Cleveland’s goodbye to ‘Indian’ name a good thing

By: 
Lee Pulaski
City Editor

I found myself thinking about the late Richie Plass recently as I was browsing for news. He’s fairly well known among locals, but for those who aren’t aware, he was a Menominee and Stockbridge-Munsee who found out the painful way decades ago that being an Indian mascot isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, as people from opposing teams heckled him, threw things at him and spit on him.

He took that traumatizing experience from high school days and turned it into a crusade to point out how Native American mascots are basically co-opting a culture without permission. He created a traveling exhibit called “Bittersweet Winds” that showcased a myriad of instances where Native Americans became caricatures for amusement instead of a culture to be respected.

Richie came to mind as I came across a story about the Cleveland Indians baseball team announcing it would be changing its team name to the Cleveland Guardians beginning in 2022. Team officials said they heard the complaints from Native American groups who called the Indians name racist and that they wanted to change it to something more respectable.

The team had already said farewell to its Chief Wahoo mascot three years ago, so the decision to end the Indians name shouldn’t have come as a big surprise. However, that’s not the way that Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, saw it as he tweeted: “Why does MLB hate Indians?” Cruz didn’t stop there, though, as he begged Boston in a follow-up tweet not to change the name of its Celtics baseball team, as he is half Irish. (By the way, that isn’t happening.)

I’m not too surprised at the senator’s response. After all, this is the same man who fled from Texas in the dead of winter when the power grid failed a few months ago, but it does provide a reminder as to just how ignorant many people are to Native Americans and the strife they’ve endured over the centuries as they hold onto their culture and identity against a society that would eagerly exploit it.

I suppose we shouldn’t condemn the senator too much, as Texas only has three federally recognized Native American tribes in its borders. However, I’m wondering if the leaders of those tribes are putting in calls to Cruz’s office to defend Cleveland’s decision and educate him on how derisive and divisive the Indians moniker is. That’s the only way he’ll learn, assuming he would be open enough to learn on the experience.

I consider myself fortunate that my high school mascot was a cougar and therefore fairly safe from controversy — assuming that a roving band of older women who have a thing for younger men doesn’t develop to picket outside the school gates.

I also consider myself fortunate that I’ve been exposed to a number of Native American cultures and have a number of friends from those tribes who have talked with me about the appropriation of those cultures by a primarily white society. They’ve helped to show that having a name like “Indians” or “Braves” or “Redskins” is not an honor for them as much as it is an insult.

I wonder, if Cruz had the same people who talked to me talking with him, that it might show him that having a comical portrayal of a Native American is akin to a white person acting in blackface, which is also considered racist. Would he get the point if something like “Bittersweet Winds” was presented to him and showed him how icons and images have denigrated tribes for decades?

It’s a shame that Richie Plass isn’t alive today, as he would likely load up his traveling exhibit and head for Washington, D.C., to show Cruz the folly of his ways, the same as he did for almost 20 years nationwide. Richie’s efforts helped to get more than 30 school districts in Wisconsin alone to change their mascots, but the fight is far from over.

I remember seeing the exhibit for myself a couple of years ago and, despite being well educated on Native American issues, being surprised by just how many sports teams, products and even works of art had negatively exploited tribes. Some items, like a T-shirt with the name “Caucasians” and a whitewashed version of the former Cleveland mascot, flipped the script and showed how denigrating it would be to other cultures if their image was exploited for money and chuckles.

With the continued debate on racism in this country, it might be time for Congress to pass a law that bans sports mascots that are degrading to Native Americans and other cultures. Cleveland has stepped forward to make the change, as has Washington’s football team when it killed its Redskins moniker, but there are plenty of school and professional teams that still haven’t gotten the message yet, so it might be time for a clean sweep.

Such a bill probably won’t get a yes vote from Cruz, though.


lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com