Beyoncé is facing mounting criticism after she wore a Buffalo Soldiers T-shirt during her 19 June Juneteenth performance in Paris on the “Cowboy Carter” tour. The shirt’s back read that the unit’s “antagonists were the enemies of peace, order and settlement: warring Indians, bandits, cattle thieves, murderous gunmen, bootleggers, trespassers, and Mexican revolutionaries.” Indigenous influencers, performers and academics say the language perpetuates anti-Indigenous stereotypes and erases the victims of U.S. expansion. Images of the shirt remain on the singer’s website. A spokesperson for Beyoncé declined requests for comment as the 43-year-old prepares to open a run of hometown shows in Houston this weekend. Cale Carter, exhibitions director at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum, noted that only recently have institutions begun to add nuance about the soldiers’ role in violent campaigns against Native Americans and Mexican revolutionaries. Museum education chief Michelle Tovar said the episode shows “how hard it still is to teach honest history.” Historians Tad Stoermer of Johns Hopkins and Alaina E. Roberts of the University of Pittsburgh added that while Buffalo Soldiers imagery can highlight Black agency in the West, it also risks reinforcing nationalist myths and overlooking the unit’s participation in what Roberts called “genocide in a sense.” The backlash comes as Beyoncé’s country-inflected album “Act II: Cowboy Carter” continues to dominate streaming charts after winning the 2025 Grammy for Album of the Year. Country singer Gavin Adcock, whose own release trails hers on Apple Music’s country ranking, told a concert crowd that the record “ain’t country music” and vowed, “We’re coming for her,” remarks he later repeated on Instagram. Taken together, the flare-ups underscore the scrutiny surrounding Beyoncé’s bid to reinterpret U.S. frontier iconography—from song choices to stage wardrobe—while navigating genre gatekeeping and evolving debates over historical memory.