But before we specifically define the origin of the word “Sioux”, other mascot names on the same level of misunderstanding should be noted briefly here. Because each culture of the world had their braves, warriors, and chiefs, democracy requires that we honor each in rotation to be fair. One year would feature the Mediterranean and southern Asian cultures by wearing a turban at the football games for a softer bump-and-grind; another year would honor the African culture by wearing a clip-on replica of a gold nose ring as the sole uniform required; another time would headline the European culture by wearing a peruke wig to cover up the baldness in some players or to befuddle the batter in the pitcher’s windup in the baseball games. And a hauberk being too awkward for a complete football uniform, rather a Scots Highlander kilt and sporran would do well with a Viking metal headgear. In this way each culture would be honored fairly and enormously.
Now to reconsider “Sioux” today is to review language barriers of the last century and earlier. Commonplace but complex, Lakota speakers did not understand English and conversely so that at first contact in the latter 1800’s only sign language was used.
Since then many haphazard down-to-earth translations have been used where names were thrown about in great numbers in great error. For instance in other related areas, we know enough now to discard Chippewa and Navaho as misnomers and in its stead the inestimable Anishinabi and Dineh respectively have stepped forward.
In the meantime the aforementioned language bar is being overcome with many students of the Lakota and English languages. Many dictionaries and even a few grammar books are being published: The Lkaota-English Dictionary of 1983 compiled by Rev. Eugene Buechel S.J. and the Rev. Paul Manhart, S.J. being the most widely-circulated. Also the scientific 41-letter Lakota alphabet is now in print since 1982 to cover precisely every unique sound spoken in the language. Of no other alphabet in the world can this exactness be ascribed except in Lakota. However, it is still true today that the language barrier is real as in the 1800’s. An English-only speaker and writer does not understand Lakota so that only the bilingually-fluent Lakota and English speaker is qualified to do translations today. One might as well throw away everything written and spoken in English-only about matters Lakota before 2000 and start anew. Lakota fluency requires its words be brought out to the foreground so its meanings may emerge as faithfully as possible. Most English-only speakers and writers do not do this thus their free-flowing conjecture. Therefore Lakota fluency is a necessity especially when translating original terms and definitions. Here an oversight worth pointing out is that Si Tanka was a nickname and that Hehaka Gleska-Spotted Elk is his formal name. In this the Cheyenne River community College is playing the game of them down-playing us by downgrading ourselves-what brainwashing we’ve been through!
Finally though, to recapture the prime meaning of the derivative word “Sioux” is to stay within its denotations at the morpheme level as much as possible. The prevaricated “Sioux” had been roughly traced to the French and/or a Chippewa term in the past. Be that as it may, it is not the French nor the Chippewa under discussion herein. “Sioux” as spelled is not an original word in Lakota although soo and su are other spellings of the same sounds, the latter spelling having some significance in the Lakota. But su is nearly always used with other qualifying words as in iwoju su or garden seeds. Still the very first European arrivals into the Lakota territory were uninhibited and boisterous given to downgrading everything in front of them.
Just along those lines the Europeans latched onto the diminutive su of the full noun susu which means the penis in the Lakota. And so in their initial approach, the European idea was to diminish the Lakota by naming them as half-penises. Then since the Lakota did not understand the spelling “Sioux” they did not see or know the full impact of the meaning “Sioux” for well over a century. Part of that 100-year span was the time of the forbidden conversations in Lakota.
Except now the wordplay of English vis-à-vis Lakota becoming familiar to the Lakota it is the right time to change these obscene errors in translations of who is whom, and other misinterpretations.
In the legal terms when all is said and done, the misnomer “Sioux” goes against the intent of the Draft of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples, since adopted by the United Nations General Assembly by Resolution 61/295 on September 13, 2007. In the draft United Nations document, indigenous means original, native peoples of each continental area on Grandmother Earth. Here, quoting from the United Nations Draft Declaration at part I, article 2: “Indigenous individuals and peoples are free and equal to all other individuals and peoples in dignity and rights, and have the right to be free from any kind of adverse discrimination, in particular that based on their indigenous origin or identity.” And at part II, Article 7: “indigenous peoples have the collective and individual right not to be subjected to ethnocide and cultural genocide, including prevention of and redress for, (at subpart (e): Any form of propaganda directed against them.”
In this linguistic review of proper names, “Sioux” was and still is the first deception and fraud committed because of bilingual ineptitude mainly by the United States Government since both the Treaties of Peace of 1851 and 1868 were written in English under questionable circumstances. This historical error continues in the naming of several reservations in South Dakota as Rosebud-Pine Ridge-Cheyenne River-Standing Rock “Sioux” tribes. In truth they are properly: Sicangu Lakota, Oglala Lakota, Wakpa washte Lakota, Hunkpapa Lakota respectively of the Peta Sakowin of the Titunwun Lakota or Lakota Nation.
In the subject of mascot nicknames, what irony that places for enjoyment of sportsmanship, for higher learning, and other ideals instead becomes places of gross and unrefined ignorance of an elemental area as proper names.
Wicahpi Wanjila-Leroy C. CurleyJanuary 15, 2010
