The Wake

What’s in a team name anyway? To many fans and alumni at universities around the country, it means tradition and pride. To Native American activists, they see Native American symbols used in sports as offensive and racist.

It’s fairly easy to understand the activists’ point of view when watching a Florida State football game on television. During their famous pre-game ritual, fans cheer loudly as the school’s mascot, Chief Osceola, rides his horse and plants a burning spear into the ground. This tradition was given the approval of Seminole tribes, but still disturbs activists across the country.

Last year, the NCAA made strides to be culturally sensitive towards Native Americans. The NCAA executive committee adopted a new policy in terms of team names in August 2005. According to the NCAA rules, as of Feb. 1, 2006, no school displaying “hostile and abusive racial/ethnic/national origin mascots, nicknames or imagery” may host any of 88 NCAA championships. This means that any school deemed to have “hostile or abusive imagery” must cover their logos if hosting an NCAA championship. For example, The Fighting Sioux of North Dakota would have to cover more than three thousand Indianhead logos if they wanted to host NCAA championship hockey games.

There are fourteen other schools, including the University of Illinois, that fall into this category. One school that didn’t land on the list of unacceptable names, to the dismay of schools whose names were on the list, was San Diego State, whose team name is the Aztecs.

Four schools, originally on the list of schools affected by the new policy, have won appeals with the NCAA, including: the Utah Utes, Central Michigan Chippewas, Florida State Seminoles and Mississippi College Choctaws due to the close relationships the schools have with the tribes they represent. Mississippi College is the most recent school to win an appeal with the NCAA to keep its name after the Choctaw Indian tribe approved the use of the name.

In addition to this new practice, the NCAA ruled last year that “institutions displaying or promoting hostile or abusive references on their mascots, cheerleaders, dance teams and band uniforms or paraphernalia are prohibited from wearing the material at NCAA championships.” This new rule comes into effect Aug. 1, 2008.

Before the NCAA made these new rules, some universities had already changed their team names to be culturally sensitive towards Native Americans. Some notable schools that changed their team names are Marquette University, which changed from the Warriors to the Golden Eagles, St. John’s University which changed from the Redmen to the Red Storm and Stanford University which changed from the Indians to the Cardinal.

Other schools have decided to change their names in response to the policy enacted by the NCAA. Carthage College changed from, and this is not a typo, Redmen to Red Men. Carthage was allowed to do this since a high school team in the same area of Illinois was named the Blueboys and Redmen was originally meant to differentiate the two area teams. Midwestern State University Indians dropped all Native American imagery and changed their team name to the Mustangs. Southeastern Oklahoma State University, whose teams are known as the Savages, plans to change its’ team name to “Savage Storm” in May of this year. Chowan College and the University of Louisiana-Monroe also plan to make changes to their team names to remove “hostile or abusive imagery”.

Two steps forward, one giant step back

While some universities around the country have been making strides toward cultural sensitivity in the last fifteen years, a prime example of regression is with the University of North Dakota.

Ralph Engelstad, a graduate from Thief River Falls high school in Minnesota, donated $104 million to build a hockey arena for the University of North Dakota in 1998. Engelstad had attended UND and played goalie for their hockey team. Engelstad, who died in 2002, built the Imperial Palace hotel and casino in Las Vegas during the 1970s. He later built another casino under the same name in Biloxi, Miss. The controversy around Engelstad began primarily in the late 1980s when he was fined $1.5 million by the Nevada Gaming Commission for his Nazi-glorifying actions. These actions included having birthday parties for Hitler, producing bumper stickers saying “Hitler was right” and collecting Nazi memorabilia.

Ralph Engelstad, during his talks with the University of North Dakota, said he would withdraw his donation for the arena if the team’s name, The Fighting Sioux, was changed. Engelstad was passionate about this and to secure to the team name, the arena is owned by an Engelstad company and leased to the university, reportedly, for a dollar per year. This extreme action to preserve a tradition disappoints many American Indian activists.

The issue of Native American mascots isn’t limited to college athletics. High schools across the country use names like the Red Raiders, the Indians and the Warriors. Professional sports also use similar names; in Major League Baseball, there’s the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians. Atlanta Braves fans have the ritual of the “tomahawk chop,” which can be seen at home games. The National Football League has two teams with Native American connotations, the Washington Redskins and the Kansas City Chiefs. Lastly, the NBA has the Golden State Warriors using a name with Native American connotations.

Did you know the Fighting Sioux logo that UND currently uses was drawn by a Native American artist who holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from UND. His name is Bennett Brien.

Fightin’ Whites - The name of an Intramural basketball team at the University of Northern Colorado in 2002. The name was meant to mock the use of Native American team names. Their original logo includes a white man with the slogan “Every thang’s gonna be all white.”