Offensive Team Names Should Throw in the Towel

Content warning: Racism, offensive language

With November being National Native American Heritage Month and with ahistorical narratives around Thanksgiving resurfacing, the time is ripe to critique a common, yet controversial aspect of American sports — offensive team names.

By appropriating the names, likenesses and cultures of Indigenous Americans, sports teams continue to perpetuate the legacies of colonization and white supremacy. Chicago’s own Blackhawks were named after a leader of the Sauk people — now known as the Sac and Fox Nation — whose direct descendant has criticized the team’s name and logo, according to CBS2 Chicago.

The Blackhawks argue their name honors the life of Black Hawk even though it’s an English translation of his Sauk name, roughly transliterated as Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak.

The team derived their name from a U.S. infantry division during World War I, also named for Black Hawk. The Blackhawks logo, which depicts a Native American man’s head, was drawn by Irene Castle — a white woman. The logo has been criticized by multiple Indigenous organizations for these reasons but defended by the Trickster Cultural Center, which is financially supported by the team.

In 2023, the Blackhawks franchise donated 0.15% of their $288 million total revenue to the Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma. This donation, however, may not be genuine support but rather manipulation, according to The Washington Post.

This supposed show of solidarity becomes even flimsier when accounting for a bone-chilling fact — Illinois had no state or federally-recognized tribes until this year, with the induction of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation. The land acknowledgments issued by the Blackhawks, Loyola and other colonial institutions fall on long-exiled ears.

Like Chicago’s hockey team, the high school in my hometown of Melrose, MA had a team named the Red Raiders, referring to both the offensive perception of Indigenous Americans having “red” skin as well as their depiction as uncivilized, violent people.

They supposedly amended their name in 2022 after the Melrose School Committee proposed changing it to the Red Hawks, but the previous name continues to be used on the high school’s website.

Growing up in Massachusetts — itself named after the Massachusett people — meant I was surrounded by city and town names inspired by Indigenous individuals and words. For out-of-staters, these names are frequent targets for taunting, being perceived as weird or hard to pronounce even though there are plenty of cities with oddly-pronounced, etymologically English names.

Towns, cities and states across the U.S. still use offensive language for Indigenous Americans in their team names, from the Kansas City Chiefs to the Atlanta Braves. Even names that refer to specific peoples — like the Utah Utes and Florida State Seminoles — are controversial because they capitalize on and erase the history of oppressed groups.

This erasure isn’t exclusive to sports, though. Brands like the Jeep Cherokee, Land O’Lakes and Calumet Baking Powder appropriate names and visuals of Indigenous Americans and rarely heed the objections of impacted groups.

Sports don’t exist in a vacuum. The teams we follow aren’t just reflections of our identities and values — they’re how we present ourselves to the world. We shouldn’t flaunt our legacy of colonization, even through something seemingly minor like a team name.