Indian Veteran’s Group Now Withdraws Support For “Fighting Sioux” Nickname
I wonder who leaned on them.
Members of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation’s Veterans’ Group board voted 3-2 Wednesday night to rescind their two-day-old support for UND’s Fighting Sioux nickname and logo.
The board voted unanimously to support the nickname during a meeting Monday, but board members later were inundated with calls from Standing Rock veterans and other tribe members expressing opposition to the nickname, said Ed Black Cloud, the board’s acting chairman.
“There were a lot of things we didn’t know about when we made that motion,” Black Cloud said, later adding, “we didn’t know about the treatment of Indian students (at UND).”
The group likely will take the matter up again after a scheduled tour of UND’s campus and meetings with UND and Ralph Engelstad Arena officials in September, Black Cloud said after Wednesday’s vote in McLaughlin, S.D.
“We still want to hear what they have to say, and we’ll decide what we decide,” Black Cloud said. “There are a lot of different things we have to talk about.”
The board’s initial vote supporting the nickname came during a visit by Sam Dupris, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River (S.D.) Sioux Tribe and a decorated Korean War veteran who is touring North Dakota’s Sioux tribes as an envoy for REA.
During that meeting, Dupris described for board members a memorial wall honoring the state’s Sioux veterans that REA officials are considering building by one of the arena’s entrances.
The “there are a lot of things we didn’t know” line is pure bunk. This group made a decision of their own, and then the tribe came after them.
Because we all know that things like individual thought, disagreement and political dissent aren’t tolerated on North Dakota’s Indian reservations.
