Overview

• During her Juneteenth performance in Paris, Beyoncé wore a T-shirt featuring Buffalo Soldiers with text labeling Native Americans and Mexican revolutionaries as enemies of peace, order, and settlement.
• Fans and Indigenous influencers took to social media to condemn the shirt’s framing as anti-Indigenous and to call for an apology.
• Beyoncé’s publicist has not responded to requests for comment and no formal apology has been issued.
• Cale Carter of the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum says the institution has recently revised its exhibits to highlight the soldiers’ dual legacy of service and campaigns against Indigenous peoples and Mexican revolutionaries.
• Her Cowboy Carter album won the 2025 Grammy for Album of the Year, topped Billboard’s country chart, and employs Western iconography to reclaim space for Black artists in country music.