Professional and collegiate sport teams, most notably the Washington Redskins in the NFL, have received scrutiny for their use of Native American symbols in their team names.   This was a persisting issue, and it came to national attention when President Barack Obama said Redskins owner Dan Snyder should change their team name. In addition, according to an

ESPN article, the Oneida nation met with the NFL on Oct. 30 to discuss the Redskins’ name. The meeting received controversy as Snyder and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell failed to show up.

Despite the recent criticism, 64 percent of 11,828 voters are in favor of keeping the name according to an Oct. 30 ESPN Sports Nation poll.

One of the 64 percent is Kevin Feller, senior and Redskins fan. Feller is an adamant supporter of the Redskins name. Feller believes that the name is an important representation of the team as it has existed since 1932.

“It’s been there so long and all the diehard fans care,” Feller said. “People want to keep it for merchandise reasons. If the name actually changes, it will change the identity and the team’s tradition would go away.”

He said that the Redskins’ name can be offensive if it’s used as an insult. However, Feller believes that the Redskins’ organization does not mean to offend anyone.  He also said that the Redskins are getting criticized the most, even though other teams, such as the Chicago Blackhawks, the Cleveland Indians, and the Kansas City Chiefs, use Native American symbols. While Feller believes that it’s unfair that the Redskins are getting blamed the most for their nickname, he said that none of the teams intend to offend anyone.

“If they are looking at it so hard, they should look at it that way for all other teams. (The teams) are not trying to be offensive. The names are more of a symbol to honor (Native Americans), not to insult them.”

While fans of these teams do not want to see a name change, there are others that do. Among them are Larry Zimmerman, Public Scholar of Native American Representation at IUPUI. Zimmerman said that the word “redskin” is a racial slur, and it does not honor anyone. He believes that using Native American team names portray them as savages instead of warriors.

“The other names—Chiefs, Indians, Blackhawks and the like—are not racially based but nevertheless do a number of things many Indians see as negative. Their reference, for example, is always to Indians as warriors. This plays to other stereotypes of Indians as ‘savages’, scalping and other warlike images which limit people’s understanding of Indians, ‘locks’ them in the past, and perpetuates all the stereotypes,” Zimmerman said via email.

Like Zimmerman, junior Matt Hicks said that while the organizations do not mean to insult Native Americans, the names still stereotype against the Native American groups. Despite being Caucasian, Hicks said he believes that using Native American names for sport teams is wrong.

“(The names) involve ethnic stereotyping. We wouldn’t just have a team called ‘the Muslims’ or ‘the Whites’ or ‘the Jews’ because it can be offensive to these ethnic groups,” Hicks said. “It doesn’t matter if teams like the Indians are named as they are to evoke a heroic or brave image to a group of people; it is still stereotyping, offensive and racist towards cultures.”

Feller, Zimmerman and Hicks agree that it will take a lot to effort to see the team names change. Zimmerman said that Native Americans consist of a little more than one percent of the U.S. population. He states that teams are not willing to change the names for financial reasons. Hicks also said that not many are willing to support a name change.

Feller said that a lot of people do not want to witness a name change because it will erase tradition. Additionally, Snyder confirmed that as long as he is the owner of the Redskins, he will not change the Redskins’ name.

“If the President of the United States is saying something about it, more and more people would look at it but it’s not going to change soon,” Feller said.

One thing’s for certain, there’s a lot of ambiguity in this controversy.

“Some of the people that identify against the Native Americans don’t see anything wrong with the names and don’t recognize the offense. They see no reason to change it,” Hicks said.