The Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League will reportedly change their name. TSN and Postmedia reported that the team will make the switch. Soon after the Washington Post reported that this was true.
This comes following a decision to do the same by Washington of the NFL. The team hinted a change is coming when they released a statement indicating they would review the name of the club.
“We acknowledge and appreciate the feedback and input regarding our name,” the team said in a statement
“We take this issue seriously as has been demonstrated by the three years we’ve spent engaging in Canada’s north and conducting research related to our name.”
“We recognize that a lot has occurred since this information was gathered, and as a result, we are accelerating our ongoing process of review. We will be seeking further input from the Inuit, our partners and other stakeholders to inform our decisions moving forward.”
“We’ll continue to listen carefully and with an open mind. We intend to complete our review as quickly as possible and will provide an update on these discussions by the end of this month.”
Teams across sports have been under increasing pressure to drop racist or stereotypical names. The CFL has postponed the start of its 2020 season due to the coronavirus pandemic. There is no guarantee the league will play this year.
Although American Inuit continue to use the word Eskimo, Canada’s northern people left that name behind about the same time they began negotiating their land claim in the 1970s.
Information and media used in this article is from the Edmonton Eskimos. For more sports, news and information follow the Midwest Sports Network on Twitter @MWSNsports or like the MWSN page on Facebook.
