Cleveland Indians Nickname
Curse of Sockalexis…
Not meant to be anywhere near as darkly humorous as Boston’s celebrated “Curse of the Bambino” or the Chicago Cubs’ concerns about curses related to a billy goat or a reviled fan named Bartman, a curse from the late Native American political activist Russell Means was put on the Cleveland Indians baseball team for its inappropriate nickname and racist caricature logo/mascot, Chief Wahoo.
Mainer confronts Cleveland Indians execs…
As my plane winged its way to Cleveland last week, on my way to give a library talk in praise of Maine Penobscot Indian Louis Sockalexis and against the Cleveland Indians’ continuing use of Chief Wahoo, I began imagining myself as being something like the Jimmy Stewart character in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”
The Cleveland Indians need to learn same lesson…
ORONO, MAINE — The Cleveland Indians organization has never had any real understanding — or appreciation — of what it has in the historical figure of Louis Sockalexis, a man who almost certainly broke professional baseball’s color barrier, a man who was definitively the first-known American Indian to play, a man who went through the exact same experience Jackie Robinson endured 50 years after him but never gets any comparable credit for doing so and a man who most certainly did inspire the team’s nickname.
Cleveland nickname does not honor Sockalexis
In Maine, we should be more sensitive regarding disrespectful traditions aimed at Native Americans. And everyone, everywhere in this state should be particularly incensed at disrespect focused at our Penobscot tribe by the Cleveland Indians organization, which continues to claim (and rightly so) that the team’s nickname originated because of a real Indian from Maine.