Sports

Bills Backers and “The Chop” in Kansas City

J.C. Seneca & Dean Seneca Express Their Opinions Regarding the Chant & Chop

October 22, 2022 | By Michael J. Billoni | buffalorising.com

Of the thousands of Bills’ Backers who ventured to this Mid-Western city for the National Football League’s Game of the Year on Sunday between the Chiefs and Bills, I may have been the only one there for other reasons than the game.

In this article, Mr. Billoni talks about his visit to Kansas City and the tour he took with president Bob Kendrick.

On Saturday afternoon, Kendrick took him and others, including Buffalo’s Lamont Williams and his friends, on a two-hour tour of a museum, located at 18th and Vine in a complex that includes the city’s Jazz Museum.

Billoni writes “Leaving the museum, I was overwhelmed by Kendrick’s vivid description of the racism these great ballplayers dealt with during their careers and what they went through before MLB’s white owners allowed Jackie Robinson to break the color barrier and join the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

The feelings of what Kendrick and others are doing to break the racial divide in society today, through baseball and its museum in Kansas City, stuck with me. However, what I experienced the next day inside Arrowhead Stadium made me want to leave the stadium before the game even started because, for the first time, I heard and saw the Tomahawk Chop live.”

A long-time client of Billoni Associates is J.C. Seneca, founder, president and CEO of Tallchief Territory, home of Native Pride Truck Plaza on the Seneca Nation in Irving. J.C. is an amazing historian of his Native American and Seneca culture and through him and his family I have experienced the reverence around their healing circles, the mental challenges many on the nation deal with every day because of what their families endured with Native American Boarding Schools from the mid-17th century to the early 20th centuries with a primary objective of “civilizing” or assimilating Native American children and youth into Euro-American culture.

I get more disgusted with the more I learn about what occurred on Indian territories in Canada and United States regarding those schools, including those on Seneca land in Buffalo, Irving, and Salamanca.

Another area of stress among our Native American neighbors, and J.C. Seneca, are sports teams with Indian symbols as their nickname and brand. Leading the way of insults to them is the Tomahawk Chop, accompanied by its distinctive cheer.

“I find the entire chant and chop disgusting and insulting to all of our people,” Seneca said. “I know they have tried to have these brands changed in the past but maybe now it is time to call for the owners of these professional and college teams to follow what many high school, college and professional teams have done. A process needs to be started to change these brands.”

History shows the Chop, and “War Chant” began when Deion Sanders played football for the Florida State Seminoles in 1984. When the two-sport star joined MLB’s Atlanta Braves five years later, FSU fans in the stands would start the chop and “War Chant” when “Prime Time” would walk to the plate.

The Chop and Chant is currently being used by the Kansas City Chiefs, Atlanta Braves, Florida State University, and the Exeter Chiefs of the English Rugby League.

It has long been criticized by Native Americans as making fun of its culture and being a reference to the former practice of scalping. Tribes protested the Braves use of it prior to a 1991 World Series game in Minnesota. During the 2019 National League Division Series between Atlanta and St. Louis, Cards’ relief pitcher Ryan Helsey, a member of the Cherokee Nation, was asked about the chant and chop. “It depicts Native Americans as Cavemen-type people who are not intellectual,” he said.

That prompted the Braves not to hand out foam tomahawks, playing the chop music or showing chop graphics when the series returned for Game 5. The Braves promised to evaluate its practice after that series, and would continue discussions with the Native American community. Nothing changed and in July 2020, Atlanta faced mounting pressure after the Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins announced they were discussing brand changes. The Braves have announced no new name change.

In 2016, Native American groups asked the Chiefs to stop doing the chop and they also did the same for the Exeter Chiefs but to no avail. In late 2019, the editorial board of the Kansas City Star newspaper called for cessation of the “Arrowhead Chop,” noting opposition from Native American Tribes and stated the practice stereotypes and dehumanizes Native Americans. The Chiefs said they would continue discussions with Native Americans in the area.

The Kansas City Chiefs have largely escaped the hottest embers in the national debate over American Indian mascots and imagery in sports. Their name does not evoke a slur like the former Washington Redskins, and their mascot is not a red-faced caricature like Chief Wahoo of the former Cleveland Indians.

The Chiefs have tried to appease the Native American by discouraging fans from dressing in Indian regalia and asking broadcasters to refrain from panning to those who disregard the request. The team makes informative announcements about Native American history and tradition during some games, and a group of Natives hands out literature at the stadium. The team sometimes invites Native people to bless the drums that are ceremonially beaten before games. I did hear before Sunday’s game something about the drums being blessed by a Native American tribe.

The Chiefs have shown little appetite, however, for preventing their supporters from doing the chop.

Dean Seneca, CEO and Founder of Seneca Scientific Solutions+ and an Adjunct Professor at the University at Buffalo, said of the Tomahawk Chop and Chant at sporting events: “It’s a mockery to our Indian culture.”

Read the full article here: https://www.buffalorising.com/2022/10/bills-backers-and-the-chop-in-kansas-city/#disqus_thread