THEIR OPINION: Activists strike: Dartmouth folds

The following is an editorial that appeared Sunday in the New Hampshire Union Leader.

The Offendians - Native American activists who seek political leverage by manufacturing outrage at alleged white intolerance - have elicited a startling apology from Dartmouth College's athletic director.

Writing in the student newspaper Wednesday, Josie Harper, Dartmouth director of athletics and recreation, apologized for "the pain that (an upcoming hockey tournament) will cause."

Is she psychic? No, she's just been on the receiving end of complaints from Native American students at Dartmouth who claim to be offended that the college has invited UND Fighting Sioux to participate in a men's hockey tournament late next month.

Writing that the tournament "will understandably offend and hurt people within our community," Harper continues, "Let me state clearly that UND's position is offensive and wrong."

We don't know how Harper reached that sweeping conclusion. Native Americans in North Dakota are not unanimous on the subject, but many support the nickname. North Dakota's Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe approves of the nickname. Though the Standing Rock Sioux judicial committee officially rejected the name, Archie Fool Bear, the council's chairman, has opposed the council's vote, stating that most of his tribe supports the nickname. In 1968, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe officially adopted UND's president into the tribe and gave the university the right to use the Sioux name.

The president of the university's Indian Association, who supports the nickname, resigned this month over the name. Most of the university's 400 Native American students support or are indifferent to the nickname, he said, but a tiny, vocal group of about 30 students makes it appear that all oppose it.

Dartmouth owes no one an apology for inviting the UND Fighting Sioux to campus.

Harper, however, owes the Sioux an apology for insulting the tribes' collective intelligence and judgment.

It is an article of politically correct faith that any use of an ethnic minority's nickname or image by a majority-white organization is a de facto display of racism, or at least condescension.

This is not so.

The fact is, many Indian tribes understand that such associations can be and usually are made out of respect.

Those who would tell the tribes that they are wrong to be proud of such affiliations are the ones who are being condescending, and perhaps even racist.

Reprinted with permission from the New Hampshire Union Leader.