William Mendoza has regarded the debate over the Washington Redskins football mascot as a teachable moment. | Getty Obama official faces questions about Redskins jersey altercation

As the head of Barack Obama’s Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education, William Mendoza has regarded the debate over the Washington Redskins football mascot as a teachable moment.

At least a dozen times a year, Mendoza, himself a Native American, has approached strangers who he believes are reinforcing ethnic stereotypes to explain why certain words and images are hurtful. He says he approaches people with respect, calling the conversations a “mutual exchange of viewpoints that nearly always ended in a handshake.”


“Never have any of these conversations become confrontational or violent,” Mendoza told POLITICO.

That is, until last October, when Mendoza sought to have such a conversation with a college student wearing a Redskins jersey at an educational “Pow Wow” at a Washington-area hotel. The talk quickly escalated into a violent brawl that left both men with injuries and now threatens Mendoza’s reputation.

Although Prince George’s County, Md., police wrote a report, no charges were filed. The student, Barrett Dahl, 28, who is also Native American, subsequently dropped out of school in Durango, Colo., and says he has $50,000 in medical bills stemming from the incident. Dahl couldn’t immediately provide these medical records to POLITICO. He did share records showing his diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism.

The police report describes both men as having “minor injuries” and says both were treated with ice and declined to be taken to the hospital. The report also states that there were no witnesses “who could advise who started the altercation.” Dahl says he was “begging to go to a hospital,” but police refused to take him.

Now, 10 months later, after Dahl shared his story with the Durango Herald, a small Colorado newspaper, the tale has gone viral as the latest chapter in the long controversy surrounding the name of the Washington Redskins football team, which critics say amounts to a racial slur and defenders justify as a name so common it is used even by several high school teams on Indian reservations. But it’s unclear how much this encounter was really about the offensive language and mascot on Dahl’s jersey.

Dahl is calling on Mendoza to resign and says he plans to sue Mendoza over his injuries. He said he has an attorney, but wouldn’t disclose the name.

“He came up there and started a fight that pretty much ruined my life,” Dahl said. “I’ve had three surgeries. I lost the use of my right arm over this. We’ve lost our home over this.”

Mendoza, meanwhile, has hired his own attorney, who accuses Dahl and his family of grossly mischaracterizing what happened last October at a National Harbor hotel.

“Mr. Dahl's accusations are not only completely fictional, but his story of what allegedly occurred seemingly gets worse as he feels emboldened to spread his lies,” said the attorney, Mark Zaid. “This unfortunate incident was, as every known eyewitness has stated, unilaterally sparked by Mr. Dahl's hostile and aggressive behavior arising from his wearing of a racist and insensitive jersey specifically with ‘Injun Pimp’ on the back in front of children at a Native American conference."

Mendoza said he informed the Education Department about the incident. An Education Department spokeswoman declined to comment, citing personnel matters.

The unlikely setting for the fight was an annual “Pow Wow” to encourage Native Americans and Hispanics to pursue careers in science, held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center.

Mendoza said he and his wife had decided to make the Oct. 30 event a family outing with three of his kids. There they encountered a man in a Redskins jersey. Mendoza said his 9-year-old son asked him to explain “Injun Pimp,” emblazoned on the back of the jersey, and so he decided to initiate a dialogue with the stranger, whom he initially assumed was Caucasian.

Mendoza said he walked over to where was Dahl was sitting, got down on one knee and addressed him as “Brother.”

“Are you aware that name and image is offensive and harmful to us, especially those of us with children?” Mendoza said he asked Dahl.

Mendoza said Dahl immediately challenged him to take the issue outside. “I said, no Brother, it’s not even like that,” Mendoza said. “I just want to understand why you wear it and would like the opportunity to share my concerns.”

Dahl recalls the event very differently. He says Mendoza called him an “uneducated weetard” and spat in his face — claims Mendoza denies.

Dahl said he went to find security, and Mendoza followed him out of the ballroom and “attacks me at the escalator,” Dahl said. “I do everything I can to ward him off.”

Dahl also said he’s “90 percent sure” the Redskins jersey said, “Injun Player,” and not “Injun Pimp,” but the jersey is “torn to shreds” so he can’t check.

As Dahl tells it, he wore the jersey because he was visiting the nation’s capital as part of a field trip from Fort Lewis College. “I wear Washington gear because obviously this was Washington, D.C., right?” he said.

In Mendoza’s version of what happened, he left the ballroom to seek help. He said he approached an officer from the Prince George's County Police Department, but the officer didn’t take his concerns seriously, responding, “Let me get this straight, he’s in an offensive shirt? You want me to do something about an offensive shirt?”

A Prince George’s County police spokeswoman said the department is investigating Mendoza’s complaint about being brushed aside.

Mendoza said the officer told him he would need to find private security, since he wasn’t a guest at the hotel. Mendoza said he began looking for a security guard, and went up an escalator where he encountered Dahl a second time. Hoping to diffuse the situation, Mendoza said he offered to shake Dahl’s hand and said “my apologies for offending you.”

Mendoza said Dahl responded by tossing coffee in his face and punching him twice in the face, which led him to fight back.

“It was very, very difficult for me to ensure I didn’t come out of this very mortally wounded, if not sustaining significant injuries,” Mendoza said. “He was trying to do everything he could to kill me as far as I’m concerned.”

Mendoza said he has lingering knee problems stemming from the incident and was treated afterward for a hairline wrist fracture.

He said he went to the police department to inquire about filing a criminal complaint but decided against it because of concerns about the legal costs and because he wanted to put it behind him. But Mendoza said he is now considering filing a complaint.

After the fight, Mendoza said he found out that Dahl was a student at Colorado’s Fort Lewis College — his own alma mater. He said he was told by a professor who participated in the Washington trip that disciplinary action would be taken against Dahl.

Mendoza said he later spoke to that professor and the college president, Dene Kay Thomas, to discuss the possibility of he and Dahl having a mediated conversation. Mendoza said Thomas extended her sympathy about what had happened, but didn’t think such a conversation “would be productive.”

Citing privacy concerns, a spokesman for Fort Lewis college declined to answer any questions or make college officials available for interviews.

Court records indicate that Dahl’s mother, Debora Dahl, sought a protective order in a Cleveland County, Okla., court in May against her son, but the case was later dismissed because she didn’t appear in court. A working phone number could not be found for Dahl’s mother.

Dahl said his mother pursued the protective order because she was trying to distance herself from her son’s ballooning medical debt.

Mendoza, meanwhile, said the fallout has affected his whole family.

“My children … left a seemingly family event in a moment of joy only to see their father beaten, and that was traumatic to them, and traumatic for my wife,” he said.

Dahl insists the entire incident could have been avoided if Mendoza had not approached him.

“It would not have killed him to just sit on the other side of the room and ignore someone wearing a football jersey,” Dahl said. “It’s not illegal to wear.”