Isn’t there a more meaningful way to honor Native Americans?

Among my guilty passions during COVID-19 has been binging on audio books and cable network series. On long walks, I took the detailed and convoluted novel, “The Goldfinch,” along and couldn’t wait to see how they made a full-length movie without it lasting almost four hours like “The Irishman.” After watching it, they did a pretty good job.

“Outlander,” the gripping, erotic and violent time-travel thriller over five so-called seasons to this point shined some new light on the ages-old Washington Redskins controversy that has apparently reached a new milepost with the NFL franchise shucking the nearly 90-year-old moniker for a yet-to-be-announced new nickname.

In the “Outlander” portrayal of the 18th Century, everyone is out to kill everyone else — from proud Scottish highlanders to the arrogant British red coats to the smugglers and pirates to the Native Americans who, in my opinion, have the biggest beef. Wasn’t this land their land when Columbus arrived and before the British colonists were defeated by the revolutionary settlers who wanted to govern their own country?

I don’t really know how and when the NFL Redskins protest started, but today it remains part of our racist subculture, even though the world champion Kansas City Chiefs seem to get away with it.

The Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians in baseball, the Chicago Black Hawks in hockey and pro basketball teams along the way have faced renaming movements, although the Golden State, nee San Francisco, Warriors have not been forced to change thus far.

Among colleges, Stanford is one of more than a dozen schools once known as the Indians, St. John’s changed from Red Men to Red Storm and several schools went away from Braves and Chiefs in their nicknames. Florida State has kept its Tomahawk Chop and legendary sobriquet through an agreement with the Seminole Tribes of Florida.

I like what the Supreme Court did last week by returning much of eastern Oklahoma to true natives who were there first. Indeed, if all the disenfranchised were treated better, it might be a different world today.

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