Report: Arizona Tribe Refused Redskins' "Bribe" To Build Skate Park

As first noticed by Dan Steinberg, a release from a Native advocacy group claims that representatives from Dan Snyder's Original Americans Foundation met with an Arizona tribe yesterday to offer a donation to help build a skate park, an offer that was unreservedly rejected as "bribe money."

From Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry:

On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 representatives from Washington Redsk*ns owner Dan Snyder's foundation Original Americans Foundation met with the Fort Yuma Quechan (Kwatsan) Tribe today to offer them a blank check to build a memorial skate park. They even brought a park designer with them with renderings of the skate park in burgundy and gold. Tribal representatives refused the offer.

Tribal member Kenrick Escalanti, whose organization Kwatsan Media, Inc. is raising $250,000 to build The Quechan Memorial Skatepark was invited to present the funding needs for the project which seeks to help fight Native youth suicide said, "We say, no. There are no questions about this. We will not align ourselves with an organization to simply become a statistic in their fight for name acceptance in Native communities. We're stronger than that and we know bribe money when we see it."

According to the release, tribal members were repeatedly assured by OAF representatives that accepting the donation would not require or imply support of Washington's team name. Though it is curious to note that foundation representatives brought their own design for a burgundy-and-gold skate park, coloring that doesn't appear in the tribe's own proposed rendering.

[ EONM, via KSK]