Native Americans Call on Buffalo, NY to Change Its “Racist” Name

Mark Beasley, a member of the Navajo Nation, has started a petition for Buffalo, NY to change its “racist and offensive” name. According to Beasley, he speaks for his “Native American colleagues.” Beasley writes in his petition that “Buffalo is the name of the animal that was driven almost to extinction by the non-Native forces in order to annihilate and drive out my ancestors from the American landscape.” Further, “Within only a few years from the beginning of the campaign, all Native nations were driven off their lands and into reservations, where we have prior and since been unduly subjugated and and [sic] exposed to genocidal horrors unimaginable to the rest of the world and throughout history.”
For these reasons, Beasley writes, Buffalo “should change their offensive and racist names containing the word “Buffalo.”” If the city does this, they will “End the use of racist and genocidal imagery and symbols toward Native Americans today” and “End the pain and denigration these symbols and images incite and the damage to the psyches of Native Americans everywhere.” On top of that, changing the name of Buffalo will “restore Native people’s dignity.”...more