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| Anita Mankiller, who claimed Cherokee and Chickasaw blood, protests outside the offices of the Dead Cherokees Thursday morning. |
By Ariel Mutha-Tafoya
FSN Sports
For a second straight day, protesters — Native American groups among them— besieged the Sylvan Park headquarters of the NFFA Dead Cherokees, demanding that the team change its name, which has been denounced on all seven continents as racist.
Beginning early Thursday morning, a few hundred people gathered in front of the team’s offices on Charlotte Avenue, beating drums and chanting, “Hey hey, ho-ho, Dead Cherokees have got to go!” and “Wound the knees of Dead Cherokees!” One woman, who identified herself as part Cherokee and part Chickasaw, held a sign that read, “I am a descendant of warriors who survived genocide. I am not a mascot.”
By 11 a.m., as word spread via social media, the crowd had grown to more than 5,000, blocking Charlotte Avenue completely, and had turned destructive, toppling a larger-than-life statue of owner Mark Wollaeger outside the team’s office.
Shortly afterward, a group of counter-demonstrators, who included bikers dressed in paramilitary uniforms, arrived and began shouting, “Long live Dead Cherokees!” and moving their arms in the so-called “tomahawk chop.” Police in riot gear formed a barrier between the two groups, who continued to shout taunts at each other.
Among the protesters was ex-Chicago Bears star Richard Dent, who happened to be in NashVegas for an event at his alma mater, Tennessee State University, when he learned of the demonstration. “I take this s—t personally,” said Dent, who described himself as one-sixteenth Seminole. “F—k a bunch of Dead Cherokees.”
Meanwhile, a separate group of protesters apparently firebombed the West Police Precinct, which burned to ground. Some witnesses claimed the rioters were members of the Choctaw nation who regularly camp on the grounds of the Beelzebubbas’ Club Gitmo in The Nations section of West Nashville — a perception reinforced after league founder Dr. Jorgé Linardo, tweeted, “Remember, every time a police HQ burns, an angel gets his wings.”
As the unrest spread, Wollaeger, who had not been at the team offices, was summoned to an emergency Zoom meeting of the NFFA Security Council at NFFA Tower in downtown Nashville. The Security Council, chaired by Smack Daddies owner Lex Dominica, includes the owners of the league’s five founding franchises.
According to multiple sources, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak, Dominica began by stating the purpose of the meeting, to which Commissioner Jim McMahon replied, “Why would our league have a team called the Dead Jerkies?” After being told the actual name of the Sylvan Park team, he said, “I’ve been to Sylvan Park. Why in God’s name would we ever have a team in Sylvan Park?”
When the five owners on the Council informed Wollaeger that he would need to change the team’s name, sources said that he proposed the “Dead Ho’s” as an alternative that was almost immediately rejected. Wollaeger, who said he was merely joking, then suggested, as a tribute to Native American warriors, that the franchise be renamed the Sylvan Park Indigenous Custer Killers — an idea that seemed to intrigue the Council until Dave the Animal observed that it would inevitably be shortened to the acronym S.P.I.C.K. McMahon then said, “Actually Dead Jerkies kind of grows on you,” but his motion to change the moniker failed for lack of a second.
Sources said the meeting ended without a resolution to the crisis, but fellow owners called on Wollaeger to return on Monday with a renaming and rebranding strategy. “There is ample precedent for this,” Bubbas owner Mos Ded reminded the group. “Mojo D’s team understandably goes through a rebranding at least every other year.” He suggested that Wollaeger consider Dead Poets and Dead Presidents as possible alternatives.
Mojo D, reached at a large revival tent on a vacant lot that he described as his team’s temporary headquarters in the Buena Vista neighborhood of North Nashville, told FSN that he had advised Wollaeger to rechristen his franchise as the Sylvan Park White Gentry. “Name-check your privilege,” D said. “It’s the right path forward.”
The tense standoff on Charlotte Avenue continued through the weekend night, although there were no further reported outbursts of violence. On Saturday afternoon, several hundred Native Americans, joined by young hipsters from The Nations and Village Green owner Dave Goodrow, began setting up camps on the McCabe Park public golf course in Sylvan Park. The group, which met no resistance from Metro Park Police, signaled their intention to stay indefinitely, perhaps even beyond such time that Wollaeger meets their demands to change his team’s name and to require his coach, Bronko Nagurski, to undergo “cultural re-education.”
Outside a hogan he said he ordered from IKEA and assembled on the 18th green, an obviously drunken Goodrow shouted, “Long live the Free State of Tanasi!” referring to the name of a Cherokee village from which the state of Tennessee’s name derived.
FSN will provide regular updates to this developing story.
