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 NCAA. North Dakota had been one of 18 institutions the NCAA singled out in 2005 for American Indian mascots it deemed hostile or abusive; all were prohibited from hosting NCAA postseason tournaments. The university appealed, lost and chose to fight it 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 change still irks tradition-bound fans and alumni like Sandelin, a defenseman from 1983 to 1986.
Sandelin found plenty of support in the room. About one-quarter of the approximately 250 attendees wore Fighting Sioux attire, including the three women in the back selling raffle tickets.
When Sandelin opened his remarks with, “Always nice to be back among the Fighting Sioux fans,” it ignited immediate and prolonged applause.
“I knew that would get a rise,” he said, smiling.
Several minutes later, Sandelin concluded with, “Once a Sioux, always a Sioux. I can still say that.”
The university is rebranding its athletic teams as the Fighting Hawks, a nickname chosen in an online vote last November, a process nearly as contentious as the fight to save the old nickname. But the Fighting Sioux legacy is not going away quickly or quietly.
Part of that is logistical. Fighting Hawks gear is not available yet because the new logo will not be unveiled until late May.
North Dakota scrubbed the Fighting Sioux name and Indian head logo from its uniforms, communications, website and booster club. Approximately 2,500 Sioux logos remain throughout Ralph Engelstad Arena, home of the men’s and women’s hockey teams. Engelstad, the arena’s benefactor who died in 2002, ordered them put in to discourage a nickname change.
Curiously, the logos no longer matter. North Dakota athletic director Brian Faison, who leads the Division I men’s hockey committee, said the NCAA now prefers off-campus sites for postseason tournaments, rendering moot the reason for removing or covering the logos. North Dakota hosted a 2015 regional at Scheels Arena in Fargo and is scheduled for another in 2017. The university did make one major change to Engelstad Arena, replacing “Home of the Fighting Sioux” on the outside of the building with “Home of North Dakota Hockey.” But the statue of the Sioux chief Sitting Bull on horseback is still out front. Inside, large “You’re in Sioux Country” banners hang at each end, along with seven NCAA championship banners in the rafters with the Sioux logos.
At a recent game with Minnesota-Duluth, more than half of the announced crowd of 11,890 wore Sioux-themed attire. When the public address announcer Darrin Looker introduced “the University of North Dakota,” hundreds of students seated near center ice pumped their fists and yelled, “Sioux!” Any mentions of the Fighting Hawks drew boos.
“When I go to that hockey game and I see 4,000 Fighting Sioux jerseys in a 12,000-seat arena, hear the chants and see the rituals and hear the booing and cheering and all that stuff, that bothers a lot of people at the university,” said the interim university president Ed Schafer, a former two-term governor and briefly the agriculture secretary under President George W. Bush.
He added: “I look at it and say, what’s the alternative? What do the students have to turn to instead of that? We don’t have that right now.”
Early in the season, hundreds of students seated along center ice booed the new nickname so vehemently that Looker now says it only for North Dakota penalties and coach Brad Berry’s pregame introduction.
The passion for tradition is particularly strong at hockey games. North Dakota’s men’s team, which closes its regular season this weekend, is ranked second in Division I after reaching the Frozen Four the past two years as a nickname-less team.
“If you go to a basketball game, they say Fighting Hawks every 30 seconds, and nobody boos,” said Kyle Kinnamon, a freshman from Plymouth, Minnesota.
Further muddling the transition is the fact that North Dakota’s 2007 settlement with the NCAA 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 Legacy 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 NCAA.”
Many alumni, students and university employees are weary of the drama.
“It’s probably closer to 50-50 or 60-40 on people ready to turn the page, tired of fighting this, and let’s move on,” said Mike Mannausau, a former North Dakota linebacker and assistant football coach who directs the Champions Club.
But others, like Mark Klekner, an alumnus, cannot let go. Klekner built a Sioux-themed bar in the basement of his Savage, Minnesota, home. He said he bought about $1,000 of Sioux apparel when he learned the university was retiring the nickname. When Klekner’s wife was pregnant with their first child, his father, Dan Klekner, stocked up on Sioux clothing to fit the boy through age 12.
“I’m very passionate about the Sioux logo and name,” said Mark Klekner, dressed in a white Sioux hockey sweater at a recent game. “I think the university has always used it with both pride and respect, but I also understand why they got rid of it. That being said, they will always be the Fighting Sioux to me. I probably will never buy any Fighting Hawks stuff.”
Faison said university officials would not ban Fighting Sioux apparel at games.
“We’re not going to be clothing police,” he said. “That’s not the issue here. There will always be an element, absolutely. Ultimately, people will want to wear what the team’s wearing.”
The North Dakota Booster Board chairman, Lowell Schweigert, whose brother Kyle coaches the football team, struggled with the transition. A 1978 graduate who lettered in football and baseball, Schweigert was part of the 11-person committee entrusted with narrowing the options for a new nickname. Schweigert, who is a financial consultant, said his office was filled with Fighting Sioux memorabilia.
“For a while, it was a really, really emotional issue for me,” he said. “But after a while, it was time to take the emotions out of it and say, rather than being Lowell Schweigert in the past from the ’70s, what’s the best for the University of North Dakota and their athletic program? Based on what the NCAA had coming down the pike if we kept the name, it became pretty obvious that we had to make a change.”
Schafer said he believed that change would be accepted over time.
“There’s a strong element that thinks we ought to take that trademark, dig a big hole and bury it, never to be seen again,” Schafer said. “And there’s a strong element that says, we should go back to that trademark and use it all over the place.
“We have to celebrate our heritage. This was a part of UND for a long time, and it’s not going to go away. But if we handle it properly, we can say, OK, this is our base, this is our heritage, this is what we stand for, and now we’re transitioning to the new. And in the future, that’s where we’re going to be.”
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