The Chief’s idiot grin was part of the culture that greeted Keeler’s parents when they arrived in Cleveland circa 1960 as part of the federal government’s so-called American Indian Relocation program.
“Basically, it relocated young Native people from reservations to urban centers,” Keeler says. “They brought about 20,000 Native people between the ages of 18 and 30 to Cleveland in the 1950s and 1960s.”
The
Cleveland Plain Dealer, on its front page in 1957, reported the news this way: “Cleveland is going to get some new Indians, but this is no baseball story. Honest Injun.”
That tells you a lot about the era when Keeler’s parents met and married in Cleveland. Some years later, they joined other members of the local Native community in protesting the Cleveland club’s team name and its malignant mascot.