I think the argument about the Redskins name, or as Tuesday Morning Quarterback used to prefer, the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Peoples, has a side Ms. Harjo and you haven’t addressed. She and her fellow plaintiffs do not necessarily represent a monolithic consensus about the offensiveness of the name. While here in Washington we obsess about the political correctness of racially charged names and stereotypes, some native Americans have embraced them.
If you leave the self-absorbed National Capitol, and travel to Navajoland in northeastern Arizona, you might run across Red Mesa High School, with the team name of Redskins. This is a sparsely populated area and like many Indian reservations has lots of poverty and not many opportunities.
If Dan Snyder really wants to solve his problems with the Redskins name, he should resist his initial impulse to try to extort licensing fees out of the school, but should follow his other modus operandi and buy his way out of trouble. He should donate a million dollars a year to a scholarship program for schools on reservations. This money could provide additional funding for school physical plant and programs (including athletics), support families of students to keep them in school through high school graduation, and then to attend whatever college they can get in. If Mr. Snyder really loves the Redskins name, he should have no problem donating the money he makes from licensing it to such a worthy cause.
