Fighting Sioux nickname supporters on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation met with tribal officials this week, hoping to expedite a membership vote on the name and logo. But they've run into significant procedural hurdles.
"We're not even talking about the petition yet," Tribal Chairman Charles Murphy said Thursday.
"We have a petition with 1,004 signatures, but we have to go through a process of getting it certified," he said.
Nickname supporters submitted the petition bearing 1,004 names of tribal members who want to vote on whether Standing Rock should endorse UND's continued use of the Sioux name.
But the tribal council won't consider the petition until its signatures have been certified, and Tribal Secretary Adele White said Thursday that she can't begin to certify the names until the council provides her with a certification process.
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The tribe has no formal guidelines in place to deal with such an issue, White said.
"We need to draft a policy for certification," she said. "They have to give me a process to set the criteria for a vote like this -- when to hold the vote, whether it would be advisory or not."
Tribal officials also have raised questions about whether the tribe could or should be bound by a 30-year commitment to stand by its authorization for UND's use of the name, a condition the State Board of Higher Education placed when it submitted the issue to the two namesake tribes, the Spirit Lake and Standing Rock Sioux.
Spirit Lake voters approved use of the nickname and logo last year. But in the absence of a vote at Standing Rock, the state board directed UND President Robert Kelley to begin the transition away from Fighting Sioux.
Kelley outlined his plans for the transition last week to the University Senate and on Monday to the state board.
"I understand the asking for a vote," White said. "We want our people to be able to vote. We want to honor that. And I'm trying to be neutral, moving this process along. But we need to have standards in place (for certifying the signatures) and those need to be approved by the council. It's not up to me."
Once certification begins, "the process could take 90 days," she said. "We'd have to verify the addresses, make sure they're eligible voters. A lot of the signatures are hard to read."
Another potential stumbling block: A special election on the logo would cost $80,000 to $100,000, White said.
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Archie Fool Bear, a leading proponent of UND retaining the Fighting Sioux name, was among people who met Wednesday with Chairman Murphy. He and other nickname supporters say they still hope to see a vote, believing Standing Rock voters would overwhelmingly support UND using the name. That, in turn, might persuade the state board to reverse its nickname decision.
The tribal council has for years consistently opposed the nickname and logo, and opponents on and off the council accuse nickname supporters of manipulating and misleading people to gain their signatures on the petition.
"I am 100 percent against" UND's use of the name and logo, said Jody Luger, a 1980 UND graduate, Fort Yates businessman and president of the local chamber of commerce.
"I think the tribe's position of not having a vote is best," he said. "This is a way for the dominant society to look down on a minority and use them in a manipulative way -- then continue to manipulate them through divide and conquer."
Luger said he "thought the Fighting Sioux (name) was cool, that it honored the Lakota people," when he was in high school. But seeing later how the Sioux image was sometimes distorted or mocked changed his mind, he said.
"Then, when you grow up and realize how it affects your children's self-esteem, that's a whole other thing."
He also takes issue with a comment Fool Bear made about Standing Rock needing the attention brought by UND's use of the name.
"It trivializes our culture," he said.
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Reach Haga at (701) 780-1102; (800) 477-6572, ext. 102; or send e-mail to chaga@gfherald.com .
