No More Fighting Sioux

 Following a statewide vote this summer, the University of North Dakota athletic teams will no longer be known as the "Fighting Sioux".  The seven-time NCAA hockey champions will have no nickname or even a mascot until 2015 at the earliest according to this article.  The controversy, which has assumed titanic proportions over the years, has seen a nasty division between traditionalists and the politically correct and even between rival groups of the namesake Sioux themselves.

Thoughts on the subject have yet to be exhausted, however.  First of all, the very word Sioux isn't part of the Lakota language, the speech originally spoken by the offended ethnic group, or even English.  It's French.  Additionally, who is to say to whom, exactly, the French word "Sioux" refers?  Couldn't perhaps a single Lakota go to the University of North Dakota and say, "I'm the Fighting Sioux, me.  For a certain pecuniary consideration I'll license you to use a modified artistic rendering of my visage for athletic promotion purposes.  What dya think? "  Would this be illegal or even wrong?  Acceptance of such terms by UND seems like a perfectly legitimate contract.  It would thus be up to school itself and its regents to accept or reject such a contract.