From NPR:
Voters in Tuesday’s North Dakota primary were being asked whether to uphold or reject the Legislature’s repeal of a state law requiring the school to use the nickname and American Indian head logo.
The vote sends the matter back to the state’s Board of Higher Education, which is expected to retire the moniker and American Indian head logo.
Coverage here, and here (discussing the NFL in the context of this vote).
Here is the opinion.
News coverage here, via Pechanga.
From the coverage:
The North Dakota Supreme Court today declined to address the constitutional issue raised by the State Board of Higher Education, which claimed that a law requiring UND to keep the nickname improperly intrudes on the board’s authority.
A slim majority of the court was ready to take up the constitutional issue but was blocked by the opposition of two justices and the requirement that such decisions require the support of four of the court’s five members.
“There are not enough members of this court willing to decide the constitutional issue at this time,” Chief Justice Gerald VandeWalle wrote. “We therefore do not address the constitutional issue, and we decline to enjoin the secretary of state from placing the referendum measure on the June 2012 primary election ballot.”
Here. An excerpt:
Each of the three standard arguments used to brush off such substantive criticism is more inane than the next. Let’s debunk them one at a time:
Nonsensical Argument #1: A mascot is designed to honor, not lampoon, an ethnicity
To know this is idiotic is to replace a Native American mascot with a caricatured mascot depicting another ethnic group — and then ask if that would really be considered an honor. Would anyone seriously defend a team called the Boston Blacks or the New York Jews, each with mascots of ethnic stereotypes? Probably not (sure, Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish embody a non-Native American cultural stereotype, but two wrongs don’t make a right). Nobody would or should defend those hypothetical names because we know what a mascot really is — we know its whole purpose is to draw attention through flamboyant spectacle. We also know, then, that when we turn an ethnicity into a mascot, we are not-so-subtly insinuating that the group is inherently an attention-grabbing spectacle of flamboyance — that is, we are insinuating that its otherness is so alien, strange or ridiculous, that its people are fit to be presented as glorified clowns. That’s not an honor — that’s an insult.
Nonetheless, the mascot-as-hero conceit is frequently trotted out by a majority culture desperate to continue the minstrelization of minorities via athletic logos. As the University of Akron’s Dana M. Williams reports, surveys show that “one of the most common storylines about the (UND) nickname offered by white supporters is: ‘It’s intended as an honor because Native people were brave fighters.’” To this, Williams offers a powerful rejoinder:
Such a claim minimizes the racism inherent in a predominantly white university using a discriminated-against racial minority as its sports nickname. The statement also reinforces the misleading stereotypes that all Native Americans were brave and were fighters, thereby making all Native people targets of an externally imposed “honor.” Ironically, in the past, attributing the labelfighting to Native Americans would have been perceived as highly negative, and would have helped to justify attacks by the U.S. Army on Native Americans, as well as white settler incursions into Native territory.
‘Nuff said.
An excerpt:
The committee’s lawsuit against the NCAA is intended not to win in court but to sway the voting public. I read the NCAA’s motion to dismiss, and it reads like a 30-page spanking. It would be laughable if it weren’t for the harm it will do to our sovereignty: Every time a tribe files and loses a frivolous lawsuit, it erodes our tribal sovereignty even more.
Yet another reason to make this nickname and image go away as soon as possible.
Here.
An excerpt from the NYTs (permalink here):
The new law, signed by Gov. Jack Dalrymple, has left the university in a difficult position: defy the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which has mandated that all American Indian mascots be dropped, or break the law. The legislative debate has reopened wounds over retiring a beloved mascot that has graced hockey jerseys and pennants across the state for years.
University officials hope that a meeting later this month in Indianapolis between Mr. Dalrymple, legislative leaders and N.C.A.A. officials will help resolve the conflict. As it stands, if the university continues to use the name after Aug. 15, its athletics program would face penalties that could jeopardize much-lauded plans to join the Big Sky Conference.
For many North Dakotans, the future of the logo — a profile of an Indian with feathers in his hair — is personal. Grant Shaft, the president of the state’s Board of Higher Education, went to law school there and said five generations of his family attended the university. But Mr. Shaft says it is time for the university to move past the matter and comply with N.C.A.A. guidelines.
“My roots with the Fighting Sioux nickname go as deep as anybody,” he said. “The reality of the situation is that the Aug. 15 date is looming, and we’re starting to realize the consequences are really untenable for the athletics department.”
Turtle Talk 