US Native American activists challenge offensive imagery amid Super Bowl

Rhonda LeValdo is exhausted, but she’s refusing to slow down. For the fourth time in five years, her hometown team and the focus of her decades-long activism against the use of Native American imagery and references in sports is in the Super Bowl.

As the Kansas City Chiefs prepare for Sunday's big game, so does LeValdo.

She and dozens of other Indigenous activists are in Las Vegas to protest and demand the team change its name and ditch its logo and rituals they say are offensive.

“I’ve spent so much of my personal time and money on this issue. I really hoped that our kids wouldn't have to deal with this,” said LeValdo, who founded and led a group called "Not In Our Honour".

'This doesn't honour us'

LeValdo's concern for children is founded. Research has shown the use of Native American imagery and stereotypes in sports has negative psychological effects on Native youth and encourages non-Native children to discriminate against them.

Some sports franchises made changes in the wake of the 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The Washington team dropped its name, which is considered a racial slur. And, in 2021, the Cleveland baseball team changed its name from the Indians to the Guardians.

Before the 2020 season, the Chiefs, the team named after Kansas City Mayor H. Roe Bartle, nicknamed 'The Chief,' implemented a policy prohibiting fans from wearing headdresses or face paint that references or appropriates Native American culture in Arrowhead Stadium, although some fans continue to do so.

The next year, the Chiefs retired their mascot, a horse named Warpaint that a cheerleader would ride onto the field every time the team scored a touchdown.

The team's name and arrowhead logo remain, as does the “tomahawk chop,” in which fans chant and swing a forearm up and down in a ritual that is not unique to the Chiefs.

Today, LeValdo and other Indigenous activists stand outside Arrowhead Stadium during Chiefs home games, with signs saying, “Stop the Chop” and “This Does Not Honour Us.”

For LeValdo, the pain fueling her anger and activism is rooted in the oppression, killing, and displacement of her ancestors and the lingering effects those injustices have on her community.

“We weren’t even allowed to be Native American. We weren’t allowed to practice our culture. We weren’t allowed to wear our clothes,” she said.

“But it’s OK for Kansas City fans to bang a drum, to wear a headdress, and then to act like they’re honouring us? That doesn’t make sense."