Stay Informed

Commanders owner on restoring the former name: ‘That ship has sailed.’
The new owners of the Washington Commanders could opt for another name change, but they will not go back to using the team’s previous moniker, the Redskins.
“That ship has sailed,” Mitchell Rales, the top partner in Josh Harris’s ownership group, told a crowd of nearly 700 at a dinner hosted by David Rubenstein and the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. “We’re not going to re-litigate the past. We’re about the future. We’re about building the future and not having a divisive culture that we’re engaged in. We’re going to look at everything come the end of the year and think about a lot of different things and do a lot of testing and see what people think. And we’ll learn. The beauty is we have the time to look at all of this stuff intelligently and make fan-based decisions.”

Plymouth-Canton school board overwhelmingly votes in favor of retiring Canton H.S ‘Chiefs’ mascot, arrowhead logo
The vote is in and Canton High School’s Chiefs mascot and arrowhead logo are out.
Amid controversy, the Plymouth-Canton Community Schools Board of Education approved to drop the high school’s name and logo in a 6-1 vote on Tuesday, July 11.
According to a recent survey, the vote comes after many people voiced opposition to the change.

Brave-Less New World
Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting—Only once, in the nearly four years I lived in Washington, D.C., did I go to an NFL game. I was mostly indifferent to sports in general and to football in particular, but my girlfriend at the time was a rabid lifelong fan of the team there. It was the hardest ticket in town to get, so she was thrilled when she landed a pair somehow, during the 1991 season when they went on to win the Super Bowl.
What I remember is that when we walked in to the game on that very cold and cloudy November afternoon, a good-sized group of Native American protestors were drumming and chanting outside RFK Stadium. They were there, of course, in opposition to the team name and mascot.

Review: A pulsating documentary takes up ‘The Fight Against Native American Mascoting’
Striving for meaningful visibility is hard enough for the marginalized Indigenous peoples of America without them having to also fight its spurious, racist flip side: the harmful stereotype industry of sports mascoting that keeps Native Americans in an Other-ized loop as a culturally disrespected and perpetually demeaned underclass.
The movement to get sports leagues, intransigent owners, and rabid fans to grasp the offensiveness in Native-themed team names, images and longstanding gestures — and harder yet, scrap them entirely — is the central subject of Ben West’s and Aviva Kempner’s pulsatingly argued, wide-ranging, and occasionally seething documentary “Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting.” Where movies and television have made the necessary changes onscreen (if not fully behind the camera), the sports world still clings to its affronts.

The fight against Native American mascoting in sports: ‘You can still love your team and just hate the name’
The noise rumbles down from above like a booming sound wave at an athletic event. Doesn’t matter if it’s from Truist Park in Atlanta, Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, or Doak S. Campbell Stadium on the campus of Florida State University.
What do these venues all have in common?
The Tomahawk Chop, that robotic arm movement to “honor” Native Americans all the while moaning some sort of call to battle for the fans.

Normalcy of tomahawk chop, Chiefs ‘war chant’ remains wrong and sickening | Opinion
About a half-hour before the Super Bowl 57 kickoff came the theme music, straight out of an Old West movie from the 1940s. And as the Kansas City Chiefs bolted out of the tunnel and onto the field at State Farm Stadium, they were greeted by arguably the most racist gesture demonstrated on the American sporting landscape: The tomahawk chop.
It was just like the scene at a Chiefs home game at Arrowhead Stadium.
And sadly, it was just as wrong and insensitive.

The Super Bowl’s Kansas City Chiefs Are a Cruel Insult to Native Americans
WE HAVE HAD beer thrown at us, people walking up to us doing the chop, people yelling in our faces asking why we are here, and telling us to go home. Guess what? We are home.
We, the Not in Our Honor Coalition, have been protesting Kansas City football’s appropriation of our culture since 2005, and there have been many other Native people raising their voices against them long before us, like Suzan Shown Harjo, who started the toppling of the Washington, D.C. football team’s racist Native slur of a name.

‘Imagining the Indian’: Native Americans Fight to Reclaim Their Image From Racist Sports Mascots in New Trailer
The latest trailer for “Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting” has arrived, days before the Kansas City Chiefs face off at the Super Bowl LVII.
Premiering exclusively in theaters, the documentary chronicles the movement to end the racist practice of words, images and gestures exploiting Native Americans in the sports world and beyond. It tackles changes that still need to be made in the wake of Washington’s recently-renamed NFL team (Commanders), and Cleveland’s MLB team (Guardians).

National Native News
Filmmakers of Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting joined demonstrators on Saturday, at the Kansas City Football Team’s playoff game to advocate for the team to change its name and end the appropriation of Native culture.
Producer Yancey Burns says the experience showed him the importance of educating the public about the fight against Native American mascots.

‘Imagining the Indian’: A Documentary Making a Difference
“Imagining the Indian” a new feature-length documentary film, is a comprehensive and deep-dive into the movement to eradicate the words, images, and gestures that many Native Americans and their allies find demeaning and offensive.
The film showcases the issues through archival footage and interviews with those involved in the fight. The psychological research is clear, the use of Native American mascots is detrimental, not only to Native people but to marginalized groups everywhere.
The Big Show with Henry Harris Talks with “Imagining the Indian” Filmmakers
Filmmakers Ben West and Yancey Burns talk about their new documentary.
Press Coverage
Witness the films traction, as several news outlets, subject matter experts and concerned citizens voice their support.

Brave-Less New World
Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting—Only once, in the nearly four years I lived in Washington, D.C., did I go to an NFL game. I was mostly indifferent to sports in general and to football in particular, but my girlfriend at the time was a rabid lifelong fan of the team there. It was the hardest ticket in town to get, so she was thrilled when she landed a pair somehow, during the 1991 season when they went on to win the Super Bowl.
What I remember is that when we walked in to the game on that very cold and cloudy November afternoon, a good-sized group of Native American protestors were drumming and chanting outside RFK Stadium. They were there, of course, in opposition to the team name and mascot.

Review: A pulsating documentary takes up ‘The Fight Against Native American Mascoting’
Striving for meaningful visibility is hard enough for the marginalized Indigenous peoples of America without them having to also fight its spurious, racist flip side: the harmful stereotype industry of sports mascoting that keeps Native Americans in an Other-ized loop as a culturally disrespected and perpetually demeaned underclass.
The movement to get sports leagues, intransigent owners, and rabid fans to grasp the offensiveness in Native-themed team names, images and longstanding gestures — and harder yet, scrap them entirely — is the central subject of Ben West’s and Aviva Kempner’s pulsatingly argued, wide-ranging, and occasionally seething documentary “Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting.” Where movies and television have made the necessary changes onscreen (if not fully behind the camera), the sports world still clings to its affronts.

The fight against Native American mascoting in sports: ‘You can still love your team and just hate the name’
The noise rumbles down from above like a booming sound wave at an athletic event. Doesn’t matter if it’s from Truist Park in Atlanta, Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, or Doak S. Campbell Stadium on the campus of Florida State University.
What do these venues all have in common?
The Tomahawk Chop, that robotic arm movement to “honor” Native Americans all the while moaning some sort of call to battle for the fans.

IMAGINING THE INDIAN – Promoting the ‘R’ Word
This emotionally charged documentary tells a tale that started 800 years ago. At this time, the citizens of 500 Indian nations were the only ones who called the US home. When their sovereignty was stolen, so their fight began. And they have been fighting ever since.

Normalcy of tomahawk chop, Chiefs ‘war chant’ remains wrong and sickening | Opinion
About a half-hour before the Super Bowl 57 kickoff came the theme music, straight out of an Old West movie from the 1940s. And as the Kansas City Chiefs bolted out of the tunnel and onto the field at State Farm Stadium, they were greeted by arguably the most racist gesture demonstrated on the American sporting landscape: The tomahawk chop.
It was just like the scene at a Chiefs home game at Arrowhead Stadium.
And sadly, it was just as wrong and insensitive.

The Super Bowl’s Kansas City Chiefs Are a Cruel Insult to Native Americans
WE HAVE HAD beer thrown at us, people walking up to us doing the chop, people yelling in our faces asking why we are here, and telling us to go home. Guess what? We are home.
We, the Not in Our Honor Coalition, have been protesting Kansas City football’s appropriation of our culture since 2005, and there have been many other Native people raising their voices against them long before us, like Suzan Shown Harjo, who started the toppling of the Washington, D.C. football team’s racist Native slur of a name.

‘Imagining the Indian’: Native Americans Fight to Reclaim Their Image From Racist Sports Mascots in New Trailer
The latest trailer for “Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting” has arrived, days before the Kansas City Chiefs face off at the Super Bowl LVII.
Premiering exclusively in theaters, the documentary chronicles the movement to end the racist practice of words, images and gestures exploiting Native Americans in the sports world and beyond. It tackles changes that still need to be made in the wake of Washington’s recently-renamed NFL team (Commanders), and Cleveland’s MLB team (Guardians).

National Native News
Filmmakers of Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting joined demonstrators on Saturday, at the Kansas City Football Team’s playoff game to advocate for the team to change its name and end the appropriation of Native culture.
Producer Yancey Burns says the experience showed him the importance of educating the public about the fight against Native American mascots.

‘Imagining the Indian’: A Documentary Making a Difference
“Imagining the Indian” a new feature-length documentary film, is a comprehensive and deep-dive into the movement to eradicate the words, images, and gestures that many Native Americans and their allies find demeaning and offensive.
The film showcases the issues through archival footage and interviews with those involved in the fight. The psychological research is clear, the use of Native American mascots is detrimental, not only to Native people but to marginalized groups everywhere.
The Big Show with Henry Harris Talks with “Imagining the Indian” Filmmakers
Filmmakers Ben West and Yancey Burns talk about their new documentary.
“It’s time for a reckoning.”
“This is an important subject and an important film.”
“Racial slurs shouldn’t be a regular part of everyday conversations, let alone cherished and institutionalized. It’s time for sports fans to open their eyes.”
Tribal Council
Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation
Northern California
Committed to
Our Mission
Our goal is to raise awareness of the issue of Native American Mascoting, expand the understanding, and appreciation, of Native American culture, and empower a movement towards widespread social sensitivity.
Meet Our Supporters
Support the Film
We appreciate your shared committment to ensuring this message reaches the masses.
Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation
Lead Executive Producer | Website
San Manuel Band of Mission Indians
Executive Producer | Website
Jessica and Steve Sarowitz
Co-Executive Producer
Aviva Kempner
Director & Producer | View Bio
Ben West
Director & Producer | View Bio
Sam Bardley
Producer | View Bio
Kevin Blackistone
Producer | View Bio
Barbara Ballow
Editor | View Bio
Yancey Burns
Producer | View Bio
Contact the Filmmakers
Expand your image of the Native American!





