TORONTO — Throughout the past week, the CFL’s Indigenous-designed team logos drew the attention of the country, as the league emphasized its commitment to Truth and Reconciliation.
CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie was a guest on Aboriginal Peoples Television Network this week. He discussed how the Indigenous-designed logos came to be and the impact that the logos can have when they come in front of the eyes of sports fans across the country and around the world who watched the CFL in Week 17.
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“Sport has an amazing ability to bring people together,” Ambrosie said.
“This is a true opportunity for us to play a small part in bringing Canadians together in all of our CFL communities and frankly around the country to be part of the national Truth and Reconciliation movement.
“To play just a small part in bridging the gap between the past and the present and the future, we’re excited about that. The credit goes to our teams, who have shown amazing initiative in wanting to be a part of this. We are incredibly proud to play a very small part in this very important moment.”
The CFL’s nine teams all worked with local Indigenous artists, who put their creative spins on the logos, honouring the game’s close ties with Indigenous communities across the country and to underscore the league’s commitment to recognizing the past, while focusing on a path forward centred on awareness, education and action.
The logos were featured on players’ helmets, in-stadium programming and on the broadcasts on CTV, TSN, RDS, CFL+ and CBS Sports Network. A portion of proceeds from all associated merchandise sold will be donated to support local Indigenous groups, organizations or programming.
Ambrosie pointed to the CFL’s history of inclusion when discussing what drove the league and its teams to work with the local artists.
“Ours is a long history of inclusion, ours is a very proud history and by the way, not a perfect one and it’s important to note that,” he said.
“We don’t claim that we have everything figured out but we do have a very, very cool history and a very powerful history of bringing people together, being a league that is very welcoming. I think by sharing that message it opens the doors to all of us, just taking that step in the right direction, being a part of the conversation, being a part of the discussion.
“If we can raise that level of awareness just a little bit it’s going to help all of us be a better, stronger national community, be better neighbours, be better friends and hopefully create an environment for some healing.
“Across all of those things we just want to play our little part. We have this great history, it’s a very authentic history, it’s one we’re very proud of and now we get to take another step in the right direction.”