By Dan Steinberg
Moseley was on NewsChannel 8’s “SportsTalk After the Game” with Alex Parker this week, and the one-time kicker was fired up.
“It’s come up before, and it’s the most ridiculous thing that you could ever have” Moseley said of the debate. “We just thought it would blow over. But this time it hasn’t blown over. They’ve managed to get to some people that have a voice, some people with a little power, and they’ve made it into something that it’s not. And so we decided as alumni that we were going to get out and find out for sure. I mean, we don’t want to do something that’s hurting somebody’s feelings or it’s not the right thing … so we decided to take it upon ourselves to find out.
“I personally grew up with the Alabama-Coushatta Indians down in Texas,” Moseley went on. “They were 10 minutes outside of town. So I’ve been around Indians all my life, and when I came to the Washington Redskins it was elation in the reservation. They loved the fact that I was playing for the Indians. They considered it an honor.
“And so we were really upset with the fact that they’re trying to tell us that all these years we’ve been playing under a name that was derogatory to someone,” he said. “We’ve interviewed over a thousand people. We’ve talked to over a thousand Indians. And not one, not even one has said anything about it being derogatory to them. I even went up to one of them face-to-face that I didn’t even know, and I asked him, I said point blank, ‘If I came up and I called you a Redskin would you be insulted?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely not, I take great pride in being an American Indian, being called a Redskin.’ So to me, it’s bogus.”
Later, Parker asked Moseley what he thought about the people who have said they are offended by the name.
“If it was Indians, then I would be concerned,” Moseley said. “But everyone that’s said anything to me has been a white man or a black man. No red men have said anything derogatory to me about it.”
No "red men" have said anything derogatory to Moseley? Well, then, the name can't be racist!
And your experiences 30 or 40 years ago when people hadn't begun to think about the issue? Totally relevant!
More Pinocchios for Redskins
Alas, Moseley's claims proved to be another in a long series of Redskins lies masquerading as Redskins facts.
Alabama-Coushatta Tribe responds to Mark Moseley, saying it does not support the Redskins name
By Dan Steinberg
“The Tribe and Tribal Members took great honor in the fact that Mr. [Moseley] played in the NFL, and he played in a time when the mascot debate was not an issue,” Tribal Council Chairman Ronnie Thomas said in a statement on Thursday. “Times have changed and the Tribe has not advocated for or against the use of the Washington mascot. The Tribe has more pressing demands such as providing our Tribal people adequate health care, higher educational opportunities, struggling with unemployment and preserving our culture. While Mr. Moseley once associated with the Tribe, it is incorrect to say that the Tribe supports his efforts to maintain the mascot name.”
The Tribe’s press release further says that the National Congress of American Indians and the United South and Eastern Tribes have both “been adamantly opposed to the Washington mascot name.” The release says that the Alabama-Coushatta “is a member tribe of both organizations and the Tribal Council supports the position that NCAI and USET has taken.”
Carlos Bullock, the tribal spokesman, wrote in an email that Moseley “did grow up in Livingston, which is where our Tribe has been settled since the late 1700s,” and that he went to school with some Tribal Members.
“But to say that the Tribe supports the Redskins name is false in this day and time,” Bullock wrote. “When Mr. Moseley played for the Redskins, the Tribe did take pride in the fact that a local guy made it to the pros, and at that time the mascot debate was not even considered an issue.”
Bullock wrote that the tribe as a whole has not taken a stand on the name issue, “due to the level of real life situations we face such as health care, unemployment, education for our young people, etc.”
But he added that the notion that the Tribe has no issues with the Redskins name “is simply untrue.”
Moseley didn't actually say the Alabama-Coushatta tribe supported the name, but he implied it. That implication was false; the truth is the exact opposite. As they have so often recently, the Redskins have lied about the widespread Native support for changing the name.
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