http://troublemakingpunk.org/2014/03/31/chief-wahoo-must-die-by-river-smith-let-everybody-enjoy-the-game/ While isolated tribes and occasional individuals have indicated that they don’t mind the usurpation of their native images and words, every major national Native American organization has made it clear that sports team names and emblems are racist and foster unhealthy and misleading stereotypes of their people...

1. troublemakingpunk.org
Love, Liberation, & Eco-feminist Boat Rocking
Chief Wahoo Must Die by River Smith: Let
Everybody Enjoy The Game
March 31, 2014 //
0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_08Q7wH6Vg (River Smith’s The Long & Painful Death of
Chief Wahoo-drum & poetry video with archival footage)
I used to feel like I was born with a baseball in my left hand, a shortstop’s glove on the other. Sudden
Sam McDowell, Luis Tiant, Sonny Siebert set my blood rushing. What fun it was to watch Thunder
Thornton, Frank Robinson, Bobby Bonds, Charlie Spikes, and Joe Carter. There is no ballet I enjoyed
more than Omar going into the hole, leaping, spinning, and releasing; Kenny running, running,
propelling himself in the air, cleat on the fence, reaching high as the ball slammed into his glove.
Wow.
I love baseball. Love playing it. Love watching it. Oh, I enjoy Kyrie and the guys a lot, and can get
excited for a moment as a browns runner slides and twists his way through defenders, but I love
baseball.
So it’s Springtime in Cleveland again. Time for blooming buds, lakefront picnics, buzzing
lawnmowers, dreams of a pennant winning season, and Cleveland’s own special pastime, racism. For
twenty years our video collective has documented the demonstrations outside Fort Progressive (Fort
Jacobs) to protest the demeaning Chief Wahoo emblem and the baseball team’s nickname, Indians.
Native Americans from around the country come most years to help educate fans about how the
nickname and the wahoo serve to stereotype American tribal peoples; how the use of face paint and
feather headdresses mock their religion; how the comments about the warpath and scalping totally
misrepresent Native American history and culture. Incidentally, if you do your research you’ll find
that probably far more Euro-Americans scalped Indians, than vice versa.
While isolated tribes and occasional individuals have indicated that they don’t mind the usurpation
of their native images and words, every major national Native American organization has made it
clear that sports team names and emblems are racist and foster unhealthy and misleading stereotypes
of their people. After scores of high schools and colleges, and a few professional teams changed their
nicknames, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) declared seven years ago that they
will not allow any team nicknames or mascots “hostile and abusive” to Indians to be displayed on
team uniforms at any NCAA postseason tournament. American students all over the country and
their advisors are getting it. Why can’t we?
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2. How long do you think a team named the Cleveland Jews with a caricatured image for an emblem or
the Euclid Negroes with caricatured Uncle Ben or Aunt Jemima would last? Somehow we can get that
this is not okay when it comes to these groups. If we just open our hearts and widen our
understanding a little more, we can see that it’s also not really innocent fun if our behavior causes
young Indian girls and boys to have to grow up with distorted images and stereotypes of themselves
and their families promoted all around them.
I have loved Cleveland baseball all my life. How does changing the name of the team harm my
memories? How does it harm the actual tradition of playing the game? Bob Feller still played for
Cleveland. Rocky Colavito still played for Cleveland. Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez still played for
Cleveland. Changing the nickname of the team doesn’t change the joy that fans have had watching
these extraordinary players. It does, however, reduce the pain and discomfort for thousands of our
brothers and sisters. Surely we can delight in a Santana homerun or a diving Bourne catch whether
the team is called the Rockers, the Steelmakers, or the Spiders. The cartoonish character on the
player’s sleeve doesn’t make the play any more exciting or better.
I want to watch Justin Masterson and Astrubel Cabrera. I want to cheer on Francisco Linder when he
gets here, but neither I nor many other fans with conscience will ever feel comfortable paying to
attend a Cleveland baseball game as long as it means insulting our Indian brothers and sisters, and
their children.
River Smith is co-producer at Liberation Brew TV
and author of A Conspiracy to Love: Living A Life of Joy, Generosity and Power
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