Just a little perspective from a lifelong (and white) Cleveland MLB fan. I've seen these Native American protesters, and they are generally peaceful. As you can see from the video, they marched and then were contained in traffic barriers. That's been the case for a few years now. The pro-Chief Wahoo fans shown are despicable. I understand the nostalgic connection to the name and logo, but these people are so disgustingly racist.
I was very attached to Chief Wahoo because it reminded me of going to the home opener with my dad every year. However, I did some research a few years ago into the common arguments I always heard in support of the logo and name, and now I no longer wear Chief Wahoo and have more recently come to object to the name of the team. I prefer the Block C and support retiring the logo and changing the name. Here's why:
The biggest thing I always heard was that the team was named in honor of Louis Sockalexis, the first Native American to play in Major League Baseball. But history will tell you that this "honor" was retroactively applied. The team name was changed from "Naps," ironically actually honoring a player by using his name for the team, to "Indians" in 1915. First of all, this was the height of Jim Crow America. Honoring minorities wasn't really a thing back then. This was also only 25 years after Wounded Knee. Native Americans were mostly associated with scalping and general savagery.
The truth is that the sportswriters of the era named the team Indians as a tribute to the Boston Braves, who in 1914 had completed a miraculous worst-to-first run to win that year's World Series. The only reference to "honoring" Sockalexis was the good fun they had making racist comments when he was on the Cleveland Spiders from 1897 to 1899. That's right, Sockalexis played only three seasons with Cleveland and had fewer than 100 at-bats. Granted, he was great in 1897, for about three months. Is that really worthy of honor? This would be like naming the team after "Super" Joe Charboneau today because of his Rookie-of-the-Year season in 1980.
And if Sockalexis' short career was worthy of honor, why not name the team more specifically after him, as they did with Napoleon LaJoie when they were the "Naps" from 1903 to 1914? One of Sockalexis' nicknames was "The Deerfoot of the Diamond." Wouldn't something like "Cleveland Deerfoots" be a more honorable way to pay tribute to Sockalexis than the generic term "Indians"?
This article does a good job going through the history of the team name:
http://joeposnanski.com/cleveland-indians-the-name/As for Chief Wahoo, I always hear people say, "It's not offensive. It's just a cartoon." But the people who say that are always white, or they claim some ancestral tie to being Native American. Or they throw out the classic "My best friend is Native American, and he has no problem with it"-type argument. We don't have a large Native American population in Ohio, and there are no reservation lands here, so obviously these protest groups are always small. So, yes, there appears to be only a small minority of people who are offended by the logo. But, isn't that the definition of oppression? Oh, it's just the minorities complaining, so who cares?
This article does a good job explaining how Chief Wahoo is a akin to the racist Sambo caricatures:
https://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/the-curse-of-chief-wahoo/Content?oid=2954423The Cleveland Indians agreed to remove Chief Wahoo from uniforms starting in 2019. This was his last home opener, so it seemed the pro-logo fans were already riled up, but that doesn't excuse their terrible behavior. I love baseball, and I love my home team, but I also try to respect other people's heritage. The logo is a racist caricature. The name is an outdated term for a race of people. I don't think either are an appropriate way to honor anyone.