Washington Commanders urged to drop name and re-adopt Redskins branding by family of Blackfeet chief depicted in old ‘racist’ logo
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The family of the man depicted in the former Washington Redskins logo has reignited the debate over the team’s politically correct ‘Commanders’ rebranding.
‘The fans want him back and we want him back,’ Thomas White Calf, a great nephew of late Blackfeet Nation chief John Two Guns White Calf, told Fox News after meeting with Senator Steve Daines (Republican, Montana).
Thomas’ pleas come four years after the team began its rebranding, first becoming the Washington Football Team on a temporary basis before adopting ‘Commanders’ and dropping the feathered John Two Guns White Calf emblem.
Our ancestor was the most famous and most photographed native in history,’ Thomas told Fox alongside his mother, Delphine White Calf, a niece of the late Blackfeet chief. ‘Two Guns was also the face on the Indian head nickel. I’m proud of him. The Blackfeet are proud of him.’
The club began as the Boston Braves in 1932 before changing its name to ‘Redskins’ a year later and moving to the US Capital in 1937. But it wasn’t until 1971 that Blackfeet leader Blackie Wetzel created a portrait of John Two Guns White Calf that ultimately became the team’s logo.
The rebranding process began in 2020, when the team succumbed to years-long pressure by dropping ‘Redskins,’ which is considered offensive to Native Americans. In 2021, the team played as the Washington Football Team.
The term’s origin is disputed, according to a 2016 Washington Post article that claims it was first used as a pejorative as early as 1863 in Minnesota.
‘The State reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory,’ read an announcement in The Winona Daily Republican. ‘This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth.’
By 1898, Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary began defining ‘redskin’ with the phrase ‘often contemptuous.’
