Sioux City's Lesson Of Enlightenment

SIOUX CITY, Iowa - Of late, civic pride has become as deep and wide as the Missouri River that runs west of town. Two turns for the better have occurred this winter. Professional baseball is returning to Sioux City after an absence of 33 years when the New York Giants had a farm team here in the Three-I League.

The other achievement, with an impact reaching well beyond this plains community, is that the team is to be called the Sioux City Explorers, not the Sioux City Soos, which was the old name and one the new owners initially considered reviving three months ago.

A lesson of enlightenment can be learned here, the wisdom of which has yet to take hold in such cities as Washington, Atlanta and Kansas City where the owners of professional teams - Redskins, Braves, Chiefs - persist in keeping names that racially offend large numbers of Native Americans. Sioux City is believed to be the nation's first and only sports franchise to honor the feelings of its native citizens by changing a team's name.

The shift from Soos to Explorers - the latter in tribute to Lewis and Clark, who paddled upriver in the early 19th century - came about when the region's Santee Sioux and Winnebagos pressured local politicians and team owners to understand that they saw the name as a racial slur. The mascot of the old Soos was remembered: Lonesome Polecat, a cartoon Indian clad in a loincloth, flailing a hatchet and grinning drunkenly.

For a time, the controversy over the team's name lurched toward nastiness. The letters page of the Sioux City Journal became a verbal war zone. Columnists took opposing sides. One who embraced the Sioux and Winnebagos' argument wrote: "Quite frankly . . . we can certainly do much better than the bastardized spelling of an Indian tribal name." For that, the columnist became a target of local scorn. Instead of receiving death threats, it was worse. Critics began calling him a liberal.

One of the tribal leaders who helped bring about the name change was Frank LaMere, a Winnebago who heads the Nebraska Indian Inter-Tribal Development Council. He is a nationally known Democrat. At the national convention in New York last July, LaMere was among the 21 delegates brought to the platform on the final night to be honored for their social activism.

At first, LaMere's grievance was seen by some as the idle fumings of a lone dissenter who would soon tire and fade away. In late autumn, he organized the 10,000 Sioux, Winnebagos and Omahas who live in the area. Agreement was reached to protest. One critic of the name change wrote to the Journal about "the hokey concept of political correctness. I think it is a bunch of garbage. . . . If the (Indians) are really concerned about their problems they should be doing something about the lousy health care they receive."

That was the reason LaMere took a stand: "People say that Indians have bigger problems than mascots and use of Native American images, but I disagree. If you can't see me as an individual then how can you understand the problems we have as a people? We have taken much heat and the backlash has been tremendous but we can take it. If our children do not have to endure the insults we have endured then our efforts will have been worth it."

At the same time Sioux City was working out its problems, Kansas City wasn't. A game there last November saw the Chiefs play the Washington Redskins. Local fans performed the tomahawk chop and sang war chants during scoring drives. Outside Arrowhead Stadium, Vernon Bellecourt, a co-founder of the American Indian Movement, explained why he and 100 others were protesting: "We're saying, play football and stop playing Indians. Stop this demeaning, degrading and despicable exploitation of our cultural and spiritual life."

By far, the most offensive team name in the country is the Redskins. Owner Jack Kent Cooke, a pompous character with limitless self-importance, lacks the decency to take action. There's a way to force him. Cooke is eager to build a bigger and more profitable stadium. Before allowing it, the mayor and city council should demand: no new stadium without a new name.

Sioux City is a model of civic progressiveness. "Down the road," says Frank LaMere, "we'll see that the discussion here was healthy and the debate was good. Sioux City has grown in its thinking and maybe we helped a little bit. Maybe someday they'll let me throw out the first ball."

Colman McCarthy's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times.

(Copyright, 1993, Washington Post Writers Group)