TAKING ON THE "FIGHTING SIOUX" - MORE THAN A SIMPLE PROTEST -
 
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 14:59:58 -0600 (CST)

 
TAKING ON THE "FIGHTING SIOUX" - MORE THAN A SIMPLE PROTEST - OREAD DAILY

Holding signs that read: "For a better University of North Dakota (UND),
people not logos," about 100 demonstrators, including representatives from
North Dakota and various tribes around the country, gathered in front of the
arena there just before the noon NCAA Elite Eight Division II basketball game
protesting UND's use of Fighting Sioux nickname and logo outside the Ralph
Engelstad Arena. BRIDGES (Building Roads Into Diverse Groups Empowering
Students), a UND student organization, was a co-sponsor of the protest.

Several regional and national Indian tribes and groups, including the Three
Affiliated Tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara) of the Fort Berthold Indian
Reservation in North Dakota, and the National Congress of American Indians
have drafted resolutions opposed to UND's nickname and logo

Group leaders said they wanted to raise awareness about their nearly
35-year-old quest to ban the use of American Indian symbols as mascots in
educational institutions.

When universities use 200-year old Indian imagery such as the Fighting Sioux
logo for promotional purposes, they spread negative stereotypes that
eventually translate into racism, said Charlene Teters, a writer, art
professor and founding board member of the National Coalition on Racism in
Sports and the media.

Daniel Green, a Diversity Studies professor at the University of Wisconsin, La
Crosse, Wis., who spoke at an early morning meeting in UND's Lotus Mediation
Center, agrees. "What goes into the mind comes out in the form of behavior,"
Green said. He said that cultural stereotypes have a negative impact on native
and non-native American people alike and gives them erroneous information
about Indian culture and traditions. It also promotes low self-esteem in the
developing minds of Indian teenagers who are often cast out and grow up
thinking that they are not good enough compared with mainstream society,"
Green said. "I know that because I used to be one of them," he said.

Extreme poverty, low self-esteem and drug problems are some of the main
reasons the suicide rate among Native-American teens is four times a higher
than the national average. Hate speech is the most destructive of them all,
Green said. "Studies prove that there is a correlation between racism and
suicide rates," he said.

The NCAA has asked UND to do a self-study on why the school continues to use
its American Indian nickname and logo. The school and 30 others that have
similar nickname, logo or mascot issues have until May 1 to reply to an NCAA
panel that eventually will make recommendations to the association's Executive
Committee.

Ron Stratton, NCAA vice president of education services, said it's unclear
what actions, if any, the association might take until all responses have been
assessed.

Joining UND's Fighting Sioux on the list are the Choctaws of Mississippi
College, the Utes of the University of Utah, the Savages of Southeastern
Oklahoma State University and the Fighting Illini of the University of
Illinois in Champaign.

In 2000, the North Dakota State Board of Higher Education ignored protests
from a variety of American Indian organizations, college alumni, students and
faculty and decided to keep the Fighting Sioux as the team name. At that time
the State Board and the university knuckled under to University patron Ralph
Engelstad who had just donated $104 million to build the Engelstad arena.
Engelstad said he'd pull his check if the university dared to change the
name.

Supporters contend that such nicknames are an entertaining part of a cherished
tradition and were never intended to harm or make a mockery of any group.

In October 2003, a professor of journalism from the University of Texas at
Austin named Robert Jensen spoke at UND on behalf of BRIDGES and laid waste to
that argument. His speech was entitled "The Past and Human Dignity: What the
'Fighting Sioux' Tells Us About Whites," and he discussed the historical
cultural issues that are imitated within the conflict over the team name.

"Appeals to the dominant white society to abolish the Fighting Sioux nickname
and logo typically are framed in terms of respect for the dignity and humanity
of indigenous people," Jensen said. "That is the appropriate way to address
the question, but it has failed-at least in North Dakota-to persuade most
white folks."

". the nickname controversy is really about-white America refusing to come to
terms with the truth about the invasion and conquest of North America and
refusing to acknowledge the fundamental illegitimacy of its power over
indigenous people as a result of that conquest."

Jensen referenced the history of the white conquest as grounds for his
argument.

"It's history, they say," he said. "Get over it-don't get stuck in the past.
But this advice to forget history is selective; many of the same folks who
tell indigenous people not to get stuck in the past are also demanding that
schoolchildren get more instruction in the accomplishments of the Founding
Fathers. The question isn't whether we should pay more attention to history.
The relevant questions are who gets to write history? From whose point of view
is history written? Which historical realities are emphasized and which are
ignored?"

Jensen believes there is a simple subconscious motivation behind the
mainstream's objection to changing the name of the Fighting Sioux.

"A power dynamic is at the core of white resistance to the simple act of
dropping nicknames such as Fighting Sioux," he said. "Indians don't get to
tell white people what to do. Why not? Polite white people won't say it in
public, but this is what I think many white people think: 'Whites won and
Indians lost. It's our country now. Maybe the way we took it was wrong, but we
took it. So get used to it. You don't get to tell us what to do.'"

He believes this power dynamic is responsible for the reluctance to let the
American Indian protestors win the conflict over the nickname.

"In this case, the argument for white people giving Indians that power is
intensified by the magnitude of evil perpetrated by whites on Indians," he
said. "To acknowledge all that is to acknowledge that the American nation is
based on genocide, on a crime against humanity. The land of the free and the
home of the brave, the nation that was born as the vehicle for a new freedom,
rests on the denial not only of freedom, but of life itself, to a whole group
of people."

Jensen compared the current mascot situation in America to a hypothetical
world in which Nazi Germany would have won World War II and began using the
"Fighting Jews" as a team name. He then spoke on the common view that the use
of the nickname is perpetuated based on tradition.

"Can tradition, the common argument for keeping the Fighting Sioux, trump
other considerations?" he said. "Indeed, tradition makes some people (mostly
whites) feel good. Does that value to some outweigh the injury to others? Many
traditions have fallen by the wayside over time when it became clear that the
tradition imposed a cost on some other person or group."

Across the country, according to the National Coalition on Race and Sports in
Media, which is part of the American Indian Movement (AIM), there are more
than 3,000 racist or offensive mascots used in high school, college or
professional sports teams.

"It's the behavior that accompanies all of this that's offensive," Clyde
Bellecourt a national leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), has said
"The rubber tomahawks, the chicken feather headdresses, people wearing war
paint and making these ridiculous war whoops with a tomahawk in one hand and a
beer in the other-all of these have significant meaning for us. And the
psychological impact it has, especially on our youth, is devastating."
Sources: Lakota Journal, Grand Forks Herald, Indianz, New Jersey State Bar
Association, Wall Street Journal

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