New York (AFP)

Washington says goodbye to the Redskins and Cleveland to the Indians: more and more teams are giving up Native American imagery, very popular in American sport, but its imprint remains strong, especially among the Kansas City Chiefs, on track for the Super Bowl, the National Football League (NFL) final on Sunday.

The Redskins, it took 87 years for the NFL Washington team to abandon this name, "racist and contemptuous", according to the Navajo nation.

After decades of activism, and after a spring of Black Lives Matter protests, the "cancel culture" has taken off unprecedentedly in all strata of American society.

The big economic partners of the capital club, like FedEx, even ended up joining the fight and threatened to withdraw.

In mid-December, the Cleveland professional baseball team repudiated the name Indians, determined to take, like Washington, the time to find a successor.

In the four major professional championships in the United States, only the Atlanta Braves (baseball), the Chicago Blackhawks (ice hockey) and the Kansas City Chiefs (football) still borrow Native American references.

At the end of August, just before the current NFL season, the Chiefs officially banned spectators from wearing a feathered headdress and any make-up evoking the "Native Americans."

Remains the name of the team, which many fans recall that it does not originate from the Native Americans, but from the former mayor of Kansas City H. Roe Bartle, whose nickname was "Chief".

- "Less visible" racism -

But the former white city councilor loved to wear a headdress and created a scout troop with the name and codes freely inspired by Amerindian traditions.

Like the Blackhawks or the Braves, the Chiefs, who did not respond to an AFP request, are not considering a name change.

Chicago, which chose its name in honor of Chief Black Hawk of the Sauk tribe, claims a "dialogue" with the Native American community.

She collaborates in particular with the Trickster Cultural Center, a cultural center located in Illinois.

Some Native American fans of the Chiefs, especially on social media, believe the club does not have to give up its name.

"I don't think they've done anything in terms of social justice or to be less racist," said Gaylene Crouser, executive director of the Kansas City Indian Center, of the headdress ban. and make-up by the Chiefs.

"It's less visible, that's all," she said.

This season, we hit a big drum again in every home game and the public rallying gesture always mimics a tomahawk.

Researcher at the University of Michigan, Stephanie Fryberg has shown that Native American mascots can harm the self-esteem of adolescents from this minority and their vision of this community.

- Tip of the iceberg -

"People will become less and less tolerant on the subject," warns Gaylene Crouser, who sees opinion increasingly embracing the Native American cause.

"It would be better to be proactive and to say (...) + we stop everything +, rather than to act piecemeal."

And professional sport is only the tip of the iceberg.

According to the specialized site MascotDB, more than 1,600 sports teams still have an Amerindian reference mascot.

There are still for example 125 teams called Redskins in the United States, 855 Indians and 189 Chiefs.

The cliché of the proud and warrior Indian, ready to do anything for his tribe, has fueled American sport for more than a century, without the Amerindians having been associated with it.

This phenomenon of cultural appropriation has, moreover, corresponded to a fundamental movement to assimilate the Amerindians and erase their heritage.

In Colorado, the school group La Veta has just renamed its mascot RedHawks, and has put the Redskins away.

Seven years ago, supporters of change were "brutally attacked" at a public meeting by opponents, recalls Eleanor Foley, president of the school group.

This time, she took advantage of the move to new premises to put the question of the mascot back on the agenda, whose image would end up on the American football field and in the gymnasium.

There were still heated discussions but "the consensus was not the same".

For a majority, "we had to change mascot".

© 2021 AFP