Indigenous activists renew push against Chiefs name ahead of Super Bowl LVII

Editor’s Note: This story was written for my sports reporting class at NYU. It was completed on Feb. 9, 2023.

When the Kansas City Chiefs face the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII on Sunday, fans dressed in white and red jerseys dawning an arrowhead will perform their beloved ritual before kickoff: the tomahawk chop.

But steps outside of the State Farm Stadium in Arizona, Indigenous activists will be calling for the end to the Chiefs name and team traditions, which they believe promote stereotypes about Native people and appropriate their cultures.

The protest, organized by the Arizona to Rally Against Native American Mascots, will feature Not In Our Honor, a Kansas City-based Indigenous advocacy group, and other local leaders from the 22 tribes across the state — many who have protested the Chiefs franchise for close to two decades.

“We’re doing all we can to try to address it,” said Rhonda LeValdo, the founder of Not In Our Honor. “I’m hoping that they’re going to see that they are perpetuating a stereotype of Native people all over the world.”

LeValdo, a citizen of the Acoma Pueblo and a professor at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, has been involved in protesting outside of home games at Arrowhead Stadium since she organized the first demonstration of its kind in October 2005. Alongside other activists, LeValdo has driven dozens of hours to playoff games and Super Bowls to spread her message against the use of Native mascots and imagery in sports, and specifically the Chiefs.

She pointed to the historical trauma that underlies the tomahawk chop and accompanying fake war chant, which have been long performed by fans as a source of pride.

“People relive the racism that was done to our ancestors every time that chop is done,” LeValdo said. “They don’t care what happened to our people, but there was a holocaust, there were massacres — and it was done in this country.”

Although the Chiefs franchise has never announced plans to change its name, it has gradually moved away from Native imagery in recent years. In 2020, amid a period of racial reckoning across the country, the team said it would prohibit fans from wearing headdresses and face paint that caricaturize Indigenous people and cultures.

But the tomahawk chop, in which fans repeatedly move their arms back and forth in a chopping motion, has continued to live on as a staple of Chiefs games, despite other professional teams — including the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians — deciding to distance themselves from Native mascots and traditions.

Gaylene Crouser, the executive director of the Kansas City Indian Center, believes that the franchise has refrained from following suit due to the priorities of the Hunt family, who have owned the team since its inception in 1959.

Originally known as the Dallas Texans, the team was renamed as the Chiefs in honor of Mayor Harold Roe Bartle after the franchise moved to Kansas City in 1963. Bartle, who was nicknamed “Chief Lone Bear,” was the executive of the Boy Scouts of America group Tribe of Mic-O-Say, an honor society of mostly white members who embraced Native names and motifs.

Crouser said the recent success of the Chiefs — making three Super Bowl appearances in the last four years — should serve as momentum for the team to fully retire its name under the national spotlight.

“They’re in a position of power right now, having such a winning streak and having these superstar players that people in Kansas City worship,” she said. “They really have that power to make a change and harness that star power to bring the fans along — to do something that’s going to be on the right side of history.”

Crouser, who has rarely missed participating in protests outside of the stadium over the last few years, said some fans have been supportive of the demonstrations, cheering for the group as they passed by or honking their horns while driving. She called others, however, “hostile” and “belligerent,” screaming directly in their faces and yelling profanity.

“You have to have pretty thick skin to stand out there,” said Crouser, who is Lakota. “Especially when they’re giant groups of people, they start even before they cross the street with the chant, and just doing that tomahawk chop.”

Lifelong Chiefs fan Mat Hostetler, who grew up in Kansas City, has thrown away his merchandise that displays the arrowhead logo since researching and learning about the harmful effects of Native mascots. He said that like other Chiefs fans, he found ways to justify his initial support of the name by believing it was a form of honoring Indigenous peoples.

“I was able to compartmentalize it in a way of being like ‘I know that Washington, that’s obviously really racist, but the Chiefs, that’s not as bad,” said Hostetler, who has since created a podcast titled “Sometimes it Rains” that explores the the history of Native mascots in sports. “I would be lying if I didn’t say [the podcast] has given me some personal things to have to wrap my head around.”

Kevin Blackistone, a Washington Post columnist and former ESPN panelist, said the continued use of the Chiefs iconography is the result of a lack of education and discussion among players and owners about the racist nature of the name.

“Seventy percent of the labor force is Black, and you would hope Black players would be sensitive to an issue like this, but none have ever really expressed any concern about it whatsoever,” said Blackistone, who is also a professor at the University of Maryland. “Patrick Mahomes is being celebrated as a Black quarterback this weekend, the first to play in a game against another Black quarterback, but this is not an issue to him.”

Last year, Blackistone worked on a documentary that examined the history of Native mascots, particularly in sports. The film, “Imagining the Indian,” highlights the movement calling for their retirement and shows evidence of the psychological effects of their usage on Indigenous youth based on research from the American Psychological Association. It will be shown at Scottsdale Community College on Friday as part of a lead up to the demonstration.

For Crouser, protesting is about highlighting the hypocrisy of how players and the franchise are profiting from a group whose existence has been denied throughout history.

“When it comes down to it at the end of the day, it shouldn’t be on Native Americans to say ‘Stop with this’ — this hurtful stereotyping and cultural appropriation,” she said. “But we’re just going to have to keep standing up for ourselves.”