Digital Scholarship and Initiatives

This opinion piece discusses the merits of changing the name of the Washington Redskins football team to the Washington Lumbee, a tribe from North Carolina, citing that the name fits easily into the team’s fight song, honors an actual tribe, and with public association with the football team in the nation’s capital, would provide a huge boost to the Lumbee’s cherished dream, so far denied, of official recognition by the federal government and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Although tribe members insist that both archaeological and DNA evidence demonstrates their claim to American Indian ancestry, some contemporary observers – including many American Indians – insist the Lumbee are mostly a mixture of African and European blood.

The Lumbee, for their part, have never gotten the recognition they deserve for their role in what has been called the Battle of Hayes Pond, a shootout with the Ku Klux Klan that took place January 18, 1958, in which the Lumbee community decided to stand up against the Klan instead of fleeing, as most did.