Battle lines have been drawn over the name of Washington's beloved American football team, after President Barack Obama indicated he'd favour something less racially charged than Redskins.
The casino-rich Oneida tribe in New York state is spearheading a campaign to get the National Football League franchise to rebrand itself, just as NFL owners meet in the US capital.
"It's a dictionary-defined offensive term," said Ray Halbritter, a prominent leader of the Oneida Indian Nation, at a symposium on Monday in Washington in the same hotel where NFL owners will be meeting this week.
"Washington's team name is a painful epitaph that was used against my people, Indian people, when we were held at gunpoint and thrown off our lands.
"It is a word that few would use in casual conversation when talking to a Native American.
"When marketed by a professional sports team, it is a word that tells Native American children that they are to be denigrated - that they are second class citizens."
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said a meeting has been scheduled with Oneida Indian Nation for next month.
"We respect that people have differing views," McCarthy said.
"It is important that we listen to all perspectives."
Whether the Redskins should retain a name deemed "usually offensive" by the Merriam-Webster dictionary and "dated offensive" by the Oxford dictionary has been a festering issue in Washington for years.
But it reached a new level when Obama, otherwise preoccupied with the US government shutdown, said in an interview published on Saturday that "I'd think about changing" the name if he was the Redskins' owner.
Dan Snyder, the marketing mogul who bought the Redskins in 1999, has insisted that he will never change the name.
On Monday he got his lawyer to say it again.
"We at the Redskins respect everyone," Lanny Davis said in a statement.
"But like devoted fans of the Atlanta Braves, the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago Blackhawks (from President Obama's hometown), we love our team and its name and, like those fans, we do not intend to disparage or disrespect a racial or ethnic group."
