August 19, 2005
Fighting Sioux...
My son is at UND, so I noticed this interview Hugh Hewitt had with UND president Charles Kupchella, about the decision of the NCAA to ban them from championships for for being "abusive and hostile to American-Indians."
...CK: We don't have a mascot. We have a nickname...
HH: Which is?
CK: It's called the Fighting Sioux.
HH: The Fighting Sioux.
CK: And we do have a logo that's just a great piece of art. It was designed by Ben Brien, an American-Indian artist, a very respected one here in North Dakota, and I think beyond. His sculptures and work appear all over the state, and he did a masterpiece for us in this logo.
HH: Now explain to our audience what the National Collegiate Athletic Association ruled on August the 5th.
CK: Well, they basically said, I think, that we were among a group of schools, eighteen I think total, that were being abusive and hostile to American-Indians somehow, and without ever giving any definition to that. And presumably, it's simply because use the nickname Fighting Sioux. Apparently, everything is derived from that. No matter how much respect we give to that, apparently this wasn't enough for them....
...We will file an appeal, once we know what it is that we're going to be basing this appeal on. I mean, the main thing I've tried to communicate in this letter, is that we don't get it. I don't understand what they used as a standard, so it's pretty hard to know how to appeal, since you don't know what it is they used to decide. So once we get that result, then of course, we'll decide....
One can understand his total frustration at being unable to fight back when the rules are never spelled out or clearly defined. But that is intentional. The people who do this kind of stuff don't give a damn about Indians, nor about justice. It's all about power. It's bullying for its own sake. Leftists think they should be running the circus, and everybody's lives. And they leap on every "wrongdoing" as a chance to push people around. They don't want the rules clearly defined; they want their feelings and fads to have the force of law, without appeal. (And they also don't want clear rules because those can be turned back against them, such as the cases where lefty ranters have been accused of "hate speech," or people discriminating against whites and Asians have been snagged by rules against racism)
And it's about moral preening. The liberal elites get to condemn "immorality," and everybody then hangs their heads and shuffles their feet and hardly dares to answer back. Well, those days are over. Except in certain protected enclaves, like the academy. And even there Americans are starting to fight back. And though my blog is not an important blog, it's still so utterly cool to have a voice, and to be able to talk back to a certain kind of sniveler, and to say we are the good guys, and we were morally right to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we saved millions of lives by doing so.
And since the subject is up, while we all wish the native American populations had been treated better, we were morally right to settle this country, which was to become a refuge and a home for hundreds of millions of people from far worse places, and is now the world's engine promoting freedom and democracy and economic opportunity.
The Indians had to be displaced, for the good of the world. As Kit Carson said, "One Indian needs as much land as a million white men." And no matter how we had handled the problem, they would still have ended up as small marginal populations.
Posted by John Weidner at August 19, 2005 09:13 AM | TrackBackYour view is a bit ahistorical. We were not morally right or wrong to settle the land-- nor was the slaughter of the Native American peoples something we had any control over. The simple fact of the matter is that +90% of the Native America population was killed off by diseases we had no choice about spreading...
People explore and expand. They just do. The same impulse that caused the groups who became the Native Americans to leave eastern Asia is the same impulse that caused the groups who became North Americans to leave Western Europe. The survivability difference comes from the fact that “westerners” had been dying for millennia of diseases which all hit the Native Americans at once...
None of which excuses our treatment of the survivors. Nothing, for instance, justifies the Trail of Tears. But the level of brutality we may or may not have displayed didn’t do much to effect the mortality rate of the Native American populations...
You are very right, about how people just "explore and expand." And our frontiersmen were often pretty "tribal" themselves.
And I read somewhere a theory that by the time the Pilgrims landed the native population had already been greatly reduced, and the earlier cultures had been much larger and more organized and agricultural...
Also the Kennewick Man controversy is really about the possibility that the Indians themselvs displaced earlier and different populations.
Posted by: John Weidner at August 19, 2005 08:55 PMYes, between Columbus and the Pilgrims the Native American population was about 90% lower than it started. This is because the Europeans were (mostly) immune to the bubonic plague (after it killed 1/3 of Europe), but the Native Americans were not. There were also about a dozen other viruses (small pox comes to mind) which were deadly to Europeans but very _very_ deadly to Native Americans...
If I remember correctly, what we call “Native Americans” came over in 3 waves, each killing and displacing a group that had already been there, which is not something that current Native American groups like to think about...
Posted by: Andrew Cory at August 20, 2005 12:32 AMDamn, this is a fine blog. Sharply written and skilfully argued.
Posted by: slatts at August 21, 2005 12:03 AMThank you, Mr Slatts!
Posted by: John Weidner at August 21, 2005 09:00 AMjust keep talking, you only go to show how ignorant you are.
You think systematic genocide in order to settle the country was Morally right? You better wake up.
And even if "the indians had to be displaced for the good of the world"
Does that mean that we can continue to treat them with dis-respect and ignore their requests to change the name? Because that is what UND has done. All but one South Dakota Sioux tribes have written resolutions for the name to be changed. all of the north dakota tribes (except spirit lake which is questionable at most) have asked for the Fighting Sioux "nickname" to be changed. This isnt about being PC it is about listening and respecting the wishes of other people.
make all the excuses you want, but you cant get around this fact.
as for the other comment:
maybe some disease was spread "accidentally" however there are recorded instances of disease infested blankets intentionally distributed to native americans. Also at the time, there was a immunization against smallpox (crude but effective). This was witheld from native populations(also documented).
It's YOU who are treating the Indians with disrespect, by encouraging them to be weaklings who whine and complain about trivia like team names rather than dealing with their problems.
People like you encourage minorities to be "professional victims," eternally complaining about the wrongs done to their ancestors. That hurts minorities, robs them of self-respect, and distracts them from the hard work and hard decisions needed to succeed.
Everybody's ancestors were abused sometime in the past.
You lefties (I'm guessing that's what you are) love to repeat those tales of smallpox blankets, because it gives you an excuse to stand aside from the hard messy work America is doing to make a better world, and sneer and complain and feel morally superior. But you are hurting the Indians, and the other groups you want to infantilize. And doing no good whatsoever.
Posted by: John Weidner at August 22, 2005 11:58 AMLet's have a touch of Back-To-Reality here regarding smallpox blankets...from what I understand, there's only one actual incident, that from the French and Indian War, involving Lord Amherst during Pontiac's rebellion. Here's one discussion of that incident, and here's another.
Jenn - you reference "incidents" - can you give a source for any incident other than the Amherst incident? (Which, by the way, was inflicted against combatants during a war; and which also was probably pretty ineffective at spreading smallpox regardless of the intentions; and which occured during a time when waves of smallpox infections make it impossible to know if any later outbreaks had anything whatsoever to do with Amherst's blankets). There well may be many, many more out there, but without some citation, I've gotta go with my memory over your assertion.
Also, you said, "at the time, there was a immunization against smallpox (crude but effective). This was witheld from native populations(also documented)." The first vaccine wasn't developed until 1796, and Pontiac's Rebellion was in 1763. So though vaccines may have been withheld from Native Americans later, it could not possibly have been withheld "at the time."
Given the fact that you're apparently confused on at least the timeline, you'll excuse me if I ask that you to cite a reference or two to support your assertions? I'm not emotionally invested in defending our horrific treatment of Native Americans, by any means - it's a tragic blight on our history, one of many, and one which makes our current greatness that much more amazing. Nonetheless, I think all sides of an issue are far better off having facts align with their assertions, rather than Asserting-and-Running...
Posted by: Ethan Hahn at August 25, 2005 06:39 AM
