Donna Brown's stories in the USA Today article, when presented alone, makes it seem as if the campus is completely hostile.  Patrick Miller wrote a pretty good article on USCHO, asking how such a consistently hostile environment ends up with so many more Indian students than the other three major Dakota universities, and also has more than the two "model institutions" UW and Iowa combined.  While I can't say the personal testimony from UND aren't true events, I can give a few first-hand stories to temper the article a little.

I don't feel that open racism toward Native Americans is tolerated on UND's campus any more than as on any other.  I've never witnessed it--but I won't pretend that it doesn't happen.  Unfortunately, that amount of racial harassment isn't zero anywhere.  The nickname opens a few easy doors to intentional harassment from the morons, but as a whole, I dare say that the exposure results in more respectful conduct by the vast majority (the comeback of course is that "intentional" is the key word).  It's not just about bad apples, but the majority of the apples actually come out more polished because of the experience.

One anecdote I have is that, once in a while, you'll have a freshman fan think that starting the tomahawk chop would be a cool idea.  They get very grim looks from the upperclassmen, saying hey, that's not cool at all.

While wearing my jersey at a series in Wisconsin, a couple of kids who were probably ten years old came up to me to ask what Sioux is.  There was another anecdote printed a while back of a woman who's little son asked if the Bleacher Creature was a Sioux (BC was a goofy costume that ran around at games in the early '90s and had nothing to do with the logo).  The point of that anecdote was that kids might think lime green fuzzy monsters are Sioux, but my thought is that, without the Sioux nickname, this opportunity to teach about the Sioux wouldn't have come up.

There are a lot of good and a few very poor arguments from both sides, and we've heard them all--some way too often from well-meaning newcomers to the debate.  I am honestly torn about the issue and I won't touch the argument itself today.

Kirk Eisenbeis


On 9/29/05, Doug Peterson dglsjptrsn-at-earthlink.net |HOCKEY-L| <...> wrote:
> USA Today has a half-dozen articles on the UND name.  The most
> extensive one was on "The Ralph".  There are links to the others from this
> one:
> 
> http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/other/2005-09-27-sioux-
> arena_x.htm
> 
> Doug Peterson
>