Mascot foes want to destroy Lakota?!

Activist joins nickname defenders

Marilyn Schoenberg plans to help with petition drive, recruiting helpers

By Chuck HagaAs Fighting Sioux nickname supporters at the Spirit Lake and Standing Rock Sioux reservations prepare to launch their petition drive to force a statewide vote on the issue, they’re reaching out for help from people like Marilyn Schoenberg, 63, of Hebron, N.D.

The retired teacher and frequent activist on social issues is not American Indian and has no direct connection to UND. But she has been to Standing Rock “about 10 times” in the past two years to confer with Archie Fool Bear and other nickname supporters, most recently about circulating petitions in the southwestern part of the state.

The Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe and its pro-nickname Committee for Understanding and Respect, supported by Fool Bear and others at Standing Rock, announced two weeks ago that they would seek a referendum on the Legislature’s repeal of a law mandating UND’s continued use of the name and logo.

The nickname supporters said they also plan to seek a constitutional amendment to carve the Fighting Sioux name and logo firmly into state law, and they have solicited volunteer and financial help through the committee’s website, SavetheFightingSioux.com.Are you really an activist if you're trying to protect the status quo from change? Anyway, here's more on Schoenberg the so-called activist:She attended State Board of Higher Education meetings, spoke for the nickname during hearings at the Legislature, and drafted and circulated a support petition in Hebron. She also wrote a letter to several newspapers citing “seven reasons to support the nickname.”

First among those reasons, she said, was respect for tradition.

“My mother was a member of the State Historical Society,” she said. “She was of the Germans from Russia, and we had such marvelous reunions because of the pride we have in how our ancestors came over from Russia and left everything behind but made a new life here.

“Now they (nickname opponents) are trying to destroy the tradition and pride of the Sioux people,” which she believes are reflected in and honored by UND’s nickname and logo.Comment:  The aptly named CUR committee is slinking through the slime of ugly arguments. It's trying to resurrect the dying "Fighting Sioux" mascot by fabricating the motivations of its opponents.

Yeah, hundreds of Native organizations and tens of thousands of Indians oppose the mascot because they hate the Lakota. Not because they've spent decades fighting every kind of racism and stereotyping against Indians, but because they want the Lakota weak, helpless, possibly dead and gone. There's no other conceivable reason, so that must be it.

That must be why these activists spent decades trying to eliminate the University of Illinois's Chief Illiniwek: to destroy the tradition and pride of the Illinois Indians. Even though 1) these Indians no longer exist; 2) their nearest relatives, the Peoria Indians of Oklahoma, opposed the mascot; and 3) the dancing clown in the chief's headdress had nothing to do with Illinois culture or history. Why do these activists hate Indians so much?!

This also explains why activists oppose Chief Wahoo and the Washington Redskins--because they're trying to destroy those venerable traditions. You know, the traditions of the Wahoo and Redskins tribes, two of the 565 federally recognized tribes. The actual Chief Wahoo and a bunch of nameless "dirty redskins" are rolling in their graves over the loss of their pride and dignity.

How stupid can you get? Have I mocked Schoenberg's ignorance and idiocy enough, or shall I go on?

For more on the Fighting Sioux, see NCAA Says No to N.D. Officials and Origin of "Fighting Sioux."