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MPR News Staff

University of North Dakota's new mascot: Fighting Hawks

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University of North Dakota
University of North Dakota
Jimmy Emerson | Creative Commons via Flickr

University of North Dakota teams will be known as the Fighting Hawks following a vote of student, faculty, alumni and others with ties to the school.

The new nickname, unveiled Wednesday, ends a decade of controversy over the university's longtime Fighting Sioux mascot and name in a state with a large Native American population.

In 2005, the NCAA moved to restrict college team nicknames or mascots deemed "hostile or abusive." After years of battling, the University of North Dakota agreed in 2012 to retire the Fighting Sioux name and have teams play simply as North Dakota or UND.

A competition the past year to pick a new name yielded more than 1,000 ideas that came down to two: Roughriders and Fighting Hawks.