Erik Brady

USA TODAY Sports

Dennis Brown meticulously unstitched the Chief Wahoo emblem on the sleeve of his Cleveland Indians jersey a night before leaving to visit their spring training camp in March, mixing fashion statement with political manifesto.

The longtime Cleveland sports fan tweeted a picture meant mostly for his friends, as he had few followers. But re-tweets gave the missing logo larger circulation, where it struck a nerve. Angry Clevelanders called Brown a traitor and a moron and, oddly, a communist.

It wasn't just that Brown had "de-chiefed" the jersey — his term of art. The real power of the image resides in the outline of emptiness of the threads left behind. The mind's eye can still see the big-toothed, idiot-grinning, red-faced caricature, even if all that actually remains is its ghostly outline.

A grass-roots movement inspired by Brown gained momentum on social media over the weekend as thousands using the hashtag #DeChief called on the Cleveland team to retire Chief Wahoo — and on Nike to stop producing merchandise with that logo. Jacqueline Keeler, a founding member of an activist group called Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry, said her group borrowed the DeChief idea from Brown and called on fans to make it a trending topic on Twitter. The hashtag was used 4,236 times from noon Saturday to noon Sunday.

"I liked Chief Wahoo as a younger person," Brown told USA TODAY Sports. "As I got older, I sort of evolved from liking it to being ambivalent to becoming opposed. If you have ever seen images with hidden pictures in them, once you see the hidden picture, that's all you can see. That's what happened to me with Chief Wahoo. Once you see it for what it really is, you can't un-see it."

That makes Chief Wahoo a sort of Rorschach test for the nation as much as for northeastern Ohio. Some look at the logo and see history, tradition and baseball. Others look at it and see racism as plain as the (oversized) nose on the chief's cartoon face.

Nearly all of the national conversation on American Indian-themed team names in pro sports over the last year has centered on Washington's NFL club, whose use of "Redskins" — defined in dictionaries as offensive slang — has brought condemnation from the National Congress of American Indians and a federal trademark lawsuit that brands the word as disparaging.

But four other franchises in the four major professional team sports also use Indian-themed names — MLB's Indians and Atlanta Braves, the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs and the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks. USA TODAY Sports contacted each of them over the last two weeks, and their representatives talked gingerly about their mascot issues, when they spoke of them at all.

The volatility surrounding such names has amped up in the year since Daniel Snyder, owner of Washington's NFL club, told USA TODAY Sports that he'd never change his team's name: "NEVER — you can use caps." At least Snyder staked out a clear position. Representatives for the Indians, Braves, Chiefs and Blackhawks declined to answer questions on whether their teams would consider name changes, or even if they were monitoring the Washington team's troubles.

USA TODAY Sports asked to speak with top team officials; all four teams declined to make them available. In three cases, the teams asked for questions in advance; the Indians, who didn't ask, were also given them. All four teams offered statements — three written, one spoken — that mostly did not address the questions. The Indians did offer a statement about their embattled logo.

"We are very cognizant and sensitive to both sides of the conversation — our fans' deep, long lasting attachment to the memories associated with Chief Wahoo and those who are opposed to its use," the statement said. "We continue to research our fan base to better understand their perception and stance on the logo, but at present time have no plans of making a change. We will continue to have the Wahoo logo represented on our uniforms and home cap during the 2014 season."

Brown, who grew up in the Cleveland suburbs and works in marketing in Columbus, said he thinks the statement is carefully crafted to leave wiggle room for a change away from the logo just as it is less visible nationally. Since last season, the Indians replaced Chief Wahoo as their primary logo with a block "C" that stands for Cleveland. That's the one that can be found on MLB's website. The team said this change does not represent a first half-step away from the cartoon image.

"While the Block C is listed as our primary logo in the MLB style guide to help celebrate the City of Cleveland on a national scale, locally all three logos (Script Indians, Chief Wahoo, Block C) are as much a part of our brand now as they were last season," the statement said. "Currently, all three of our logos are being used across our uniforms, merchandise and ballpark."

The statement was issued before the term "DeChief" trended on Twitter this weekend. The Indians declined to say more Sunday: "We aren't going to elaborate further than our statement."

'NO GOOD ANSWER'



Some fans of franchises with Indian team names inevitably attend games as faux Indians in redface and feathers. The Indians, Braves, Blackhawks and Chiefs were asked if they are comfortable with that. None answered. Amanda Blackhorse, lead petitioner in the trademark case against the Washington team name, suggested a reason for that.

"There is no good answer," she said. "If it was OK, they wouldn't hesitate to say so."

Washington's team name has been an issue for decades; the original trademark case began in 1992, and the current one could be decided any day. Snyder's combative all-caps comment a year ago marked a tipping point, as the Oneida Indian Nation joined the fray in June with a well-financed national "Change the Mascot" public relations campaign. Pressure has come from as high as the Oval Office: President Obama told The Associated Press in October that if he owned the Washington team, he'd think about changing the name. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has spoken out several times, most forcefully last week, when he called on the NFL to "remove this hateful term from your league's vocabulary and rid the league of racism and bigotry."

National pressure has been less on the Indians, Braves, Blackhawks and Chiefs. Obama and Reid didn't mention them. But the National Congress of American Indians, which bills itself as the nation's most representative American Indian and Alaska Native advocacy organization, has long called for the abolition of all such team names in pro sports.

"I say they're all equally offensive," Blackhorse said. "They all promote stereotypes of native people for profit. And that's not right."

When Reid spoke on the Senate floor, he compared the NBA's banishment of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for racist remarks with the NFL's longstanding inaction on the Washington team name. Opponents of Chief Wahoo feel similarly.

The Twitter account @DeChiefWahoo said, "Lesson to Donald Sterling: Use racist imagery instead of words. #DeChief."

Keeler's group protested at Nike headquarters in Oregon on Thursday. She lives near Portland but was born in Cleveland and said her Native American parents marched against Chief Wahoo 45 years ago. She said the idea for the Nike protest came after she read this fan tweet: "Ordered a new #Indians jacket today. Got this one just to piss off the #DeChief (supporters)." It included a photo of the jacket, which pairs Chief Wahoo with the Nike swoosh.

"Nike is a socially conscious company that runs a fund that supports Native American sports and recreation programs," Keeler said. "So why is Nike selling merchandise with that grotesque caricature on it?"

Nike issued a statement in which it said it has "a contractual partnership" with MLB "as the licensing agent for MLB-approved marks." Nike noted each MLB team chooses its marks and that the company has long supported Native American causes "and we encourage the teams and leagues to engage in constructive dialogue with their communities."

NON-ISSUE FOR CHIEFS?

The Chiefs were the first of the teams to ask for questions in advance. These are the ones they were sent. (The other teams got some version of these.)

1.) Are the Chiefs monitoring the ongoing controversy with the Washington team? If so, what are your thoughts?

2.) Would the Kansas City team consider a name change? If not, why not?

3.) Are there Native Americans in the KC area who object to the name?

4.) The franchise says it is named for a former KC mayor, not American Indians. But the logo is an arrowhead.

5.) Fans of teams with Indian names often dress as pretend Indians, with painted faces and feathers. This occurs in Kansas City. Are you comfortable with your fans doing that? Might that be reason enough to consider a name change?

"We just aren't dealing with some of the issues that other teams are or have," Chiefs vice president of communications Ted Crews said. "We're not dealing with them. So I'm not going to go through (questions) 1 through 5 and answer them. That would be our stance. … Those issues haven't presented themselves from fans or groups."

Suzan Shown Harjo, lead petitioner in the original trademark case against the Washington team name, said she was startled at that stance. "Gee," she said, laughing. "That's wishful thinking. They wish they had no issues."

Blackhorse participated in a protest of Indian team names at Arrowhead Stadium in 2005, when the Washington team played there. She said some Chiefs fans wore feathers and war paint and shouted profane insults and threw beer at the protesters.

"I've been here since 2012, and we've not had anything that I've had to deal with in my position," Crews said. "We are not currently dealing with major issues with our name. We are not dealing with any issues, actually, I should say."

ONGOING DIALOGUE IN CHICAGO



Said the Braves' statement: "As the oldest continuously operating professional sports franchise in America, the Atlanta Braves are proud of our legacy as an organization. In the past, we have participated in a dialogue with the Native American community to exchange viewpoints. We remain comfortable with our team name and its origin and will continue to honor its history in the same respectful manner as always."

That history includes Chief Noc-A-Homa, a mascot who appeared when the Braves knocked a homer at Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium as recently as the 1980s.

MLB said in a statement that it "empowers its clubs to make decisions about their identity, logos and many other matters based on the clubs' expertise of their fan base and market." MLB said the Indians and Braves "have shared feedback they have received from fan research and conversations with the Native American community. As a result, we are comfortable with their positions and will continue to have a dialogue with both clubs."

Said the Blackhawks' statement: "We are very proud of our logo and the history it represents, dating back to our inception into the NHL in 1926. We have a strong relationship with the American Indian Center of Chicago, one of the oldest Indian Centers in the United States, and are honored to have their support.

"Through a genuine and ongoing dialogue we continue to learn about the needs of the native people in our community, display a reverence for their culture and their traditions, and understand the need for constant communication regarding the use and the depiction of native marks."

Scott Sypolt, general counsel for the American Indian Center of Chicago, which he said represents roughly 50 tribes in the Midwest, said the hockey team's front office has created "a genuine and ongoing dialogue with the native community in Illinois and for that we respect them."

Sypolt does not respect some of the other teams with Indian names. "There is a clear distinction," he said, "between sports teams that depict Native Americans as caricatures and red, screaming savages. ... If you look at Chief Wahoo, you have the big lips, the exaggerated nose and the beady eyes."

No major league pro team has changed its Indian-themed team name since the Buffalo Braves were rechristened as the San Diego Clippers, which came about more because the franchise swapped cities than because it was the right thing to do. That was 1978, three years before Sterling bought the franchise and several years after the Golden State Warriors jettisoned Indian imagery associated with their name.

That era was the beginning of a wave of mascot change at colleges and high schools across the country. Five major pro franchises cling to their Indian team names and imagery even as more than two-thirds of such names at more than 3,000 high schools and colleges have simply disappeared, like Chief Wahoo from a jersey sleeve.