In three separate surveys released Monday, a large percentage of UND employees, students and minority students also indicated the Fighting Sioux nickname honors the university and people referred to as Sioux.
Group responses The minority classification, however, included a sample of all minority students.
The largest percentages of Native American students and faculty also disagree that Kupchella should find another solution to the controversy, rather than changing the name. Prepared by a UND commission currently studying the continued use of the Fighting Sioux nickname, the survey questions weren't identical for each group, a source of criticism for some on the commission. For the minority group, the word Sioux was dropped when it referred to a group of people. Instead, because of sensitivity concerns, the subcommittee that prepared those questions used the proper identifiers Dakota, Lakota and Nakota. Sioux is considered derogatory by many descendants of people who originally were referred to as Sioux because the term, in some definitions, means snake and was placed on them by their enemies.