Republican lawmakers who work on issues affecting Native Americans are mostly shrugging off President Donald Trump’s latest preoccupation — making the Washington Commanders football team change its name back to the Washington “Redskins.”
Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, a Chickasaw Nation member and one of the only Native Americans in Congress, said these days, his only issue is that the Washington team played better than his favorite team last season. (In 2014, Cole called the name “insulting” and had backed former President Barack Obama’s call to change it.)
“They’re not my football team,” Cole said. “I’m a Dallas Cowboys fan, a long suffering Dallas Cowboys fan. [The Commanders] got further in the playoffs than we did this year.”
“I’m not a Commanders fan, so I don’t care what they’re called,” said Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford. “I follow the Steelers and the Cowboys.”
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Trump posted on social media this week urging the owners of the Commanders and the Cleveland Guardians baseball team to bring back their old names and branding, which many Native people find derogatory.
“I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back to the original ‘Washington Redskins,’ and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, ‘Washington Commanders,’ I won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington,” Trump wrote. “Indians are being treated very unfairly. MAKE INDIANS GREAT AGAIN (MIGA)!”
The team’s name was changed — first to the Washington Football Team in 2020 and to the Commanders in 2022 — after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, which sparked nationwide protests seeking an end to systemic racism. The team had faced decades of criticism over the “Redskins” name and logo, which depicts a Native American, and Native American groups had protested the name for years.
Sen. Mike Rounds, a member of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, said changing the name of the Commanders is ultimately up to the team’s owners. But the president’s suggestion he would stop the stadium deal from going through took Rounds by surprise when he heard about it.
“There’s a lot of people that have different opinions on it,” Rounds told NOTUS.
“Some of them say, ‘If you’re respecting us, that’s one thing, but if you’re using names that are inappropriate, that’s another,’” he said of the tribes.
Montana Sen. Steve Daines, who also sits on the Indian Affairs Committee, was less concerned about the name change, but he has been pushing for the team to bring back its old logo, which depicts a former chief from the Blackfeet Nation in Montana, John Two Guns White Calf.
“The president’s been focused on the name change,” Daines told NOTUS. “I’ve been focused on the logo change.”
Daines held a hearing on the issue and said in 2024 that the logo should return because “it is not a caricature. It is a depiction of pride and strength. Of courage and honor.”
“The Blackfeet Tribe in Montana fully supports returning the logo. It’s a source of pride for Indian Country, not only across Montana but across the country,” Daines said this week. “The Dallas Cowboys are going to be playing the Commanders on Christmas Day, and it would be wonderful to see that logo on the helmets.”
A representative for the Blackfeet Nation did not return a request for comment.
Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, a member of an Appropriations subcommittee that works on tribal affairs and the Native American Caucus, told NOTUS he thinks the team’s name should be “The Nations.”
“It fits in with the Nationals. It’s the nation’s capital, and the [Native] nations are sovereign nations. Keep the logo, make it The Nations, life goes on,” said Zinke, who also served as Trump’s first Interior secretary. “Montana tribes are sensitive to the logo because it was a Blackfeet. I think the logo, the traditional one, is incumbent upon great nations, and I think it’s very honorable. So, I prefer The Nations.”
North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, another Senate Indian Affairs Committee member, said he’d be fine with a name change.
“Generally, what I’ve heard from the Native Americans that are actually involved in some way, shape or form with the Redskins, is that they’ve been supportive,” Hoeven said. “I know there are probably some that aren’t, as with any issue.”
The president’s fixation with the Commanders’ name is long-standing. In 2013, Trump wrote that then-President Barack Obama “should not be telling the Washington Redskins to change their name-our country has far bigger problems!” And again, in 2020, he expressed frustration at owners changing their teams’ names “in order to be politically correct.”
The National Congress of American Indians, a nonprofit organization for Native American and Alaska Native rights, condemned the president’s call.
“Any attempt to distract by invoking our names and purporting to speak for our communities is an affront to Tribal sovereignty and is not taken lightly,” NCAI President Mark Macarro said in a statement. “For seventy-five years, NCAI has held an unbroken voice: Imagery and fan behaviors that mock, demean, and dehumanize Native people have no place in modern society. NCAI will continue to stand in support of the dignity and humanity of Native peoples.”
Democrats told NOTUS that changing the name back would be a distraction at best and a dishonor at worst.
Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree, ranking member of the Appropriations subcommittee that works on tribal affairs, called the name change a “terrible idea.”
“They already came to a decision,” Pingree told NOTUS. “It’s clear that to many communities, using these Indian — quote, unquote — names has been disrespectful, and we’ve moved beyond that. It’s unfortunately the habit of the president to try to move us backwards in history.”
Wisconsin Sen. Tina Smith said this seems like “more Trump chum in the water,” and her fellow Indian Affairs Committee member Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico said the name change is a distraction from what would actually help Native tribes.
“They want to make sure that they can connect to broadband, have radio stations that are fully funded and have access to food programs and housing and energy. There’s communities in my state that still don’t have access to water and drinking water. That’s what [Trump] should be doing,” Luján said.
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This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and Oklahoma Watch.
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