Original story can be found here.
A youth hockey player in Calgary will sit out the upcoming season rather than play for her local team after discovering the team’s logo features a Native American man’s head adorned in feathers, according to Alanna Smith of the Calgary Herald.
The Northwest Warriors’ logo resembles the one used by the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks, who have one of the oldest and most well-known logos in hockey history.
The mother, who declined to be identified for the story to protect her family, said her 7-year-old daughter won’t wear the “discriminatory” jersey and cannot play for another team due to geographic restrictions. As a result, the young girl will be forced to sit out instead of playing her first season of organized hockey.
“A shirt is supposed to represent unity between people,” she said. “My daughter is all about culture and bringing people together with arts and sports. So being told to wear this or sit on the bench — you have to be kidding right?”
The girl and her family, who are Native American, “live in a grey area between two teams’ boundaries,” per the Herald. When they petitioned Hockey Calgary to allow the girl and her 5-year-old brother to play for the Bruins, another local program that uses a bear as its logo, the mother says the association refused because of their mailing address.
The Northwest Warriors’ logo was created when two other local teams, the Northwest Warriors and Crowchild Blackhawks, merged. They kept the team name from the former and the logo from the latter. This is the first complaint the program has ever received about the logo, according to its president, Bryan Boechler.
“The warrior is a revered figure in the First Nations heritage, so that’s the perspective we took in bringing our new name to the forefront,” Boechler told the Herald. He also said there are no plans to change the logo, although that could change if more parents complain.
This is the latest in what’s become an ongoing controversy surrounding logos like the ones used by the Northwest Warriors and the Chicago Blackhawks. The teams say that the logos honor and respect Native Americans, but they’re increasingly seen by fans as offensive and disrespectful.
Various proposed replacement logos for the Blackhawks have made the circles over the years. There have also been calls for change with other sports teams, including the NFL franchise in Washington, D.C., and the MLB’s Cleveland Indians.