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Portland Winterhawks face protest over logo from Native American group
Chances are, one of the Portland Winterhawks diehards who has a tattoo of the team logo might have also watched and agreed with the sentiments of the South Park takedown of the NFL and Washington team owner Daniel Snyder that aired on Wednesday night.
Interesting juxtaposition, potentially?
There is no one label that fits all situations when it comes to making progress on use of aboriginal culture and imagery in the sports world. Yet in a world where one can pull up the logo of every hockey team called the Winterhawks in fewer than five seconds, it's probably not something the Western Hockey League powerhouse Winterhawks can just wish would go away. Earlier this week, Jackie Keeler, a Portland-based writer who is founder of Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry (the originator of the #notyourmascot hashtag), called on the Winterhawks to deep-six their Chicago Blackhawks-style crest.
From Colin Miner:
“Mascotry has to stop,” says Jackie Keeler, a Portland activist, member of the Navajo and Yankton Dakota Sioux Tribes, and founder of Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry.
Keeler, who used her writing and thousands of Twitter followers to help focus the nation’s attention on the NFL's Washington Redskins, is turning her attention home. Her group is planning to send a letter to the team asking them to change their logo, which depicts a stereotype of a Native American.
The logo doesn’t actually have any historical connection to the region.
While hockey has been in the city since 1914, the Winterhawks (then known as the Winter Hawks) started in 1976 when the Edmonton Oil Kings relocated here. The logo came when the team’s owner acquired a bunch of surplus Chicago Blackhawks jerseys from that team’s management. (GoLocalPDX)
There are two easy ways out when it comes to facing this conversation. One, at the liberal end, is to overreact with the zeal of an instant Internet-made convert and start making broad generalizations about racism and prejudice. The other, at the conservative end, is to pull a Snyder and refuse to acknowledge the people who do not feel honoured by the depiction, or dismiss their concern.
That is not to say the Winterhawks must change like yesterday. It's definitely a sensitive issue in Oregon, where public schools have been banned from using Native American mascots since 2012, although some have defied the law. In this case, the concern centres on a logo that the team's first owners, as the above link notes, only picked because they picked up some second-hand Blackhawks equipment 38 years ago. The Winterhawks official mascot is also a bird creature, so obviously the team is already mindful of what's appropriate and tasteful.
The least the team could do is be inclusive and hear Keeler out on her concerns. Some good, and the chance to lead and direct opinion on a sensitive issue, might come from finding shared ground.
Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.
