Name Game

By Patrick Bohn ’05, December 18, 2020

IC professor says Cleveland’s baseball team announcement on franchise name long overdue.

Cleveland's Major League Baseball franchise is going to change its name following the 2021 season.

(Photo by: LunaseeStudios/Shutterstock)

Earlier this month, Cleveland’s Major League Baseball franchise announced that it would be changing its team name after the 2021 season. The franchise has been called the Indians for more than 100 years.

It’s the second professional athletic team to move away from using Native American imagery and names. Earlier this year, the NFL’s Washington franchise retired its offensive name, and went by the moniker Washington Football Team during the 2020 season.

Ellen Staurowsky, professor of sports media in the Department of Media Arts, Sciences and Studies said that while the initial reaction in the sports world has been positive, she’s still reserving full judgement until she sees what the franchise does going forward

“It’s certainly the right decision, and it’s overdue. Still, I’ve taken a wait and see attitude on this, because of other announcements by the franchise suggesting that change was coming, and that change didn’t come.”

Ellen Staurowsky, professor, Department of Media Arts, Sciences and Studies

“I think that’s it’s a promising sign that the ownership in Cleveland have revisited this issue and appear to have made a commitment to stopping the use of Native American imagery in association with their team,” said Staurowsky, who has done extensive research on the claims of the Cleveland franchise in terms of the origin of its name and the history of the imagery it has used. “It’s certainly the right decision, and it’s overdue. Still, I’ve taken a wait and see attitude on this, because of other announcements by the franchise suggesting that change was coming, and that change didn’t come.

“I’m not trying to be overly critical, because we don’t know the details of what the franchise is planning,” she continued. “But at the same time, their conduct in the past hasn’t always been consistent with their public claims.”

“This is going to be an ongoing project of vigilance, and I wonder if the franchise and MLB executives really understand the critical role they now play in creating a meaningful context in discouraging ongoing use.”

Ellen Staurowsky

Additionally, Staurowsky, who has written extensively about the use of Native American imagery in sport, especially in terms of the Cleveland franchise, has spoken at the National Museum on the American Indian about the issue of the franchise’s name and imagery, and covered protests surrounding them, said that this change doesn’t erase history.

“It’s virtually impossible to fully get rid of the name and logo,” she said. “It will live on in films like ‘Major League’ and historical footage of the playoffs. This is going to be an ongoing project of vigilance, and I wonder if the franchise and MLB executives really understand the critical role they now play in creating a meaningful context in discouraging ongoing use. How do you compensate for the long-term damage that has occurred that might not have happened had you made this decision decades earlier?”