The club name and logo previously used by Major League Baseball's Cleveland Guardians were the subject of significant controversy. The Guardians, an American professional baseball team based in Cleveland, Ohio, were known as the Cleveland Indians from 1915 to 2021, and their branding used Native American imagery and caricatures through much of this time period.
Although the controversial logo Chief Wahoo was officially removed in 2018, the Indian-themed name continued to be a part of the Native American mascot controversy which has led over 115 professional organizations representing civil rights, educational, athletic, and scientific experts to publish resolutions or policies that state that any use of Native American names and/or symbols by non-native sports teams is a harmful form of ethnic stereotyping that promote misunderstanding and prejudice which contributes to other problems faced by Native Americans.
Protest of both the logo and name started in the 1970s, but moved quickly toward the retirement of Chief Wahoo when the 2016 World Series drew international attention to the team. Local groups said they would continue to advocate for a change of the team name, and object to the sale of merchandise with the Chief Wahoo image.
Through the decades of protest, team representatives defended both the name and logo as part of their tradition, with no intention to disparage Native Americans.
The Cleveland Indians officially announced on July 3, 2020, that the club would review its name in the wake of nationwide protests against the murder of George Floyd. On December 14, 2020, team owner Paul Dolan announced that the renaming process would begin. The team continued to play as the Indians for the 2021 season while a new name was selected and other activities necessary for rebranding were implemented. During the 2021 season face paint and headdresses were banned from Progressive Field.
On July 23, 2021, the team announced that beginning in the 2022 season, their new name would be the Cleveland Guardians. The name change was made official on November 19, 2021.
Origin and significance of the name The name "Indians" originated from a request by club owner Charles Somers to baseball writers to choose a new name to replace "Naps" following the departure of their star player Nap Lajoie after the 1914 season.
An oft-repeated legend is that the name "Indians" was chosen because it was one of the nicknames previously applied to the old Cleveland Spiders baseball club during the time when Louis Sockalexis, a Native American, played in Cleveland. The attribution of the new name as being in honor of Sockalexis, a member of the Penobscot Tribe of Maine, is generally discredited given the discriminatory treatment of Native Americans in general, and Sockalexis in particular during that era.
Defenders often claim there is an intention to honor Native Americans and that there are ways to do so while retaining their current representations. Opponents of Native American mascots make no distinction between respectful or disparaging usage, both being based upon stereotypes. The resolution issued by the Society of Indian Psychologists in 1999 states: Stereotypical and historically inaccurate images of Indians in general interfere with learning about them by creating, supporting and maintaining oversimplified and inaccurate views of indigenous peoples and their cultures. When stereotypical representations are taken as factual information, they contribute to the development of cultural biases and prejudices… This point of view echoes the position of the National Congress of American Indians, the oldest and largest organization representing enrolled tribal citizens in the United States: Often citing a long held myth by non-Native people that 'Indian' mascots 'honor Native people,' American sports businesses such as the NFL's Kansas City 'Chiefs', MLB's Cleveland 'Indians' and Atlanta 'Braves', and the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks, continue to profit from harmful stereotypes originated during a time when white superiority and segregation were common place.
Native American protesters in Cleveland also state that "retiring" Chief Wahoo would not be a sufficient solution to the issue, since both the name and logo would need to be changed to something that does not reference Native Americans in any way.
Decline and elimination of Chief Wahoo At the beginning of 2014, the use of Chief Wahoo was officially reduced to secondary status in favor of a block "C",
A small number of fans promoted "de-chiefing" of their team apparel by removing the Chief Wahoo logo as a silent protest while maintaining their support of the team. Team management declined to comment on the phenomenon, but pro-Wahoo fans made angry comments on social media.
Chief Wahoo hats continued to be worn by the players with home white jerseys and alternate navy blue jerseys both at home and on the road. This drew attention in both the United States and Canada during both the 2016 American League Championship Series and the 2016 World Series.
During Cleveland's 2016 playoff series with the Toronto Blue Jays, Renu Mandhane, chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission called upon the media outlets in Canada to stop using the name in view of the commission's general policy opposing the use of indigenous names and images in sports. Douglas Cardinal, who is of Blackfoot descent and architect of the National Museum of the American Indian, filed a human rights complaints with Ontario's Superior Court of Justice and human rights tribunal seeking to ban the use of both the name and logo, as well as names and logos of other sports teams deemed offensive, in Ontario.
Protests continued as Cleveland returned to the World Series for the first time in 19 years. In August 2016, a team spokesman said the team was "very cognizant and sensitive to both sides of the conversation" but had "no plans of making a change." Hundreds of Native Americans protested outside the stadium during the first game of the series.
The National Congress of American Indians sent a request to Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred that members of the Native American community be included in any discussion; the request was in response to Commissioner Manfred's announcement that he planned to meet with Cleveland Indians owner Paul Dolan about the issue following the conclusion of the 2016 Major League Baseball season. In advance of this meeting, the president of the American Sociological Association (ASA) sent a letter to Commissioner Manfred stating that the ASA and many other scholarly organizations have issued policies based upon scientific research that the use of Native American names and logos reinforces stereotypes and creates a hostile environment for Native Americans. Discussions between the team and MLB continued at the beginning of the 2017 season, with pressure from Manfred that there should be progress towards elimination of the logo. In 2019, the Chief Wahoo logo was removed from uniforms and stadium signs. Merchandise featuring the logo continues to be sold at the Progressive Field team store and limited Cleveland-area retailers to prevent trademark dilution, but is unavailable outside of the area, along with league merchandising partners such as Fanatics online.
Chief Wahoo as a racial caricature
The Chief Wahoo image was the Indians logo beginning in 1947, and is part of an exhibit at the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia maintained by Ferris State University in Michigan. For Dr. David Pilgrim, a sociology professor at Ferris State and an expert in racial imagery, the symbol is a "red Sambo" that hardly differs from the caricatures of Blacks popular in the Jim Crow era in which Wahoo was created, when such depictions of minority races were popularly used to inflame prejudice and justify discriminatory laws and behavior. Pilgrim explains how the exaggerated features serve their discriminatory purpose by emphasizing the differences of the depicted race, thereby reinforcing the idea that the caricaturized race is inferior. Bob DiBiasio, the team's then-Vice President of Public Relations, defended the use of Chief Wahoo, saying that fans only associate the Chief Wahoo image with baseball, while framing the team's decision to no longer "animate or humanize the logo" in terms of their "acknowledgement of the sensitivities involved."
The head of the Cleveland American Indian Movement has described the use of the mascot as "exploitative, bigoted, racist, and shameful."
Stanley Miller, while the executive director of the NAACP's Cleveland branch, lamented the lack of response to Chief Wahoo's use. In a 2008 interview, Miller said that if black Americans were depicted in an image akin to Chief Wahoo, "the NAACP would be up in arms about it. The Urban League would be up in arms about it."
Legal scholar Steve Russell, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation stated in 2001: "The Cleveland Indians are probably the least offensively named professional team, until you meet Chief Wahoo. It is like naming a team the 'African-American Freedom Fighters' and then making Sambo the mascot. It is like naming a team 'La Raza' and then resurrecting the Frito Bandito for mascot duty. No one can make the honor claim with a straight face, unless they seriously think Chief Wahoo is a straight face."
A particular problem with Chief Wahoo is that it includes a feather, which has special cultural significance to many Native American tribes. Ellen Baird, a Native American professor of sociology, says that the feather depicted in the logo is traditionally given to a warrior wounded in battle, and alleges that institutional racism prevents people from learning of this.
Social science research In a 2008 journal article "Of Warrior Chiefs and Indian Princesses", psychologist Stephanie Fryberg and colleagues studied the effects on American Indian high school students of exposure to Chief Wahoo and other depictions of Native Americans. While reporting positive associations to the images, effects included lower self-esteem, community worth, and fewer achievement-related possibilities for themselves. Follow-up research on American Indian college students again found that exposure to Chief Wahoo resulted in depressed predictions of future achievement. The researchers concluded based upon Social Representation Theory that these results were due to the relative absence of alternative positive images of Native Americans in contemporary society. Instead, mainstream characterizations of American Indians often invoke stereotypes such as alcoholism, higher school dropout and suicide rates; while sports mascots relegate Native Americans to the past, leaving little space for Native students to define a positive identity or think of themselves in terms of everyday social roles.
Subsequent research has found that exposure to the Chief Wahoo image "activated negative, but not positive, American Indian stereotypes", and that the predominantly European-American study participants' "motivation to control prejudice, prejudice level, and experience did not predict negative stereotype activation".