The Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League have decided to rename the team and an announcement to that effect might come as soon as next week.
The news comes only days after the NFL's Washington Redskins would change their name. Much like the Redskins, the Eskimos name change has come to pass due to pressure from sponsors rather than from Indigenous communities.
The Eskimos have won 14 Grey Cups (most recently in 2015), the second most in CFL history only behind the Toronto Argonauts with 17. I remember the Eskimos during their heyday in the late '70's and early '80's when they won five consecutive Grey Cups led by the quarterback tandem of Warren Moon and Tom Wilkinson.
Now it is true that the term "Eskimo" has some derogatory connotations and I can remember in grade school being taught to refer to Indigenous communities in Northern Canada as Innuit, Innu or Inuk. But as I recently argued the Redskins (and possibly MLB's Cleveland Indians) changing team names isn't going to improve the lives of Native Americans and renaming the Eskimos isn't going to improve the lives of the Inuk. Indeed, in a November 2017 CBC news item on the subject, several Inuk communiity members in both the Northwest Territories and in Nunavut have no objection to the Eskimo name and would prefer politicians would focus on addressing on more urgent matters like food insecurity, housing and suicide.
Changing the name of a football team over a 1000 miles (not to mention kilometers) away isn't going to help the Inuk one iota. But I'm sure it will make a lot of corporations feel a lot better about themselves.
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