2 days Ago
After a half century of activism, many thought a bitter was over two years ago when the team became the . 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 is reviving the debate by blocking a bill funding the for the Commanders, who have been playing miles away in Maryland. 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. The original logo was designed by a member of the Blackfeet Nation in the state of Montana. Some 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 , 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.
