Trump wants to resurrect racist mascots
America still loves its Indian slurs, from sports teams to parks. But do Native peoples? + full statement by the Association on American Indian Affairs
[Warning: This article contains numerous references to racist slurs against Indigenous peoples]
On Sunday, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, demanding that the Washington Commanders and the Cleveland Guardians change their names back to their racist brand names, while claiming that Indians want this change, too. Tribal nations, tribal advocacy organizations, Native politicians and activists have long battled to remove Indigenous racial slurs and caricatures from public life.
“The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team. There is a big clamoring for this,” Trump wrote. He continues:
Likewise, the Cleveland Indians, one of the six original baseball teams, with a storied past. Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. 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!!!
“These remarks are a distraction from the real harm this administration continues to inflict on Native Peoples,” a spokesperson for the Association on American Indian Affairs (“Association”) wrote in a statement to No Frontiers. “There is no genuine respect for Native Nations here — only empty gestures and political theater. Claiming that ‘Indians are being treated very unfairly’ while simultaneously gutting Native programs is hypocrisy at its worst.”
(Read their full statement below this story.)
Trump’s slur-riddled post comes at a time when DOGE (Project 2025’s governmental proponent) and the MAGA-dominated congress pass dictatorial-styled budget cuts to the Indian Health Service, Bureau of Indian Education, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Medicaid, and much more—while unconditionally supporting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of non-whites through his domestic mass deportation policies.
As the Association further notes, the Trump administration has defunded tribal colleges, fired or sidelined federal staff working on Native issues, dismantled environmental protections, accelerated natural resource extraction on public lands, and opened sacred sites to industry.
“This is not about restoring ‘heritage and prestige.’ It’s about erasure—cultural, political, and literal.”
In a statement to No Frontiers, the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) deputy director, Matthew Campbell, wrote:
It’s been twenty years since the American Psychological Association called for Native mascots to be retired because of the harm that they cause young Native people. The harm to Native youth has been long known, and Tribal Nations and others have worked hard to get rid of these disrespectful portrayals. Tribal Nations are not calling for these names and mascots to be reinstated. In fact, the National Congress of American Indians, which is the largest organization representing Native American interests, has passed multiple resolutions calling to end Native mascots.
Trump’s racist demand also comes in the wake of white supremacist pundit Ann Coulter posting, “We didn’t kill enough Indians,” on X about three weeks ago. No Frontiers dug into her X post history and found Coulter made racist posts about Indigenous peoples, mostly Native Americans, at least 57 times since 2012.
The Native campaign to end the widespread American misuse and appropriation of Indigenous identity, names or themes, spiritual and religious practices, and iconography has a long history and continues today.
In 2009, after a decades-long campaign, then-Montana State Senator Carol Juneau (the author’s great aunt) sponsored and successfully passed a law removing the racist and derogatory word "squaw" from the names of 76 streams, buttes, and mountains across Montana.
The word was perfectly innocent and originated from the Algonquin tribal language, meaning “woman,” but was used and stripped by American settlers, mostly white men, to describe Native women, often in a sexually explicit sense. (Some dispute this claim, arguing the slur originated from American settler use of a Mohawk word, though this doesn’t change its racist use in history or today.)
In 2022, the Department of Interior continued this work by replacing over 650 place names across the country with racist connotations to Native peoples.
As research shows, racist names have a severely negative psychological impact on Indigenous peoples, especially Native youth, and undermine mental health and encourage abusive behavior by others.
In 2019, the author reported for High Country News on the ongoing racism Native athletes and fans face at sporting events, documenting 52 racist incidents between 2008 and 2018.
These incidents ranged from racist vandalism and tweets to banners that read, “Hey Indians, get ready for a Trail of Tears Part 2,” a reference to the 19th-century death march endured by tribal citizens who were illegally and forcibly relocated to Oklahoma by the U.S. government. Other instances include players being called names like “prairie nigger,” “wagon burners” and “dirty Indians.”
Nearly all 52 reported incidents involved high school sports, but there were also four university game cases and even a fast food restaurant sign that read, “‘KC Chiefs’ Will Scalp the Redskins Feed Them Whiskey Send – 2 – Reservation.”
If Trump’s call for restoring racist team names wasn’t enough, in April, he posted on Trust Social his goal to restore Columbus Day over Indigenous Peoples Day. Columbus, of course, was a genocidal maniac (just read his diary and record of massacres) and never set foot on the continental United States, which didn’t even exist at the time. Still, America had long fetishized Christopher Columbus as conqueror before Trump began defending racist statues and holidays.
Native peoples will likely still celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day in October, yet this year they will have to bear America’s reestablishment of Columbus Day, which they fought so hard to abolish.
I’m bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes. The Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much. They tore down his Statues, and put up nothing but “WOKE,” or even worse, nothing at all! Well, you’ll be happy to know, Christopher is going to make a major comeback. I am hereby reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it has had for all of the many decades before!
The Association on American Indian Affairs
Complete statement:
The Association on American Indian Affairs condemns the President's recent social media posts calling for a return to harmful Native “themed” names.
These remarks are a distraction from the real harm this administration continues to inflict on Native Peoples. There is no genuine respect for Native Nations here — only empty gestures and political theater. Claiming that “Indians are being treated very unfairly” while simultaneously gutting Native programs is hypocrisy at its worst. Under his leadership, federal support for Native Nations has been slashed: healthcare funding has been cut, Medicaid access for Native children threatened, Tribal colleges defunded, and staff working on Native issues have been fired or sidelined. His administration has worked to dismantle environmental protections, fast-track extraction on public lands, and open Sacred sites to industry. This is not about restoring “heritage and prestige.” It’s about erasure — cultural, political, and literal.
The idea that Native Nations broadly support the use of these mascots is false. Hundreds, if not thousands of Native Nations, Native organizations, scholars, and youth leaders have repeatedly and clearly expressed that Native “themed” mascots are offensive and dehumanizing.
A 2022 scoping review, Twenty Years of Research Into the Health Impacts of Native-Themed Mascots, published in American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research found that Native-themed mascots are consistently associated with negative health outcomes for Native Peoples, especially Native youth, including lower self-esteem, increased psychological distress, and harm to community well-being.
These mascots and names do not honor Native Peoples — they reduce us to caricatures. Our diverse Peoples and cultures are not relics of the past or mascots for entertainment. Native Nations are sovereign, contemporary cultures who deserve respect and self-determination, not misrepresentation.
The Association urges all media outlets and political leaders to reject misinformation and amplify the voices of Native Nations and their citizens who have been fighting for cultural dignity and truth in public representation for generations.
POTUS' subjective thinking is always used to support his claims about anything. Trmp has no boundaries when he claims outlandish theories about what's real and not real. He states that American Indians really want to be seen as cartoon mascots for national sports teams, a total outright lie. He might go on and claim other ethnic groups want the same thing, and I wonder how far he'd get? as a member of the Navajo Nation I wonder what kinds of plans trmp has in store for us? Will we end up in concentration camps doing manual labor, hard labor, slave work? These are the kinds of things our Tribal Governments aren't even talking about or getting us ready for in case it really will happen. Our readiness depends on education, collaboration, communication, and our right to know. The Oklahoma Land Rush really happened and if he decides to sell federal lands out from under us, what happens next? Are we ready for disaster? Are we ready for what might happen to our children? Our elders? Will there be a draft? These are the kinds of questions I have but aren't being answered by our Tribal government! Our Tribal president went to Washington and probably gave or sold our coal away. He looked so happy smiling next to the president of USA. I am just one elder, one grandmother, one educator, one angry Diné!