“Indians,” “Braves,” “Redskins,” “Eskimos”—and “Black Hawks”: The Sports Team Naming Controversies

By the end of the nineteenth century almost every Native American culture was either under severe threat or had been wiped out. But images of the supposed fierceness and savagery of “Indian braves” still retained a strong hold on the imaginations of white Americans, and in the early twentieth century it began to be common for sports teams in American cities to draw on that imaginative legacy in a context in which it was desirable to have an image of strength and courage, even of fierceness. In baseball the Boston Braves (later the Milwaukee Braves, and later still the Atlanta Braves) acquired that name in 1912; Cleveland’s baseball team was renamed the Indians in 1915; in football another Boston Braves team moved to Washington and became the Redskins in 1937. For decades now many have argued—with good reason—that there’s a strong case for changing team names of this sort, on the grounds that they stereotype Native Americans in one-dimensional fashion as fierce warriors. Arguably even more offensive are gestures such as the “tomahawk chop” of Atlanta Braves fans (along with its accompanying chant), or team mascots such as that which used to be pictured on the Cleveland Indians’ logo, Chief Wahoo, with his tomahawk eyes and ludicrously demonic grin. Tara Houska, an Ojibwe lawyer, expressed the view of millions when she called the image “a blatant racial caricature.”

Many school and minor-league professional teams that formerly had names such as “Indians” and “Braves” started changing those names in the early years of this century, but as late as 2015 no major league franchise had done so. Some claimed that such a move would entail renouncing a long, proud tradition in local sports. But—to take Cleveland as an example—Chief Wahoo had been part of the Cleveland logo only since 1947. Even the name “Indians” did not date to the beginning of the franchise, which before 1915 had been known successively as the “Lakeshores,” the “Bluebirds,” and the “Blues.”

The resistance to names that reference stereotypes of Native Americans grew slowly but steadily. Toronto Blue Jays announcer Jerry Howarth was one of the first within the major league baseball world to become persuaded. Howarth reported that he “stopped using team names like Indians and Braves and terms such as tomahawk chop and powwow on the mound after receiving a letter from an aboriginal fan after Toronto defeated Atlanta in the 1992 World Series.” Howarth described the letter in an October 2016 interview:

[It was] one of the best fan letters I’ve ever received. He said “Jerry, I appreciate your work but in the World Series, it was so offensive to have the tomahawk chop and to have people talk about the powwows on the mound, and then the Cleveland Indians logo, and the Washington Redskins.” He just wrote it in such a loving, kind way. He said “I would really appreciate it if you would think about what you say with those teams.”

Howarth wrote in reply that he would indeed stop using the offensive terms—and he did just that. Soon more and more sports people started coming round to his point of view—but many still resisted change. And, much more surprisingly, so did many Native Americans. Few if any Native Americans defend the use of the Chief Wahoo image by Cleveland, but an astonishing 90% of Native Americans surveyed by The Washington Post on this issue some years ago responded that they were not offended by the team name “Washington Redskins,” while 70% of Native Americans reported that they did not find the term “redskins” disrespectful to Native Americans in any context:

Across every demographic group, the vast majority of Native Americans say the team’s name does not offend them, including 80 percent who identify as politically liberal, 85 percent of college graduates, 90 percent of those enrolled in a tribe, 90 percent of non-football fans and 91 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 39.

Could this survey have been flawed in some way? Might it have been that respondents to questions posed by a Washington newspaper were so keen not to give offence to the questioner that they were reluctant to say that they found the name of the Washington team offensive? Certainly when asked what terms they themselves prefer to be called (rather than what terms they find offensive), Indigenous Americans did not and do not put “redskins” high on the list. But the survey certainly gave pause to those who had been confident that virtually all Native Americans would find team names such as “Redskins” offensive.

Many Native activists nevertheless argued that, regardless of what the polls might say, the use of names such as “Redskins” tended to indoctrinate North Americans—including Native Americans themselves—to think poorly of Indigenous peoples. An article reporting on the poll results also quoted Oneida Nation representative Ray Halbritter and other activists arguing strenuously that the NFL should not “continue marketing, promoting, and profiting off of a dictionary-defined racial slur—one that tells people outside of our community to view us as mascots,” and that can have a harmful effect on Native American children.

I have for years sided for the most part with Halbritter and Howarth on this issue—but I have also long felt that it’s an interesting issue deserving of full discussion. Was it patronizing for those in the white majority to call for the team name “Redskins” to be dropped when a clear majority of Native Americans are evidently not offended by it? Or are such terms offensive in themselves, even if a majority of Indigenous Americans are not offended by them?

Over the last few years a good number of the teams bearing these names have finally made the change. In 2022 Cleveland’s baseball team became the Cleveland Guardians, and Washington’s football team became the Washington Commanders. In 2021 Edmonton’s CFL team (formerly the Eskimos) became the Edmonton Elks. In Atlanta, though, the Braves have kept their team name—and the controversial “tomahawk chop.” Major League Baseball has supported them, arguing that “the Native American community in that region is fully supportive of the Braves’ program, including the chop.” In discussions of team names, it’s arguable that “Chicago Blackhawks” (or, as the team name was officially until 1986, “Black Hawks”) should be treated as a special case. Far from being an undifferentiated stereotype, the team name “Black Hawks” derives from a specific WWI military unit, the name of which was in turn derived from one of the most famous Native Americans—Black Hawk (or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak) of the Sauk Nation, whose 1833 autobiography has become a classic of Native American literature.

I’m a bit torn on this one, so I’ll end with a series of questions. Should this Chicago team name be treated as a special case? Or does the name “Blackhawks” still partake of some of the same stereotypes of Native Americans that so clearly are involved in names such as “Braves” and “Redskins”? The Sauk were forced from Illinois by white settlers; is it hypocritical for the descendants of those settlers to honor a Sauk historical figure now in that way? Or does that history make it all the more appropriate for fans of all backgrounds to pay homage now to a great leader of the past?

N.B. This is an updated 2022 version of a post from several years ago.

"Ag Gag" Laws: What Values Do We Value Most?

In many areas of the world trespassing is a relatively minor offence under the law—a misdemeanor rather than a felony—and offenders are liable to relatively minor punishments. The maximum fine for a first offence in the province of Alberta, for example, was until recently $2,000; for a second offence the maximum was $10,000. (Penalties for trespassing are typically the same regardless of whether the premises are a private individual’s home and yard, a business owner’s warehouse and parking lot, or a farmer’s field or farm buildings.)

But under the provisions of a bill rushed through the Alberta legislature by the Conservative government in 2020, an individual in that province who has been found guilty of trespassing is now subject to a fine of up to $10,000 for a first offence—plus six months in jail. A second offence is now subject to a fine of up to $25,000, plus a further six months in jail. An organization involved in sponsoring or directing an act of trespass is subject to a fine of up to $200,000. If one is deemed to have gained access under “false pretenses” (for example, by falsely saying as you start a job at a pig farm that you have no intention of taking photographs of any animals being abused), one is subject to the same penalties.

Why prescribe such harsh punishments for such a minor offence? The key is in another part of the bill, where it is specified that such penalties apply even when property is not fenced off and no notices forbidding trespassing have been posted—if the offence occurs on farmland or “on land that is used for the raising of and maintenance of animals.”

Alberta’s Bill 27 was the first Canadian example of a type of legislation familiar to many Americans as “ag gag legislation”—legislation intended to gag those who would inform the general public of what goes on behind the closed doors of the agricultural operations where the 10 billion or so mammals and birds killed every year in North America for human food live out their brief, unhappy lives.

As in many other North American jurisdictions, such operations in Alberta are in practice exempt from almost all provisions of animal cruelty legislation. Typically, such legislation prohibits only the causing of “unnecessary” pain, suffering or injury to an animal, and in many jurisdictions any practice, no matter how cruel, is allowed if it can be classed as part of “generally accepted” practices of animal management or animal husbandry. For those who may imagine that the industry would not allow cruel practices to become “generally accepted” in the industry, it should be pointed out that such practices have for decades included (to pick only two well-known examples) the confining of sows in crates so small that the animals can never turn around, and the confining of egg-laying hens in cages that allow them no more than 67 square inches of living space per bird.

It’s all too clear that allowing the industry to follow “generally accepted practices” leaves a vast amount of room for cruelty. But not enough room to satisfy the animal agriculture lobby. Over the past two decades and more, undercover operations at animal agriculture facilities across North America have revealed horrific examples both of what constitutes “generally accepted practice” and of abuses that exceed anything that could possibly be described as “necessary cruelty” or “generally accepted practice.” As Camille Labchuk, executive director of the organization Animal Justice, has pointed out, “whistleblowing employees are often the only way the public has to monitor the conditions animals endure on modern farms.”

Alberta is now only one of four Canadian provinces that have moved to criminalize such whistleblowing; Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government has passed similar legislation, as have the governments of PEI and Manitoba.* In some cases the penalties prescribed are even more draconian than those in Alberta. Constitutional challenges have been launched, but for the moment, the ag gag laws of all those provinces remain in place—and Quebec is considering enacting its own legislation.

At the federal level, ag gag legislation has twice been introduced in Parliament. In 2021 Bill C-205 had passed second reading (with the Bloc Quebecois and—remarkably—the New Democrats joining the Conservatives in voting to give priority to private property rights over any concern for cruelty to animals). In the spring of 2022 Conservative agriculture critic John Barlow introduced a new ag gag law, styling it as a “biosecurity” measure. The powerful animal agriculture industry lobby continues to press both at the federal and the provincial level for ever more draconian measures against animal advocates.

I have touched already on what it is that the animal agriculture industry so determined to hide. It’s worth taking a longer look. Organizations such as the BC Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Canadians for the Ethical Treatment of Farm Animals, Mercy for Animals, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals all provide on their websites descriptions and images that give a visceral sense of the lives these animals live. Many of these images, as you would expect, were obtained through undercover operations. Here is a description from the organization, Animal Justice, of what’s shown on video footage shot in Excelsior Farms, an Abbotsford pig farm in 2019:

The footage from Excelsior Farm showed mother pigs trapped in gestation crates with dead and dying piglets; pigs prodded in the face with electric current; untreated injuries; and workers castrating piglets without anesthesia. Although the footage was provided to law enforcement officials, no charges were laid against the farm. Instead, four animal advocates were charged with dozens of offences for allegedly entering the farm to expose suffering. [What’s shown on the video is far less sensational than the abuses captured on numerous other undercover videos of animal agriculture facilities, but it certainly has the potential to be shocking or disturbing, especially for those unfamiliar with the realities of today’s animal agriculture operations. For those who do wish to watch, here is a link to the Global News clip: https://globalnews.ca/video/5214345/disturbing-images-captured-at-abbotsford-pig-farm.]

More recently, Animal Justice has made public another video—this one revealing appalling abuses at a BC slaughterhouse. The same cautions apply as to the material being disturbing to watch: https://animaljustice.ca/exposes/bc-slaughterhouse

An update on the Excelsior case: in October of 2022 two of the animal advocates were sentenced to jail terms—jailed for a non-violent act of civil disobedience, the only goal of which was to bring to light horrific cruelty that otherwise would have remained hidden. In provinces with ag gag laws, advocates in similar circumstances could have been subject to a $50,000 fine in addition to jail time.

At stake here is not only the treatment of non-human animals, important though that is; it is also freedom of speech. A society in which whistleblowers are prevented from drawing the attention of the public to horrific abuses is a society that gives license to the powerful to do anything they please.

But surely, many may say, property owners have a right to do as they please on their own property; should we not do everything we can to protect that right? To be sure, we should recognize that a conflict of rights is involved here. If someone trespasses on land owned by someone else, private property rights are indeed not being respected. The question is, do we as a society hold private property rights to be our highest value? Or do we consider certain other values—and certain other rights—to be sufficiently important that they may trump private property rights?

Let’s imagine a situation in which those being abused are not calves and piglets and chicks but puppies and kittens—or human children. In any such scenario it becomes clear that we instinctively feel private property rights to be far outweighed by the rights of those being abused—and the right of the general public to know of the abuse. We probably feel as well that anyone who has reason to believe that such abuse is taking place has a responsibility to do something about it—to report the suspected abuse to the relevant authorities, or—if there are no authorities in a position to stop the abuse in a timely fashion, to take action themselves. We would regard it as irresponsible for anyone who comes across a parent beating up his child, or a dog-walker repeatedly kicking a dog in his care, not to take some action.

Perhaps many would prefer not to know the details of the cruelty routinely inflicted on farm animals. But the vast majority (even of those who eat animal products) say that they would prefer that farm animals be treated humanely up to the moment when they are killed. They are the consumers, and surely all those who wish to know have a right to know how the food they consume is produced. The public has a right to know—and, I would argue, the public and its representatives have a responsibility to do everything possible to stop the abuse. That’s particularly the case given that agricultural operations enjoy the benefits of considerable government subsidies—substantial expenditures of taxpayer dollars—in almost every North American jurisdiction. Yet governments in four Canadian provinces, just like governments in many American states, are doing everything possible to keep the public from knowing what’s going on, and are doing nothing whatsoever to stop the cruelty.

Animal advocacy and free speech groups are challenging the constitutionality of the Canadian laws, just as such legislation has been challenged in America. But the efforts of the animal agriculture industry lobby are outpacing those of the animal advocacy groups. In America, ag gag laws have been attempted in a total of at least 28 states; they have become law in a total of at least 11. Even in Iowa, where the state ag gag law was ruled unconstitutional in January 2019, the legislature within two months managed to pass a new ag gag bill. And in some states with ag gag laws—notably, North Carolina—the legislation is worded so broadly as to deter whistleblowing in almost any industry in almost any context.

Today’s media pay a good deal of attention to alleged threats to freedom of speech coming from progressives on university campuses; it’s time more attention was paid to the far more serious threats to the free flow of information that are coming from industry and from government.

*It’s worth noting that the provinces which have not passed ag gag laws win no prizes for cracking down on cruelty to animals or for treating whistleblowers fairly. Indeed (as the Excelsior Farms case discussed below goes to show), some of these provinces treat whistleblowers at least as harshly as the provinces with ag gag laws on their books.

The Sonnet at Salford: A Case Study in the Spread of Falsehood

How does misinformation germinate in today’s charged political climate, and how does it grow? A controversy that blew up in May of 2022 over the teaching of sonnets at the University of Salford in Britain provides an interesting case study. Here is some of what Rex Murphy (a columnist for Canada’s National Post newspaper) had to say on the topic as the manufactured controversy spread around the world:

Within the strict and limited form of the literary sonnet may be found some of the most exquisite and artistic creations of the poetic mind. They are the exhalations of literary genius. … To take these triumphs of the creative poetic mind out of consideration, and to lay on them the brand that they are “products of white western culture” and as such need to be “decolonized” (whatever that murk of a verb can possibly mean) is to commit a sacrilege against poetry and art. But such are elements in the idiot days we live in, that there is a university—at least that’s what it’s called, but names mean nothing in many cases—Salford, in England, where Shakespeare flourished and where Milton birthed his imperishable genius, which is doing just that.

Murphy’s 21 May column bears a combative headline (“How ridiculous is it for universities to sideline sonnets? Let me count the ways,”—and the subheading is even more ideologically charged: “In its wokeness, Salford University is pushing young minds away from some of the greatest artistic expressions the world has to offer.”

Murphy was one of several commentators who deplored this supposed “sacrilege against poetry and art.” The problem with these commentators’ claims? They were deploring something that had not in fact occurred.

What had in fact happened? Those in charge of a single course at the University of Salford—a second-year course in creative writing entitled Writing Poetry in the Twenty-First Century, not a survey of English literature—had decided to place less emphasis on the sonnet. Yes, this single course had indeed noted that such forms “tend to be the products of white western culture” (as they surely do indeed tend to be). But the sonnet had not been banished—not even from this one course. Previously, students enrolled in the course had been required to compose sonnets as part of both of the course’s two assessments (the work on the basis of which they were graded). After the change in the curriculum, they would still be required to compose sonnets (as well as sestinas and tankas), and one of the two assessments would still require students to submit both a sonnet and a tanka for assessment (with students having the option of submitting a third poem in a form of their own design). As Scott Thurston of the English and Creative Writing Department made clear, the only difference was that there would be slightly less emphasis in the assessments on the sonnet and especially on the sestina—though even in the case of the sestina students would still be required to compose in that form as part of their exercises. This was merely, then, a slight change in the way students would be assessed when it came to calculating grades for a single Creative Writing course. Far from taking the sonnet “out of consideration” across the entire university, Salford had not even banished it from this single creative-writing course.

How is it possible that such a thorough distortion of the facts could become so widespread? Part of the problem can be attributed to news media headlines, which are often written by a headline writer, not by the author or editor of each article. The first piece on the matter seems to be have been a 14 May 2022 report in the Daily Telegraph (often described as among the more respectable of Britain’s right-wing newspapers). The Telegraph piece was wrong or misleading in several respects, but it was far less misleading than the headline it was given: “University Sidelines Sonnets as ‘Products of White Western Culture.’”

Similarly, the article that followed a few days later in the Daily Mail (often described as among the less respectable of Britain’s right-wing newspapers) was correct—if misleadingly incomplete—when it quoted “Dr Scott Thurston, leader of the creative writing course at Salford,” as having said that “students would still be required to undertake exercises in composing sonnets.” You wouldn’t guess any of that from the Daily Mail headline, which blared out a more extreme story: “University of Salford Cancels Sonnets from Writing Course because they are Products of White Western Culture.”

When Google picked up the Daily Mail headline, it adopted it in an edited form. What you see first with respect to that Daily Mail article if you Google “Scott Thurston course – Salford” (as of 30 November 2022) is not the full headline but rather this shortened version: “University Cancels Sonnets over Concerns They Are “Products of White Western Culture.” The omission in the Google version of the phrase “from Writing Course” clearly suggests that the policy change was university-wide. Presumably the Google headline is more likely to have been crafted by Google software than by any human headline writer employed by Alphabet Inc.; either way, the result is pernicious.

But neither the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail headline writers nor the Google headline software should shoulder the bulk of the blame. The most egregious acts of irresponsibility here are surely those of writers such as Murphy themselves. Could it be that the writers who followed up on the original Telegraph piece with their own articles deploring the University of Salford’s supposed change of policy did not actually read much more than the headline? Such carelessness is surely within the realm of possibility; many people have plausibly suggested that there’s more and more skimming and less and less actual reading in today’s digital world.

It’s hard not to conclude, though, that ideology often dovetails with carelessness in such cases. Take, for example, the coverage accorded the incident by Maggie Kelly in an online publication called The College Fix—a publication that appears to be very largely dedicated to the fight against “political correctness.” Kelly begins her article with a sentence that references the Telegraph report and that, though somewhat misleading, is at least limited in its claims: “The University of Salford, a public university in Greater Manchester, England, removed sonnets and other “pre-established literary forms” from a creative writing course assessment, The Telegraph has reported.” Again, the headline above goes much further: “University drops sonnets because they are ‘products of white western culture.’” Could The College Fix be a publication large enough to have a staffer dedicated to headline writing? It hardly seems likely. Kelly is identified not only as the author of the article but as the “assistant editor” of the publication, which leads one to believe that at the very least she would have had to approve the publication of such a grievously untruthful headline. Evidently The College Fix is so concerned with attacking alleged political correctness that they can’t be bothered with the old-fashioned sort of correctness—the sort that regards it as important to get one’s facts right.

How difficult might it be for anyone who is interested in this matter to establish the facts? As is often the case with such outbreaks of disinformation, getting at the truth of the matter simply by Googling is not that easy. It’s far, far easier to find the misinformation repeated* than it is to find at least partial information about the second year Creative Writing module where it is posted on the University of Salford’s English and Creative Writing website. Even if you have the patience to go four or five pages down when you’re googling “Salford – sonnet controversy,” you’re not likely to find online the information that gives the lie to the screaming headlines of the right-wing publications.

Fortunately, the Internet isn't the only source of information. The University of Salford is a public institution, Scott Thurston’s email address is easy to find, and, as I discovered myself, Dr. Thurston responds politely and helpfully to inquiries. But it's surely something of a grim commentary on the state of the media today that it can be almost impossible to access anything like the full truth about certain news items without going directly to the source.

*The following were among the sites that were spreading the false information as of 30 November 2022: the Best American Poetry blog; the Classical Poets.org website; the Redstate news website; the headline USA.com website; flipboard; the European Conservative.com; MSN (the Microcoft news portal); and Res ipsa loquitur (the blog of Jonathan Turley).