Tom Benjey's Weblog

Daines continues to fight for reinstatement of the Redskins logo honoring John “Two Guns” White Calf but the team’s current owner, Josh Harris, is firm in his position abut not changing the team’s name back.

On Saturday, Mary Papenfuss included the following in an article she wrote for The Independent web site:

“The decision to change the name and mascot came after years of organizing from Native communities and allies, and billions of dollars from investors in the ‘Change The Name’ movement. Going back on this commitment should be a non-starter,” Angel Charley, executive director of IllumiNative, said in a statement.

One word jumped out at me when I read it, so I put it in boldface type so readers couldn’t miss it. I didn’t make this up. Activists spent billions, meaning not just millions but multiple billions, of dollars getting the Redskins name changed.

Three questions come quickly to mind:

1. Where did these billions of dollars come from?
2. Where did these billions of dollars go?
3. What else could these billions of dollars have been used for?

IllumiNative.org, the website for Angel Charley, describes the organization thusly: “IllumiNative is a Native woman-led racial and social justice organization dedicated to increasing the visibility of—and challenging the narrative about—Native peoples.”

The 2023 Form 990 states the income that year as $2,126,490, coming almost entirely from two unnamed individuals. $5,000 came from a third unnamed individual. The 2023 return was for a partial year because the organization was formed in 2023. Obviously Angel Charley could not have been at this organization very long due to it’s having been in existence only a short time. She was with Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women the previous seven years. It was probably at her previous position where the billions of dollars were raised to get an NFL team to change its name and logo. But this doesn’t tell us where the money came from.

A September 7, 2023 article by Kerry J. Byrne of Fox News identified the likely source of the billions in funding. The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) had lobbied for decades to erase the Redskins name for decades. He claimed they bragged about their work “fostering a proactive partnership” with the team. Could that mean threatening the team if they didn’t bend to NCAI’s wished?

But where did the NCAI get the billions in funding Angel Charley claimed had been spent in this campaign. One need look no further than George Soros and his Open Society Foundations. He has hundreds of billions of dollars available to use toward changing society in the way he wants. One recent example is the number of attorneys general and district attorneys he got elected by funding their campaigns. The result of that has been the crime waves experienced in the jurisdictions the electees control. Soros isn’t NCAI’s only funder. Their website lists seven federal government agencies and five tax-exempt foundations which give them taxpayers’ money.

We now know Angel Charley’s claim was probably accurate but what was the money spent on?