Blackfeet Chief John Two Guns White Calf was the warrior face of the NFL’s Washington Redskins for 48 years.
Then his heroic life story, his proud portrait, and the team’s native identity were erased from American history in 2020, following a relentless and politically orchestrated seven-year cancel-culture assault by mainstream media.
Two Guns White Calf now is collateral damage in the woke cancel-culture war on America’s multicultural heritage. He was wiped from the US history books by the very same group that purports to defend native dignity.
White Calf’s family now has a message for the owner of the Washington, D.C., pro football franchise.
“We want to meet face to face with Josh Harris and tell him our side of the story,” family spokesman Thomas White Calf said in an exclusive interview with Blaze News.
“We want the Redskins back in the NFL, and we want the image of Two Guns back with the Redskins. We want to share with Harris the true history of the Redskins and the heroic life of Two Guns White Calf.”
The NFL franchise did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
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Thomas, Delphine, and Shawn White CalfKerry J. Byrne
The Redskins were renamed the Commanders in 2022, a year before Harris’ investment group bought the franchise. He inherited a public relations nightmare. Many fans, perhaps a majority, still call the team the Redskins. Its current image is unpopular. The Commanders ranked 29th out of 32 NFL teams in merchandise sales in 2024, according to a FinanceBuzz annual study.
And the White Calf family has been making rounds in D.C. for the first time this year, meeting with lawmakers such as Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and sharing their story with Redskins fans.
“I wanted to have the blessing of the family, to see if they’re OK with the name and logo, and now I have it,” said Redskins fan Jonathan Lynch after meeting the White Calfs in the shadows of the U.S. Capitol in May.
‘We’ve been silenced long enough.’
Two Guns White Calf was one of the most famous Americans of his era. He fought to preserve native heritage and defend tribal treaties from the Blackfeet Nation of Montana to the halls of power in Washington, D.C. His death in 1934 was front-page news coast to coast.
The New York Times obituary lauded Two Guns White Calf as an American “dignitary” who made President Coolidge a member of the Blackfeet Nation and who gained fame as the model for the U.S. Mint’s iconic 1913 Indian Head nickel.
Two Guns White Calf became the face of the Redskins franchise in 1972, at the behest of leaders of the Blackfeet Nation and with support from Native Americans around the country.
Two Guns White Calf now is collateral damage in the woke cancel-culture war on America’s multicultural heritage. He was wiped from the U.S. history books by the very same group that purports to defend native dignity: the far-left, Soros-funded National Congress of American Indians, a powerful D.C.-insider organization with deep ties to the Democratic Party.
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Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Media outrage against the Redskins erupted with sudden ferocity in October 2013. Significant evidence indicates that it was orchestrated by the NCAI. The elite unit of cancel-culture assassins claims responsibility for erasing more than 2,000 native names and images from public display across the United States. The Redskins are the group’s trophy kill.
The NCAI put Two Guns White Calf in its crosshairs in October 2013.
President Obama became the first chief executive to publicly criticize the Redskins on October 5. Just days later, the NCAI issued an inflammatory, racially charged 29-page manifesto titled “Ending the Legacy of Racism in Sports & the Era of Harmful ‘Indian’ Mascots.”
The report was heavy on incendiary accusations but light on actual evidence. It claimed the face of Two Guns White Calf was responsible for social decay, even suicide, in native communities, and that “the term ‘Redsk*ns’ is associated with the barbaric practice of scalping.”
Mainstream media appeared to take the NCAI missive as marching orders. The Associated Press, NBC Sports, New York Times, and Sports Illustrated, among others, released scathing attacks on the Redskins in the days that followed, each dutifully parroting the dubious NCAI narrative.
NYT columnist William Rhoden wrote a shocking hit piece on October 12 that branded then-Redskins owner Dan Snyder a racist, comparing him to notorious segregationist Democrat and four-time presidential candidate George Wallace (who vied for the party presidential nod as recently as the 1976 Democratic National Convention against Jimmy Carter).
NBC Sports blowhard Bob Costas added fuel to the inferno the following night.
“’Redskins’ can’t possibly honor a heritage or a noble character trait,” Costas seethed in a “Sunday Night Football” halftime rant on October 13. “It is an insult, a slur, no matter how benign the present-day intent.”
The Redskins and team owner Snyder were suddenly tainted as racists in the public sphere, days after Obama’s opening blast, by journalists peddling an NCAI fictional account of “redskins” etymology debunked by ample scholarship.
It’s as if the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame wrote a report on the legacy of Rolling Stones lead singers and forgot to mention Mick Jagger.
“The word ‘redskin’ reflects a genuine Native American idiom,” Smithsonian Institution senior linguist the late Ives Goddard wrote in 2005. He called the media narrative “fictional” in a letter sent four years later to the Washington Post. Editors deleted the world “fictional” before publishing the letter, Goddard claimed in a 2013 interview with Slate.
The Associated Press rigged the narrative, too.
“No consensus among Indians on ‘Redskins’ team name,” screamed an AP headline in a far-reaching wire story on October 8, three days after Obama’s critique.
The headline told a lie. The truth was buried in the very same story.
“In the only recent poll to ask native people about the subject, 90% of respondents did not consider the term offensive,” reporter Jesse Washington revealed far below the impactful headline in paragraph six, citing a 2004 Annenberg poll.
The AP headline suggested a Native American community torn apart over the Redskins issue. The only data the AP reported revealed a community united by overwhelming consensus.
The Washington Post conducted a similar poll of native opinion in 2016. Same result: 90% of Native Americans had no problem with the Redskins name or image.
Big-city white media elitist Bob Costas called “redskins” an “insult” and “a slur.” Nine out of 10 Native Americans disagreed.
The NCAI never offered polling data in its October 2013 media directive or in any public statements before or since. It’s obvious why. The mainstream media treats the NCAI as the sole voice of the American Indian. But its woke agenda contradicts the overwhelming opinion of American Indians.
Proof of the NCAI’s deceit is found in the October 2013 media missive. The 29-page report is devoted entirely to two topics: Native American sports logos and the history of the Washington Redskins.
Photo of John Two Guns White Calf courtesy of White Calf family
Two Guns White Calf served as the face of the Redskins for 48 years, one of the most familiar sports logos in the U.S., for more than half the organization’s 95-year history.
Yet the NCAI report somehow forgot to mention the name of the Blackfeet hero at the very center of the entire controversy. The most celebrated American Indian since Sitting Bull was erased from history by the National Congress of American Indians.
It’s as if the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame wrote a report on the legacy of Rolling Stones lead singers and forgot to mention Mick Jagger.
The media followed the NCAI lead. The name John Two Guns White Calf never appeared in any of the thousands of media stories bashing the Redskins that followed from 2013 to 2020. Costas and NBC Sports never mentioned him. Rhoden and the NYT never mentioned him. The AP never mentioned him. ESPN never mentioned him. The hometown WaPo never mentioned him.
“In the rush to erase a supposed stereotype, American media erased a real native man — Two Guns White Calf,” Native American scholar Andre Billeaudeaux, author of “How the Redskins Got Their Name,” told Blaze News.
The NCAI did dirtier than erase Two Guns White Calf from American history. It dehumanized him. The NCAI labeled the proud portrait of the most famous Indian of his era a “savage and clownish caricature.”
It did so with brazen audacity. The entire time the NCAI was at war with the image of Two Guns White Calf, Chief Illiniwek of the University of Illinois, the Fighting Sioux of North Dakota, and so many others, it represented itself with a cartoonish caricature far more “savage and clownish” than any of those it attacked.
To this day, visitors at NCAI headquarters in Washington, D.C., wipe their dirty shoes on a floor mat featuring the cartoon-clown native image of its organizational logo.
The White Calf family has suffered in the same anonymity, ignored by the NFL, the NCAI, mainstream media, and the Washington, D.C., pro football franchise.
“We’ve been silenced long enough,” Thomas White Calf told Blaze News. “We’re proud of Two Guns. The Blackfeet Nation is proud of Two Guns. We want to meet with Mr. Harris to tell him why.”
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Washington redskins, Woke agenda, Indians, Native american, Politics
