Native Americans Changing the Game

            In recent news, there has been controversy over the NFL team, Washington Redskins, and whether they should change their name. This began when people of the Oneida Indian Nation started a campaign called “Change the Mascot”. Although the campaign has been launched, this issue has been ongoing for sometime. In fact in May of this year owner, Dan Snyder, of the Washington Redskins quoted in USA Today Sports "We'll never change the name. It's simple. NEVER -- you can use caps." (Keim, 2013). More recently Snyder has said he understands their point of view, but wants them to understand as well, meaning what the name means to the team. However now President Obama has gotten involved in the incident. On October 5^th he stated that even if the team has history, he would have changed it due to the name hurting sizable group of people (Lee, 2013). After the President had weighed in on the issue representative of the Oneida Indian Nation, Ray Halbritter, saw this is a break through saying, “The president's comments were nothing less than historic. The Washington team's name is a painful racial epithet first used against my people when we were held at gunpoint; it is a word that tells our children that they are second-class citizens” (Roberts, 2013). People offended by the team name are still in the process of seeking higher power and getting it changed.

            In this circumstance the co-culture theory has come into effect between the dominant group of White Americans and the non-dominant group of Native Americans. The co-cultural group, being the minority, is trying to communicate that the label does not represent their experiences. There should be no reason that they should find themselves in dialectic struggles (Martin & Nakayama, 2013). This goes to show that the power of labels can be offensive and make a co-culture feel trapped. They may even lead to them standing up for themselves, like the Oneida Indian Nation, in a positive and inspiring manner.

            When it comes to the language and labels we use, we need to understand not only how we perceive it, but also how others you might be affected perceive it. In our text, it explains how men might see a color and say “red”, while women may say “cherry” or “scarlet” (Martin & Nakayama, 2013). This is the same issue with labels. Our perspective of the label may be innocent, but taking in cross-cultural differences in language can help you understand why “Redskins” comes off offensive. Social position is also important to keep in mind because when two different groups are communicating the semiotic process also differs. Everyone is different, and when something is offensive to a cultural group and still has not changed after all this time, it is clear that individual perspectives, positions, and identities are not playing a part in the process.

References

Keim, J. (2013, October 9). Dan Snyder defends 'Redskins'. ESPN. Retreived from http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/9797628/dan-snyder-defends-washington-redskins-name

Lee, T. (2013, October 7). Obama weighs in on Redskins name controversy. MSNBC. Retrieved from http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/10/07/obama-weighs-in-on-redskins-name-controversy/

Martin, J.N., & Nakayama, T.K. (2013). Intercultural Communication in Contexts (6th ed.) New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Roberts, D. (2013, October 7). Native Americans take NFL Redskins name-change campaign to Washington. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/07/native-americans-nfl-washington-redskins-name