Edmondton Football

The Edmondton Football Team

The mascot discussion extends beyond the United States. The Edmonton Football Team, part of the Canadian Football League, was historically named the Eskimos. Natan Obed, President of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Canada's national Inuit organization, expresses the feelings and desires of his people this way:

“As the leader of the 60,000 Canadian Inuit in this country, I am compelled to take a stand in solidarity with all other Indigenous peoples calling for an end to the use of our peoples as sports team mascots. . . . . .The word Eskimo is not only outdated, it is now largely considered a derogatory term. It has never been our term. When Inuit mobilized in the 1970s to protect our rights, we started using the term Inuit to describe our people because that is our way of describing ourselves. No other society has a right to impose their terminology upon us. . . . . . I reject any arguments that the name is benign and has positive intent to align the Edmonton football team culture with Inuit strength or spirit. . . . . The CFL football team does not honour [sic] our culture, our history, our present, or our future. The name is an enduring relic of colonial power. That force enabled Indigenous identity to be appropriated and redefined as a branding tool for non-Indigenous entertainment, during a time when our children were taken from us, our lands were being developed without our consent, and we were being moved around as human flagpoles. . . . . Indigenous people deserve to be treated with respect and as equals.”[1] 

Change takes time. Obed called for other sports teams to stop using any name referencing the Nations, their people, or their culture, echoing calls for teams such as the Washington Football Team to stop using Native mascots. The Edmonton team took five years to change its name; the Washington Football Team changed its name in 2020.

[1] Natan Obed, “Attention Edmonton Eskimos: Inuit are Not Mascots,” The Globe and Mail, November 27, 2015, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/attention-edmonton-eskimos-inuit-are-not-mascots/article27512855/