Criticism of team's name heats up Dartmouth game

Sioux imagery is 'offensive,' says AD

By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff | December 29, 2006

Dartmouth College's men's ice hockey team will face off tonight against the University of North Dakota's powerhouse Fighting Sioux, but the main drama is unfolding far from the ice. Debate about whether the Fighting Sioux name is offensive has sparked angst and recriminations from Hanover to Grand Forks, with even North Dakota's governor, a Dartmouth alumnus, weighing in.

Josie Harper, Dartmouth's athletic director, wrote a letter to the student newspaper, The Dartmouth, last month about the game, saying: "I must offer a sincere apology to the Native American community and the Dartmouth community as a whole for an event that will understandably offend and hurt people within our community."

Dartmouth, in Hanover, N.H., has decided to set up a committee that will consider whether the school should refuse to compete against teams that use Native American nicknames and mascots. The university jettisoned its Indian mascot in the 1970s, while the University of North Dakota staunchly defends its Sioux name. After the National Collegiate Athletic Association last year banned schools that use "hostile or abusive" Native American imagery from hosting postseason championship games, the state of North Dakota sued the NCAA on behalf of the university. The case is still in the courts.

North Dakota's elaborate hockey rink, decked in thousands of Native American images, was built with a $100 million donation from an alumnus who threatened to halt his gift if the school abandoned the Fighting Sioux name.

Harper called the University of North Dakota's use of a Native American symbol "offensive and wrong." Her letter came as the campus was gripped by controversy over several incidents that were deemed racist toward Native Americans.

It provoked a stern response from the University of North Dakota's president, Charles E. Kupchella.

"I must. . .. express my great displeasure and dismay at what has appeared to many here to have been an attempt. . . to deflect your problems onto the University of North Dakota," he wrote to Dartmouth President James Wright Nov. 30.

"To call what we do here as wrong, in some blanket way, is outrageous. [For Harper] to have placed herself above the majority of Indian people and above the Spirit Lake Nation is nothing short of patronizing."

Kupchella wrote that the Fighting Sioux image is a respectful one designed by an American Indian artist and cited a poll that found that support for the university among American Indians would not change if the school altered its nickname. North Dakota Governor John Hoeven , who graduated from Dartmouth in 1979, also criticized Harper's remarks to local press.

Wright responded to Kupchella in a letter dated Dec. 4, assuring him that the hockey team "will be most welcome here for the holiday tournament. . . We respect the current team and its historic excellence."

No protests are planned for tonight's game, according to Michael Hanitchak , director of Dartmouth's Native American Program, although he said some students wanted Dartmouth to cancel the game.

Wright has described tonight's game as problematic, writing in an e-mail to students last month, "We clearly must be more thoughtful in our decision-making on such events."

Wright also apologized to Native American students for recent events many students deemed racist, including students distributing T-shirts depicting the Dartmouth Indian, fraternity pledges allegedly disrupting a Native American drumming circle, and the rowing team hosting a Cowboys and Indians party.

In 2001, 33 schools used Native American mascots or images, but there were 18 in 2005, according to NCAA spokesman Bob Williams, and fewer still last year.

Several universities, including the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin, decline to compete against teams with Native American symbols, Williams said.