Hot Corner | The Fighting Sioux lose their last battle

This week’s top head-scratcher in sports brings us to the great state of North Dakota for a dose of confusion from which I still haven’t fully recovered.

The big story to follow in the Peace Garden State—in fact, the only story since the University of North Dakota’s hockey season ended—has been the ongoing legal battle surrounding quite possibly the best collegiate nickname in the nation, the UND Fighting Sioux.

The state Supreme Court and Board of Higher Education ruled Thursday to retire the school’s allegedly offensive nickname for good after four years of litigation. The omnipotent NCAA has long been the driving force behind the effort, saying they find the moniker “hostile and offensive.”

But here’s the kicker: the Native American tribes in the region have been among the most vocal supporters of retaining the name. That’s right: the only people who have the right to complain about the name actually like it. You know, the people whose ancestral land was taken from them by European conquerors in a genocidal imposition of rule and have been marginalized to relatively miniscule plots of land under the auspices of it being in their best interest.

The nickname was born out of a simple rivalry, not an attempted cultural slight as the NCAA would like to believe. UND was originally “the Flickertails” until 1930, named after the fearsome figure of a Richardson’s ground squirrel. Interest by students and the university around that time sought a change, and the primary reason for suggesting the Sioux, in addition to their cultural influence on the area for centuries, was that the Sioux were excellent at exterminating Bison, the nickname of archrival North Dakota State.

The addition of “Fighting” came some years later, and was modeled after the nickname of another UND: the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

If you’re looking for a reason to dislike the moniker, it should come from within the actual Sioux community. One possible point of contention would be that its designer, Bennett Brien, was a UND student with Ojibwe tribal origins, a group that was one of the major combatants against the Sioux in the decades following Europeans’ arrival on the continent.

Many of the illustrious alumni of the university’s hockey program, it’s most well known and nationally relevant athletic squad, aren’t in favor of the change. New Jersey Devils’ forwards Zach Parise and Travis Zajac are two that have voiced their displeasure, describing it as “disappointing” and “stupid,” in the words of Parise.

It’s been a point of pride for a number of famous NHLers, including eventual Hall of Famer Ed Belfour, Hobey Baker Award winners Tony Hrkac (1987) and Ryan Duncan (2007), 2010 Olympians Parise and Jonathan Toews, and 1980 Miracle on Ice defenseman Dave Christian.

Now let’s cut the NCAA-inspired rhetoric and find the real reason why the Fighting Sioux nickname doesn’t jive with the collegiate governing body. UND is in the process of transiting from Division II to Division I athletics, with a target date of 2012 to promote all its programs to DI status.

The name provides two obstacles. First, no conference will take on UND if this legal battle still rages on. Second, one of the stipulations of the previous naming arrangement is that UND isn’t allowed to host postseason events without the approval of the area’s two tribes, the Spirit Lake and Standing Rock Sioux tribes.

I’ll break this into the simplistic calculations surely included in at least one PowerPoint presentation delivered at NCAA headquarters:

Division I Athletics = $ for UND

Postseason events = $$ for UND

Sioux approval of events = no $ for UND

No Sioux = $ for UND

If we’re really out looking for offensive nicknames, let’s look at the ever so hypocritical folks in South Bend. I would bet that if you brought up the belligerent history of immigrants from the shores of Eire, you would be labeled as much more offensive than if you did the same for members of the Sioux tribe.

It’s bad enough that we’re losing one of the coolest jerseys and most unique nicknames in all of college sports and gaining yet another generic state university named after a fierce animal (although the UND Nokota Horses, for the state animal, would be an acceptable compromise). But, NCAA, don’t act like you’re riding in to save us from the evils of political incorrectness.
 

Matthew De George is a contributing editor for The Hawk and senior biology major.  The Hot Corner appears weekly. He can be reached at: thehawk@sju.edu.