U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly nullified the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board;s decision last fall. According to the Washington Post, "she threw out a federal board's 1999 decision to cancel six highly lucrative Redskins trademarks. She said she was not opining on whether the word 'redskin' was insulting or not but concluded that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's board had relied upon partial, dated and irrelevant evidence submitted by the activists." Specifically, her 83-page report stated:

"There is no evidence in the record that addresses whether the use of the term "redskin(s)" in the context of a football team and related entertainment services would be viewed by a substantial composite of Native Americans, in the relevant time frame, as disparaging ... This is undoubtedly a 'test case' that seeks to use federal trademark litigation to obtain social goals. The problem, however, with this case is evidentiary. The Lanham Act has been on the books for many years and was in effect in 1967 when the trademarks were registered. By waiting so long to exercise their rights, defendants make it difficult for any fact-finder to affirmatively state that in 1967 the trademarks were disparaging."

Yet there was no acknowledgement that the American Indian Movement wasn't even established until 1968. Was the civil rights group born a year too late or could it be that derogatory name-fixing was not an initial priority? After all, it takes a while to get people who have been oppressed to understand what, in fact, are their civil rights. Look how many years it took feminism to transform "girls" to "women." Look how many years it took their mothers to hyphenate their married names. Look how many years it took so many of them to become judges.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly's decision embraced as "fact" the team's propaganda that the late Coach Lone Star Dietz was Native American and the team was named in his honor. As a result, virtually all media coverage of the event noted the link between the team's name and its Native American patron saint. This emphasis panders to an already polarized national discourse, in which so-called "political correctness" is pitted against good old American team spirit, freedom of speech and corporate America. Yet how much less were Natives able to "exercise their rights" when Lone Star Dietz was a player and then assistant coach for Pop Warner at the Carlisle Indian and Industrial school (1911 - 1914)? During this time, the popular Carlisle "Indians" were often referred to as "Redskins." The "homage" paid to Dietz (and, thus, the argument goes, to "Native Americans") was surely connected to Dietz's affiliation with the Carlisle Indian school team. It seems that the nostalgia of Dietz for Carlisle's "Redskins" was passed on to Pro-Football, Inc.'s nostalgia for a beloved "Native American" coach. And this latter passing on is as strategic a move as any "pass" planned in a football team's huddle. Suzan Shown Harjo's group has not given up, though, and the case is now on appeal.

But the story of how the Boston Braves became the Washington Redskins, or how Lone Star Dietz, himself, was once a Carlisle "Redskin" obfuscates a more intimate story of Anglo-America's tendency to fetishize skin color because "difference" is threatening. In fact, there is much more to this story than a simple, though derogatory, name can contain. But isn't that the problem? Translation always entails a negotiation. Names are not only translated cross-linguistically, but also cross-culturally, and in these translations something is always lost, and something is always changed. The question is, who is reading or hearing the name? Are "One Star" and "Lone Star" really the same name? Can "Redskins" be disparaging to some, and honorific to others?

Returning to the story of Lone Star Dietz will not answer such important questions. But it will answer others. It's important to note that the life story of Dietz was added to the academic canon of Native American history, art, and ethnology by the late John C. Ewers (1909 - 1997), former ethnologist for the Smithsonian Institute. In 1977 Montana: The Magazine of Western History published a biographical essay on Dietz, written by Ewers. This is still considered the authoritative scholarly work on Dietz and may be where most of the "facts" about him derive today. Since, according to the Smithsonian Institution, Ewers should be considered "one of the nation's foremost scholars in the ethnology of the Plains Indians and the history of the West," there seems to be no reason to question this article, which is titled, "Five Strings to His Bow: The Remarkable Career of William (Lone Star) Dietz."

The Ewers article tells of Dietz's early childhood, his marriage and, the "five strings to his bow," which are his accomplishments as artist, athlete, actor, teacher and football coach. Unfortunately though, the article is misleading and the supporting research Ewers undertook to produce it is incomplete. For the sake of space, here's some of what is NOT true about Ewers' "Lone Star" Dietz: 1) There is absolutely no proof he was an Oglala Lakota; 2) He did not attend Chilocco Indian school before arriving at Carlisle (he went to Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., and Friends University in Wichita, Kan.); and 3) Dietz's romantic story about his birth and childhood in South Dakota (which Ewers quotes verbatim) was entirely fabricated. Though Dietz may have had Native ancestry (but it may be impossible to prove whether he did), he was posing as "Indian," and needing an origin story to make himself appear authentic, he created one.



(Continued in Part Three)



Linda Waggoner has taught for 12 years in the American Multicultural Studies and Philosophy departments at Sonoma State University in California. She is currently finishing a biography on Winnebago artist and educator Angel DeCora Dietz (1869 - 1919) and has written "Neither White Men Nor Indians" published in 2002.