President Barack Obama’s Interior Secretary admitted that changing the Redskins name is not a top priority for Native American leaders even though she said she was personally “surprised” that Dan Snyder has not already changed the name.
“My personal views are not necessarily reflected in the tribes that I talk to,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in an interview with ABC News that was released on Friday. “It isn’t high on their agenda.”
As The Hill noted, “Jewell, whose department includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” said, “Personally, I think we would never consider naming a team the ‘Blackskins’ or the ‘Brownskins’ or the ‘Whiteskins.'”
“So, personally, I find it surprising that in this day and age, the name is not different,” she said.
Numerous polls have found that a majority of Americans and Native Americans do not want a name change, with a recent ESPN poll finding that 71% of Americans do not want a name change. And ESPN conceded this week that the name-change controversy has been played up by the mainstream political and sports press.
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