The Buzz: Too Many Chiefs and Too Few Indians

It was the lead issue in this month’s staff meeting at my government agency: The Kansas City Chiefs are going to the Super Bowl for the second year in a row. Yes, a team with an offensive logo and name that continues to objectify American Indians/Alaska Natives (AI/AN) — the only racial group in the U.S.A. to be caricatured in the name of sports entertainment. Just ask AI/ANs who live and work in San Francisco (Golden State Warriors), Atlanta (Braves), Chicago, (Blackhawks) and Cleveland (Indians). 

This institutionalized racism brewed in Kansas City, MO, can be attributed to Harold Roe Bartle — a non-Indian with a loud voice, boisterous personality and a 25-cigar-a-day habit. In the 1960s, Bartle convinced Lamar Hunt, the owner of the Dallas Texans football team, to relocate his team to Kansas City (KC). It is not surprising that the team took the moniker of the “Chiefs” since Bartle, as mayor of Kansas City at the time, was known as the “Big Chief,” and was often seen sauntering around in a headdress. 

In traditional Native American culture, there were four tasks required to become a chief and to assume the honor of wearing a headdress: 

• Touching an enemy without killing him 
• Taking an enemy’s weapon 
• Leading a successful war party 
• Stealing an enemy’s horse 

I doubt Bartle—or any KC owner, player, fan or employee—has accomplished these tasks. The last living war chief was Joe Medicine Crow of the Crow Nation, who died in 2016. 

While KC and the rest of the football world celebrate their beloved Chiefs, please understand that every misappropriated headdress, misused war paint, whoop, tomahawk chop and regalia embezzlement continues the objectification of Indigenous people as “warlike creatures” confined to a forgettable past. 

My friends tell me to cut the KC folks some slack; they are just repeating narratives they inherited from the white founders of the U.S. It’s true — schoolchildren in the U.S. are taught and internalize messages from their “founding fathers” that suggest AI/ANs are essentially untamable (George Washington); wolves and beasts, nothing human except the “shape” (Thomas Jefferson); and “merciless Indian savages” (Declaration of Independence).

I will never forget the conversation I had with a Maryland eighth grader about their school’s Indian mascot, which directly reflected the sentiments of Washington and Jefferson: “We simply chose an Indian as the emblem. We could have just as easily chosen any uncivilized animal.” Sadly, we have taught our children these narratives well. 

The normalization of this language and behavior promotes the uninterrupted dehumanization of the very people who welcomed Washington, Jefferson, and the eighth grader’s ancestors onto their land. American Indians met these folks with the right hand of friendship… only to be forced into a colonizer’s idea of “coexistence” characterized by centuries of land theft, broken treaties, genocide and forced assimilation. Who are we kidding? After these capital crimes against Indigenous humanity, today sports fans mindlessly appropriate these cultures in Arrowhead Stadium by playing “Indian” — and we are willing to brush this off? 

For many, it seems, at the end of 4th quarter, the only things that matter are your favorite beverage, another plate of chicken wings and your beloved team on the winning end of the scoreboard. If your team happens to fall short of victory, just remember: the real loser at the Super Bowl LV this year will not be the Chiefs or the Buccaneers — but the lost opportunity to celebrate and recognize the humanity of Indigenous communities… just ask an American Indian. 

*Nothing in this blog post is a reflection of the positions of the federal government, Department of Treasury or the IRS. The opinions in this piece are solely the views of the writer in his personal capacity as an American Indian.*