In 2004, the National Annenberg Election Survey asked 768 people who identified themselves as Indian whether they found the name "Washington Redskins" offensive. Almost 90 percent said it did not bother them.
"If we are offending one person," Goodell, the NFL commissioner, said last month, "we need to be listening."
"Of course, it is one thing for one 'skin to call another 'skin a 'skin, but it has entirely different meaning when a non-Indian uses it," Meland said in an email interview.
It was a white man who applied it to this particular football team: Owner George Preston Marshall chose the name in 1932 partly to honor the head coach, William "Lone Star" Dietz,Football Jerseys For Sale, who was known as an Indian.
What gets far less attention, though, is this:
"Are you a tribal person? What is your nation? What is your tribe? Would you say you are culturally or socially or politically native?" Harjo asked. Those without such connections cannot represent native opinions, she said.
Marshall, however, had a reputation as a racist. He was the last NFL owner who refused to sign black players — the federal government forced him to integrate in 1962 by threatening to cancel the lease on his stadium. When he died in 1969, his will created a Redskins Foundation but stipulated that it never support "the principle of racial integration in any form."
Now, 81 years into this jumbled identity tale, the saga seems to finally be coming to a head. The NFL's tone has shifted over the last few months, from defiance to conciliation.
He believes Indian mascots are disrespectful, but said: "It would be interesting to get a sense of the diversity of opinion within a native community."
"Society,Wholesale Chicago Bears Jerseys, they think it's more derogatory because of the recent discussions," Yazzie said. "In its pure form, a lot of Native American men, you go into the sweat lodge with what you've got — your skin. I don't see it as derogatory."
But the thoughts and beliefs of native people are the basis of the debate over changing the team name. And looking across the breadth of Indian Country — with 2 million Indians enrolled in 566 federally recognized tribes, plus another 3.2 million who tell the Census they are Indian — it's difficult to tell how many are opposed to the name.
"Stories on the mascot issue always end up exploring whether it is right or it is wrong, respectful or disrespectful," said Meland, an Ojibwe Indian.
"The Washington Redskins name has thus from its origin represented a positive meaning distinct from any disparagement that could be viewed in some other context," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote in June to 10 members of Congress who challenged the name.
Indian support for the name "is really a classic case of internalized oppression," Harjo said. "People taking on what has been said about them, how they have been described, to such an extent that they don't even notice."
"We just don't think that (name) is an issue," Yazzie said. "There are more important things like busing our kids to school,Swell Uk Bottle, the water settlement, the land quality, the air that surrounds us. Those are issues we can take sides on."
Harjo declines to estimate what percentage of native people oppose the name. But she notes that the many organizations supporting her lawsuit include the Cherokee, Comanche, Oneida and Seminole tribes, as well as the National Congress of American Indians, the largest intertribal organization, which represents more than 250 groups with a combined enrollment of 1.2 million.
The controversy has peaked in the last few days. President Barack Obama said Saturday he would consider getting rid of the name if he owned the team, and the NFL took the unprecedented step Monday of promising to meet with the Oneida Indian Nation, which is waging a national ad campaign against the league.
North Dakota was the scene of a similar controversy over the state university's Fighting Sioux nickname,Babe Ruth Jersey. It was decisively scrapped in a 2012 statewide vote — after the Spirit Lake reservation voted in 2010 to keep it.
"Marginalized communities are too often treated monolithically," said Carter Meland, a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota.
"The 'Redskins' trademark is disparaging to Native Americans and perpetuates a centuries-old stereotype of Native Americans as 'blood-thirsty savages,' 'noble warriors' and an ethnic group 'frozen in history,'" the National Congress said in a brief filed in the lawsuit.
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