Board of Higher Education/NCAA Locking Out Native Americans When Discussing Sioux Nickname

Cross posted from Say Anything Blog.

Of course they've never cared what the actual Sioux Tribal Members thought about the name.

Grant Shaft, a Grand Forks attorney and vice president of the State Board of Higher Education, said that Gov. Jack Dalrymple, Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem and leaders of the North Dakota House and Senate have been invited to the face-to-face meeting.

Also invited: Board President Jon Backes, UND President Robert Kelley and Athletic Director Brian Faison.

Shaft said that NCAA President Mark Emmert and Bernard Franklin, a longtime NCAA vice president and head of its governance committee, have agreed to attend the meeting. Additional NCAA officials may also participate.

It will be a closed meeting, Shaft said, adding that Stenehjem and Pat Seaworth, the board’s attorney, have indicated that the assemblage as anticipated “would not require” that it be open under North Dakota’s open meetings law.

Of course the public is going to be excluded as well.

Our current egregious settlement was negotiated in secret by Attorney General (included in the meeting) and the NCAA (included in the meeting.) The settlement was then approved in secret by the Board of Higher Education (included in the meeting).

The settlement with the NCAA was egregious because it had an unprecedented requirement that not one but two tribes approve the use of the Sioux name. One can only conclude that these secret meetings were about getting rid of the name and having the blame fall upon the Indians.

And now the same people, the NCAA and the Board of Higher Education are getting together to make decisions on what is respectful to the Indians by treating the Sioux Tribal Members with disrespect. I'm reminded of the attitude of the 1800's where the government said they knew what's best for the Indians so they should control all of their assets. Now I don't believe in apologizing for things done in the past by people to people that are all long dead. But I don't condone that same attitude by people working for us in 2011.

This Board of Higher Education should be ashamed of themselves, but I doubt that they have that much decency.

They sure didn't show any decency when they made this deal with the NCAA and then never made an attempt to keep the name. Grant Shaft, pictured supposedly led the effort to keep the name. He waited a full year to actually do anything. He disbanded his committee after one meeting because the Spirit Lake Tribe was moving towards having a vote on the issue. He then used the trumped up issue of Summit league membership to push through a shortened deadline in order to thwart the will of the people across the state including the Sioux people.

Having these same people represent us in negotiations with the NCAA is a travesty.

Mike Jacobs; "UND nickname dispute exposes racial attitudes"

If you haven't read this marvelous (yes I am being sarcastic) opinion piece by Mike Jacobs, our beloved Editor of the Grand Forks Herald. I have posted his article from today addition of the Grand Forks Herald. Jacobs admits what we already knew, he is anti logo. Say it isn’t so. I also don’t believe him when he says that he isn't celebrating. Yeah, oh ok Mike! Again, I must ask myself why I am paying money for your miserable newspaper. That’s $15.75 a month that could be better spent on other things. It's not like we need to read your worthless opinion pieces, there are other media options available to us. The only reason I read the Herald anymore is because of the sports coverage. I am seriously thinking about canceling the paper for good.

The more I think about last week’s decision to retire UND’s nickname and logo, the more discouraged I become.

I’ve been opposed to use of “The Fighting Sioux” since students constructed grotesque snow sculptures that depicted Indian people to celebrate something called “King Kold Karnival” back in the 1960s — long before the days of political correctness. In the ’70s, the coffee shop in the Student Union used cups decorated with a caricature of “Sammy Sioux.” There were worse offenses against human dignity — including enthusiasts who did mock dances dressed in loin cloths and little more, whooping and hollering and pretending to be Indians — or what they thought represented Indians. Something similar happened a couple of years ago, when a sorority hosted a party with a cowboys-and-Indians theme.

Clearly, it seems to me, the nickname and logo have long encouraged thoughtless stereotyping of Indian people.

Over the years, I’ve taken quite a lot of heat for this point of view. In fact, I’d say that nothing I’ve written about in more than 30 years at the Herald has brought me so much abuse.

So I should be celebrating last week’s decision to end use of the nickname and logo.

But I’m not celebrating at all.

Instead, it seems to me that the decision only underscores the indifference that North Dakotans feel toward American Indian people.

It says that we just don’t care.

If we cared what Indian people thought, we would have engaged them in this discussion a long time ago — way before the current members of the Board of Higher Education took office.

But we didn’t.

If we cared, we would allow American Indian people to be heard on their own terms and in their own time.

But we won’t, if last week’s decision by the Board of Higher Education stands.

Indifference, more than any other thing, has produced the result that confronts us now.

The campaign against the Fighting Sioux nickname and logo began as a fight against racism, so the activists said.

It ends — if indeed it has ended — exposing racial attitudes in a way that doesn’t flatter the state nor — this must be said — critics of the nickname.

Critics of the nickname argued that there shouldn’t be votes in the state’s Indian communities. One letter published in the Herald last year argued that results of an election at Spirit Lake should be disregarded because Indian communities operate on consensus — even though tribal councils have been elected for more than a century, far longer than nations in which the United States has tried to build democracy (including such countries as Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention Japan and Germany).

To suggest that Indian people shouldn’t be heard about such a straightforward issue is dismissive in a very disturbing way. It suggests that we white folk know better.

But of course we don’t.

The truth about North Dakota is that it is a rigidly segregated place, and most white North Dakotans like it that way.

Doubt it?

Have a look through the comments about Herald stories posted on our Web site.

Retaliation is a frequent theme. UND should end its programs for Indian students, for example.

And this despite the apparent truth that it is that white society that has failed to engage Indian people rather than the other way around.

So what’s the way out of this dilemma?

That’s far from clear.

In Indian country, both supporters and opponents of the nickname have indicated that they will never give up. Erich Longie, an opponent, said as much in a letter published on April 4, a week ago. Steve Fool Bear, a nickname supporter, said the same in a letter published Saturday in the Herald.

Their message is the same: Listen to us.

But of course that’s not what the Board of Higher Education — representing us white folks — wants to do, not then and not now.

It could be too late to save the nickname, which is a small thing after all, and of little consequence.

What we urgently need is to build a society here that includes all of us.

Are we really interested in that?

Frankly, in the last week any evidence that we really are has been mighty hard to find.[Grand Forks Herald written on 4-1-2010]