The FIghting Soux Continue To Fight On -- New York Times -- March 3, 2016

The New York Times brings us up to date on the NDSU Fighting Sioux Hawks story.

North Dakota was famously known as the Fighting Sioux from 1930 until the university retired the nickname in 2012, ending a seven-year battle with the N.C.A.A. North Dakota had been one of 18 institutions the N.C.A.A. singled out in 2005 for American Indian mascots it deemed hostile or abusive; all were prohibited from hosting N.C.A.A. postseason tournaments. The university appealed, lost and chose to fight in court.

The dispute dragged on, with the state Board of Higher Education and the Legislature weighing in. Ultimately, in June 2012, North Dakota voters overwhelmingly chose to phase out the nickname.

The decision by the Sioux Nation to support this idiocy was incredibly stupid. I haven't walked in their moccasins so I am not one to talk .... but everyone else has -- in fact, as the Times says, North Dakota voters "overwhelmingly supported the decision to "phase out the nickname" and very few North Dakota voters are of the Sioux Nation. 

But I digress.

The Sioux Nation was well known because of their association with the UND athletic teams. Over time, the Sioux Nation will gradually be forgotten. Dumb, dumb, dumb.  For the Sioux Nation to lead the fight against this nickname was simply dumb, dumb, dumb. It will take awhile, but eventually the Sioux name will be lost, and when it is, one can look back on the UND story as the tipping point, when things began to fall apart. 

I always associated "fighting" Sioux with a people willing to fight for what they believed was theirs, nothing more, nothing less. There were only a few Native American Nations able and willing to do that; the Sioux were one of them. 

Something tells me Sitting Bull would have said, "By God, we're fighting Sioux. We took on Custer then and we will continue to fight for our legacy now."

But UND now takes a non-descript, generic nickname that could be applied to any elementary school, middle school, high school, across the entire US. The Hawks. Really? 

At the end of the article:

Further muddling the transition is the fact that North Dakota’s 2007 settlement with the N.C.A.A. allows it to keep the Fighting Sioux trademark. According to Schafer, federal trademark law requires North Dakota to maintain continuing commercial use to keep it. So it must sell some Fighting Sioux gear or risk losing the trademark, which would allow outside vendors to flood the market with Fighting Sioux knockoffs.

Three years ago, the university introduced the Dacotah Legacy Collection of Fighting Sioux merchandise. Two racks of that collection’s shirts, hoodies and ball caps in Engelstad Arena’s Sioux Shop drew the most attention from shoppers before that Minnesota-Duluth game.

“It’s a crazy thing,” said Schafer, a 1969 North Dakota graduate. “They say we can’t use the Fighting Sioux, and then they say, well, you have to. They just put us in a really stupid position. But that’s the N.C.A.A.”