I\’ve tackled this topic before. But an article by my favorite Strib columnist Katherine Kersten discusses the University of North Dakota\’s mascot, The Fighting Sioux.
See, I told you that Kersten is slippery. Every time you think she\’s a right wing wack job, she pushes out an article like this that I agree with 99.44%.
I won\’t rehash the whole story, because Kersten does a good job of doing it, but the short version is that the NCAA is on the warpath (ha!, sorry) against schools that use offensive mascots (mostly Native American). UND has resisted the pressure from the NCAA to the point that a district judge has allowed UND to compete in the post season even though that is against the NCAA policy (which as of now prohibits post season participation by schools on its shit-list).
It\’s very interesting to get background information on why the Fighting Sioux are called the Fighting Sioux. It would seem that if a representative body of the Sioux nation is comfortable with it, there shouldn\’t be any problem, but the PC times we live in don\’t make much sense on many fronts.
And speaking of the Sioux, I was also under the impression that they didn\’t like that name for themselves, and preferred being called \”Dakota\”, because \”Sioux\” was Algonquin for \”Snake\”. Turns out that isn\’t the case either.
So it looks like the Sioux will live on to fight another day, and I hope they will be victorious. However, this still hasn\’t solved what to do with Chief Wahoo.
Leave a Reply