As they’ve confronted mounting scrutiny, the Chiefs have made an effort to evolve such practices lately. “Over the course of the membership’s 60-plus-year historical past, the Chiefs group has labored to remove this offensive imagery and different types of cultural appropriation of their promotional supplies and game-day presentation,” reads an announcement on the group’s official web site. In 2014, as an illustration, the Chiefs engaged in a dialogue with the American Indian Neighborhood Working Group, made up of “leaders from a various group of American Indian communities in Kansas Metropolis and the encircling space.” Collectively, they devised a set of tips for the Chiefs’ athletes and followers to comply with throughout game-day occasions at Arrowhead Stadium. As an illustration, whereas a ceremonial blessing of the drum kicks off all house video games, costume headdresses have been banned within the stands. 

However are these adjustments sufficient? For a lot of Indigenous individuals, the reply is not any. In 2005, a report from the American Psychological Affiliation discovered that “mascots based mostly on stereotypes had a dangerous impact on the social identification growth and shallowness of younger [Native American] individuals.” A reputation just like the Chiefs, it’s been argued, bears related in poor health results. “[The name] perpetuates the nationwide feeling that native Individuals are historic figures moderately than dwelling communities with actual individuals who exist now and matter,” one Instagram consumer not too long ago asserted. “Not imaginary, not fictional, and never lifeless.” 

It’s a case that feels particularly persuasive in 2024: Simply final month, President Joe Bided signed an government order that known as for the Inside Division to make closing revisions to the 1990 Native American Graves Safety and Repatriation Act, which now requires museums and federal businesses to get consent from tribes earlier than displaying any human stays and cultural artifacts from Indigenous communities. (It’s led New York’s American Museum of Pure Historical past to shut two outstanding exhibition galleries.) If the humanities sector could make such adjustments, endeavoring to stop treating Indigenous Individuals as figures from a distant previous, absolutely a sports activities group can, too.

That stated, the precise technique of revising a significant sports activities group’s title is difficult—and costly: It will probably take wherever from 18 months to 2 years, per The Atlantic, and value of tens of millions of {dollars}. (Past changing the group’s uniforms and gear, there would even be the matter of updating logos, merchandise, banners, and different advertising supplies.)