And The Fighting Sioux of North Dakota
Why should they be offended?
Braves sounds really good. If I were Native, I would be proud that somebody named team “Braves” after myself.
Are oilers or cowboys upset about teams named after them?
Over 50 Indian tribes from across California strongly oppose Prop 27
Prop 27 would drive business away from Indian casinos—posing a direct threat to Indian self-reliance.
Back in the ‘60s, a native baseball team in B.C.’s Cariboo called themselves the “Wagon Burners”.
A sense of humor goes a long ways.
Having been born and raised in an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland, our major league baseball team is, and will always be the INDIANS ! I don’t give a flip what “they” want to call them.
Just to provide some local perspective on a few things from this thread, since sometime in the mid 1960s forward a handful of people from a group called “The American Indian Movement” would show up on opening day and yell at all the fans in Indians regalia and the fans basically told them to go pound salt. The ownership resisted MLB attempts to do away with the name and logo.
Chief Wahoo was last used on a Cleveland uniform during the 2018 season. Coincidentally, Cleveland hosted our first All-Star game in 22 years in 2019. After that it was all downhill from there. You can still buy Chief Wahoo merch from the Team-store and the ownership continues to hold the copyright on the Chief. Imagine that.
I will also relate a personal experience that I had when I went to an Indian casino in the U.P. of Michigan 20 some years ago. I was wearing my Cleveland Indians baseball cap with Chief Wahoo on the front. All the staff were members of the local tribe and I got a lot of thumbs-up, high-fives and smiles as a result. Not one negative comment. Make of that what you will.
I have heard it said that its those of us over 40 that still call the Indians the Indians while the youngsters could cars less. Oh well. Go Tribe !
Without these teams, these tribes will disappear from our consciousness. Will future generations remember who the Seminoles, fighting Siouz, or Aztecs were? How many people even know the Utes are a tribe?
There are no “native” Americans. The only place Homo Sapiens are ‘native’ to is Africa’s Great Rift valley. Even the Indians are inmigrants, they just got here long before the Europeans did.