Casino Tribes Share Others’ Criticism of Beyonce’s Attire Attacking Native Americans

The performer Beyoncé's T-shirt from her Cowboy Carter tour generated a lot of controversy and a debate on the recently-created American holiday Juneteenth about how Americans interpret their past. The Houston-born superstar was widely criticized, including by representatives of Indian casino tribes who own hundreds of gaming facilities across the United States.

The Buffalo Soldiers, who were members of Black US army battalions active in the late 1800s and early 1900s, were shown on the T-shirt worn during a concert in Paris. "Their antagonists were the enemies of peace, order, and settlement: warring Indians, bandits, cattle thieves, murderous gunmen, bootleggers, trespassers, and Mexican revolutionaries," read the long description of the soldiers on the back.

Fans and Indigenous influencers criticized Beyoncé on social media as she got ready to travel back to the US for performances in her hometown. They pointed out that she was wearing a shirt that promotes anti-Indigenous language.

Six military groups formed following the US Civil War in 1866 comprised the Buffalo Soldiers. They served in hundreds of battles, including the Spanish-American War and the First and Second World Wars, before being disbanded in 1951. They were made up of Black civil war warriors, freemen, and former slaves.

According to some historians, the tribes who respected the combatants' courage and perseverance gave them the nickname "Buffalo Soldiers." However, Cale Carter, director of exhibitions at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston, suggested that this may be more myth than reality.

According to Carter and other museum employees, the museum has only recently attempted to cover more of the intricacies of the conflicts the Buffalo Soldiers fought against Mexican revolutionaries and Native Americans, as well as their part in the enslavement of Indigenous peoples. In the face of political pressure on schools to steer clear of candid conversations about the US's past, they, like many other museums around the nation, hope to add more subtlety to the way they frame American history and show greater respect for the ways they have harmed Indigenous populations.

Concurrently, Beyoncé's latest album Act II: Cowboy Carter has capitalized on a type of American imagery, which many interpret as her attempt to reclaim the cowboy aesthetic for Black Americans and undermine the country music genre's proximity to whiteness. She became the first Black woman to ever reach the top of Billboard's country music chart last year, and she took home the 2025 Grammy Awards' album of the year title with Cowboy Carter.

However, historian and professor Tad Stoermer of Johns Hopkins University also notes that the Buffalo Soldiers have been portrayed in the American narrative in a way that contributes to the myths of American nationalism.

According to Alaina E. Roberts, a historian, author, and professor at the University of Pittsburgh who focuses on the intersection of Black and Native American life from the Civil War to the present, Black Americans also use their story to assert agency over their role in the formation of the nation, as suggested by Beyoncé's use of Buffalo Soldiers imagery.

It was asserted that Beyoncé's adoption of Western symbolism sends the message that Black people, too, can engage in American nationalism and that there is no "progressive" method to reclaim the US's history of empire construction in the west.

The casino tribes generally attempt to avoid controversies such as this, but the seeming attack on Native Americans was generally seen as too strong for them to remain silent, and thus the pushback by many of the gaming tribes. It remains to be seen if it continues, or if the desire to remain separate from positions that can interfere with normal business patterns overcomes the natural desire for self-defense when they perceive themselves to be under attack.

Source:

“Beyoncé faces backlash after wearing shirt with anti-Indigenous language” , theguardian.com, June 29, 2025