Letter to the editor: Bring tribal council in on UND nickname negotiations

It blows my mind to learn the Spirit Lake Tribal Council has never been invited to any of the negotiations over the University of North Dakota Sioux name and logo. These are the people it wholly concerns and they have never been invited to express their opinions?

Now we learn the cost of this ridiculous transformation will be a minimum of $750,000. And, since estimates came from UND President Robert Kelley, you know it was greatly underestimated. Can we believe anything this turncoat says? That goes for his North Dakota Board of Higher Education buddy, Grant Shaft, too. That name sounds apropos. The council is right on track that terminations are in order for these two. Who do they pretend to represent? Kelley is a California Berkeley elitist type. How can he possibly care or understand the gravity of the Spirit Lake people’s position if you know about Berkeley?

I remember about that place when in the Marines at Khe Sanh, Vietnam, in 1968.

If Ralph Engelstad were alive, he would be howling mad. If you think he would want anything removed from his arenas, you’ve been smoking something. After donating upward of $140 million to UND and knowing his position on the Sioux name and logo, UND brass and NDBHE are spitting right in this man’s face and making it seem like he never existed. Now that is real gratitude for you. Maybe UND should return all the money he donated since this flies right in the face of what he wanted. You can throw in NCAA fat-cat officials, along with Big Sky Conference’s Doug Fullerton, to help UND reimburse that money with transition costs thrown in. How long would these nabobs stick to their proposals if they had to chip in?

While we are on the name and logo, this is not about some fat, humpbacked, prairie-grazing bovine. I’m perturbed that Notre Dame has the Irish portrayed as a scrawny, green leprechaun. The Lakota and Dakota are real, genuine, proud people who just so happened to have kicked the crap out of that arrogant, glory-seeking Custer. They are great warriors who want their voices finally heard for once and want to keep their name at UND. Grant them at least one wish they have ever had. Native Americans are owed it and current people of North Dakota too. If these name-change advocates have their way, this state might just be “North” in the near future. Just think how much that will cost.

Al Carlson and Mike Schatz, stick to your guns because 80 percent of North Dakota is behind you and if it is put on the state ballot, it would be proved once and for all.

Jerome Bixby

Milnor, N.D.

Tags: opinion, letters, und, sioux