Gist-Mackey, Angela NSperling, Julien Alexandre2024-11-262024-11-262022-12-312022http://dissertations.umi.com/ku:18769https://hdl.handle.net/1808/35765Professional sports can serve a variety of secular functions for people. The passion of the fans, the commitment of the players and staff, and even the stadium plays a critical role in how fans identify with sports teams and brands. This critical case study employs Tribal Critical Race theory and Social Identity Theory to better understand the viewpoints of Indigenous Kansas City NFL fans. The purpose of this research is to understand how Indigenous fans’ make sense of and discursively construct their racial and fan identities in relation to the Kansas City NFL team. Second, this study explores how Indigenous Kansas City NFL fans interpret the Kansas City NFL team’s cultural misappropriation. Third, this study investigates how Indigenous Kansas City NFL fans understand the 2020 organizational policy changes that limit fans’ symbolic cultural misappropriation by restricting fans’ nonverbal communication. Most importantly, this study privileges the voices of Indigenous fans to better understand their perspectives on these concerns. This critical case study design uses semi-structured interview data and phronetic iterative qualitative data analysis. Also, during the interview process, participants brought artifacts that represented their affiliation to the Kansas City NFL team as fans. Findings resulted in three major themes. The first theme titled, “Navigating Internal Turmoil” revealed a typology of five different types of fans, which vary based on their identification with their Indigeneity and the team: supportive fans, balanced fans, reluctant fans, former fans, and anti-fans. The second theme titled, “Mocking a Race of Human Beings” revealed participants’ perspectives on specific Indigenous symbols (i.e., drums, war bonnet, and tomahawk chop) employed by the Kansas City NFL franchise. The third theme, titled, From “Small Baby Steps” to “Trying to Kill Ideas” revealed participants perceptions of the policy changes and amplified participant voices, which call for greater action from the franchise, such as more education and changing the name of the team. The thoughts and opinions of my participants tell a story filled with emotions on the matter of cultural misappropriation by the Kansas City NFL team. Theoretical and practical contributions are addressed in closing.205 pagesenCopyright held by the author.Organizational behaviorSports managementNative American studiesCultural MisappropriationIndigenousNFLOrganizational PolicySocial Identity TheoryTribal Critical Race TheoryDissertation0000-0001-6943-8084