“It’s not profound, you know—nothing I do is profound—but I wanted to address the whole kerfuffle over the Redskins’ name,” Bruce McCall says.
Many Native Americans have said that the longstanding name of Washington's N.F.L. franchise is repugnant and offensive to them. Bruce McCall’s cover brings attention, through satire, to what has become the subject of numerous editorials and rallies. In August, the Washington Redskins franchise, owned by Dan Snyder, filed a lawsuit to overturn the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s decision to cancel its trademark registration. Snyder has said that he’ll never change the name, because “it was, and continues to be, a badge of honor.”
McCall thinks differently. “This is 2014, and it seems a little late to be dealing with that stuff,” McCall says. “It should have been quashed a long time ago. We did everything to the Indians that we could, and it’s still going on. It seems crude and callous. Names like the Atlanta Braves come from another time. So, in my cover, I’ve brought the cultural arrogance of one side back to the sixteen-hundreds and the first Thanksgiving dinner, just to see what would happen.”
