The Edmonton-based CFL team will no longer be called “Eskimos” after years of the Inuit community in Canada calling for the name to be changed.
The decision, announced by the team’s board of directors, comes after a review by the team and after it twice said this year that it was keeping the name, which has been associated with Edmonton sports teams since the 19th century.
George Floyd’s death while in Minneapolis police custody in May caused a surge of protests seeking to end racial and social injustice around the world. This led to a renewed look at some of the team names in North American sports and eventually led the Washington NFL team to drop the name “Redskins” and the Cleveland MLB team to say it would review its use of the name “Indians.”
But the spotlight has been on Edmonton’s team name in the past. In 2015, days before the club defeated the Ottawa Redblacks to win its most recent Grey Cup, Natan Obed, the president of Canada’s national Inuit organization, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, made headlines when he called for the name to be changed.
“It isn’t right for any team to be named after an ethnic group,” Obed said, according to The Edmonton Sun. “This is part of the past. It isn’t part of the present and shouldn’t be part of the future.”
The Edmonton CFL team announced in February that it would be keeping the name “Eskimos” after a year-long review which included discussions with Inuit leaders.
“We heard a wide range of views, ranging from individuals within the Inuit community who were very supportive of the name, and some (who) weren’t as supportive,” Agrios said at the time. “What we did consistently hear was a desire for more engagement with the club.”
On July 3 the team said again that it wouldn’t be making a name change, citing the same research it did in February. However, only hours after that announcement, the club put out a second statement saying that because of “increased attention to the name recently” it would “ramp up our ongoing engagement with the Inuit communities to assess their views.” Days later, after insurance provider Belairdirect said it would no longer sponsor the team without a name change, the club said it would speed up its review and have a decision by the end of the month.
The current Edmonton CFL team was founded in 1949 under the name “Eskimos” and has won 14 Grey Cups in the modern CFL era since 1954.
The origins of the word Eskimo are unclear but people living in Canada’s north have distanced themselves from the word since the 1970s as they attempted to regain possession of their ancestral lands. Some historians believe the word comes from the Algonquin term meaning “eaters of raw meat” while others say it comes from another aboriginal term that refers to people wearing snowshoes.
The people in Canada’s north have used the word Inuit to define themseleves for centuries. It means “the people” in Inuktut.
With files from The Canadian Press.
