Native Americans fear woke efforts by Kansas City Chiefs, Boy Scouts and Taylor Swift to erase heritage

Native American activists under attack via cancel culture say they hope to stop woke efforts today from obliterating wide swaths of United States heritage and history.  

The Kansas City Chiefs and the Boy Scouts of America both appear to be erasing traces of their Native American heritage, according to activists and to the evidence as well. 

Also, America’s most famous Chiefs fan right now, Taylor Swift, is being hailed by some as the great woke hope who can force the franchise to cave to charges of racism and end its "tomahawk chop" chant.

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Not in Our Honor, a Kansas City-based group, said it was "hopeful" that Swift would be an "ally" in their effort to force the team to end the tradition, according to media reports during the football season. 

The legacy of popular Kansas City, Missouri mayor and Arapaho tribal member Harold Roe "Chief" Bartle could be obliterated in the fallout. He is a foundational figure in the history of both the Chiefs and the Boy Scouts — at least until he’s canceled, American Indians fear. 

A young fan of the Kansas City Chiefs, Holden Armenta, waits for the start of Super Bowl LVIII between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Feb. 11, 2024 (TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)

"It's a woke firing squad looking to tear everything down by telling us that Native Americans and Americans need to be divided," social media influencer Maurice the Native Patriot (@lanativepatriot), a Swinomish Indian from Washington state, told Fox News Digital in an interview last week.

"It’s become popular to think that even seeing a Native American image is racist."

Bartle was mayor of Kansas City in the 1960s, when the AFL's Dallas Texans moved to town. The team was renamed in honor of his efforts to land the franchise, according to the team website and many other sources.

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Bartle also spent much of his life in the service of the Boy Scouts. He was a champion of civil rights, according to several biographies, as well as devoted to Native American heritage.

But his multicultural legacy is in jeopardy now as both the Chiefs and the Scouts are distancing themselves from their Native American roots. 

"This effort to divide us comes from the ‘hate-America’ Marxist crowd that wants to tear down tradition …"

"Native American history is American history," Tony Henson, the executive director of the Native American Guardians Association (NAGA), headquartered in North Dakota, told Fox News Digital.

"This effort to divide us comes from the ‘hate-America’ Marxist crowd that wants to tear down tradition and rebuild the United States in their own image," Henson said. 

Travis Kelce, No. 87 of the Kansas City Chiefs, and Taylor Swift embrace after the Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers in overtime during Super Bowl LVIII at Allegiant Stadium on Feb. 11, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Yet the Boy Scouts are "looking to remove all Native American aspects of the program," one Pennsylvania troop leader wrote in an e-mail obtained by Fox News Digital.

The troop is also said to be scrambling to create a new insignia to replace "a Native American chief/brave logo" that it's been using "for over 60 years" to meet what the letter claims is a new directive from the Boy Scouts of America. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the organization, which refuted those claims. "There is no national mandate from the BSA to remove all Native American imagery from the Scouting program," Scott Armstrong, national spokesperson for the Boy Scouts of America, told Fox News Digital in response.

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He said local Boy Scouts troops may have "misinterpreted" guidance about dialogue with local First Nations leaders. 

"The goal is proper respect, not removal," said Armstrong.

Target for years

The Kansas City Chiefs have been the target of woke outrage for years and demands to eradicate symbols of Native American identity. 

The team's recent success has elevated the attention. 

The Chiefs have banned "headdresses and face paint at the stadium on game day."

"Taylor Swift doesn’t do the chop. Be like Taylor," said a sign that the group Not in Our Honor used before the Super Bowl to protest the "tomahawk chop" chant popular among Chiefs fans. 

The franchise has made concessions to protesters in the past that appear to distance the team from its own Native American heritage. 

The Chiefs have banned "headdresses and face paint at the stadium on game day." They also "retired Warpaint" — a pinto horse mascot — according to the team website. 

The franchise also appears to be rewriting its own historical narrative, rejecting its roots to appease the cancel culture movement but upsetting pro-Native American activists in the process. 

A close-up of a Boy Scout uniform is photographed on Feb. 4, 2013, in Irving, Texas.  (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)

"The Kansas City Chiefs were named for H. Roe Bartle, the mayor of Kansas City in the early 1960s," the franchise claims in its online history, corroborated by many sources. 

"Nicknamed ‘Chief,’ Mayor Bartle was instrumental in attracting Lamar Hunt's American Football League franchise, the Dallas Texans, to Kansas City in 1963." 

The franchise then claims, however, that "the origin of the team's name has no affiliation with American Indian culture." 

They returned the friendship and welcomed him as one of their own. 

This claim, however, conflicts with almost every other Bartle biography and team history. It also disparages Native American tradition, some Indians argue.

Bartle was the top Boy Scout leader in Wyoming in the 1920s. During that time, he developed a deep admiration for local Native Americans. 

They returned the friendship and welcomed him as one of their own. 

"Bartle was inducted into the Northern Arapaho Tribe as a blood brother and was sponsored into it by a Chief named Lone Bear," Scouting historians David L. Eby and Paul Myers Jr. wrote in a biography of the beloved organizational leader.

Kansas City Chiefs fans do the Tomahawk Chop in the first quarter of an NFL game between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs on Oct. 16, 2022, at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri. (Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Bartle was Arapaho in the eyes of the tribe — no different than an immigrant to the United States becomes an American by taking the oath of citizenship, according to Maurice the Native Patriot and other sources. 

"There is no DNA testing to prove you’re a member of the tribe, just as there’s no DNA testing to prove you’re an American," he said. 

Cancel culture, the Swinomish native added, has forced Native Americans to feel they have to "show their papers" to prove their heritage in a way other Americans do not.

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Bartle went on to establish the Tribe of Mic-O-Say in Kansas City in 1925 to "blend the spirit and pride of the American Indian with the ideals and objectives of the Boy Scouts of America," states the group's website. 

"This effort to erase history and divide us is not where 90% of Americans are. This is not where 90% of Native Americans are."

The Tribe of Mic-O-Say is still in operation today, on the H. Roe Bartle Scout Reservation in Kansas City. 

The NFL franchise, however, now claims "no affiliation with American Indian culture" despite its namesake's acceptance by the Arapaho and his life and legacy promoting Native American heritage, originally recognized by the team. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the team several times for comment, and to Taylor Swift as well for comment. 

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, meanwhile, "claimed to be Native American and got away with it purely to advance her career," said Maurice the Native Patriot, noting a double standard in identity politics. (She later apologized to a group of Native Americans for her past claims of cultural heritage, saying she "listened," "learned," and was "sorry for the harm I have caused.")

Said Henson of the NAGA, "This effort to erase history and divide us is not where 90% of Americans are. This is not where 90% of Native Americans are."

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