Navajo president attends game with Redskins owner

Navajo Nation president Ben Shelly and First Lady Martha Shelly 

The president of the country’s largest American Indian reservation appears to be a supporter of the Washington Redskins.

Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly, wearing a Redskins cap, was seated next to Redskins owner Dan Snyder as the team played the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday in Glendale.

The president’s spokesman, Deswood Tome, says Shelly was there to discuss an NFL franchising agreement involving Navajo artists.

Tome says Shelly believes challenges for the Navajo, such as education and job creation, take “far more precedence more than a mascot name.”

Shelly’s presence coincides with a rally by nearly 100 demonstrators outside University of Phoenix Stadium earlier in the day.

Some Native American leaders say the name is a racial slur.

Snyder has vowed to never change the name, saying it honors Native Americans.

The Redskins name remains a source of controversy for many who argue its racial connotations are unacceptable in 2014. But as hard as opponents push for a name change, Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder pushes back, either explicitly or implicitly.

Sunday saw the latter, as Snyder welcomed Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly into his owner's box for the Redskins' game against the Arizona Cardinals. The Navajo Nation covers more than 27,000 square miles in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, and is the largest Native American reservation in the United States.

More pointedly, for Snyder's purposes, the Navajo Nation is home to Red Mesa (Ariz.) High School, a Native American-based school which uses "Redskins" as its own team name.

Last year, a spokesman for Shelly indicated that the Navajo Nation supported the use of the name within the Navajo community, but that the name should be avoided outside the community because of “the legacy of negativity that the term has created.”

More recently, the nation's radio station reached a sponsorship arrangement with Snyder's "Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation," a move that drew protest from some within the Navajo community.

[Update: Deadspin has since noted that there are plenty of reasons to be highly suspicious of Shelly's presence in the box, starting with the fact that he is a lame-duck president.]

Regardless, Snyder scored some major public relations points with those who want to keep the name by having Shelly and his wife in the owner's box ... and wearing Redskins hats, no less. Shelly may not be the most credible of supporters, but he's Native American, and that's enough for Snyder to claim support.

ECCLESIASTES 7:

7 Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad; and a gift destroyeth the heart.

PROVERBS 17:

23 A wicked man taketh a gift out of the bosom to pervert the ways of judgment.

1 MACCABEES 1:

11 In those days went there out of Israel wicked men, who persuaded many, saying, Let us go and make a covenant with the heathen that are round about us: for since we departed from them we have had much sorrow. 

12 So this device pleased them well. 

13 Then certain of the people were so forward herein, that they went to the king, who gave them licence to do after the ordinances of the heathen: 

14 Whereupon they built a place of exercise at Jerusalem according to the customs of the heathen: 

15 And made themselves uncircumcised, and forsook the holy covenant, and joined themselves to the heathen, and were sold to do mischief. 

2 MACCABEES 4:

12 For he built gladly a place of exercise under the tower itself, and brought the chief young men under his subjection, and made them wear a hat. 

DEUT. 28:

37 And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the LORD shall lead thee.