Fighting Sioux
There's been an ongoing controversy about the University of North Dakota's nickname - the Fighting Sioux. Yesterday, the North Dakota Board of Higher Education voted to set an Oct. 1 deadline to stop using the name. The president of the board said this issue has been a distraction for too long. Has it ever!
My older brother attended UND. I was only 13 or so when he graduated. I never thought much about the nickname. Growing up in Duluth, I was a huge UMD hockey fan - the Bulldogs. I really didn't like the Sioux during those years because they were better than the 'Dogs and usually had a winning record against them.
What I do remember specifically from those games was the fact that the crowd would change the last word of the national anthem to "Sioux." So... "land of the free, and the home of the Sioux." One might think that after 9/11 this tradition would be frowned upon, but they still do it at every game. (Even if they are the visiting team which just bothered me in a practical sense.) I consider myself patriotic, but not crazy about it. I learned how to properly fold a flag and I would never let it touch the ground. I hate seeing a torn flag waving in the breeze, but I don't freak out if someone uses flag burning in a demonstration. The fact that a lot of people who would want to ban flag burning are the same people yelling "Sioux" at the end of the anthem has always bothered me.
UND got a new hockey arena in 2001. It was a big deal. Hockey is a big deal in Grand Forks. Probably because the weather supports it 10 months out of the year, and there isn't much else to do. I went to the first game at the arena. My dad was on the board of the Hockey Hall of Fame then. It was a fundraiser for them. I think the Sioux played the Gophers, but I really can't remember. I hold a very vivid picture, however, of the arena itself. It reminded me of a mini Excel center. Same format for seating, same lighting around the inside ring. I didn't see the locker rooms, but apparently the "backstage" of the place was the most amazing.
The arena was built by Ralph Engelstad. He died a few years ago, but he was on the ice that opening night in an old shirt and dirty tennis shoes. Not particularly concerned with fashion, he was very passionate about UND. As I remember it, he tried to walk on as a goalie, but was never really successful. When he became wealthy in the casino business, he decided to give back to the school by financing this arena. He built it off-campus so that they could serve beer and so that a foundation could run it instead of the university itself. He also demanded that thousands of Sioux logos be built into every piece of the structure. The floor, the pillars, the bathroom walls - there are Sioux logos everywhere! Ralph didn't do this for aesthetics. He did it because the argument over the logo was hot even then & he wanted to make someone work really hard and pay a lot of money to remove that logo from his building should it ever come to that. His money paid for the arena so he could dictate every single one of those logos, but the feeling inside that space made me sick. Every logo carved into marble was put there out of spite. Ralph didn't think there was a reason to drop the logo - the Indian nations were over-reacting. And he was going to use the power of his cash to show them that.
My favorite argument for this has been, "Well, I'm Norwegian, should I be offended by the Vikings?" My answer is yes! Yes if you consider the Viking profile sacred and would truly be hurt by people walking across an image of it, then you should be mad as hell! But I suspect you aren't. I suspect you aren't mad because the Viking is really not a symbol of a sacred culture that has been stampeded, killed and abused for centuries (at least not by the dominant culture in this country). The comparison is not a valid one because there aren't Norwegians who truly feel racism in the logo of our pro football team. If there are, then they need to get organized and make themselves a little louder.
The Spirit Lake nation has decided to support the use of the Sioux logo. The Standing Rock tribe has said no, and says they won't change their position before the Oct. 1 deadline. I completely back both of these decisions because they were made by the people who are invested. Honestly, I hope the Standing Rock tribe doesn't back down. The fact that we've been having this conversation for more than 10 years proves that there's something to it. If there weren't, it would be another Vikings situation. But because there is something wrong with the image of the Sioux logo, the conversation has continued. There is a minority society that has made themselves heard and steadfastly protested the use of their image. We've heard them and ignored them. But, I'd like to think that in 2009 we could recognize how our treatment perpetuates hatred and racism. There's no place for the Ralph Engelstad attitude. We've come further than that and we are better than that.
