Fenway Park

At this site, you will watch a video describing Native perspectives of Native mascots, and specifically the history of the Washington R**skins football team, which changed their name from the Braves when they moved to Fenway Park in 1933. When you arrive at the site of Fenway Park, think about the following questions: Why would sports franchises owned by white people choose Native mascots (and specifically use racial epithets in those names)? What does that tell us about how settler-colonialism operates well beyond initial contact between Native people and settlers?

Next, the Washington football team long defended its mascot choice by stating that it was named after one of their former coaches, who was Native (and led the team when they were in Boston) and honored American Indians. Take a moment to read this article from the Denver Post on the topic, which explains the myth behind this explanation: https://www.denverpost.com/2013/11/07/is-the-redskins-history-based-on-a-lie/

Then read this article from Indian Country Today on the real James One Star and how a white football player and later coach likely took his identity and "posed as an Indian" to advance his own career: https://ictnews.org/archive/reclaiming-james-one-star-part-one and https://ictnews.org/archive/reclaiming-james-one-star-part-two

For more on the concept of "playing Indian," where white people appropriate Indianness as a form of Native erasure, conquest, and dispossession of Native peoples, see this book summary of Philip Deloria's "Playing Indian": https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.12987/9780300153606/html?lang=en

Then, read about the Washington's football teams resistance to racial integration in the 1950s and 1960s, which provides an example of how settler-colonialism often intersects with anti-Black racism: https://www.npr.org/2011/09/04/140066378/a-showdown-that-changed-footballs-racial-history