‘Guardians’ is fine, and fine is good enough

By |July 27, 2022|Cleveland Indian Nicknames, Uncategorized|

I wanted to wait a bit to gauge the fallout after the Cleveland baseball team announced that, beginning in 2022, they will be known as the “Guardians.” Over the years, I’ve probably written more about this than most, and, having grown up in Cleveland as a huge baseball fan, I’m probably more emotionally attached to this than most. I grew up with the Cleveland Indians. I wanted to see how people responded before getting down some of my thoughts.

He’s why Cleveland came to be called the Indians. How should they honor him?

By |December 21, 2020|Author Publications, Cleveland Indian Nicknames|

Cleveland’s major-league baseball team announced Monday that it will drop its “Indians” nickname — in place for more than a century — to “unify our community,” a decision quickly praised by Native American groups, including some members of a Maine tribe with a historic connection to the team.

Cleveland to Drop Controversial Nickname

By |December 21, 2020|Cleveland Indian Nicknames|

Ed Rice’s phone was ringing off the hook on Monday. People wanted to talk about the news that Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians intend to abandon their longstanding name, one that is considered by many to be offensive. “I am stunned,” said an elated Rice, who has spent nearly 40 years researching and telling the story of Louis Sockalexis, a member of the Penobscot Nation from Indian Island, and the racism that he experienced playing in Cleveland.

This Penobscot baseball player inspired the Cleveland Indians name ‘for all the wrong reasons’

By |December 18, 2020|Cleveland Indian Nicknames|

Louis Sockalexis, in an undated photo taken during his professional baseball career between 1897 and 1907. Credit: Public domain It was a historic day in 1897 when Louis Sockalexis, a 26-year-old member of the Penobscot tribe, became the first Native American Major League Baseball player, taking the field for the Cleveland Spiders.

Changing of a name

By |July 15, 2020|Cleveland Indian Nicknames|

One of the pillar images of my childhood was seeing that giant Chief Wahoo sign that used to be on old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. It was Wahoo batting righthanded -- leg lifted high in the air like he was about to take one deep. I would see that sign and every part of me would tremble with excitement because that sign meant baseball, that sign represented my childhood team, and nothing on earth was more important to me than baseball and the Cleveland Indians.

Hidden heroes have done the right thing on Indian mascots

By |January 24, 2019|Author Publications, Indian Nicknames/Mascots in Maine|

All through the late 1990s and well into the 2000s, I was part of the growing national movement to get the Cleveland Indians to drop Chief Wahoo — perhaps, the most racist caricature in use in American society. Frustration with that effort, ultimately successful after many years, led me to more than a decade of trying to work to see that all such offensive nicknames and mascots end in my home state of Maine.

Skowhegan has opportunity again to cleanse itself of insensitive mascot

By |January 24, 2019|Author Publications, Indian Nicknames/Mascots in Maine|

I’m seeing two inconvenient truths as the Skowhegan Area High School’s 23-member school board — again — considers whether to do the right thing, and end its use of an insensitive Indians nickname and mascot, or, maintain the status quo by continuing to bury its head in the sand, bringing shame and condemnation upon its communities.

Neither Chief Wahoo nor the Indians’ nickname…

By |February 1, 2018|Cleveland Indian Nicknames, Indian Nicknames/Mascots in Maine|

Earlier this week, after continued pressure from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, the Cleveland Indians announced they will strip the controversial Chief Wahoo logos from their on-field uniforms starting in 2019. The club will still sell some merchandise with the racist imagery, but doing so will prevent others from profiting off use of the smiling, red-faced caricature.

Curse of Sockalexis…

By |October 25, 2016|Cleveland Indian Nicknames|

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.

Maine’s do-nothing Board of Education needs to take on school mascot disrespect

By |March 30, 2016|Author Publications, Indian Nicknames/Mascots in Maine|

know many conservatives revere the notion of “local control.” But I believe here in Maine, probably as a direct result of five combative, wholly divisive years of ultra-conservative LePage administration policies, we have come face to face with a very sinister version of this philosophy that merely allows elected officials to ignore injustice and abrogate governmental responsibility.

Skowhegan ‘Indian Pride’ website continues to denigrate Native Americans

By |November 13, 2015|Author Publications, Indian Nicknames/Mascots in Maine|

Since the French, the British and colonial Americans invaded North America, the use of alcohol helped white people to subjugate Native Americans in all manner of nefarious ways and made the indigenous peoples subservient to their respective wills. They cheated them in basic trades for furs and goods, stole lands from them again and again in treaties they never intended to honor and robbed them of their self-respect and perverted their health.