Aaron Rodgers tries to cross the goal line in the Packers’ October 2010 road game loss against the Washington Redskins.
By Meg Jones, Journal Sentinel
When the Green Bay Packers take the field at Lambeau on Sunday for their home opener, they won’t be the only ones taking aim at the Washington Redskins.
Packers fans walking in to Lambeau Field through the Oneida Nation Gate will see Oneida members and others protesting the use of the Redskins logo and mascot, which they say is offensive to Native Americans.
“The warrior image is not the image we want to be portrayed,” said Brandon Stevens, an Oneida Nation elected official. “We’ve moved past the time of Western encroachment and how the West was won, and that’s where all the images are taken from — when we were a valiant enemy.”
Members of the Wisconsin Indian Education Association’s Mascot and Logo Task Force are expected to gather outside Lambeau Field before the noon game holding signs protesting the Washington Redskins’ choice of mascot. The group also has scheduled a seminar on the topic on Friday at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
The Packers declined to comment on the mascot issue. The protesters contacted the team to ask permission to hold signs outside the stadium, and the Packers will set up an area where they’ll be allowed to protest.
“We respect that reasonable people may have differing views,” National Football League spokesman Brian McCarthy said Tuesday in an email. “The name from its origin was always intended to be positive and has always been used by the team in a highly respectful manner.”
A Washington Redskins spokesman did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
It’s not just the Oneida Nation in Green Bay pressing the Redskins to change their mascot. The Oneida tribe in upstate New York already has publicly called on the NFL team to get rid of the name.
In a radio ad that began airing Monday before the Redskins season opener, a member of the New York Oneida tribe called on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to “stand up to bigotry” by denouncing “the racial slur” in the team’s name.
Redskins owner Dan Snyder has said he’ll never change his team’s name.
For more than two decades the Oneida tribe in Wisconsin has opposed the use of Indian characters and names in insensitive ways including sports teams, Oneida Nation spokeswoman Bobbi Webster said. When the Redskins last visited Lambeau, in October 2007, Oneida members held signs at the stadium saying they were not mascots, Webster said.
The topic is timely given the standoff between the Mukwonago School District and the state Department of Public Instruction over the school’s use of the Indian logo and mascot. The state’s deadline for Mukwonago to drop its Indian mascot passed last month. The School Board in July voted to take no action to change the nickname and logo, despite the possibility of daily fines for not complying with the state order.
On Sunday the protest group plans to provide information to Packers fans lining up to get inside the stadium, raising awareness of sports mascots and logos that are derogatory to Native Americans. Webster said it’s not an official protest by the Oneida Nation, which is a major sponsor of the Packers and has the naming rights to the entrance on Lambeau Field’s east side.
Stevens, a member of the tribe’s business committee, said Native Americans are no longer simply fierce warriors.
“We’re educators, we’re community members, we have families and go to work like everyone else,” Stevens said. “Having those negative stereotypes takes us back 100 years.”