Native Americans rail against Trump's call to change Commanders' name back.
Source: USA Today
Updated July 21, 2025, 9:15 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON ‒ Native American groups fought for years to get this city's National Football League team to change its name. Now, President Donald Trump wants to change it back to a moniker many Native Americans consider offensive and disrespectful. “No Native American child should have to sit through a pep rally or in a stadium where their culture is being mocked,” said Jacqueline De León, senior staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund.
Trump threatened over the weekend to block a deal to build a stadium in Washington, D.C., if the Washington Commanders team refuses to revert to the name it had from 1937 when the team moved from Boston until 2020. "The Washington 'Whatever’s' should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team," Trump posted on his Truth Social site. “I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back to the original 'Washington Redskins,' and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, 'Washington Commanders.'”
In a post the same day, Trump said Native Americans would welcome the change. "Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen," he wrote in a post that also encouraged the Cleveland Guardians to revert to a former name. "Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them. Times are different now than they were three or four years ago. We are a Country of passion and common sense. OWNERS, GET IT DONE!!!”
But that's not what USA TODAY found when reaching out to Native American activists. Native Americans are not mascots, said Savannah Romero, a member of the enrolled member of the Eastern Shoshone Nation, who urged city officials not to yield to the name change. “We are language keepers, land protectors, survivors of attempted genocide, and a part of sovereign nations," Romero, co-founder and deputy director of the BLIS (Black Liberation-Indigenous Sovereignty) Collective Collective, said in a statement. "To equate Native people with cartoonish mascots alongside animals is a gross and ongoing tactic of dehumanization.”
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/07/21/native-americans-slam-trump-commanders-former-name/85315348007/
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