Chicago Blackhawks name and logo controversy
[2] The National Congress of American Indians,[3] the American Indian Center of Chicago, The Chi-Nations Youth Council, and over 1,500 Native organizations and advocates from over 150 federally recognized tribes across the country, including some members of the Sac and Fox Nation, support changing the team name and logo.
[14] Chicago is home to the third largest Urban Indian population in the United States with 65,000 Native Americans in the Greater Chicagoland area with over 175 tribes represented.
[15] The team still maintains a collaborative partnership with Chief Black Hawk's Sac and Fox Nation tribe.
Opponents of the logo say that adoption of his name for the 86th Infantry, the hockey team, and later for the Blackhawk helicopter are an example of designating certain Native Americans as "worthy adversaries.
[25] In 1832, Black Hawk led an armed party of Sacs, Meskwakis (Foxes), Kickapoos, Ho-Chunk (Winnebagoes), and Potawatomis into his occupied homelands.
[36] Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee), who was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom for decades of American Indian advocacy, including leading a lawsuit against Washington’s football team[37] and restoring over 1 million acres of Indigenous land back,[38] and is President of the Morning Star Institute and former Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians,[39][40] says the Blackhawks have escaped the scrutiny given to other teams using Native imagery because hockey is not a cultural force on the level of football or baseball.
[41] In 2010, sports columnist Damien Cox called on the franchise to retire the "racially insensitive" logo, saying that: "Clearly, no right-thinking person would name a team after an aboriginal figure these days any more than they would use Muslims or Africans or Chinese or any ethnic group to depict a specific sporting notion.
"[43] In 2015, Mark Chipman, chairman of True North Sports & Entertainment, the owner of the NHL's Winnipeg Jets, decided to ban fake Native headdresses at games after meeting with First Nations leaders.
Living in Chicago, we are constantly bombarded with the Blackhawks logo, which represents the city's professional ice hockey team.
"[45] In 2024, in an interview with CBS, one of Black Hawk's lineal descendants, April Holder (Sauk and Fox, Wichita, Tonkawa), spoke out against the Chicago Blackhawks, calling on the team to stop use of its name and logo and to stop profiting off of her ancestor's identity and legacy.
In 2013, Scott Sypolt, Executive Counsel for the American Indian Center weighed in on the logo and name controversy by stating, "There is a consensus among us that there's a huge distinction between a sports team called the Redskins depicting native people as red, screaming, ignorant savages and a group like the Blackhawks honoring Black Hawk, a true Illinois historical figure.
"[47] However, this stance is markedly different from the one previously taken by the American Indian Center, with the shift coming only in the past few years after other, more offensive mascots were successfully retired.
"[48] John Blackhawk, Chairman of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, has suggested that the change in position for the AIC may be connected to contributions the Blackhawks organization has recently begun making to the center: "We all do contributions, but we don't do it for the sake of wanting to be forgiven for something we've done that's offensive.
The AIC noted in its statement that they "previously held a relationship with the Chicago Blackhawks Foundation with the intention of educating the general public about American Indians and the use of logos and mascots.
[50] However, the team did agree to ban Native American headdresses at home games held in the United Center in recognition of being sacred symbols.
"As statues of invaders, slave holders, and white supremacists fall across the nation so too should the images and language of the savage and dead 'Indians'."
CNYC also noted "As social consciousness has grown over the past decades so has the Blackhawks performative gestures of buying their reprieve from those willing to sell out the health and humanity of our future generations.
"[14] Their website states that they are working on "educating our staff, fans and local community on the history of Black Hawk and original peoples of Illinois, as well as on Native American contributions to today's society.
"[14] As of 2025, the team still maintains a partnership with Chief Black Hawk's Sac and Fox Nation tribe.
[16][17] The partnership involves collaboration on various issues, including land acknowledgement, grant programs, collaborative exhibits and installations, language preservation projects, game day materials, resources invested in identifying future opportunities and ways to ensure transparency between both parties.
