Indian Activists Protest Sioux Logo

This is a crosspost from Say Anything Blog.



Tomorrow the State Board of Higher Education is having a conference call to discuss extending their deadline for the Sioux logo and nickname. If you remember right the State Board (appointed by Governor John Hoeven moved the deadline up right after the Spirit Lake tribe gave it's overwhelming support for UND to continue to honor the Sioux name.

It seems that some people that DON'T care what the tribal members want decided to show up for a chance to get their names in the press.

About 50 people demonstrated outside UND’s Memorial Union on Wednesday. Some carried signs reading, “UND Sioux Logo = Identity Theft,” and “We Demand Our Civil Rights.”

The demonstration comes a day before state board meets to decide whether to extend the Oct 1 deadline for dropping the nickname and logo.

American Indian Movement activist Clyde Bellecourt said they should be dropped because they are racist.

So who are the leaders of this protest. Tu Uyen Tran wrote up a quick listing:

Here's who will be speaking:

* Concerned Native Students on campus
* David Gipp, President of United Tribes Technical College
* Erich Longie, Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc.
* Clyde Bellecourt, American Indian Movement activist for Native rights
* Duane Martin, Sr., Strong Heart Civil Rights Movement
* Denise Lajimodiere, Alum of UND (University of North Dakota)

Most of them are local voices against the nickname, except Bellecourt and Martin, who are big names in what I suppose might be the more militant wing of American Indian civil rights. Both were involved in the 1973 Wounded Knee incident, in which the American Indian Movement took over the town of the same name and engaged in shootouts with the feds.

Bellecourt is a co-founder of AIM, whose brother Vernon was a leader in the fight against Indian nicknames and mascots.

Besides being a member of AIM, Martin is involved in the Strong Heart movement, but I don't know exactly what that is. I found a couple of news items/press releases in which:

* He "blockaded" a dry reservation to block alcohol from entering; he got arrested for that .
* He joined others in declaring the independence of the Lakota nation -- as in making it a foreign country -- a purely symbolic move that he and others seem to take very seriously. The Republic of Lakotah has a Web site, which claims, among other things, an ongoing genocide by the U.S. government. Oops. Wrong Web site. This interesting article says Martin has essentially seceeded from the Republic of Lakotah to form the Lakota Oyate.
* He helped found a bank that trades only in silver and gold currency. I suppose this is a way to avoid using U.S. currency.

So the point is nickname opponents are bringing in the big guns, figuratively, to oppose the nickname.

Now most of the people scheduled to speak just disagree with me. That's OK, they have every right to do so. I have to question why they think that their feelings outweigh even the members of the spirit lake tribe. I'm not saying that the local speakers are bad people, I just disagree with them on this. I don't know them and they have every right to speak out as they see fit.

But we also have some hard core activists speaking. I think it will interesting to find out if the State Board of Higher Education agrees with Belcourt who claims that he's seceeded from the United States or if the agree with the vast majority of the public including the Spirit Lake Tribe who know that UND's use of the name is honoring the name.

Or does the State Board of Higher Education (appointed by Governor Hoeven) think that we're all a bunch of racists just like Clyde Bellecourt thinks.