Wab Kinew, indigenous leader, says sports team name is a racial slur

Wab Kinew, a Winnipeg indigenous leader, says the name of a Morden, Man., hockey team is "defined in the dictionary as a racial slur," and he doesn't think it has any place in the public sphere.

Heather Francis, a Morden Manitoba city councillor, agrees with him.

"Merriam-Webster calls it 'usually offensive,' Cambridge calls it 'offensive' and 'dated,' and Oxford is the same. It's definitely a derogatory term," she said. "I think we need to change it."

Earlier this month she put a motion before Morden's city council, which would have seen the government send a letter to the team, asking them to change the name.

"I don't think anybody on the R-words hockey team is intending to offend anybody … but I think times have changed … and names and words have an impact," she said. "I'm not intending to provoke a fight."

• City councillor to ask Morden 'R-words' to change 'derogatory' name

The hockey club's president, Brent Meleck — who has been with the club since 1997 — said Francis's motion "is the first I've heard [that the name] is offensive to somebody around our community."

Meleck also said "it's funny, because I'm First Nations, and I don't think it's offensive at all."

But, according to Kinew, this isn't about "somebody in a position of power, like the president of a hockey team, or even somebody such as myself."

"This is about protecting someone less powerful and more vulnerable, like little kids on a school playground," he said. "What are the chances that they're going to be called the 'R-word' and feel good about it?" Kinew added.

He pointed out that the only time someone is going to be called the "R-word" is when they are being demeaned, "and so we should do what we can to make sure that kids, or other vulnerable people, are not called these names, and they're taken out of the public sphere."

But Kinew doesn't think all teams with names that reference indigenous culture or people should be treated the same way.

"A team like the Blackhawks, to me that's less offensive; that's named after a specific historic figure," he said.

Kinew added that in the case of this team, and its NFL namesake in Washington D.C., "this is a racial slur you're talking about, it's different."

According to Kinew, "you can say you value or support [indigenous people] all you want, but using a racial slur says otherwise."