A T-shirt worn by Beyoncé throughout a Juneteenth efficiency on her “Cowboy Carter” tour has sparked a dialogue over how People body their historical past and brought about a wave of criticism for the Houston-born celebrity.
The T-shirt worn throughout a live performance in Paris featured photos of the Buffalo Troopers, who belonged to Black U.S. Military items lively throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s. On the again was a prolonged description of the troopers that included “their antagonists have been the enemies of peace, order and settlement: warring Indians, bandits, cattle thieves, murderous gunmen, bootleggers, trespassers, and Mexican revolutionaries.”
Photographs of the shirt and movies of the efficiency are additionally featured on Beyoncé’s web site.
As she prepares to return to the U.S. for performances in her hometown this weekend, followers and Indigenous influencers took to social media to criticize Beyoncé for sporting a shirt that frames Native People and Mexican revolutionaries as something however the victims of American imperialism and for selling anti-Indigenous language.
A spokesperson for Beyoncé didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Who have been the Buffalo Troopers?
The Buffalo Troopers served in six navy items created after the Civil Conflict in 1866. They have been comprised of previously enslaved males, freemen, and Black Civil Conflict troopers and fought in a whole lot of conflicts — together with within the Spanish-American Conflict, World Conflict I, and World Conflict II — till they have been disbanded in 1951.
Because the quote on Beyoncé’s shirt notes, in addition they fought quite a few battles towards Indigenous peoples as a part of the U.S. Military’s marketing campaign of violence and land theft throughout the nation’s westward growth.
Some historians say the moniker “Buffalo Troopers” was bestowed by the tribes who admired the bravery and tenacity of the fighters, however that may be extra legend than truth. “On the finish of the day, we actually don’t have that type of info,” mentioned Cale Carter, director of exhibitions on the Buffalo Troopers Nationwide Museum in Houston.
Carter and different museum workers mentioned that, solely up to now few years, the museum made broader efforts to incorporate extra of the complexities of the battles the Buffalo Troopers fought towards Native People and Mexican revolutionaries and the position they performed within the subjugation of Indigenous peoples. They, very like many different museums throughout the nation, are hoping so as to add extra nuance to the framing of American historical past and be extra respectful of the methods they’ve brought about hurt to Indigenous communities.
“We romanticize the Western frontier,” he mentioned. “The early tales that talked concerning the Buffalo Troopers have been impacted by a variety of these components. So you actually didn’t see a altering in that narrative till lately.”
There has usually been a scarcity of numerous voices discussing how the historical past of the Buffalo Troopers is framed, mentioned Michelle Tovar, the museum’s director of training. The present political local weather has put monumental strain on colleges, together with these in Texas, to keep away from sincere discussions about American historical past, she mentioned.
“Proper now, on this space, we’re getting pushback from a variety of college districts by which we are able to’t go and train this historical past,” Tovar mentioned. “We’re a museum the place we are able to a minimum of be a hub, the place we are able to invite the neighborhood no matter what districts say, invite them to study it and do what we are able to do the outreach to proceed to show sincere historical past.”
Historians scrutinize reclamation motive
Beyoncé’s latest album “Act II: Cowboy Carter” has performed on a type of American iconography, which many see as her approach of subverting the nation music style’s adjacency to whiteness and reclaiming the cowboy aesthetic for Black People. Final yr, she turned the primary Black lady ever to high Billboard’s nation music chart, and “Cowboy Carter” received her the highest prize on the 2025 Grammy Awards, album of the yr.
“The Buffalo Troopers play this main position within the Black possession of the American West,” mentioned Tad Stoermer, a historian and professor at Johns Hopkins College. “In my opinion, (Beyoncé is) nicely conscious of the position that these photos play. That is the ‘Cowboy Carter’ tour for crying out loud. The whole tour, the complete album, the complete piece is located on this layered narrative.”
However Stoermer additionally factors out that the Buffalo Troopers have been framed within the American story in a approach that additionally performs into the myths of American nationalism.
As Beyoncé’s use of Buffalo Troopers imagery implies, Black People additionally use their story to say company over their position within the creation of the nation, mentioned Alaina E. Roberts, a historian, creator and professor on the College of Pittsburgh who research the intersection of Black and Native American life from the Civil Conflict to current day.
“That’s the class by which she thought possibly she was coming into this dialog, however the Buffalo Troopers are even a step above that as a result of they have been actually concerned in not simply the settlement of the West however of genocide in a way,” she mentioned.
On-line backlash builds forward of Houston reveals
A number of Native influencers, performers, and teachers took to social media this week to criticize Beyoncé or decry the shirt’s language as anti-Indigenous. “Do you suppose Beyoncé will apologize (or acknowledge) the shirt?” indigenous.television, an Indigenous information and tradition Instagram account with greater than 130,000 followers, requested in a put up Thursday.
Lots of her critics, in addition to followers, agree. A flood of social media posts referred to as out the pop star for the historic framing on the shirt.
“The Buffalo Troopers are an attention-grabbing historic second to have a look at. However we’ve to be sincere about what they did, particularly of their operations towards Indigenous People and Mexicans,” mentioned Chisom Okorafor, who posts on TikTok beneath the deal with @confirmedsomaya.
Okorafor mentioned there isn’t any “progressive” approach to reclaim America’s historical past of empire constructing within the West, and that Beyoncé’s use of Western symbolism sends a problematic message: “That Black individuals, too, can interact in American nationalism.”
“Black individuals, too, can revenue from the atrocities of (the) American empire,” she mentioned. “It’s a message that tells you to desert immigrants, Indigenous individuals, and individuals who reside exterior of the USA. It’s a message that tells you not solely is it a advantage to have been born on this nation, however the longer your line extends on this nation, the extra virtuous you might be.”
