The view(s) from Standing Rock

I have to admit that I am not a fan of the Grand Forks Herald newspaper, except for their sports coverage. It's not much of a mystery that the Herald is firmly in the camp of lets the change the name. At least in this article they attempt to be even handed and at least fair.

“I will be a Sioux to the end,” Fool Bear said.

And he remains a defender of the UND Fighting Sioux despite arguments by opponents — backed by the NAACP and American Psychological Association — that the name contributes to an atmosphere of bigotry harmful especially to young Indians.

“There’s a certain faction that doesn’t like the nickname,” Fool Bear said. “They have their points.” He remains skeptical, though, of Indian students’ stories about incidents of abuse.

“The name didn’t create that atmosphere,” he said. “You have negative people everywhere. If something happened to them, let’s fix it. Let’s deal with it, like how they got rid of ‘Sammy Sioux’ and the ‘Siouxperburger.’ They got sensitized about things like that. But now (the nickname opponents) are coming here and telling everybody it’s so bad up there” at UND. “They’re going around here and telling people, ‘Don’t send your kids there.’

“I’ve been there. I’ve never experienced anything like that.”

Indian students from Standing Rock and other tribes have described feeling intimidated at Fighting Sioux sporting events, including the 2001 dedication of Ralph Engelstad Arena.

“I wanted to get out of there,” Emmy Scott, 24, a Winnebago and Arikara Indian and UND student who attended as a teenager with her mother, said in a recent interview. “I thought of my family, and I cried. In a lot of ways, our lives are dominated by this.”

Fool Bear said he attended the dedication ceremony, too, and he also speaks emotionally about it — about watching a Standing Rock dancer perform and seeing his nation and its warrior tradition portrayed heroically in a video before the game.

“The video talked about pride and courage and tenacity and winning battles,” he said. “And the reaction from all those people — man, that felt good.” [Read the whole story here]