Looks like the anti-Fighting Sioux nickname croud is bringing out the big guns for it's Rally against the Fighting Sioux nickname. I am surprised Russell Means isn't coming as well. The Standing Rock Tribe also has their election today.
EDIT: Happened to drive by the Memorial Union today when I was out about 9:15 A.M. and there was a very SMALL croud protesting the Fighting Sioux name. I would estimate the size of the crowd to be abut 50-75 top end. Probably closer to 50 people. Not a very big crowd. Of course the news cameras were there.
Senior American Indian civil rights activists are among the speakers at Wednesday’s rally against the Fighting Sioux nickname at UND, according to information in a press release issued by rally organizers.
Both Clyde Bellecourt and Duane Martin Sr. took part in AIM’s 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, S.D., a seminal moment in Indian civil rights.
Bellecourt, an Ojibwe, is also considered a founder of the civil rights group.
Martin, in 2007, joined activist Russell Means and others in declaring the Lakotah nation independent of the United States, claiming vast tracts in North and South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska. These are lands it said were given to Lakotah people in the original 1868 treaty.
Other speakers include Erich Longie, longtime nickname opponent from the Spirit Lake reservation; David Gipp, president of United Tribes Technical College; and Denise Lajimodiere, a UND alumna and an education professor at North Dakota State University.
The rally will take place at 9 a.m. in front of UND’s Memorial Union.
The focus of the rally is on a meeting of the State Board of Higher Education on Thursday in which the board would consider extending the deadline for the state’s two namesake tribes to approve of the nickname.
Nickname opponents say the American Indian nicknames are derogatory.
[Grand Forks Herald]
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