Supreme Court punts on Redskins case

The ongoing drive to purge derogatory American Indian nicknames and mascots from U.S. sports and schools took a minor hit Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined, without comment, to hear an appeal challenging the trademark protecting the name of the National Football League's Washington Redskins. Native groups, headed by Cherokee-Muskogee lawyer Suzan Shown Harjo, say the name is disparaging and propagates negative stereotypes regarding American Indians. Though they feel the court dropped the ball in this case, the effort to tackle such names, including the Redskins', will go on. "We do a lot of Supreme Court cases, and they decline a lot of them. The case isn't over," National Congress of American Indians' general counsel John Dosset told IPS Monday. The U.S. football team has held the controversial moniker since 1933, when the Boston Braves were renamed the Boston Redskins in honor of their Sioux head coach William "Lone Star" Dietz. The team moved to Washington, D.C., in 1937.