The Patriot Post® · Native Americans Move Right

In recent years, there’s been a big push from the Left to atone for historical injustices done to Native Americans.

Even though those Native Americans fought bloody battles against one another for centuries over territory, resources, and tribal differences, many Americans have been conditioned to feel guilty about living on “stolen land.” It’s even trendy these days for public figures or members of a town council or civic organization to open proceedings by apologizing or reminding us that long before running water, electricity, medicine, civil government, equality, liberty, and other evils of Western civilization, native peoples roamed the lands we now call home.

Recently, pop star Taylor Swift opened a Toronto concert by letting everyone know they were standing on land the British had purchased from natives in 1805. The virtue-signaling made Swift feel better, but it’s doubtful any folks in the crowd went home that day and put their homes on the market.

In recent years, various groups have forced the Cleveland Indians, the Washington Redskins, and numerous other sports teams to change their names. They’ve also taken the Indian girl off the Land O’ Lakes butter packaging, and they continue to wage an all-out war on Thanksgiving.

And forget about Columbus Day. It’s now Indigenous People’s Day.

Many Americans may think Native Americans are the driving force behind all these changes and demands, but they’re not. It’s white progressives who now carry the burden while these native peoples have moved on with their lives.

White leftists tried for years to force sports teams in college and the pros to abandon Native American names and mascots, even though the living descendants of these very people weren’t bothered in the least. In fact, the Redskins and the Indians were both named to honor Native Americans despite claims by progressives that Americans are inherently racist.

Don’t tell that to the Blackfeet. Earlier this year, the family of Blackfeet Nation member John Two Guns White Calf, whose image inspired the Indian logo on the Redskins helmet, announced that they want it returned to the franchise.

As NewsNation reports, “The original logo was designed by a member of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana in the early ‘70s, causing some to take pride in not only the depiction but the man who helped design it — Walter 'Blackie’ Wetzel, a former Blackfeet Nation tribal chairman and former president of the National Congress of the American Indian, the country’s oldest Native American and Alaska Native advocacy organization.”

Last year, the New York Post reported that the Native American Guardians Association gathered more than 90,000 signatures asking for the Washington Commanders to restore the Redskins name.

In the minds of left-wing cultural activists, if anyone in America represents the worst of whiteness and Western culture, it’s Donald Trump. They assume when Native Americans look into Trump’s eyes, they’re reminded of westward expansion and the Trail of Tears. Yet, a whopping 65% of them voted for the so-called dictator with orange skin.

Scott Pinsker at PJ Media writes, “The human mind struggles to comprehend data that’s contrary to our worldview. What happened on Election Day was directly, 100% antithetical to their ‘1619 Project’ narrative of American history: Whatever happened, the answer is always, always, ALWAYS racism. No exceptions, no excuses.”

Pinsker adds that the Left is “utterly incapable of wrapping their brains around the fact that the most discriminated, abused, neglected, and disadvantaged ethnic group in American history voted for Trump in larger numbers than the ‘privileged’ white voters!”

Like black and Hispanic Americans, native peoples have loyally voted Democrat for decades. But it took a billionaire from New York to shatter their notions about Democrats. Native communities experience some of the highest unemployment in the country, and changing the name of a football team isn’t helping them pay their bills or put food on the table.

“Trump’s late September announcement that he would sign legislation granting the Lumbee Tribe full federal recognition is just one example of GOP outreach to the community,” writes Jessica Towhey at the New Hampshire Journal.

For too long, Democrats asked Native Americans and others to put their real-world concerns aside while guilt-addled leftists tore down statues, renamed schools, and pressured companies to remove Native American likenesses from their products. That strategy is beginning to backfire.

As Naomi Schaefer Riley writes in City Journal, “Ongoing apologies about historical wrongs that whites committed against them don’t seem to have resonated as Democrats had expected — much in the same way that reparations appeals have failed to move many black voters.”

Republicans have a long way to go to win the trust of voters who’ve become disenchanted with the false promises of the Left, but the shift to the right by Native Americans is indeed an encouraging sign.