Going Native: Chief Wahoo and the Lie of Gradualism

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Major League Baseball’s Cleveland franchise boasted this week that the team has decided to retire it’s eighty-plus-year old American Indian mascot, Chief Wahoo at the start of the 2019 season. It’s a decision the public and even some Indians are applauding. But it’s nothing more than a corporate sports team’s attempt to appease what the league considers a growing backlash.

In reality, the move allows the team to retain the racist spirit of Chief Wahoo, and to continue to avoid truly reckoning with the damage the mascot has and continues to inflict.

For decades the buck-toothed cartoon mocking this country’s First Peoples has served as the prideful cheerleader for one of baseball’s storied teams. Chief Wahoo goes hand-in-hand with hot dogs and homeruns in Cleveland. No hardcore fans (apparently) imagine their beloved mascot to be a demeaning and dehumanizing image that exploits American Indians.

In 1968, the National Congress of American Indians, an advocacy organization representing 250 tribes, called upon corporations and public institutions to stop using stereotypical names and images deemed offensive to Indian people. Unlike with other racist images such as Little Black Sambo and Frito the Bandito, it has been nearly impossible for Americans to see the harm in such a lovable character as Chief Wahoo, especially since legend has it the Chief was named after Major League Baseball’s first American Indian player, Cleveland Spider’s outfielder, Louis Sockalexis.

Unlike with other racist images such as Little Black Sambo and Frito the Bandito, it has been nearly impossible for Americans to see the harm in such a lovable character as Chief Wahoo.

Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian, endured racial taunting in nearly every stadium he played in for the three years of his career. And he was not a breakout star like Ruth or Colfax. He was average (by major league standards), hardly the stuff dreamy young fans long to emulate. The notion that Sockalexis was immortalized as the inspirational Chief Wahoo, historians and experts say, is very doubtful.

Historians tell us the fetishizing of the American Indian is as old as the Republic. Those Boston Tea colonists who dressed up in feathers, buckskin and war paint to protest taxation by the British Empire sought to strengthen their independence by claiming an indigenous identity. They needed the Indian to justify breaking away. Throughout this country’s past, using images of American Indians to rile up sports fans, promote corporate food brands, and to provide savage characters for movie entertainment has been so common, so ingrained in the American psyche that even many Indians fail to see the ugly racist side of these images.

A few years ago, I was invited to speak at a conference on whether or not the University of North Dakota’s sports team name “The Fighting Sioux” was derogatory. Near the end of the discussion a young American Indian student stood up and told the crowd that he thought the name honored the Sioux Nation. He said Indians had diabetes, alcoholism, and other more pressing issues to worry about. I said I was no psychologist, but if I was not mistaken, demeaning names and images are an assault on every human being’s self esteem and sense of personal worth. And would this young Indian man please correct me if I am wrong, but poor self esteem can have a direct negative impact on a person’s physical, mental and emotional health.

Using images of American Indians to rile up sports fans, promote corporate food brands, and provide savage characters for movie entertainment has been so common, so ingrained in the American psyche that even many Indians fail to see the ugly racist side of these images.

What is most disturbing about the Cleveland baseball team’s announcement to retire Chief Wahoo is the glaring omittance of a sincere apology to American Indians for perpetuating hate for more than eighty years. Even beyond an apology—what a missed opportunity for lasting education!

How the National Congress of American Indians and others could consider this a victory for Indian Country is discouraging. Because the truth is: Cleveland fans will have another season to celebrate Chief Wahoo beaming from the jerseys of their hometown team. Fans will be allowed to continue wearing Wahoo hats and shirts and scream playful war cries at the ballpark. There will be no measurable profit loss for the team because their gift shop and other consumer outlets will continue to sell Chief Wahoo apparel, posters and knick knacks.

For those who would say I’m blinded by cynicism, that while not perfect, retiring Wahoo is a positive step in the right direction, I cry foul ball. That’s gradualism—the belief that there is no need to demand revolutionary change, that given time, wrongs will be righted.

I have learned the truth about gradualism the hard way. Once I was asked to appear on public radio and debate a conservative journalist on whether or not American Indian names and mascots were racist. I took up the fight believing that we as Indian people get so few chances to offer our views on issues that directly affect us. But I realized after the program that I should not have to go on public radio and argue point for point the damage done by racist mascots. If I were African American or Hispanic reacting to Little Black Sambo or the Frito Bandito, I would have never been asked to join such a debate. Public radio would have welcomed me on air to educate their listeners on racism that comes from stereotypes. Now, had I refused, that would have been a revolutionary statement.

It is extremely short-sighted to think the Cleveland baseball team is making a revolutionary statement of its own by giving up Chief Wahoo. We cannot embrace this as a sign that one day, probably long after Indians like me are gone, we will be freed from all racist names and mascots. We cannot allow this generation of American Indians and perhaps the next to continue being racially victimized.

Mark Anthony Rolo is an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians and author of the memoir My Mother Is Now Earth.