Grand Forks Herald: Nickname task force further develops open forums

More details are starting to emerge from the UND Nickname and Logo Task Force. I like many, received an email asking me if I would like to attend one of these four-hour forms.

Anna Burleson, Grand Forks Herald -- The UND Nickname and Logo Task Force fleshed out a few more details for upcoming community forums at a meeting Friday.

The group plans to address those who still hold on to UND’s former Fighting Sioux logo and mascot, which was officially retired in late 2012 after the NCAA deemed it offensive.

“The tagline around here is ‘Fighting Sioux forever,’ and a lot of people still maintain that passion and feeling and there is no way you’re ever going to change their mind that it has to change,” task force and UND faculty member Sue Jeno said. “We need to respect it and honor it, but we don’t need to inflame it.”

The four-hour forums will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 6, and 5 p.m. on Nov. 7 at the Howard Johnson. They are open to the public and attendees outside of the 90 stakeholders specifically invited to each meeting will have an opportunity to leave their comments and suggestions as well.

After a brief welcoming session, each table of people will have a task force facilitator guide three 20-minute brainstorming sessions, with attendees switching tables for each session.

So what if we keep the name? A devil's advocate look at the nickname.

The UND track team is the first team to suffer as a result of the University of North Dakota resuming use of the Fighting Sioux nickname. Someone posted the link to this Associated Press article over on Sioux Sports this morning.

IOWA CITY --- The University of Iowa has decided not to invite the University of North Dakota to an April track meet because of the school's Fighting Sioux nickname.

Associate athletic director Mark Abbott Monday said Iowa decided against the invitation when UND reinstated the name earlier this month.

Iowa policy prohibits the athletic department from scheduling competitions with schools or attending tournaments hosted by schools using Native American mascots, unless those mascots are approved by the NCAA.

So where are we going from here?

I get it; I don’t like being told by an out of control hypocritical organization like the NCAA what our nickname should be. The NCAA is out of control and there are much more pressing issues facing college sports than this, but this is where the like minded organizations (Minnesota, Iowa, Wiscosin) who think the same way as the NCAA, can get back at the State of North Dakota for thumbing it’s nose at the NCAA.

These schools and the NCAA could care less if the nickname petition drive was conducted by people from both Sioux tribes. The NCAA and like minded organizations could also care less about a state wide vote on the Fighting Sioux nickname. The only thing that matters is that both tribes approved the use of the Fighting Sioux nickname and Standing Rock didn't give UND the approval.

Why should the NCAA and these institutions care? They have a signed settlement agreement by the the Attorney General of the state of North Dakota and UND is in violation of that legally binding agreement.

Small cost right; for keeping the Fighting Sioux nickname? Right? I mean it's only the track team right? Recently, I have read a lot of comments from people that said have said, “So what if the University can’t host NCAA playoff events.” It’s a small price for keeping the Fighting Sioux nickname.

Is it?

These are just the first teams to suffer the wrath of the NCAA sanctions, if the BSC doesn’t kick UND out of the conference, eventually the football team is going to qualify for the FCS football playoffs, sooner rather than later, but they won’t be able to host an NCAA football game because UND is under NCAA sactions as a result of UND using the Fighting Sioux nickname.

I have also read comments like this, “Who cares if the Woman’s team has to travel to Fargo to host an NCAA hockey series?” Well this is proof that the Fighting Sioux nickname will cost the University of North Dakota. Playing at home would have a big advantage as opposed to going on the road.

Next season there is a very good chance that the Fighting Sioux woman’s team is once again going to be a national power in Woman’s Divsion I hockey and the advantage of playing at home could mean the difference between winning and losing an NCAA series.

Small cost for keeping the Fighting Sioux nickname. Right? Tell that to the women that play on that team.

Again, you won’t find a bigger fan of the Fighting Sioux nickname, I wear the logo in some form almost every day’s of the week. I have many ball caps and stocking caps, tee shirts, golf shirts and hooded sweat shirts, I am currently wearing a golf shirt with the Fighting Sioux logo on it, as I type this.

I am considering getting a tattoo on my left calf in honor of the Fighting Sioux nickname.

That being said, I also recognize the damage that is being done to UND because we are keeping the Fighting Sioux nickname.  I am a proud alumnus; I have two degrees from the University of North Dakota, 1996 B.A. and 1999 MA.  I want to see this university succeed both on and off the playing field.

Not one of my diplomas says the Fighting Sioux on it. It says the “University of North Dakota.”

I will also cheer and support this school no-matter-what they call us. I will also continue to cover UND/Fighting Sioux hockey for whoever and whenever, as long as I can.

I will also support the Native Americans and their law suit against the NCAA, because I think it’s a fight worth having. The NCAA is an out of control tyrannical organization, but we have to play by their rules as long as we are a member of the NCAA.

I will also help them raise money for the lawsuit if they want my help.

Audio from the Spirit Lake Announcement

Watch live video from scotthennenshow on www.justin.tv
The Scott Hennen show has the announcement live.

N.D. Supreme Court hearing on Sioux nickname is today

Here is the latest on the Fighting Sioux nickname. Let's just hope the State Board of Higher Education does not pull the rug out from under the nickname supporters down on Standing Rock that have worked hard to get the 1000 signatures on the petition.

A state Supreme Court hearing that’s been holding up a decision to end the use of UND’s Fighting Sioux nickname is scheduled for today.

The court will decide whether the district court in Devils Lake decided correctly when it ruled against nickname supporters from the Spirit Lake Dakotah Nation. The plaintiffs had filed suit to block what they consider an illegal early retirement of the nickname by the State Board of Higher Education.

The board had indicated it favored early retirement last fall, but the lawsuit and the temporary restraining order it triggered forced the board to pause. After the judge ruled in favor of the board, the board still took no action because the plaintiffs had appealed to the Supreme Court.

Thrown into this mix is the potential for the nickname to go on the ballot at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Nickname supporters there turned in a petition with 1,004 signatures, a significant number considering about 1,900 voted in the last tribal election.

The main reason board members favored retiring the nickname was they weren’t seeing any movement toward such a ballot measure at Standing Rock.

UND needs the blessings of both the state’s Sioux tribes to keep the nickname, as stipulated in the settlement between the state and the NCAA, which considers American Indian nicknames offensive
[Grand Forks Herald]

Standing Rock Supporters: Enough Signatures on Petition

It would appear that supporters of the Fighting Sioux nickname might have gotten some good news. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

WDAZ - A group of Sioux nickname supporters on the Standing Rock Reservation say they have enough signatures to ask for a reservation-wide vote on the issue.

They have collected more than 800 signatures. They only needed 600 for the tribal council to consider the issue.

The tribal council has already voted against putting support for the nickname to a public vote.

Supporters are hoping to present the petition to the council tomorrow to see what the next step is.

One problem: the Standing Rock constitution doesn't outline a procedure to dealing with a petition asking for a referendum vote.

It's up to the council and tribal attorney to outline a plan and that could take a while.

The North Dakota State Board of Higher Education is waiting until the North Dakota Supreme Court has ruled on an appeal to a decision that previously blocked them from changing the nickname.

That ruling is expected by early April.

Nickname supporters at Standing Rock begin push to add UND nickname to ballot

Looks like there is some movement on the Standing Rock Reservation. I still think the logo is on life support though.

Supporters of UND’s Fighting Sioux nickname at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe will be starting a petition drive today to get the issue on the ballot.

Tom Iron, one of the supporters, said the group aims to have at least 600 signatures by next Wednesday. He said he’s spoken with Chairman Charlie Murphy about the matter, and the chairman has promised to cooperate.

Nickname supporters have worked for months on a petition, but the apparent lack of progress had convinced many State Board of Higher Education members that it was time to retire the nickname and move on.

Under a settlement between the state and the NCAA, which considers American Indian nicknames offensive, UND has until Nov. 30 to win support of both the state’s Sioux tribe or abandon the nickname. Spirit Lake tribal members had voted overwhelmingly last year to stand behind the nickname, but Standing Rock’s Tribal Council had refused to allow a referendum.

Iron and other supporters hope the signatures would convince the council, about half of which is new, to put the nickname on the ballot.

The state board will meet Feb. 18, and most members have indicated they might decide to retire the nickname then so UND can apply to the Summit League athletic conference. The Summit League has said it won’t consider an application until the nickname issue is settled. A lawsuit seeking to stop the board from doing that is awaiting a Supreme Court hearing in March, but board members think they won’t have to wait.

Coincidentally, the board will be meeting at Lake Region State College, not far from the Spirit Lake reservation.
[Grand Forks Herald]

Four of five North Dakota Supreme Court justices in Sioux nickname case are UND Law School grads

My first reaction to this story was you have got to be kidding me? Also, I think Leigh Jeanotte is trying to muck up the process by forcing the court hand to make the decision in his favor or the ND Supreme Court doesn't have any credibility. This is right out of the rules for radicals play book; begin the task of agitating: rubbing resentments, fanning hostilities, and searching out controversy. This is exactly what Jeanotte is doing, he is trying to invent a controversy before the appeal even begins. This is shameful. Let the issue play out in the courts without influence from the outside. The group that brought the lawsuit against the State Board of Higher Education are actually members of the Spirit Lake Tribe.

Leigh Jeanotte “would hope” that North Dakota’s Supreme Court won’t be biased in any way about the Fighting Sioux nickname because four of its five members are University of North Dakota law school graduates.

“But you always wonder about that affiliation with UND and the athletics,” said Jeanotte, director of American Indian Student Services at UND and an outspoken nickname opponent. “It just could taint something, I think, in a horrible way.”

Legitimate or not, such concern exists among some nickname opponents hungry for an end to the issue, he said.

Despite his reservations, “My feeling is that they’re going to be fair with this and any other item that they have to deal with,” Jeanotte said.

The Supreme Court has received a notice of appeal from the attorney representing a group of Spirit Lake Sioux trying to stop the state Board of Higher Education from retiring the nickname before a November deadline set in a settlement with the NCAA.

The board voted 5-3 on Thursday to keep the nickname until the appeal is heard, and directed its attorney to request an expedited hearing before the state’s highest court.

Chief Justice Gerald W. VandeWalle bristled Friday when asked whether it will be difficult for justices to set aside their UND connections when hearing arguments in a case that goes to the heart of the university’s identity.

“You start with the presumption, apparently, that all the judges are on one side or the other,” he said. “I don’t know that. I have no idea what their position is on the issue.”

“I’m not happy, very frankly, about the question because I think it raises issues about the credibility of the court,” he added.

Of the four justices who hold law degrees from the UND School of Law, two of them, VandeWalle and Justice Daniel Crothers, also earned undergraduate degrees at UND. Justice Dale Sandstrom earned his bachelor’s degree at North Dakota State University, while Justice Mary Muehlen Maring earned hers at what is now Minnesota State University Moorhead. Justice Carol Ronning Kapsner holds a bachelor’s degree from College of St. Catherine in St. Paul and a law degree from the University of Colorado School of Law.
[READ the WHOLE ARTICLE]

Cross posted at sayanythingblog.com

Fighting Sioux nickname #2 story of the year.

Let's see we have two wars, a horrible economy, companies bleeding jobs and this is the number two story of the year according to the Alerus center cheerleader, I mean Grand Forks Herald writer Tu-Uyen Tran,.

No. 2: UND nickname dispute

The dispute over UND’s Fighting Sioux nickname simmered and boiled into yet another year. True to form, it continued to defy anyone’s guess at how it might end. In theory, the university has until Nov. 30, 2010, to win approval from both the state’s Sioux tribes. That’s what it says in the settlement between the state and the NCAA, which opposes American Indian nicknames.

One of the tribes, the Spirit Lake Dakotah Nation, voted overwhelmingly in April to grant that approval. Yet the following month, the State Board of Higher Education put a crimp in their victory by imposing its own September deadline for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to grant the same approval. The stated reason is UND wants to join the Summit League, but that athletic conference won’t consider an application until the nickname issue is settled.

With little movement from Standing Rock even to have a public vote, the board moved its deadline to Oct. 31 to see if the tribe would show any sign of granting approval. The board was on the verge of retiring the nickname in November when Spirit Lake nickname supporters sued the board to force it to abide by the original deadline. They lost, but the appeals process means the nickname issue will continue into next year.

Nickname issue likely won’t be discussed at next board meeting

It would appear that the board has given the Standing Rock Tribe a little breathing room and some time to decide if they really want to have a referendum on the Fighting Sioux name. I can bet there isn’t a lot of time to waste here; the State Board of Higher Education will probably start transitioning the Fighting Sioux nickname if there isn’t some movement. The other athletic teams need a conference to play in. I would say that the nickname is on life support right now unless there is some movement at Standing Rock.

The State Board of Higher Education will meet in January but likely won’t take any action on the UND Fighting Sioux nickname, a board member said Tuesday.

Grant Shaft said the Jan. 21 meeting at UND would be the next opportunity to bring up the issue, but he didn’t think the board would be able to take any new action — even though a lawsuit from the Spirit Lake Dakotah Nation that attempted to block the board from changing the name was dismissed Dec. 18.

“I suspect that the matter will be under appeal at that time,” he said. “So, it will be very similar to what we’ve been doing up to this point.”

Options

Shaft said the nickname could come up for discussion at the January meeting “in reference to what action we’ve taken previously.”

He said he thinks the board would be prohibited from taking any new action on the issue if the appeal is still under way at the time, but members could possibly take action if it was subject to the appeal’s outcome.

Also possible would be going into executive session, which would allow board members to discuss the appeal with Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem. Still, he said there’s nothing about the nickname on the meeting’s agenda so far.

“From my standpoint right now, I think during the appeal process the matter is essentially on hold until that process is finished,” he said. “And the official position of the board is the action that we took back in October that just remains suspended right now until the legal process is concluded.”
[Grand Forks Herald]

In Twist, Tribe Fights for College Nickname

My friend Rusty from the Illegal Curve sent me this article in my email this morning. Interesting story and I am surprised the New York Times would cover this story. Funny that this story brings up a point that I have made mention of for a long time. That there are a number of people upset with the Fighting Sioux nickname that aren’t Dakota/Sioux. This sound awful familiar. [click to see article] The Whistler and I were quoted in this article back in November.

GRAND FORKS, N.D. — Sometime soon, the Fighting Sioux of the University of North Dakota were to be no more, another collegiate nickname dropped after being deemed hostile and abusive to American Indians.

Except that some members of the Spirit Lake Tribe, one of two groups of Sioux in the state, say they consider the nickname an honor and worry that abandoning it would send them one step closer to obscurity.

“When you hear them announce the name at the start of a hockey game, it gives you goose bumps,” said Frank Black Cloud, a tribal member. “They are putting us up on a pinnacle.”

And so, in a legal standoff that has turned some preconceptions upside down, North Dakota’s top state lawyers will be in court on Wednesday to oppose members of the Spirit Lake Tribe who have sued to preserve the Fighting Sioux name and logo, an image of an Indian in profile, feathers draping down.

The battle here, like some others at the 20 or so institutions urged by the National Collegiate Athletic Association to drop their mascots, names or images, has been painful and drawn out. The University of North Dakota is the only one still sorting the matter out, an N.C.A.A. spokesman said, and it is creating rifts on this campus of 13,000 students, among its web of alumni that run through nearly every realm in North Dakota, and, especially, among American Indians here.

All around, harsh new accusations are flying. The members from Spirit Lake behind the lawsuit assert that many of the American Indians opposed to the Fighting Sioux nickname are simply from tribes other than the Sioux, and are jealous of all the recognition. (Opponents call this absurd.)

Some against the name claim that the operators of the Ralph Engelstad Arena, the gleaming hockey stadium built by a particularly successful alumnus for more than $100 million — and contains 2,400 images of the logo — are secretly behind the lawsuit, hoping to block the nickname from being abandoned. (False, the Spirit Lake members and hockey stadium officials say.)

“Still, to do what they’re doing, you’re more or less selling out,” said Frank Sage, a Navajo and one of about 400 American Indian students at the university and one who says he finds the Fighting Sioux imagery hurtful and harmful. “They’re just being used.”

The lawsuit, filed last month by eight members of the Spirit Lake Tribe, is tangled, and grows out of a similarly tangled series of events that began in 2005, when the N.C.A.A. warned the University of North Dakota and 17 other colleges to change their nicknames and mascots if they wished to show the images at N.C.A.A.-controlled championships or to host such events. (Two other institutions were later added, according to the N.C.A.A.)

Since then, some colleges changed their logos, others sought and received permission from local tribes to keep them, and a few resolved the matter in other ways.

But the University of North Dakota is still at it. The state’s Board of Higher Education and the university sued the N.C.A.A. to preserve the nickname and logo, and in 2007 reached a settlement that let it keep them if the Sioux tribal councils in the state — at Spirit Lake and Standing Rock — agreed to the idea by the end of November 2010.

But some university officials said they began worrying that the debate was leading other institutions to avoid competing against them in sports. Robert Kelley, the university’s president, has taken no position on the nickname but said he found himself being asked about it almost constantly —at the supermarket, in meetings of the state’s Congressional delegation — and wanted to ensure that the debate did not eclipse the university’s academic focus.