‘Time is a great healer’
By LUCIE KRISMAN
ND Newspaper Association
The recent retirement of the Washington professional football team’s “Redskins” nickname and logo, along with reports of other sports teams reconsidering Native-themed names and logos, has some North Dakotans reflecting on the long, controversial history of the University of North Dakota’s “Fighting Sioux” moniker.
For David Dodds, an alumnus and director of communications for the university, the relationship people have with the former Fighting Sioux name and logo has evolved through
court proceedings and years of public debate.
“It was certainly something that I felt a lot of pride in,” Dodds said. “I’ve had a bit of a personal evolution in my mind as far as how I think about our former nickname and logo and how I came to embrace the current Fighting Hawks logo.” This kind of evolution makes sense to Tim O’Keefe, who played hockey at UND and is former head of the UND Alumni Association.
