Looking Beyond Chief Wahoo

Last week, the Cleveland Indians announced that beginning in 2019 they would no longer use the red-faced Chief Wahoo logo on their hats and uniforms. They would continue to wear the image for one more season, and they would keep selling merchandise bearing the Native American cartoon (at least in part to maintain their copyright), but the most controversial insignia in sports was otherwise being relegated to history.

The downfall of Chief Wahoo, whichhad been demoted to alternate-logo status in 2014, was a victory for activists who had long decried the image as a racist caricature. It was also a sign that the growing pushback against Native names and symbols in high-school and college sports had finally found a foothold in the pros. “We’re already pretty far into the dominos falling; it’s just that the most visible dominos are the most stubborn,” the Cherokee writer and organizer