LISTEN: Scholar urges Eskimos to make a name change

By Windspeaker.com Staff
With files from Dustin McGladrey of CFWE-FM

Inuit scholar and writer Norma Dunning has waded into the debate over the term “Eskimos”, the name attached long ago to Edmonton’s Canadian Football League team. Edmonton was dispatched into to losers’ column yesterday by the Calgary Stampeders, who now advance to compete for the Grey Cup on Nov. 26 in Ottawa.

Dunning believes the Edmonton team’s name should also be dispatched.

“It’s time for Edmonton to make that change and to be pro-active,” she said. Dunning joins a growing chorus of people who want the name of the team changed, including Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman, who publicly commented about the issue before the Western semifinal playoff game with his city’s Blue Bombers earlier this month.

There is a powerful movement in North America to pressure sports teams using names that many Indigenous people find offensive, including the name “Redskins” of the NFL’s Washington team.

“When we have people who are talking that the term is not offensive, or isn’t doing any harm, that’s an example of how the grand narrative of Canadian history has been indoctrinated into our population, and what is missing there is the Aboriginal history that lives within this country.”

 The term Eskimo is a derivative of ‘eaters of raw meat’ and, as far as Dunning is concerned, alludes to people of ‘low intelligence’ who did not have the ability to make fire, uncivilized.

“It’s not a word that was ever in use by Inuit people and it is not how we described one another,” she said.

The word comes from Danish anthropologists, and became popularized as a term to describe Northern people.

When the Edmonton team adopted the name it was a time of disparity between mainstream settler society and the Indigenous people who were forcibly colonized. It was not only chosen to represent a football team, but also baseball and hockey teams as well, Dunning said.

“That name, “Edmonton Eskimos”, has been in use in Edmonton for well over 100 years over three different sports.

What I hear often is people who are uninformed or misinformed and it should be changed. It’s a term that we the people, the Inuit, do not use.

“Please make the change,” she said.