This season the Sounders made two moves in the right direction. It is inarguable, however, that we can and should do more than we are to recognize, promote, and support Native American communities and cultures in the region. Tourists flock to places like Blake Island for a taste of traditional culture.
We drive on and through reservation land on our way to and from just about everywhere in the Northwest. Businesses use Native American iconography in their logos. The state ferries are all named after local tribes. The Seattle area specifically and the Pacific Northwest, in general, has at least acknowledged the region’s Native American heritage, even if it goes mostly unnoticed by most of us on a day-to-day basis. Stick with me as we unpack this and try to keep it all connected. You may be wondering what this has to do with soccer generally and more specifically what it has to do with the Sounders. The slow, plodding progress being made through things like the elimination of racist mascots can not ever make up for the brutal history of colonialism.
Let’s be honest, if you’re reading this in North America, you’re sitting on what was once land Indigenous Americans called home before European settlement, warfare, and treaties forced them from their land onto reservations, a catastrophe few of us were ever fully taught, and a historical transgression that can never be made right. If you’re reading this pretty much anywhere in the Seattle area, you’re sitting on Native land.
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