This article appeared in the December 15, 2020 edition of the Monitor Daily.

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Don’t expect the Spokane Indians to change their name

Amy Sinisterra/AP/File
Juanita Ramirez of the Spokane Indians Advisory Council (left), Little Miss Spokane Tribe Shenoah Bowen, Junior Miss Spokane Tribe Dominique Morning Owl, and Gerald Nicodemus of the Spokane Tribal Council look at the new baseball cap logos of the Spokane Indians Baseball Club during the unveiling of the new logo at the Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, Washington, on Nov. 29, 2006. The new design was a rare instance of a sports team working with a local tribe on the sensitive issues of racial stereotypes in nicknames, mascots, and logos.

The new owners of the Spokane Indians minor league baseball club came to the Spokane Tribe of Indians in 2006 with a question: Should we change our name?

Keep the name, the tribal council said, but change how you think about it.

This week, news broke that the Cleveland Indians baseball team will change a nickname seen as demeaning by many Native Americans. Spokane shows a different path. Today, Spokane’s baseball team is still the Indians, but there are stadium placards explaining tribal history and culture, signage in the local language of Salish, a team logo inspired by a Native artist, as well as a jersey written in the Salish script – so pioneering that a copy is in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Other teams, such as the Florida State University Seminoles, have taken a similar path – genuinely honoring a tribe, not caricaturing it. In Spokane, a shift in thought changed everything. “You have a choice. You can do it with arrogance and appropriation, or you can do it with humility and collaboration,” designer Jason Klein told Sports Logos News.

The Spokane Tribal Council has called the work a “groundbreaking” example of respect and collaboration. “To see the jerseys in my language means a lot to me personally,” tribal chairman Carol Evans told Indian Country Today in 2015. “It’s important for the people that live in the city of Spokane to know who the original people are.”


This article appeared in the December 15, 2020 edition of the Monitor Daily.

Read 12/15 edition
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