Former Viking safety Joey Browner, who was just inducted into the team’s Ring of Honor last month, will be returning to the Metrodome Thursday for the Minnesota game against Washington.
According to the Pioneer Press, he will be joining the American Indian Movement’s march to the Dome to protest the use of “Redskins” as the team name.
“It should have been changed a long time ago,” Browner, who faced Washington four times during a career that ran from 1983-91, tells the paper, saying the team “is making multi billions” over a word that historically has to do with scalping Indians.
Browner reveals that he is “three-fourths indigenous,” with Polynesian and Cherokee on his mother’s side and Seminole and Blackfeet on his father’s.
He also has been on the AIM board for three years.
Truth to Tell has a primer on the name, and the recent groundswell for changing the name yet again, and also notes AIM’s leader, Clyde Bellecourt. The march to the Dome will start at the AIM offices about a mile away.
Browner, who is calling it a “conscience walk,” says times are different in the NFL now, and that even President Obama has joined the discussion.
The St. Cloud Times reports that Browner will join Bellecourt and U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum of St. Paul at a race and sports symposium at the University of Minnesota’s Coffman Union Tuesday afternoon.
“I want to show that I’m indigenous and I want to show a conscious awareness to the world,” Browner tells the PiPress. “We need to change the imagery presented to our children.”
