders.

The organization left behind the racist slur “redskins” as its name and retired the logo that was closely tied to that name: the profile of a Native man with long hair and two feathers.

Now, a white Republican U.S. senator from Montana is reviving the debate by blocking a bill funding the revitalization of the decrepit RFK Stadium for the Commanders, who have been playing miles away in Maryland. Sen. Steve Daines says he will block the legislation until the NFL and the Commanders honor the former logo in some form.

Daines declined Associated Press requests to explain his stance or respond to criticism from Indigenous people who say such efforts are rooted in racism.

A logo’s complicated history

The original logo was designed by a member of the Blackfeet Nation in the state of Montana. Some tribal members take pride in it and the legacy of the man who helped design it in the early ’70s — Walter “Blackie” Wetzel, a former Blackfeet Nation tribal chairman and former president of the National Congress of the American Indian, the country’s oldest Native American and Alaska Native advocacy organization.

Wetzel’s family says Daines and Wetzel’s son Don, who died last year at 74, formed a friendship that may be fueling the senator’s fight for the logo.

Indian Country is typically a bipartisan topic in Congress.

Daines sits on the Senate Committee for Indian Affairs and has worked with Democratic colleagues on clean-water access for tribal communities. He has supported the passage of a truth-and-healing commission to investigate the history of Indian boarding schools, a bill carried by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts.

Daines has also used the policy area to take jabs at the Biden administration and was one of the fiercest opponents to the nomination of Deb Haaland, the first Native American to run the Department of the Interior.

He accused her of being hostile to the energy and natural-resource extraction industries and said she would use the appointment to “negatively impact the Montana way of life.” In May, he blocked the nomination of the woman who wanted to be the first Native American federal district court judge in Montana. Daines said the Biden administration did not consult with his office about the nomination, a claim the White House disputes.

Painful symbolism?

Daines said in a prepared statement that he would hold up the stadium legislation until representatives of the Washington Commanders and the NFL show that they’re working with the Wetzel family and leaders of the Blackfeet Nation to find a way to “honor the history of the logo and heritage of our tribal nations and to rededicate the organization as an advocate for Indian Country.”