Earlier this week, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 17-2 to advance the D.C. Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium Campus Revitalization Act. The bill aims to lease the federally owned RFK land to the D.C. government for 99 years, allowing city officials to redevelop the land as they choose. This development clears a major hurdle for the Commanders to return to D.C., where they last played as the Redskins in 1996.
Washington team officials are considering that option.
“Today’s result is an exciting and significant step forward for the city of Washington D.C. as it looks to gain long-term control of the RFK site,” the Commanders said in a statement. “The Commanders have been fortunate to have three incredible jurisdictions as we search for a new home and stadium. The vote today brings us one step closer towards continuing conversations with D.C., along with Maryland and Virginia, as a potential future home for our franchise.”
One lawmaker who voted to advance the bill is Montana Sen. Steve Daines, who earlier this year halted the legislation from progressing to a full committee vote. Daines said it wouldn’t support the bill until the franchise began honoring its storied Native American tradition, specifically the iconic logo of an Indian chief that adorned the Redskins’ helmets until it was retired with the name in 2020. Creation of the logo, which I covered extensively in my biography George Allen: A Football Life, was the vision of prominent Native American Walter “Blackie” Wetzel.
Prior to the 1972 season, Wetzel approached Allen, then entering his second year with the Redskins, on designing a new helmet logo. Wetzel, the chair of Blackfeet Nation in Montana and a former president of the National Congress of American Indians, subsequently consulted with his tribe and returned with an image of fellow Blackfeet Chief John Two Guns White Calf, who projected the look of a warrior and is often cited as the model for the U.S. Indian Head Buffalo nickel. Allen, an admirer of Native American history and culture, approved the image.
“I said, `I’d like to see an Indian on your helmets,’” Wetzel told The Washington Post in 2002. “It made us all so proud to have an Indian on a big-time team. . . . It’s only a small group of radicals who oppose those names. Indians are proud of Indians.”
Daines has felt there was no reason for the team to erase the logo, although he has not implored the Commanders to restore the name Redskins, and it appears there’s little chance that will happen. He learned from meeting with Walter Wetzel’s son, Don Wetzel, that the logo was a “point of pride in Indian Country, and it should be recognized as such.” He thus encouraged team officials and their corporate sponsors to fully support Blackfeet Nation’s request to restore the logo, including in merchandise sales.
Specifically, Daines was pleased that after blurring out the logo on a Darrell Green legacy shirt in October, the team corrected that and produced the same shirt with the logo.
Daines wrote the following on his Twitter page:
“What’s changed since the May hearing on the RFK Stadium bill? In short, any stigma around the logo is gone. Blackie Wetzel’s legacy has been honored. A foundation is in the works. This iconic Native American imagery has been restored to a place of honor.
“The logo isn’t offensive and it isn’t derogatory,” he added. “It’s an honorable and realistic depiction. It’s a tribute and appreciation of Native American history.”
Regarding the RFK Stadium bill, it’s possible that Senate and House leaders will add the measure to a larger spending bill that they’ll vote on before the end of the year. There’s no guarantee the Commanders will return to nation’s capital if the RFK bill passes.
But would you like to see them once again compete on the site where the Redskins recorded their glory years during the Joe Gibbs-1 era?
