Aboriginal student leader calls for public apology and condemnation of Redskins name as a racial slur after GBC ad airs during game
Brad Gallant, a Qalipu Mi’Kmaq man who lives in Mississauga, has filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario against George Brown College (GBC) after an ad for the college aired on Sportsnet during a game by the Washington NFL team on Dec. 26.
When he saw that George Brown was among the advertisers during the game, “honest to God, I almost threw up.”
In his application to the tribunal Gallant wrote, “Redskins is a slur and discriminatory against indigenous, First Nations, and Native Peoples. When GBC aligned itself with a Redskins broadcast it gave its institutional sanction to lesser treatment of First Nations people.”
The application was filed on Feb. 2 but has yet to be processed. The claims in it have not been proven.
“All I want in an apology is ‘we shouldn’t have done it, we’re not going to do it again, and we’re going to make sure that we’re not going do it again’,” said Gallant. “Because having George Brown say it was wrong will make other sponsors reconsider. And if you cut the money from the NFL that’s how you’re going to stop it, because money talks and bullshit walks.”
Coty Zachariah, the Student Association of GBC’s First Nations, Métis and Inuit constituency representative, is backing the call for a public apology. The Student Association also funds The Dialog.
“Every day the ‘Redskins’ continue to use that slur is an offense. While GBC may not have been able to foresee their ad playing during a Washington game, it did. A public apology and condemnation of the ‘Redskins’ name to the college community is not too much to ask and would show GBC’s support of the indigenous community,” said Zachariah.
Karen Thomson, GBC’s vice president of marketing and strategic enrollment management, disagrees an apology is needed stating that they are not responsible for the ad airing during the game as they had no prior knowledge of what teams would be playing.
“There’s nothing for us to apologize for in terms of our behavior,” said Thomson adding that the college regrets the occurrence and has asked its ad agency to alert them if another “poor context” like this should arise in the future so they can try and adjust their ad buy.
“I think it’s unfortunate that this is happening but I think it’s an opportunity for us to grow and make things better in the future,” said Lori Budge, an aboriginal students counsellor at GBC.
Thomson said that the college purchases a block of time on a network in a particular genre, such as football. The network then decides what will broadcast and neither the college or the ad agency knows the details of the program it will be broadcast on.
Thomson said that this wasn’t a mistake that could have been prevented and likened Gallant’s complaint to “killing a mosquito with an elephant.”
“I would suggest that Mr. Gallant pursue the sports companies themselves, because I do think that there needs to be a change, and I think that if he was targeted in his efforts that’s where he’s going to be able to influence the change,” said Thomson.
There has been a long campaign to change the Washington NFL team’s name. In 2013, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, representing 85 civil rights organizations in the United States, unanimously passed a resolution calling on the team to change its name. There have also been regular protests at the team’s games.
“We’ll never change the name,” said Washington’s owner Daniel Snyder in a 2013 interview with USA Today. “It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps.”
“There’s been a raging debate in the United States about it and on May 22, 2014 half the US Senate urged the NFL commissioner to change the name and it’s still not changed,” said Budge, who supports Zachariah’s call for an apology. “The only headway we’ve made is when major advertisers pulled money from both the team and the league during those games.”
