To the Editors:

This year, Oberlin students are coming together as allies to
support groups which have worked for years to change the Cleveland Indians mascot.

The mascot, Chief Wahoo, is a cartoon face with a huge grin, red skin, triangular eyes, a hook nose and a red feather. This caricature represents, for some, a baseball team for whom they feel loyalty and love. For others the caricature also represents a demeaning image of native Americans and is a source of personal pain.

“We don’t look like that,” emphasized Robert Roche, director of the American Indian Movement in Cleveland (AIM) and of Cleveland’s American Indian Education Center (AIEC).

To Roche, the logo is a “mockery of spiritual traditions.” The red feather which appears in the Wahoo logo is traditionally presented ceremonially to those who have shed their own blood in battle, such as Native American veterans of the war in Vietnam.

Twelve thousand Clevelanders identify as American Indian, and these 12,000 people are not honored by the Cleveland mascot, but stereotyped and represented by an inaccurate, dehumanizing and degrading image.

Every opening day for decades, a crowd of protesters has gathered outside of the stadium, led by the American Indian Movement and often including faculty and students from Oberlin College.

Protests have been held and lawsuits have been filed for decades, resulting in small signs of success. The baseball team now has a line of merchandise which replaces chief Wahoo with a capital “I.”

The logo of Wahoo’s face appears less frequently and in smaller size on tickets and similar items. However, the team’s name and logo still continue to represent a disregard for the dignity and identity of Cleveland’s real Indians, and no lawsuit thus far has taken action in forcing the team to replace the name or mascot.

A third way that the American Indian Movement and the American Indian Education Center are active is through education. Roche gives workshops and lectures every year, explaining to students of many ages the racism behind the image and the effect of the mascot on his own sense of identity and his children’s.

He says that a sign of hope was students’ changed response over a period of a few years. After visiting Nordonia public schools for a number of years, giving presentations in their auditorium, he experiences the students as more sensitive to the racism behind the mascot.

Roche will be teaching an Exco class next semester at Oberlin College called “American Indian Movement.”

Oberlin’s American Indian Council (AIC) has been involved in this issue, initiating meetings with Larry Dolan, a member of Oberlin’s board of trustees and the owner of the Cleveland Indians baseball team.

In 2000 and 2002, the AIC met with Dolan urging him to change the mascot. At the end of the 2002 meeting, Dolan requested that Oberlin students gather a wider bed of support, networking within the greater Cleveland community to pressure him to change the mascot.

Today, a group of Oberlin students and faculty want to do just that. You can make a difference by joining this group of allies in an effort to raise awareness and gather supporters outside of the Oberlin College campus.

For more information, contact Evelyn.Lane@oberlin.edu, an ally, or Diana.Frame@oberlin.edu, a leader of the AIC.

The reward of these efforts will be a team name and mascot that one day all of Cleveland can rally around and be proud of, a team name that will welcome Cleveland’s 12,000 Native Americans into the bleachers instead of leaving them outside in protest.

A mascot and name that will let the real Cleveland Indians define themselves.

–Rachel Wylie
College sophomore
MORE NAMES TO COME