BLACKFEET NATION — NFL Network broadcaster Jason Kelce ignited faux media outrage Sunday when he called the league’s Washington franchise the Redskins — six years after the team’s name and native imagery were claimed by cancel culture as its trophy kill.
If Kelce is looking for allies, he’ll find them among most Americans, few of whom obey the command to call the team by its official new name, the Commanders.
'The [Redskins] logo was the most powerful logo in NFL history, because it actually had meaning behind it.'
He’ll also find allies in Blackfeet Nation and among the family of Chief John Two Guns White Calf, an American hero who, according to a NYT obituary, served as the face of the U.S. Mint’s famous 1913 Indian Head nickel and, posthumously, the Washington Redskins for 48 years.
“The team’s new stadium [slated to open in 2030] needs to honor John Two Guns White Calf in the right way, because he was their image, their logo, from 1972 until 2020,” Thomas White Calf told Blaze News in a recent interview, while standing in the shadows of 8,894-foot White Calf Mountain.
Blaze News reached out to representatives for Jason Kelce and did not receive a response in time for publication.
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The White Calf family are already on the record saying they want the NFL and the franchise to reclaim the Redskins name, the native legacy of “braves on the warpath,” and the proud portrait logo of Blackfeet Chief Two Guns White Calf.
The family, however, were silenced for years by the same media outlets trying to silence Kelce today.
Media outrage against the Redskins exploded suddenly in October 2013. President Obama criticized the team on Oct. 5. The National Congress of American Indians issued an incendiary report to mainstream media outlets on October 10. Within days, the Associated Press, ESPN, NBC Sports, New York Times, and other major media outlets published and broadcast scathing attacks on the team.
Dan Snyder, the previous owner of the Redskins, succumbed to the withering media attack and dropped the team name and native imagery in 2020. Current owner Josh Harris inherited the public relations nightmare when he bought the team in 2023. The White Calf family stated their wishes to meet with the team in a previous Blaze News report.
Despite years of widespread reporting on the Redskins name and image, Thomas White Calf's interview with Blaze News was the first-ever media interview about the issue in the Blackfeet Nation homeland of “the most photographed native in history,” as Thomas White Calf called the family patriarch.
He was joined by his mother, Delphine, a great-niece of Two Guns; brothers Shawn and Chris; and his nephew Chris.
“Nobody ever asked us for our opinion. Nobody ever asked what we thought,” Thomas White Calf added, standing on the edge of a spectacular valley overlooking Saint Mary Lake in northwest Montana.
“This is where it all started from. The face of the Washington Redskins. The face of the Indian Head nickel. This is where Two Guns White Calf was born and raised. This is his land.”
The mainstream media not only silenced the White Calf family, they erased the heroic life story of Two Guns from the Redskins' cancel-culture narrative during a withering seven-year attack on the team orchestrated by the far-left, Soros-funded National Congress of American Indians.
The media never mentioned White Calf’s name, even though his face was the entire center of the manufactured controversy. Even worse, the NCAI dehumanized White Calf as an anonymous “savage and clownish caricature.”
White Calf was in fact an American hero who fought to preserve native heritage and force the U.S. government to honor tribal treaties from this remote Blackfeet homeland to the halls of power in Washington, D.C. His death in 1934 was front-page news coast to coast.
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If any journalists visited Blackfeet Nation, they would find monumental mountain peaks, sprawling Big Sky prairie, and sparkling rivers and lakes. Blackfeet Nation covers 2,400 square miles — about the size of Delaware — wedged between Glacier National Park and Alberta, Canada.
The White Calfs spoke from a precipice site of three monumental iron teepees, a tribute to an ancestral Blackfeet settlement with a spectacular view.
Blackfeet Nation is a land of spiritual beauty and profound continental impact. Despite the media blackout, Blackfeet Nation plays an outsized role in North American hydrological history and in American cultural history.
Just southwest of White Calf Mountain is the imposing face of Triple Divide Peak (8,018 feet).
“It’s the most sacred mountain to the Blackfeet, to our ancestors,” said Shawn White Calf.
And for good reason: Triple Divide Peak is one of the only points on earth at the corner of three continental watersheds.
It's also the only mountain on earth whose snowmelt ends in three oceans. Waters from the peak run northeast to Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean, southeast to the Mississippi River, then the Gulf of America and the Atlantic Ocean; and west to the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean.
The Blackfeet, despite their remote location, see themselves as the caretakers of all North American waters.
Two Guns White Calf was the caretaker of the original Americans.
He forged a bond with the leaders of the United States — a nation that arose only from the blend of traditions between indigenous Americans and European migrants. Among his other notable acts of unity, President Calvin Coolidge was made a member of Blackfeet Nation while Two Guns was chief.
The United States honored the Blackfeet chief in its currency; the nation’s most popular sports league honored him in the football team in the nation’s capital.
And then that face and that history were canceled. So no, Kelce didn’t commit a gaffe. He echoed the feelings of the Blackfeet people and the White Calf family and the 90% of American Indians who claimed they were not offended by the Redskins in the only two major polls of native opinion (Annenberg, Washington Post).
“The history is finally getting out there, and people are learning more and more about Two Guns and the powerful history behind it,” said Thomas White Calf.
“The [Redskins] logo was the most powerful logo in NFL history, because it actually had meaning behind it.”
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[H/T Blaze Media]
