I think some background is in order. UND has a long proud tradition of using the Sioux name as it's identity for sports team. For a long time there's been a small but vocal group trying to create discord by saying that the name is disrespectful. Of course the Sioux tribal members don't see it that way no matter how much racial discord the haters, a malcontent humanities professors, tried to whip up.
It finally came down to a law suit against the NCAA. While we had a winning case, the Attorney General and the State Board of Higher Education stabbed us in the back by agreeing to an unprecedented agreement. We not only had to get our neighboring tribe to agree to the name we had to get a tribe hundreds of miles away to agree. According to interviews I heard of Archie Fool Bear, that tribe really doesn't have a lot of contact with UND.
I would like to ask the Attorney General how many other schools had to get two tribes to approve of the name. I expect though we'd get the kind of dishonest answer that Scott Hennen when he asked AG Wayne Stenehjem why he had never visited the tribes to negotiate when he promised he would the day of the settlement. Stenehjem said on the radio that he had early on. However in the Grand Forks Herald newspaper story, the Long Bitter Fight, Grant Shaft said that Stenehjem's involvement in the matter ended at the time of the settlement.
The anti's in the administration and Board of Higher Education were happy to not negotiate with the tribes and leave the blame on the Tribes until Tribal members took up the issue on their own and were forcing a vote. Then UND's illegitimate president pressured the Summit league commissioner to say that our application was being held up until the matter was settled. The Board of Higher Education then using that as an excuse started working on retiring the name right away.
Now since the people of Grand Forks and the Tribal Members and the UND alumni have been ignored the North Dakota state legislature has taken up the issue. Robert Kelley doesn't like anyone that doesn't agree with him having a say in this matter.
He also expressed concern about “the profound negative, deleterious effect” he fears recent legislative involvement in the long contentious nickname issue could have on the university.Just like he made up the issue about the Summit league he's trying to obscure the facts. The lawsuit was settled under North Dakota state law. The state legislature can and should change the law so that people have a say.
Kelley would like to pretend that if he gets his way here that everything will just settle down. I don't think so. If UND had allowed the case to go to court and we lost we would have regretted it, but at least we tried. If UND and the state government had tried to get the tribes approval and failed we would have regretted it but at least we tried.
Instead nobody from the state negotiated with the Tribes. The Kelley administration didn't want to keep the name. The State Board of Higher Education formed a committee to try to keep the name. Grant Shaft headed up one organizational meeting and as soon as Tribal members on the Spirit Lake reservation started working on the issue on their own they he said we couldn't wait for the Summit league and made the motion to drop the nickname.
Shaft says that they had contact with the tribes. I don't believe him. Where is the documentation? Where are the expense forms for travel?
Things aren't going to just go away:
[Al] Olson also expressed concern about the effect the controversy is having on UND’s current major fundraising campaign, as many potential donors have strong feelings about the Fighting Sioux name and logo.Tim, great things aren't going on at UND. Robert Kelley is running this institution into the ground.
Tim O’Keefe, executive director of the UND Alumni Association, agreed that there are potential costs to stretching the transition out over several years. “I think this president has a great agenda … that’s being impaired,” he said. The nickname issue dominates discussions he has with alumni around the country, and consequently “they’re not talking about the many great things that are happening here.”
But a great many of UND’s 112,000 alumni “are in mourning,” O’Keefe said.
And we're not in mourning. We're angry that our side has been ignored when it hasn't been denigrated. The great majority of people on and off the reservation have this in common. We want to keep the Sioux nickname. The university people work for us, not the other way around.
Contact your House members, there is supposed to be a vote around noon on Monday to save the name.
Cross posted from Say Anything Blog
