From gars@speakeasy.org Tue Apr 24 02:11:31 2001 Date: 3 Jan 2001 01:41:00 -0000 From: Gary Night Owl To: Internet Recipients of Wotanging Ikche Subject: Wotanging Ikche--nanews09.001 _ __ _____ __ _ __ ___ ____ _ __ ___ O ' ) / / ') / / ) ' ) ) / ) / ' ) ) / ) O o O / / / / / / /--/ / / / ___ / / / / ___ O o O (_(_/ (__/ ( / (_ / (_ (___/ '__/_ / (_ (___/ ' O o o o o O ____ _ , ___ _ , ___ VOLUME 09, ISSUE 001 O o O / ' ) / / ) ' ) / / ' January 6, 2001 O o O / /-< / /--/ /-- Cherokee the cold moon O __/_ / ) (___/ / ( (___, Zuni trees are broken by snow moon KANOHEDA ANIYVWIYA Ha-Sah-Sliltha Otapi'sin Atsinikiisinaakssin Un Chota Es'te Opunvk'vmucvse ni-mah-mi-kwa-zoo-min Aunchemokauhettittea Ximopanolti tehuatzin, inin Mexika tlahtolli It-hah-pe-hah Ah-num pah-le ( N A T I V E A M E R I C A N N E W S ) This issue contains articles from ndn-aim & Our Red Earth mailing lists; Newsgroup:alt.native; UUCP email; http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/29/opinion/29ERDR.html http://www.arizonarepublic.com/business/articles/1210rezbank10.html http://animalconcerns.netforchange.com/frame.html http://www.heraldnet.com/Stories/00/12/28/13303683.cfm http://www.rapidcityjournal.com Articles appearing have been previously posted for public dissemination and/or permission for inclusion has been secured. Letters of authorization are on file. A list of those granting permission to repost their words in this issue are listed at the end of part A. I thank each of you for allowing your words to be shared with the people. IMPORTANT!! ----------- To all who send copywrite protected articles, make very sure you have permission from the copywrite holder (a newspaper, the AP, a magazine, an author) because a new law is now in effect that says you can be prosecuted even if there is no monetary gain. Just because a newspaper has a website where it posts some or all of its editions does not grant permission for their redistribution. Be careful and be sure you pass on the items you do with full permission. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, all material appearing in this newsletter is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for educational purposes. <----<<<< >>>>----> This newsletter is a way of keeping the brothers and sisters who share our Spirit informed about current events within the lives of those who walk the Red Road. ++ It may be subscribed to via email by sending a request from your own internet addressable account to gars@speakeasy.org ++ It is archived at http://www.nanews.org "To those of us locked away in here, there's nothing more important than being remembered." __ Leonard Peltier, "Prison Writings...My Life Is My Sun Dance" +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ | Indian Pledge of Allegiance | The Indian Pledge of Alleg- | | iance was first presented | I pledge allegiance to my Tribe,| on 2 December '93 during the | to the democratic principles | opening address of the Nat- | of the Republic | ional Congress of American | and to the individual freedoms | Indian Tribal-States Relat- | borrowed from the Iroquois and | ions Panel in Reno, NV. NCAI | Choctaw Confederacies, | plans distribution of the | as incorporated in the United | Indian Pledge to all Indian | States Constitution, | Nations. | so that my forefathers | | shall not have died in vain | Walk in Beauty! Night Owl +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ | Journey | In the summer and early fall | The Bloodline | of 1998 the Treaty Unity Riders | | rode a thousand miles on horse- | For all that live and live by law | back, carrying a staff and | We Stand, we Call, We Ride | praying each step of the way. | For All that fear and fear by sight | | We Hear, we Listen, we Ride | These prayers were offered for | For all that pray and pray by strength| each of us, and that the Unity | We Feel, we Move, we Ride | of all Peoples might happen. | For all that die and die by greed | | We Hurt, we Cry, we Ride | Tatanka Cante forwarded this | For all that birth and birth by right | poem on behalf of all the Unity | We Smile, we Hold, we Ride | Riders that we might stop and | For all that need and need by heart | ask if the next words we say, the | We Came, we Went, we Rode. | next act we make is for the good | | of the People or is it from ego | Treaty Unity Riders | for self. +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ O'siyo Brothers and Sisters! The clock is ticking. Time is running out for Leonard Peltier's only hope - Presidential Clemency. Call or write today, every day. Better yet, call and write every day. Excerpts from a post by Koga Suyeta 14 Aug 2000 00:44:10 -0530 The over-riding issue is Peltier. Peltier requires our undivided attention now. --- if Clinton will not sign the paper, we have a very serious problem, because Bush won't sign & Gore won't sign. It must be Clinton & the option remains his only until January 20. The focus, for once, needs to be on the man & only the man. Mail mail mail. Calls calls calls. Money money money. Don't be baited. The over-riding issue is Peltier. .. .. .. .. CALL OR WRITE ON BEHALF OF LEONARD PELTIER TODAY! Calling the regular White House number (202-456-1111) on a daily basis averages about $2.00 -$5.00 a week per person.. Dial 0 to bypass the recording and get through to an operator.. The LPDC had purchased a toll free number if you can not afford to call or are not at a place where you can make a toll call. It will cost them a lot so if you can call the regular number, please do so. The toll free is.. 1-877-561-1364. If you would like to be well versed when you call please refer to the LPDC homepage.. http://www.freepeltier.org/ Thank you.. Lona -- - - - REMEMBER our brother who was beat to death, then urinated on. DO NOT let another day pass without voicing your anger and protest! Contact the St. Paul, MN courthouse and let the prosecuting attorney know Indian Country is watching. Insure a maximum sentence is imposed! .. .. .. .. Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 18:41:23 EST From: Rayann6@aol.com Subj: the death of Stevie Thompson One suspect pleads guilty in fatal beating. Jacob Thompson (no relation) plead guilty to second degree murder in the July fatal beating of Stevie Thompson. Witnesses told police that Jacob Thompson beat the victim in the head, kneed him in the stomach, threw him to the ground and kicked him in the head. The complaint also states Jacob Thompson went through Stevie Thompson's wallet, stole 57 cents, scissors and a sewing kit and then urinated on him. According to an autopsy, Stevie died of head injuries. Jacob Thompson faces a sentence of 12 years to 20 1/2 years in prison under Minnesota sentencing guidelines. Sentencing is set for Jan. 11th before Judge Paulette Flynn. The County Prosecutor for Stevie Thompson's case is Janice Barker. Her phone number is (651) 266-3058. Address is: The Ramsey County Government Center West, 50 West Kellogg, St.Paul, Minnesota 55102 The web page setup for Stevie is: http://hometown.aol.com/rayann6/stevieThompson.html URL http://hometown.aol.com/rayann6/StevieThompson.html (the 'S' and 'T' need to be capitalized) -- - - - This will be the last week for this help list. Please make a copy and help when you can. This is NO exaggeration... your gift may save a life. The price of fuel is rising at an alarming rate. It is extremely cold on many of the poorest rez's. It doesn't take a genius to add these two bitter truths and realize that without help, some elders are going to freeze to death this winter. Many the resources below will make sure any funds you send for propane will buy propane for those with the greatest need. I know Mountain Light, Pathways and Pioneer Industries will make certain funds sent to them for fuel will buy fuel . I also believe the others are equally diligent. Help those elders survive this winter. I thank those who have written, asking for addresses to send food, funds to buy fuel, blankets and other help for the winter. Pathways To Spirit, a Colorado non-profit organization, Carmeen Klausner, Director (970) 282-8573 for funds to help place a mobile home on Pine Ridge. Pioquark@aol.com Clay Watson Pioneer Industries 1100 E. 24th St. Cheyenne, Wy. 82001 (307)778-7860 pioquark@aol.com http://members.tripod.com/~dikani/pioneer.html These donations will be gifted to the Rose Bud and Pine Ridge Reservations in South Dakota and the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. I'm on the road a lot, out back loading the truck etc. PLEASE leave a message if there is no answer.. Supporting the elders through personal contact: Adopt A Grandparent Mountain Light Center PO Box 241 Taos NM 87571 TEL: 505 776 8474 FAX: 505 776 8053 For information call 800 291-8474. email: agpmlc@aol.com From BIGMTLIST The Dineh could use some blankets to help with the cold winters. Bonnie Whitesinger Box 1073 Hotevilla, AZ 86030 Since UPS doesn't deliver to PO boxes, you would have to use parcel post. From Mike Wicks: Any help would be a blessing to those at Camp Justice, and Pine Ridge. Camp Justice c/o Tom Poor Bear P.O. Box 823 Pine Ridge, South Dakota 57770 Helping People in need on many reservations: Night Walker Enterprises, Inc. 148 West Oak Street Unit C Ft. Collins, Colorado 80534 TEL: 970 482 7797 To help send winter clothing, blankets and space heaters to residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Dowel "Whitey" Smith and Larry Gambill Double S Recycling 1420 S. Main St. Madisonville, KY 42431-3343 Thank you Claudia! Pine Ridge School Boys Dormitory Pine Ridge, South Dakota 57770 Attn: Darlene McLaughlin Sizes are for first grade to 12th grade. Not only coats but clothings, gloves, socks, shirts - anything would be appreciated. There is also a girls dorm that can use clothing as well! I am asking readers of this newsletter to continue to respond as a caring community, not as the apathetic, uncaring empty beings the dominant society so often is. We do not warehouse our elders. Our ancestors taught us that every single member of our community is too valuable to forsake. Peace! Night Owl , , Gary Night Owl gars@nanews.org (*,*) P. O. Box 672168 gars@speakeasy.org (`-') Marietta, GA 30006, U.S.A. gars@olagrande.net ===w=w=== gars@sdf.lonestar.org ----------- News of the people featured in this issue ---------- - Tribe Remembers Ambassador - Clinton Signs - A Time for Human Rights Indian Assistance Bill on Native Ground - Departing BIA Head says - A Way Out of the Peltier Dilemma Agency has a Ways to Go - Worthington Report - World Conference on Racism - In March Of 1975 - Sovereignty: Law of the Land - Big Foot Ride's - Response to the New Age Movement Spiritual Side Wanes - No Happy Holidays - Experience of Ride for Yellowstone's Bison Both Frightening and Rewarding - Brook Mi'kmaq get - Chinook Tribe Combat Training for Lobster Wars Still Battling for Recognition - Tulalip/County Disagree - Tribes Join Forces on Caliber of Protection for Lewis & Clark Tourism - Justice Department - Lessons of Wounded Knee Focuses on Tribal Youth not Taught in Schools - Second Suspect - Nations want Arkansas River Land Sought in Beating Death - Oneidas' Claim Still Unresolved - Native Prisoner - Evictions by Indians - Rustywire: Stirs Land Dispute Iceboxes and Melting Snow - Cherokees Dealt Better Hand - Poem: Medicine Power with Casino - Verse: Hawaiian Book of Days - Banks Bet on Tribes - Upcoming Events --------- "RE: Tribe Remembers Ambassador" --------- Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 08:27:19 -0600 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="TRIBE REMEMBERS" Tribe remembers ambassador `A powerful and engaging lady' Julie Titone - Staff writer Spokane _ DESMET, Idaho -- Lucy Finley, whose famous Coeur d'Alene Indian ancestor ferried travelers across the Spokane River, was herself a link between different times and cultures. She navigated between her days as a wagon-riding farm girl and a globe- trotting senior citizen. Between times of poverty and progress among her people. Between ancient tribal ceremonies and modern Catholic rites. Throughout the journey, she danced. "Even in the final years, when she had trouble walking, she would go around in her rolling walker, fully dressed in her regalia," the Rev. Thomas Connolly said. "She'd make at least one round, holding her eagle fan on high to greet the people. "She was a very powerful and engaging lady." Connolly presided at Thursday's service for Lucy Daniels Whatkan Nomee Finley. She died Saturday at her home in Worley. She was 88. Relatives and friends packed the pews of the Sacred Heart Mission church to honor her. The funeral Mass included Latin hymns, which Finley fancied from her decades of singing them at the mission. At her request, a native dancer circled her casket to the beat of drums and chants. The funeral program featured a photo of the sturdy, full-blooded Indian, her arms akimbo and her dress bedecked with beads and fringe. She also wore a blazing smile. "There was always that beautiful smile," tribal chairman Ernie Stensgar said from the podium, remembering Finley as an ambassador for Indian Country. "We don't have royalty in our tribe ... but I always looked at that lady as carrying herself in a very proud way. She commanded respect by her very bearing." Stensgar presented a 10-page remembrance of Finley's life, which Connolly wrote with help from family members. The priest usually writes only two or three pages for memorial services. "For this one, I went overboard," he explained earlier this week. "She was an overboard lady." Lucy was born in 1912 in Worley to Bernard Daniel and Mary Ann Gates Whatkan. Her ancestors included Joseph Quinamosi, who ran a ferry crossing near Liberty Lake. He had large herds of horses and cattle, and was the last of the old Coeur d'Alenes to give up aboriginal home sites and move to the reservation. When Lucy was 3 months old, her mother died. When her father remarried, her grandmother, Mary Theresa, took Lucy and her sister Mary and raised them on her allotment west of Worley. Mary Theresa was a member of the Kalispel Tribe, and the girls grew up speaking the Kalispel dialect. That is a Salish language, and as such has words in common with the Coeur d'Alene dialect, Connolly said. There are few fluent Salish speakers remaining. Lucy received only three years of formal education at the mission school at DeSmet. But she was well-versed in hard work and tribal tradition. At age 18, she married Louie Omee. She lost two children at birth, and one at age 2, before having three healthy children: Marian, Bernadine and Eli. Then her husband fell ill. He died in 1942 after holding the newborn Eli. In 1943, Lucy married Pat Finley of Montana's Flathead Tribe. They lived in the Silver Valley, where he worked in the mines; and in St. Maries, where he found a sawmill job. The couple had four children: Patricia, Sally, Henrietta and Raymond. Last summer, Lucy remembered her youngest son during the dedication of a veterans memorial in Plummer. He was killed during the Vietnam War. Lucy was remembered this week for helping raise other children, too, including Philomena Nomee and Johnny Daniels. When her friend Etta Adams died in 1980, Lucy honored a promise to watch after her five children. Lucy buried her second husband in 1974. Her final decades were full. There were powwows to attend, berries to pick, roots to dig, thrift stores to haunt. One highlight was a 1978 trip to the Holy Land, where she decided to ride a camel, Connolly wrote. "But no one told her how a camel gets up from the ground -- back feet first. Lucy slid right down the camel's neck into the sand. Her traveling partners roared with delight as she got up, brushed off the sand, straightened out her wing dress, and climbed back on the camel." One of her biggest thrills came in 1987, when she joined 50 Coeur d'Alenes who met with Pope John Paul II on his visit to Phoenix. She shook the pontiff's hand, and with her daughter, Patricia, danced in a circle around him. Staff writer Julie Titone can be reached at (208) 765-7126, or by e-mail at juliet@spokesman.com. Copyright c. Idaho Statesman-Review --------- "RE: A Time for Human Rights on Native Ground" --------- Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 00:08:07 EST From: JTRoad@aol.com Subj: Novelist Louise Erdrich on Peltier--NEW YORK TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/29/opinion/29ERDR.html December 29, 2000 A Time for Human Rights on Native Ground By LOUISE ERDRICH MINNEAPOLIS - In 1977, fresh out of Dartmouth College's Native American program, I got a job in Fargo, N.D. I worked only blocks from the federal court building, and one day, from my window, I saw a crowd collect near the courtroom entrance. I walked over to see what was happening and spotted a few friends I had grown up with in Wahpeton, N.D. My political leanings were all surface, consisting mainly of fashion statements. During the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee and the subsequent murderous climate on Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, in which more than 60 Native people and two F.B.I. agents were killed, I had been trying to get good grades. Now, here were my friends dressed in flamboyant vests, beads and black hats hung with eagle feathers. I, too, wore a hat, a brown Italian fedora, only my feather was a blue macaw's. On the basis of our hats, rather than any political awareness, I joined the crowd entering the court building and became immediately drawn into the trial of Leonard Peltier. I changed the hours in my job so that I could sit through the trial and listen carefully until at last the cases were presented. Once I'd heard it all, I was confident that not one scintilla of hard evidence linked Mr. Peltier to the murders of F.B.I. agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams. When the jury came back with a guilty verdict I remember extreme shock, a surprise so visceral that I jumped up, shouted, and then found myself quietly weeping in the swirl of subsequent chaos. I had, then, no personal connection with Mr. Peltier. I was not persuaded of his innocence, but that was not the point. I was positive that on the basis of what I'd heard in court that there was reasonable doubt as to his guilt and that he should not have been convicted. My horror was for the United States judicial system. The court system had been influenced, as had I, by the black hats and the feathers and the aura of paranoia. Only to me, these things were attractive. To others, the mood at the back of the courtroom and the drum beating in the street outside were threatening. No one at the time was capable of impartiality, or dedicated to discovering the truth. Here are a few truths. There is no exact forensic evidence that links the rifle said to have been carried by Mr. Peltier to the weapon that caused the fatal injuries. There was no witness to the shooting of the F.B. I. agents. The young witnesses who placed Mr. Peltier, along with some 30 other people, in the vicinity of the crime scene have since insisted that they were coerced and intimidated by the F.B.I. Subsequently, it appears that the F.B.I. sought to avenge the murders on the only person who could still be brought to trial after everyone else involved in the fatal episode was acquitted, by withholding and manipulating critical evidence. During the next few weeks, President Clinton has an opportunity to demonstrate to Native American people and to the world that our country practices some of what it preaches about human rights. By extending clemency to Leonard Peltier, Mr. Clinton could make an enormous gesture of reparation and healing. Mr. Peltier's release is urged by the European Parliament, Amnesty International, the Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights; by Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Dalai Lama; as well as Canada's Assembly of First Nations, not to mention Native rights groups and ordinary citizens throughout the United States. As long as Leonard Peltier is imprisoned, our country's relationship with its Native people is stained by ongoing dishonor, and our own human rights statements are undermined by hypocrisy. After the Peltier trial, I immersed myself in writing and then motherhood. Having experienced some of the hysteria and hatreds of those times, I was ambivalent about Mr. Peltier and the attendant posturing of other leaders of the American Indian Movement. I was not a knee- jerk defense committee member, although I am a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, as is Leonard Peltier. But I was haunted because of the high degree of reasonable doubt that existed in the evidence against him. Eventually, I wrote to Leonard Peltier. He is not a killer and never was. How do I know this? Because of the person he has become. Leonard Peltier lives, physically half-destroyed, in Leavenworth Prison. He is 56 years old, and he has suffered a stroke and a jaw condition that left him in unalleviated pain. Everything has been stripped away from him. He is transparent now; 24 years in prison do that. There is no rage, there is no blame in him. If his life were based upon two murders, he could not have grown, as he has, into a spiritual force, a person of true humility and gentle humor. I believe the only way he could have survived is on the strength of his innocence. Last summer, I walked my grandfather's Turtle Mountain land, side- stepping wild prairie roses, flicking off wood ticks, snapping the dry tall stems of sage into a bundle I would wrap and keep through the winter. As I walked, the evening sun blazed beneath a low cloud and lighted all I saw with a shivering golden fire. I felt in that moment the vast blessing of my own freedom, and took out a letter I'd recently received from Leonard. Words are the soul to me, so I neatly folded the letter and buried it, there, in his home ground. Leonard Peltier has paid a terrible price for all that the American Indian Movement was blamed for during the late 1970's. While other AIM leaders have trekked to Hollywood, married, remarried, traveled first- class around the world and reaped the rewards of notoriety, Mr. Peltier has paid. He has paid for our nation's savagery at Wounded Knee in 1890 and 1973, and for the shame of the F.B.I.'s treatment of Pine Ridge people. He has paid for the violence of the AIM "warriors" who trashed government offices, strutted, mugged, brandished weapons and used them. He has paid the debt for whoever actually did commit those murders. He has paid every day for 24 years. He has paid enough. It is time to let him go home. Louise Erdrich is the author of the forthcoming novel, "The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse." Copyright c. 2000 The New York Times Company --------- "RE: A Way Out of the Peltier Dilemma" --------- Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 02:45:16 EST From: JTRoad@aol.com Subj: To President CLINTON: A WAY OUT OF THE PELTIER DILEMMA Mailing List: ndn-aim A WAY OUT OF THE PELTIER DILEMMA: BLANKET AMNESTY 12/30/2000 Dear PRESIDENT CLINTON-- This is Harvey Arden, editor of Leonard Peltier's PRISON WRITINGS: MY LIFE IS MY SUN DANCE. Please read the brief exchange of emails below. They lay out a simple strategy for resolving one of the sorriest episodes in American history. I would love to discuss the issue with you, read to you from Leonard's book, help you begin the Great Healing Leonard speaks of in his book, which has now been translated into German, French, Dutch, and Spanish, with Italian, Greek and Swedish translations underway. I promise I won't bore you! I live in DC near Chevy Chase Circle and could be down to your office on the subway in 45 minutes anytime. My tel#'s 202-244-4693 "TOUCHING MR. CLINTON'S HEART" ----- Original Message ----- Date: 12/18/2000 5:02:34 PM Eastern Standard Time From: Caqemail Subj: Re: Clemency for Leonard Peltier - Justice and Reconciliation with Indigenous... >To: JT Road Dear Harvey Arden - I just called the White House and spoke for about four minutes with a live White House operator, condemning the FBI's outrageous "spontaneous rally" on Friday, and urged that the President not be swayed by the FBI's totally inappropriate lobbying in this case, and give executive clemency to Leonard. If you have not already sone so, may I suggest urgently that you find a way to quickly get a copy of "Prison Writings: My Life is My Sun Dance" into Clinton's hands. I believe that he needs to read for himself the text of Leonard's powerful and sincere message to the families of Agents Coler and Williams, as well as the entire book. Sincerely, Louis Wolf CovertAction Quarterly Harvey's response: Louis-- Excuse my delay in getting back to you...I've been in Europe. Clinton recd one copy of Leonard's book last July during his visit to Pine Ridge...I believe he's also recd at least one other of the many copies that have been sent to him. Wish I could get him to read just these words of Leonard's to the slain agents' families... "IF YOU, THE LOVED ONES of the agents who died at the Jumping Bull property that day, get some salve of satisfaction out of my being here, then at least I can give you that, even though innocent of their blood. I feel your loss as my own. Like you, I suffer that loss every day, every hour. And so does my family. We know that inconsolable grief. We Indians are born, live and die with inconsolable grief. We've shared our common grief for twenty-four years now, your families and mine, so how can we possibly be enemies anymore? Maybe it's with you--and with us-- that the Great Healing can begin. You, the agents' families, certainly weren't at fault that day in 1975, any more than my family was, and yet you and they have suffered as much as, even more than, anyone there. It seems it's always the innocent who pay the highest price for injustice. It's seemed that way all my life. "To the still-grieving Coler and Williams families I send my prayers if you will have them. I hope you will. They are the prayers of an entire people, not just my own. We have many dead of our own to pray for, and we join our sorrow to yours. Let our common grief be our bond. Let those prayers be the balm for your sorrow, not an innocent man's continued imprisonment. I state to you absolutely that, if I could possibly have prevented what happened that day, your menfolk would not have died. I would have died myself before knowingly permitting what happened to happen. And I certainly never pulled the trigger that did it. May the Creator strike me dead this moment if I lie. I cannot see how my being here, torn from my own grandchildren, can possibly mend your loss. I swear to you, I am guilty only of being an Indian. That's why I'm here. "Being who I am, being who you are--that's Aboriginal Sin. Yes Aboriginal Sin We each begin in innocence. We all become guilty. In this life you find yourself guilty of being who you are. Being yourself, that's Aboriginal Sin, the worst sin of all. That's a sin you'll never be forgiven for. We Indians are all guilty, guilty of being ourselves. We're taught that guilt from the day we're born. We learn it well. To each of my brothers and each of my sisters, I say, be proud of that guilt. You are guilty only of being innocent, of being yourselves, of being Indian, of being human. Your guilt makes you holy." --Leonard Peltier from Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance, p216 Louis, to me these words mirror the towering spirit that Leonard is... they cannot but touch and strengthen the President's heart, which must be strong if he's to pardon Leonard. But how in God's world to get him to ponder these words and the very real human being who wrote them?? My frustration is enormous, but I continue hoping and trying. If I could talk to the President, I'd tell him there's a way around all of this that could bring a grudging satisfaction to both sides...simply to declare a BLANKET AMNESTY on all those involved in the 'Reign of Terror' at Pine Ridge in the '70's...that means ALL of those--THE INNOCENT ALONG WITH GUILTY--involved in the tragic events that occurred at Pine Ridge that dark and desperate hour of the Cold War, just as the last survivors were being airlifted off the roof of the Saigon Embassy... It'd make both sides growl with displeasure, no doubt, but it would also relieve both sides of the main motivations for continuing this unnecessary war between the FBI, BIA, DOJ and Indian People. Yes, a BLANKET AMNESTY not only for Leonard and all the AIMsters and all Pine Ridge Traditionals who were involved, but also for the all the "FBI's" (as Indian people call them), even the worst of them, all the lawyers on both sides and all the prosecuters and the judges, and the GOONs ('Guardians of the Oglala Nation'), the "BIA's," the vigilantes, even the killers of Anna Mae Aquash --whose ghost calls out to us to stop using her memory to divide us. Let NO ONE fear future prosecution for WHATEVER was done in that shameful and shadowed hour in American history. Let it be a matter for historians, not lawyers, not prosecutors, not politicians. BUT, LOUIS, HOW CAN I GET THIS MESSAGE TO MR. CLINTON? CAN YOU HELP? THIS WOULD BE THE FINEST MOMENT IN HIS PRESIDENCY...THE BEGINNING OF THE "GREAT HEALING" LEONARD IS ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT... IT CAN HAPPEN! Louis, I'm a writer and a dreamer, not a politican. I barely wander outside my basement study, except to give readings of Leonard's words to small groups around the country...once even 3-4000 people at the beginning of the wonderful (though unreported) Peltier Walk in New York City a couple of weeks ago... I don't know how to reach the President... all I get are shrugs and autoresponders.... Do you know anyone who can put a copy of this very email in Bill's hand? Does such a person exist? If so, please come forward NOW and help us! Let him include this message to President Clinton that I wrote last week while visiting Europe, responding to a request from a friend for my best thoughts on Leonard's request for clemency--to be hopefully given to Mr. Clinton by a personal friend of the President's: Leonard at Auschwitz 12/23/2000 To Marc Steiner From Harvey Arden On behalf of Leonard Peltier December 23, 2000 Dear Marc, I have just returned to Germany from a visit on Thursday to Auschwitz in southwest Poland, where the Nazis slaughtered a million and half of my Jewish brethren, killing each of them with a special vengeance for the crime of being innocent--the same crime for which Leonard Peltier has been imprisoned this past quarter century. The day was appropriately bleak, the sky a grimy white, the air sulphurous with the fumes of Soviet-era factories that even today make Poland's air almost unbreatheable. As I walked through the barracks where the innocents were tortured and murdered with such malignant glee during that Holocaust of the human spirit, I felt Leonard walking with me, and I pondered the ways of men toward their fellow men. I wondered, What is the use of prayer? For most of those who died here prayed with the most intense passion and profound belief every morning, noon and evening of their lives. I pondered what is the use of Justice, when it is so selectively dispensed by the Unjust? I asked myself what is the use of Love, when those who love their families and friends and country, as the Nazis did, have such hatred in their hearts as to obliterate the very meaning of Love. As I walked through those ghost-filled barracks, I thought not only of these hallowed ones who died, but of my brother Leonard, languishing in his 5- by-9-foot cell at Leavenworth, and also of President Clinton, who now holds Leonard's fate in his hands, and, yes, of the FBI agents Ron Williams and Jack Coler, whose portraits sat above my desk for three years as I edited Leonard's book. I thought of the thousands of FBI agents who today put their lives on the line to protect every one of us, yet wish to see an innocent man die in prison for standing up for the rights of his People; I thought of all the Holocaust-deniers, who would have it that no Holocaust ever occurred, just as the FBI pretends the Reign of Terror it instigated at Pine Ridge in the 1970's never occurred; I think of Mr. Janklow sitting in the Oval Office even as I was visiting Aushwitz and doing his best to convince our President to deny clemency to Leonard Peltier, and I wonder, what is the use of Truth, when it can be so violated as to obliterate all Truth? Marc, you ask me what I can say that could be passed on to convince President Clinton to give our brother Leonard Peltier clemency. Ask him, please, to give a half-hour audience to me and Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th-Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Pipe of the Great Lakota Nation, so that we may deliver a message to him on behalf of the tens of millions of people around the world who plead for Leonard's freedom, who see Leonard's freedom as The Sign that Democracy and Justice and Love and Prayer still have a meaning in America. I want to read to Mr. Clinton from Leonard's book PRISON WRITINGS: MY LIFE IS MY SUN DANCE. I welcome the presence of President-elect Bush and Mr. Cheney and Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Reno and Mr. Freeh and any others the President cares to have on hand. Tell Mr. Clinton I also ask to have Leonard Peltier standing beside me in the Oval Office as I read his words, words Leonard would read himself if his locked jaw would allow him to. I ask no more than that, make no plea beyond that. The decision is President Clinton's and no one else's. Marc, I hope you can get this message to the President. May Spirit guide it on its way. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse and Leonard Peltier, /Harvey Arden harvey@dreamkeepers.net dreamkeepers.net http://dreamkeepers.net "Bringing the Elders to the World...and the World to the Elders" ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> To subscribe to this group,send an email to: ndn-aim-subscribe@egroups.com Archived on line at: http://www.eScribe.com FREE LEONARD PELTIER --------- "RE: Worthington Report" --------- Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 02:15:13 -0000 From: arthurmedicineeagle@hotmail.com Subj: Fwd: worthington Report Mailing List: ndn-aim As requested this has been reposted Please post to other lists too. --- In EAGLES_FLY@egroups.com, "Rhonda Richards" wrote: I got this from another list with permission from the person who posted it. She said to spread it far and wide. Rhonda http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/worthington.html December 28, 2000 Clemency near for Peltier? By PETER WORTHINGTON -- Toronto Sun In a gesture unprecedented in its 79-year history, the FBI authorized several hundred agents to march around the White House 10 days before Christmas, to protest possible clemency by President Bill Clinton for Leonard Peltier. To some, this unusual act indicates how close Clinton may be to granting executive clemency early in the new year -- something he's publicly promised to consider. The FBI is almost pathologically determined that Peltier never be freed, and its protest underlines both the oddity of this case, and the intensity of feelings. A Sioux-Ojibwa Indian, Peltier was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences for the deaths of two FBI agents during violence on South Dakota's Pine Ridge reserve in 1975. He has never denied joining the firefight that erupted on June 26, 1975, but denies killing agents Ron Williams and Jack Coler at point blank range. I've fretted about the case ever since it turned out Peltier was extradited from Canada on the basis of perjured affidavits by Myrtle Poor Bear, claiming she was Peltier's girlfriend and had witnessed him kill the agents. In fact, she didn't know Peltier, had seen nothing, had never been to the area. Three contradictory affidavits were composed by the FBI and dictated to Poor Bear under threats of vengeance. The deeper one probes into the case, the more it seems the FBI framed Peltier and withheld evidence. At the time of the FBI demonstration, I was on CBC Radio with former solicitor general Warren Allmand, discussing Peltier with host Michael Enright. Allmand, also a former minister of Indian Affairs, has relentlessly criticized the way Peltier was extradited. During our discussion, Enright played a tape of prosecutor Lynn Crooks, who not only insists Peltier is guilty, but is "proud" of the way he was convicted. As he's been repeating for 23 years, Crooks is proud of helping put him away for life. It's unsettling hearing an officer of the court and a justice system official boast about getting such a controversial and disturbing conviction. What's especially disturbing in the Peltier case - and is rarely mentioned - is that two other Indians went on trial for the murder of the agents a year before Peltier did: Bob Robideau and Dino Butler. The FBI and prosecution argued that these two killed the agents at point blank range. Their trial was held in 1976 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a hotbed of anti-Indian sentiment. Nonetheless, the jury acquitted the pair, ruling self-defence. If Butler and Robideau may have killed the agents in self-defence, how come Peltier is now the lone killer? He'd have been acquitted, too, if he'd been tried with the other two. FBI VENDETTA? I'd argue that Peltier is in prison not because the FBI thinks he did it, but because the FBI can't bear the idea that agents can be killed with no one being punished. Guilt or innocence is irrelevant, so long as someone is held responsible. One of Peltier's appeal judges, Gerald Heaney (whom I've interviewed), even wrote a letter aimed at then-president Ronald Reagan urging clemency for Peltier to "heal wounds." Heaney found FBI behaviour in the case reprehensible, and that the FBI was "equally responsible" for the deaths of the agents. Over a three year span at Pine Ridge, troubles resulted in 200-300 shootings of Indians, 60 of them fatal, most of them were Indians associated with the American Indian Movement (AIM) which the FBI then considered a communist-backed terrorist organization. At Peltier's trial, Poor Bear's recantation of her affidavits was inadmissable. Judge Paul Benson made the astonishing ruling that, if believed, Poor Bear's testimony of the FBI intimidation, coercion and fabrication would "shock the conscience of the court" and might persuade the jury to acquit Peltier. An FBI Web site aimed at preventing clemency (www. noparolepeltier.com) shows the American eagle, and starts off with patriotic music. America the Beautiful blends into The Battle Hymn of the Republic which blends into God Bless America, all setting the mood for slamming Peltier. The site carries enormous documentation on the case which, for those who casually browse, seems persuasive that Peltier is a dangerous radical (a "mad dog" according to one FBI agent) who should never be freed. If FBI propaganda were true, the likes of Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, the Archbishop of Canterbury down to individuals like myself (I have visited him three times Leavenworth prison), former Liberal cabinet minister Allmand, ex-NDP MP Jim Fulton and the Canadian Alliance's John Reynolds wouldn't be protesting Peltier's continued imprisonment. --- End forwarded message --- ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> To subscribe to this group,send an email to: ndn-aim-subscribe@egroups.com Archived on line at: http://www.eScribe.com FREE LEONARD PELTIER --------- "RE: In March Of 1975" --------- Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 06:05:10 EST From: kaonefeather@aol.com Subj: "In March Of 1975..." Mailing List: ndn-aim "In March of 1975 alone, seven people were killed by violence, all the deaths unexplained, even though, by that time, the FBI had more than fifty agents swarming over the Pine Ridge Reservation (prior to 1973 they had only two or three agents in the area, it that). Seems like the more FBIs we had around, the more murders we had. The call went out from traditional Oglala Lakota Elders from Pine Ridge, requesting that AIM come to the Oglala nation and help protect them from these attacks. A number of warriors, myself included, volunteered to go. However, we went with the understanding that we were in no way a military or paramilitary group. We weren't there to attack or kill or intimidate anybody, only to stand between the GOONs and the traditionalists with our bodies, our prayers, and a small supply of defensive arms. We called ourselves a spiritual camp, and that's what we truly were. We were spirit-warriors, not mercenaries. We wanted peace, not conflict. The violence came from the other side, not from us. It was entirely unprovoked and obviously long planned. It also obviously went very wrong. I can't believe that the FBI intended the deaths of their own agents. Their sorry excuse has been that those two agents blundered and trespassed onto the property that morning simply in order to arrest someone falsely accused of stealing a pair of used cowboy boots. That simply doesn't wash--they didn't even have a warrant for his arrest--nor does it jibe with the fact that scores, even hundreds, of FBI agents, federal marshals, BIA police, and GOONs were all lying in wait in the immediate vicinity. It seems they thought they'd barge in on the phony pretext, draw some show of resistance from our AIM spiritual camp, then pounce on the compound with massive force. They miscalculated which proved tragic for all of us. In the midst of that reign of terror which they themselves had orchestrated--with carloads of government-armed and-equipped GOONs shooting up the reservation day after day--we AIM spirit-warriors weren't about to sit quietly and wait to see just who was in those two unidentified cars that came roaring unannounced in a cloud of dust and confusion and flying bullets into our compound that morning. We defended the people we'd come to defend, and we also defended ourselves. We refused to be passive victims." Leonard Peltier "Prison Writings...My Life Is My Sun Dance" ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> To subscribe to this group,send an email to: ndn-aim-subscribe@egroups.com Archived on line at: http://www.eScribe.com FREE LEONARD PELTIER --------- "RE: Big Foot Ride's Spiritual Side Wanes" --------- Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 02:43:17 -0800 (PST) From: Anne Bates Subj: Big Foot ride's spiritual side wanes, some contend Mailing List: ndn-aim Big Foot ride's spiritual side wanes, some contend By PETER HARRIMAN Argus Leader published: 12/27/00 KYLE -- The Big Foot Memorial Ride in the past decade has evolved largely into an event to bring Lakota youth into close contact with their heritage. But the forerunner of this ride, from Sitting Bull camp to the Wounded Knee Memorial in 1986-89, was done in accordance with an Oglala medicine man's vision to release the spirits and complete the grieving cycle for victims of the Wounded Knee Massacre. This year's approximately 180-mile ride commemorates the flight of Chief Big Foot and 400 followers to the Badlands after Sitting Bull was killed in a botched arrest attempt at Standing Rock Reservation on Dec. 15, 1890. It will end Friday in Wounded Knee on the 110th anniversary of the massacre of Big Foot and nearly 300 of those travelers. Participants of earlier rides say the spiritual component was much stronger than it is today. But Zouie Lone Eagle of Bridger believes spirits still invest this venture. She thinks she saw one Christmas morning. She and her granddaughter, Carrie Lone Eagle, were headed toward the base of Big Foot Pass in Badlands National Park to watch the riders come off the summit when the women saw a gray horse cross the highway. They stopped. "But there was nobody there. It was a vision. It kind of makes you think. Maybe these horses will live on," Zouie Lone Eagle said. Lone Eagle is following her grandson, Bub Morrison, this year and has been supporting Big Foot rides since 1989. Two years ago, at the McDaniel Ranch camp, she was sleeping in a car. "I got up at 3 a.m. to light a cigarette," she said. "The staffs were leaning against a bale of hay beyond the fire, and behind them were four Indians with long hair and feathers on the side. I said, 'We've got visitors.' " Tuesday was a rest day that brought welcome relief from the 12 days of frigid temperatures. The cold has been a constant traveling companion of these horsemen since the original eight left Sitting Bull camp under snowy skies Dec. 15. The day after Christmas dawned clear, and the temperature climbed to near 30 degrees. Today, the riders will head for a camp on American Horse Road "To those of us locked away in here, there's nothing more important than being remembered." Leonard Peltier Freedom for Leonard Peltier, Standing Deer & Red Hawk http://www.angelfire.com/wy/nainmatessupportgrp/American ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> To subscribe to this group,send an email to: ndn-aim-subscribe@egroups.com Archived on line at: http://www.eScribe.com FREE LEONARD PELTIER --------- "RE: Experience of Ride Both Frightening and Rewarding" --------- Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 09:14:53 -0600 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="BIG FOOT RIDE" Experience of ride both frightening and rewarding By PETER HARRIMAN Argus Leader published: 12/30/00 This began with an offhand question in the office one day. "Can you ride?" "Haven't in years," I replied. Pressed on the matter, I said, "Well, I'm not going to be rounding up cattle or riding green broke stock. But I think I can stay on the back of a horse. Why?" Thus I was launched on a two-week odyssey through some of the most rugged wintry reaches of South Dakota. It was an immersion in a culture of Lakota horsemen for the annual Big Foot Memorial Ride on the 110th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre. At times I thought it might kill me. At others I considered it the grandest adventure I've ever had, in the company of remarkable and delightful people. That question at the office might just as aptly have been, "How well can you function in below-zero weather?" because I pretty much did that for all but two days on this trek. Frigid weather It is just incredibly difficult dealing with extreme cold every day. #I lived in four to five layers of polar fleece, wool and coveralls, was dehydrated from the arid cold half the time and was almost never actually warm. But as tough as that weather was on adults, Dana Dupris patiently shepherded seven youngsters from the Healthy Nations program at Eagle Butte through it as well. Those kids were as young as eight, and they all made it. When filing most of the longer stories for this series, I broke away from the group and spent nights in motels. However, I also bunked in community and church halls, spent two nights in a barn and three more in a horse trailer when the temperature was 10 below zero and much colder. I wrote the Christmas Day story by flashlight, curled up in a sleeping bag in a horse trailer with a pen so cold I had to put it in my mouth between sentences to keep the ink thawed. Trying not to intrude I hope I reached a point where the riders and their supporters did not consider me a dilettante. I hope they came to see me not as an interloper trying to hitchhike on their spirituality and heritage, but as someone trying to tell its fascinating story. That was a concern, because besides the Lakota riders and their supporters, the group accompanying this ride included an ever-varying assortment of camera-wielding people and sympathetic fellow travelers. Among them were four German free-lancers, three who seemed sincerely motivated by a desire to capture the event on film and videotape, and one who was looking to write a magazine article "but mostly doing this for myself," and Alex White Plume's vegetarian lawyer from California. He seemed to compromise at least some of the spirit of the event by substituting mushrooms for roast bison on his noon sandwiches. I don't know if this reflects an especially Lakota sense of humor or just Kermit Miner's, but late in the ride, when the daily camp was in a grove of green ash on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the German who was "mostly doing this for myself" told Miner proudly "I made my bow out of ash." Miner looked at him speculatively for a moment and asked "Did you bake it?" "No," came the crestfallen reply. I'm grateful the participants included me in the riders' prayer circle at the beginning and end of each day. Out of respect for Lakota spirituality, I do not presume to appropriate it for my own use. In fact, I'm not sure it's portable. It does seem to rise right out of the center of this place, these people. My notion of the contemporary impact of the Wounded Knee Massacre has changed. The precursor of this ride, from 1986-89, designed to release the spirits of the Wounded Knee victims and complete the cycle of grieving for them, seems to have done its work. The sense of that stupid, pointless tragedy as a raw wound was largely absent from this year's ride. Instead, the challenges of dealing with horses, coping with the bitter weather and introducing young riders to the principles of Lakota life seemed to dominate the event. I'm not entirely sure this is an appropriate simile, but it appears to me that today the ride participants treat the arduous winter journey commemorating Chief Big Foot's flight across South Dakota as a family living in, say, Pennsylvania might look at an ancestor killed at Gettysburg. It may be like getting everybody on bicycles and wheeling up to the battlefield to reflect, to view some family history and to use that as the axis to spend quality time together and have an adventure on the road. Adventures with horses Not that there is any comparison between a summer cycling jaunt on rural highways and a winter trip across mostly unroaded South Dakota on horses. The latter is testimony to profound toughness and expert horsemanship. At the start of this ride, I could conceive of falling off a horse, but I never entertained the thought that a horse might fall on me. It happened the third day. It was a black brute, strong as a bear, that always wanted to be at the front. I think that horse could have done this ride and pulled a 10-bottom plow at the same time. But on a narrow trail at the bottom of a draw, it slipped on a patch of snow-covered ice. It threw me from the saddle and landed briefly on my leg. I bruised a knee, a rib and a shoulder and surprised the hell out of myself. That horse was off its feet three times, twice with the ride organizer Jess Knight. During the course of the ride, I also saw two other horses slip on ice that frequently painted the steep draws we scrambled up and down, and I heard that one had reared over backwards. Had I known this going in, I might never have given such a confident assessment of my equestrian ability. Riding was indeed a challenge for the first few days. Coming out of the breaks of the Grand River at Sitting Bull Camp, where the famed Lakota leader and mystic was killed by tribal police, for a 25-mile ride on a moody, dark December day is a horrible way to have to reacquire your equestrian "seat," but I did. Afterwards, it felt like somebody had taken a blow torch to my legs. I didn't hold it against the horse, however, a remarkably kind sorrel that never tried to take advantage of my meager expertise on all the days I rode him. The second day we rode through 65-below-zero wind chill, and the third day, the black horse fell on me. That same animal carried me 40 miles another day, however, right behind the honor staffs all the way. When we finally spied a roaring campfire silhouetted against the dusk and plodded into the McDaniel Ranch yard, I climbed out of the saddle tired, but I knew if there were more miles to do, I could do them. And so an inauspicious beginning improved considerably. I awoke Christmas morning in a horse trailer full of hay and saw that day dawn over the snowy Badlands around a campfire listening to Eli Tail's wandering tall tales that invariably ended with some humorous twist on a word. This was certainly different from my own holiday traditions of Christmas Eve Mass and Bloody Marys with my family on Christmas morning, but it was memorable. I am heartily tired of soup, having eaten it in nearly infinite variations for an evening meal on almost every night of the trip. Real people One challenge I had was getting past the notion that the ride participants were icons or archetypes of an historical tragedy and instead seeing them as the people they are. Early on in this venture, as misfortune and misery piled up, I simply wanted out. Then after I got to know these folks, I wanted to be Geoffrey Chaucer. The ride itself was certainly more epic in scope than a ramble through bucolic medieval England. The participants were every bit as compelling as the Canterbury Tales pilgrims, and they certainly deserved a better biographer than me to paint them in all their rich color. I hope I managed to convey some of the sense of these interesting people, however, and there are many I'd also like to thank. Many thanks due High on the list is Knight the rodeo cowboy and Dupree rancher, who organized and managed this ride. He is enviably well-grounded in his world, and I never saw a day begin or end where he didn't take care of the horses first. His biggest challenge might have been nurse-maiding me, which he did with unfailing good humor and the offhand grace with which he got the horses across South Dakota. I'd also like to thank Luke Black Elk, who kept my cinches tight in the early days without complaining about so-called horsemen who can't see to their tack, and his sister Karen Ducheneaux, whose laugh, like birdsong, brightened many a moment on the trail. One of the most impressive sights I saw on the whole trip was she and Stan Four Bear picking up played-out mounts on the 65-below day. They crammed horses into a trailer like college kids going after the world record for stuffing a phone booth. Four Bear, a superb rider, veteran of the Big Foot Memorial Ride and many other long-distance Lakota rides, gave up countless days in the saddle to drive trailers, to cook, and generally to keep the enterprise moving. He also did this for nearly a week with a lip painfully swollen by an abscessed tooth. Now that's tough. The unheralded support crew without whom this ride could not have taken place also included Miner, Manaja Hill, and hulking John Moon, who has helped out on this ride for more than a decade. Moon told me at one point that his toughest task in dealing with the ride is keeping his temper, and I'm sure I tested him a time or two with my own varied ineptness. He also said this ride# "has kept me sober for 15 years," which seems as good a reason for persevering as any you'll find. In addition, I thank LaMarr Avery for the cowboy coffee and the stories. Making friends Most of all, I am grateful for having met black-haired, dark-eyed Cheyenne Horne-Mullen, the 5-year-old daughter of Arvol Looking Horse's wife, Paula. In the evenings on the third and fourth days of the trip, she spent hours hiding a key ring, a bottle cap, even a chewed off piece of her fingernail behind her back and asking, with an inversion of subject and predicate, "Which hand it is in?" Then she laughed delightedly when I guessed wrong. Alternately, she climbed up in my lap and, twirling her finger like a hovering butterfly, she had me guess whether it was going to alight on my balding head, my whitening beard or my wind-burned, reddened nose. Life is a whole lot easier to get through with that kind of friendship. I guess that's the thing that will stay with me most about the Big Foot Memorial Ride. It may not be the most compelling insight, but I rode a long way through miserable arctic weather to gain it. I also know now that I can do that. Yeah, I can ride. Where are we off to next? Reach Peter Harriman at 575-3615 or pharrima@argusleader.com All content Copyright c. 2000 Argus Leader. --------- "RE: Chinook Tribe Still Battling for Recognition" --------- Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 08:27:19 -0600 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="CHINOOK RECOGNITION" Chinook Tribe still battling for recognition Tuesday, December 26, 2000 By PEGGY ANDERSEN THE ASSOCIATED PRESS VANCOUVER, Wash. -- When the Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the Pacific in the winter of 1805 -- wet, cold and heartily sick of venison and dried salmon -- the locals took pity on them. "They were huddled for over 10 days in total misery on the north side of the river in storms at a place they called Station Camp," said Gary Johnson, chairman of the Chinook Tribe, now based just west of the site. "Some Chinook people came along in a canoe and helped them out and continued to trade food with them and help them make it through the winter." These days, as the nation gears up for the 200th anniversary of the overland survey by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark that opened the west to white settlement, the Chinook are battling for recognition by the U.S. government. At the same time, they are being asked -- "almost on a daily basis," Johnson said -- to participate in commemoration activities. "They want their input but they don't want to recognize them," said Dennis Whittlesey of Washington, D.C., the exasperated attorney who has worked on Chinook recognition for 22 years. Bureau of Indian Affairs Director Kevin Gover himself has written to ask that the tribe take part, Johnson said. Has Gover noted the irony of his request? "I don't know if he notes it but we certainly do," the chairman said in a recent telephone interview from tribal offices in the tiny, remote town of Chinook near Washington's southwest tip. The Chinook do intend to participate, Johnson said. "We see it as a real opportunity to tell our story," he said. "It would be terribly ironic if a tribe identified in the journals as having had direct and extensive interaction with the Voyage of Discovery were not recognized" during the bicentennial, said U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., who has written the BIA in support of recognition for the tribe. By the time Lewis and Clark arrived, the Chinook had been trading for several years with ocean-borne visitors who wanted furs. But the surveyors were after "something not very intelligible: information," said tribal historian Stephen Dow Beckham, a professor at Lewis and Clark College in Portland. While other late 18th- and early 19th-century visitors had arrived by sea and then sailed away, the surveyors rafted in on the river, built Fort Clatsop on the Oregon and stayed for months, "so the tenor of the relationship was a bit different," Beckham said. "It must have caused them great wonderment. Why had these people come with their beads and fishhooks and copper kettles?" The Chinook gave the visitors food, woven hats and a wealth of information about local flora and fauna, rivers and villages -- and their own people. Copyright c. 2000 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Copyright c. 2000 Seattle Post-Intelligencer --------- "RE: Tribes Join Forces for Lewis & Clark Tourism" --------- Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 02:52:02 -0800 (PST) From: Anne Bates Subj: Tribes join forces for Lewis & Clark tourism Mailing List: ndn-aim Tribes join forces for Lewis & Clark tourism By RON SELDEN For The Outpost Spurred by the upcoming Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, tribal leaders are forming a new coalition to coordinate tourism on Montana's seven Indian reservations. Efforts to organize the Montana Tribal Tourism Alliance have been ongoing the past year, says Darrell Martin, tourism director for the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes on the Fort Belknap Reservation. Bylaws have been drawn up, an interim president and vice president are in place, and organizers are plowing through paperwork so the group can become a tax-exempt entity. "The lawyers are looking at it right now," Mr. Martin said. "It's been a lot of hard work." Tribal councils on six reservations have approved resolutions supporting creation of the group, he said, and the Rocky Boy's Reservation is expected to sign on soon. Incorporation of the group is expected next summer. Nationwide commemoration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition's journeys from St. Louis, up the Missouri River, and on to the Pacific Coast will officially begin in 2003. Major events are expected to subside by 2006. Some analysts predict up to 9 million visitors could be drawn to Montana during the period, all seeking a piece of the explorers' lore. Tribes don't want to become lost in the shuffle, especially considering that Lewis and Clark relied heavily on Indian people to help them on their way. Another aspect that must not be forgotten, Mr. Martin and other tribal leaders said, is that the expedition opened the door to westward expansion, which resulted in the near-extermination of tribes in its wake. "We want to tell our story ourselves," Mr. Martin said, adding that the group will also focus on directing more tourists to reservation activities and businesses that are not connected to the bicentennial. "Lewis and Clark is just one of the fractions." On the Fort Belknap Reservation, for example, there are historical and cultural tours, nearly unlimited venues for camping, hiking and photography, as well as nonmember hunting for buffalo and pronghorn antelope. "Old mining, gunfights, we have it all," Mr. Martin said. On the Flathead Reservation, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes run a first-class resort, a high-mountain wilderness area, and control the southern bed and banks of Flathead Lake, the largest, natural fresh-water body this side of the Mississippi. On the Blackfeet Reservation, nearby Glacier National Park already draws millions of visitors from around the world. The Fort Peck, Crow, Northern Cheyenne and Rocky Boy's reservations are also developing tourism outlets as a way to diversify their economies. "It all boils down to economics, and that's one of the reasons for MTTA," Mr. Martin said. "It will be kind of clearinghouse, if you will." Mr. Martin added that the group is working closely with the state Department of Commerce's Travel Montana program. He says Republican Gov. Marc Racicot is supporting their efforts, as well. In time, the group plans to establish a headquarters in a central area of the state, Mr. Martin said. Plans are also in the works to publish a tribal tourism magazine. The 1997 Legislature, recognizing the need to prepare for the commemoration, created the 12-member Montana Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Commission, which is based in Helena. According to Executive Director Clint Blackwood, the group is also committed to working with tribes. "We don't want to be the ones trying to tell your story," Mr. Blackwood told a recent meeting of the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council. "Our invitation is for you to share that with others." "The Blackfeet believed Lewis and Clark were trespassers," James St. Goddard of Browning told the group. "That's the part that needs to be exposed - the detriments to Indian people." "We'll help you any way we can," Mr. Blackwood responded. "You're the ones in the driver's seat. It's what Lewis and Clark didn't write in their journals. It's the context they didn't have." Mr. Blackwood told the gathering that one project the commission would like to pursue involves recording Native American oral histories about the arrival of Lewis and Clark. But several leaders, including statewide council Chairman Jonathan Windy Boy, cautioned that some tribes have prohibitions on having their stories recorded or written. Mr. Blackwood explained, however, that state officials don't want to do the recording - it would be up to tribes to decide what is proper. And if tribes want to remain disengaged from commemorative activities, that's certainly their prerogative. "We don't want to sit at a state commission level and decide for you," he said. "We can't. You can stand in the corner and throw rocks. The other side of it is to get involved." Joseph McConnell, chairman of the Fort Belknap Community Council, said tribes need to take a hard look at their decisions, especially considering that Lewis and Clark events will be a form of economic development, which is sorely needed. "This is a good opportunity to tap into that," he added. Mr. Blackwood noted that three American Indians - Mr. Martin, Curley Youpee from the Fort Peck Tribes, and Darrell Kipp from the Blackfeet Tribe - serve on the statewide bicentennial commission. He said there's still time for tribes to chart their own commemorative paths. "This is not the last word," Mr. Blackwood told the grou -------- "To those of us locked away in here, there's nothing more important than being remembered." Lenard Peltier Freedom for Leonard Peltier, Standing Deer & Red Hawk http://www.angelfire.com/wy/nainmatessupportgrp/American ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> To subscribe to this group,send an email to: ndn-aim-subscribe@egroups.com Archived on line at: http://www.eScribe.com FREE LEONARD PELTIER --------- "RE: Lessons of Wounded Knee not Taught in Schools" --------- Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 02:13:37 -0800 (PST) From: Anne Bates Subj: Lessons of Wounded Knee not taught in schools Mailing List: ndn-aim Lessons of Wounded Knee not taught in schools By TERRY WOSTER and BRENDA WADE SCHMIDT published: 12/29/00 Many South Dakotans - Indian and non-Indian -- grew up knowing little about the tragic history of the tiny reservation community of Wounded Knee. The failure to explore historical events such as the massacre that occurred there 110 years ago may be contributing to the troubled race relations in the state today, some tribal leaders say. "It's only been recently that I've heard much of Wounded Knee," says Vern Ashley, a Crow Creek tribal member who live near Pierre. "I grew up never hearing of it. I guess most people in South Dakota did the same. The history books talk about the hardships of the pioneers, but they still have little to say about the people who were already here when the pioneers arrived. That needs to change." In recent years, schools have begun to incorporate more complete Indian history and studies into their curriculums, but Indian and non-Indian educators agree more should be done. Educators have been slow to confront controversial events from the state's history, and until that changes, it will be difficult for the races to move closer together, according to Roxanne Sazue, chairwoman of the Crow Creek Tribe. Race relations in South Dakota have deteriorated during the past several years. American Indian residents have protested investigations into the deaths of Indian men in Sisseton, Mobridge and Rapid City. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a hearing here last year to determine if a double standard exists for Indians and non-Indians in the state judicial system. "You always must know where you come from if you wish to understand who you are," says Sazue. "We are more alike than we're different, but we don't recognize that. Even in our own culture, we need to examine our history more closely." Site of tragedies On Dec. 29, 1890, U.S. cavalry soldiers killed more than 250 Indian men, women and children near Wounded Knee. The small community sits in a shallow valley at the juncture of three creeks on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota. On the same site in 1973, a group of armed protesters led by the American Indian Movement clashed with FBI agents and U.S. marshals. For 71 days, the militants held the village, demanding a return to century-old treaty rights and a change in tribal government. Today, a group of horseback riders will arrive at Wounded Knee after a 180-mile journey that followed the trail Chief Big Foot and his followers took on their way to their deaths in 1890. While the Wounded Knee massacre happened 110 years ago, it remains a vivid part of the lives of American Indian people today, says a South Dakota State University professor who has been active in attempts at race reconciliation. Charles Woodard says non-Indians, who are accustomed to treating time as a linear, chronological thing, have difficulty understanding a tribal culture that treats the days and months as part of a living circle. "In the tribal world, there's an understanding that there is a kind of timelessness to some things," says Woodard, an English professor. "Certain events are emblematic and present tense, which gives an ongoing quality, no matter how much time has passed." Wounded Knee is one of those kinds of events for many Indian people in South Dakota, he says. "Wounded Knee is emblematic. It isn't just what happened there, but what keeps happening, what is unresolved about that event." Resolving the conflict means examining it carefully, understanding what it was and is, and appreciating how it affected the state and its people, Woodard says. That is beginning to happen, he believes. "Wounded Knee, for example, is being talked about a little more in recent years," he says. "UntiI quite recently, the truth of what happened there was masked by the myth that it was a battle. As recently as 1990, I think there was a great deal of reluctance to call it a massacre. Some of the historians and writers backed away from calling it a battle. Instead they began using the word incident, or affair. I think we've gotten to the point at which we're more willing to be honest in naming it, so that's progress." Reviewing curriculum In South Dakota, students get their first introduction to the state's history in fourth grade. The state education department doesn't dictate curriculum to local school districts, but it is considering an active role in developing new textbooks and lesson plans to better explain the people and events that shaped Indian and non-Indian relations, says Ray Christensen, secretary of the education department. The Legislature directed the state Board of Education to adopt course standards for math science, language arts and social studies. The social studies standards, adopted in June 1999, focuses on "leaders, founders and achievers of South Dakota and the United States ... Students will learn about South Dakota history from the first written record to the present, including the earliest interactions between Indian and non-Indian cultures." More specifically, the history standards for Grade 4 say students will be able to: Explain the impact of people and geographic location on the growth and expansion of South Dakota, emphasizing the Mandan, Arikara, Sioux and other historic tribes, explorers (Lewis and Clark, the Verendrye brothers) and traders (Pierre Choteau and Manuel Lisa), railroad expansion and town building, homesteaders and gold miners, rainfall, prairie, Great Plains, Black Hills and the Missouri River system. Trace the history of South Dakota with emphasis on notable South Dakotans such as Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, John B.S. Todd, Fred T. Evans, Laura Ingalls Wilder, James Scotty Philip, Niels E. Hansen, Gertrude (Zitkala-Sa) Bonin, Peter Norbeck and Francis Case. Analyze issues of concern in South Dakota, including water, farming and ranching issues, Indian and non-Indian concerns and urban-rural population changes. "We say to schools, these are the standards. How they implement them is really up to local decision," Christensen says. "It's true that regarding the history of South Dakota, we really don't have a lot of good books out there. We're looking at the possibility of doing some of this on our own." Christensen's department includes the state Office of History, which has produced some lesson kits that schools may use to help with history courses. More of that could be done, but Christensen says it's possible the agency will attempt to develop a state history of its own. "South Dakota isn't a big enough market for textbook publishers to focus on us much," he says. Understanding hatred But, fourth graders may be too young to understand the significance of events like Wounded Knee, says Tom Shortbull, president of Oglala Lakota College. It's important for people to understand the hatred that led to the massacre, a lesson that needs reinforcing as students get into middle school and high school, he says. "We have these whole incidents in the United States today of hate crimes, but it stems from the failure of people to recognize that past events have affected how they perceive a people," he says. There hasn't been enough written about the Wounded Knee Massacre and the U.S. government has never apologized, he says. "The only way that we have a fuller appreciation of people is to deal with our history, and this was a bad mark in the history of non-Indian people in this country." The knowledge level of students when it comes to events like Wounded Knee depends on where they live, says Marilyn Charging, supervisor of Indian education for the Sioux Falls School District. More could be done, especially in urban areas, she says. "There's so much left out of the textbooks in terms of Indians," she says. "Even our own Indian children don't know as much either. The Wounded Knee story is in the history books. It just depends on how much time each teacher wants to spend on it, educators say. Charging is an advocate for a continuum of learning in school that includes field trips, videos, American Indian speakers as well as computer sites. "They shouldn't give up trying. That's something that needs to be done," she says. The Sioux Falls School District also offers a language and culture program at Axtell Park Middle School and a Native American Studies class at Lincoln High School. Bill Thompson is in his third year teaching Native American Studies at Lincoln. Nearly all of the 14 students in his class are American Indians. His students learn the Wounded Knee story through a video, the book, "Black Elk Speaks" and a slide presentation from the Smithsonian Institute. "It endorses their culture," he says of the course. "If we teach something, we're saying it's important. Some of them don't know much about their traditional culture or their history, especially if they've been living in an urban situation." Teachers in the Sioux Falls School District discuss specifics of the Wounded Knee massacre in their classes and reinforce South Dakota history lessons in fifth, eighth and 11th grades, according to Rich Meier, director of education services. Two supplemental textbooks used in fourth grade include information on the massacre. The district also has supplemental elementary materials teachers can use, he says. "We've made an effort to strengthen those topics for discussion that students will engage in in the classes. We're stressing it more now than we did in the past," he says. "I think we can always include more than what we are with any courses." Baltic fourth-grade teacher Rita Berg is looking for resources as she prepares to teach South Dakota history to fourth-graders for the first time. Berg, last year's social studies Teacher of the Year in South Dakota, says she will use newspaper accounts of the Big Foot Memorial Ride, videos and other research to fill out her lesson plans. "I haven't taught it yet so I don't know for sure how much they're going to understand," she says. Bringing back tradition Sazue recognizes the value of connecting people and events to ongoing relationships. She's working this week to resurrect New Year's Eve powwows, an old tradition she says fell away as elders died and young people failed to understand the connections they had with their culture and heritage. Last fall at a powwow at St. Joseph's Indian School in Chamberlain, Sazue welcomed visitors to the ceremony. She invited people to watch and learn, ask questions and study the dances and the regalia. "I know there are people who have lived all of their lives no more than 15 miles away from one of our powwows who have never been to one," she says. "That isn't the way to begin to understand what we're like and to realize how many things we have in common, in spite of differences." Non-Indians aren't the only ones who need a better understanding of history and culture, she says. "We're trying to develop a curriculum here that follows through from Head Start to senior high with a continuity, not a series of isolated lessons," she says. "We must teach ourselves who we are." That will mean a closer examination of Wounded Knee and other events that mark the history of race relations in the state, Woodard says. "I've never really understood the need to deny this," he says. "It has always been difficult for us to look at it. To own what really happened at Wounded Knee is not to disown everything else in our history. "If you look at the whole of history, you see good and bad. People outside often can look at these things more completely. It's harder for us to look at what's painful, but it is essential if we are ever to begin to resolve these things that hold us apart. Naming them and then understanding them is a necessary first step," Woodard says. --- "To those of us locked away in here, there's nothing more important than being remembered." Leonard Peltier Freedom for Leonard Peltier, Standing Deer & Red Hawk http://www.angelfire.com/wy/nainmatessupportgrp/American ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> To subscribe to this group,send an email to: ndn-aim-subscribe@egroups.com Archived on line at: http://www.eScribe.com FREE LEONARD PELTIER --------- "RE: Nations want Arkansas River Land" --------- Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 09:02:27 -0600 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ARK RIVER LAND" Dec 27, 2000 Choctaw, Chickasaw and Cherokee nations want Arkansas River land by Mary Pierpoint Today Staff TAHLEQUAH, Okla. - In 1970 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee, Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations in Oklahoma owned the land along the Arkansas River from Fort Smith, Ark., to Muskogee, Okla. (Choctaw Nation vs. State of Oklahoma 397 U.S. 620). But no settlement has been made in the disputed area. The land includes not only the banks of the Arkansas River, but also the riverbed itself. The riverbed has changed since the original allotment of the land, and non-Indians own the land which was supposed to belong to the three nations. The Cherokee Nation's GeoData center has been asked by the Arkansas Riverbed Authority to create maps detailing the historical riverbed high- water line, the current high-water line, the Bureau of Land Management Survey, the Holway Boundary and the current river channel. The finished maps will allow the boundaries to be mapped and compared and used as decision-making tools for the Arkansas Riverbed Authority as it continues settlement negotiations with the federal government over past use of the river and current ownership of lands along the river banks. A spokesman for the Cherokee Nation said that the Nation didn't want to throw the people who now lived on the disputed area out of their homes, but that the tribes are asking for restitution from the federal government for the land in question. "The Cherokee Nation realizes that kicking people off their land isn't the right thing to do," a source close to the tribe said. The land along the Arkansas River was never allotted and should have remained under the control of the three tribal governments, the spokesman said. Over the years, the land was purchased and state and county governments issued illegal titles. The land in question is owned approximately 50 percent by the Cherokee Nation, 37.5 percent by the Choctaw Nation and 12.5 percent by the Chickasaw Nation. The tribal governments say they hope when the mapping is complete, they prove once and for all that proper title was never given by the state of Oklahoma or the federal government for the land in question. The Cherokee Nation plans to use any money received in a settlement with the federal government to buy trust land within the boundaries of the nation's jurisdiction. Although it would consider buying some of the Arkansas River land, the intent was not to force those living there to move, a tribal spokesman said. He went on to say Indian people are very sensitive when it comes to removal efforts, citing their own history as an example. They want to assure current land owners along the Arkansas River that their intent is not to swoop down and reclaim the land. "In short it is a sovereignty issue. We want it to end and to be fair to people who are involved and make sure that it is done right," the source close to the tribe said. Choctaw Chief Greg Pyle, Chickasaw Gov. Bill Anoatubby and Cherokee Chief Chad Smith agreed to utilize the GeoData Center's services following a presentation given by center manager Laura Harjo and cartographers Crystal Bond and Verlita Sugar. Mapping is expected to be finished by March and the tribes involved say they are confident the 30-year-old dispute can finally come to an end. Mary Pierpoint reports from Oklahoma-Kansas. She can be reached at (785) 665-3027 or by e-mail Ozhorse@earthlink.net Copyright c. 2000 Indian Country Today --------- "RE: Oneidas' Claim Still Unresolved" --------- Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 09:02:27 -0600 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ONEIDA LAND" Oneidas' claim still unsettled 2000 saw intense talks and legal maneuvers, but the land issue remains unresolved. By Michelle Breidenbach At the beginning of the year 2000, a Post-Standard headline asked, "This land is whose land?" At the end of the year, the question goes unanswered. Twelve more months have not produced a settlement to the Oneida Indian Nation's 30-year-old lawsuit, which stakes claim to 250,000 acres in Madison and Oneida counties. At the start of 2000, Oneida County Executive Ralph Eannace said the largest issues remained unresolved after 10 months of intense mediation. Bob Antone, an Oneida from Canada, painted an even more grim picture in February when he leaked details from confidential settlement talks. The state and federal governments had offered up a $500 million pot of money to be split this way: three parts for Wisconsin Oneidas, two parts for the Oneida of the Thames and one part to the Oneidas of New York. The counties would get $25 million - down from their original $180 million request - to cover property taxes the Oneidas would not have to pay. The Oneidas turned the offer down. Then the counties turned it down. In the following months, the parties slowly released more details. The counties blamed failed talks on the Oneidas, saying they cannot be immune from property taxes and they must set a limit on the number of acres under their control. The Oneidas blamed the failed talks on the counties and the state, saying they were greedily asking for part of the settlement money. Then-Oneida land claim settlement master Ronald Riccio reached out in the spring to the 20,000 landowners who continued to live under the threat of eviction. "You've done nothing wrong," he told a crowd packed into the Vernon- Verona-Sherrill High School auditorium. "You are totally innocent and therefore, you shouldn't suffer one iota as a result of this dispute. This dispute can be settled. It can be resolved without hurting people in the land claim area or without hurting any people." In March, Riccio told U.S. District Judge Neal McCurn that "settlement talks have been sidetracked by rhetoric, posturing, bickering and maneuvering." He quit mediating and called on the judge to declare an official impasse. McCurn warned that a trial would be long and expensive. He allowed a few more months to negotiate. The additional time didn't change anything. McCurn officially called off talks in June and declared their collapse a tragedy for generations to come. In September, McCurn ruled that the Oneida Indian Nation could not bring individual landowners into the land claim lawsuit. In a 66-page report, he wrote, "(A)ll participants in these negotiations have continually put their own self-interests ahead of the broader interest of the entire community, Oneida and non-Oneida alike, who currently reside in the claim area." At the end of the year, there are no court dates scheduled on the land claim. The counties have spent $440,575 on airfare, hotels, food, cell phones, public relations firms, lawyers and office supplies. The state of New York has spent $1 million on lawyers. When the talks came to a halt, municipal and county government leaders ended their agreement to maintain the status quo during sensitive negotiations. Sherrill leaders foreclosed on tax-delinquent property owned by the Oneida Indian Nation. In return, the nation sued Sherrill in federal court, saying the Oneida Indian Nation is a sovereign government not subject to city property taxes. Madison and Oneida counties and New York state filed court papers supporting the city. Both county sheriffs decided to stop deputizing Oneida Indian Nation police officers to enforce state and local laws. At the end of the year, both counties were still investigating whether to ticket Oneida Indian Nation police cars without state-issued license plates. In the meantime, the Oneidas acquired more land and more money. The nation bought three more gas stations - in Oneida, Lenox and Verona Beach. Oneida Textiles, an Oneida-owned T-shirt printing shop, won a new contract to produce T-shirts for department stores. The nation started its own video slot machine factory in Vernon. Two Indian nations on the West Coast bought the machines, and 50 new ones made their way onto the Turning Stone Casino Resort's gaming floor. The Lummi Indians also signed a letter of intent to buy 225 machines and for the Oneidas to manage their 35,000-square-foot casino in Washington state. The Turning Stone Casino added a PGA-level golf course, which quickly attracted a celebrity tournament. Next summer, the nation plans to build a new, 23,000-square-foot golf clubhouse with a store, a restaurant, a 400- seat banquet room and an outdoor balcony overlooking the course. Also next year, the casino will add 50,000 square feet of gaming space, 200 more machines, a music lounge, a reconstructed cage for cashiers and a bus terminal. The nation does not reveal its profits but says it has made enough money to become nearly self-sufficient. The nation relies on federal aid only for health care. At the end of the year, the nation returned $1.2 million in annual social services money to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and asked that it be given to needier nations. Kevin Gover, BIA secretary, said during a visit to Turning Stone that returning money was the "ultimate expression of self-governance." Copyright c. 2000 Syracuse Online. All rights reserved. --------- "RE: Evictions by Indians Stirs Land Dispute" --------- Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 08:27:19 -0600 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="EVICTIONS" Evictions by Indians stirs land dispute Tribes say authority ignored, rent, lease payments not made By Chelsea J. Carter ASSOCIATED PRESS December 25, 2000 BLYTHE -- Staring at the Colorado River as it snaked through a slow bend, Bob Thweatt wondered aloud if he had a future along its banks. For 20 years, his family has operated the Twin Palms Resort, one of a half-dozen small mobile home parks that dot the shoreline -- a thin green oasis between the river and the Southern California desert. But the tranquillity that drew many to area has been disrupted by a land dispute between the Colorado River Indian tribes that own the riverfront land and several hundred residents who leased acreage to put up mobile homes, trailers and houses. The dispute intensified last month when the Indians evicted two mobile park owners and more than 40 tenants, saying they violated their leases. In the latest move, the tribes this month ordered Thweatt off his property for violating his lease. The move sent eviction rumors up and down the 17-mile stretch of river north of Blythe, where Interstate 10 crosses the California-Arizona line. "I'm concerned for the safety of both sides," said Riverside County Sheriff's Capt. Dave Ridgeway, who oversees the area. "Tensions are up. People are a worried about what's going to happen." Tensions have been fanned partly by a graffiti incident when two abandoned mobile homes were scrawled with "Indians must die" and other epithets. The tribes did not respond to repeated telephone calls and a faxed request for comment for this story. In statement to The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, tribal Chairman Daniel Eddy Jr. said it was illegal to ignore tribal authority and not pay rent. "We have no other choice but to evict them," he said. While Thweatt has appealed to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, others have filed lawsuits or requests for injunctions to put a stop to any further evictions until the matter can be settled in court. Some believe the tribes want to use the land to build a casino. Others believe they want the income from the riverfront property. Still others see it as a landlord-tenant dispute. "We don't know for sure. We just know they want us out," Thweatt said. The situation began last month when the Colorado Indian Reservation, made up of 3,500 members of the Chemehuevi, Mohave, Navajo and Hopi tribes, evicted William Booth and 40 tenants from the Red Rooster mobile home park for failing to pay rent. The mobile home park is part of the 270,000-acre reservation, which lies mostly in Arizona, but includes 42,700 acres across the Colorado in California and encompasses 90 miles of river shoreline. Booth, 76, claims he bought the land in 1959 from the former resident only to have the federal officials tell him later it belonged to the Indians. He admits to not paying rent to the tribes since 1971. The tribe got an eviction order from a federal court in 1993. Last month, a federal marshal backed by Riverside County sheriff's deputies escorted him off the property. Eviction notices were posted on 40 other mobile homes. "That's my home," Booth said recently, sitting inside a broken-down travel trailer temporarily parked at an auto body shop. "I've lived there better than 40 years. I've taken care of it. As far as I'm concerned, I own it." Boundaries in question Booth and handful of residents belonging to the West Bank Homeowners Association have filed a lawsuit, challenging the reservation's boundaries based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision in a water-rights case involving the tribes. The Bureau of Indian Affairs affirms the tribe's definition of the reservation boundaries. Days after evicting Booth, the tribes sent eviction letters to Thweatt and James Dean, owner-operator of the nearby 70-space Paradise Point mobile home park. Dean packed up and left, and the tenants have begun negotiating leases with the tribes. Thweatt has refused to go. "I've never challenged the Indians' rights to the land. I lease it from them and I've always paid them," he said. Thweatt says the tribes contend his lease is void because it was signed by his father, who originally operated the resort. He said he has been unable to communicate with reservation officials. "You call and leave a message, they don't call back. You go up there to talk to them, they don't meet with you," he said. Although Thweatt said he has never formally been served with eviction notices, the tribes posted fliers at a local restaurant advertising his eviction and their desire to negotiate directly with the tenants. "It caused a huge stir. You should have seen this place. People were really upset," he said. Meanwhile, Thweatt has continued to mail his lease payments, which he said totals more than $160,000 over the past seven years. Thweatt said if he was evicted legally, he would leave peacefully. "If they do it the right way, I'll go. I wouldn't like it, but I'd go," he said. "But I'll take everything with me. There will be nothing left unless they want to buy me out at a fair price." Copyright c. 2000 San Diego Union-Tribune, Union-Tribune Publishing Co. --------- "RE: Cherokees Dealt Better Hand with Casino" --------- Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 09:14:53 -0600 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="EBC CASINO" Cherokees dealt better hand with casino By MARTHA QUILLIN Raleigh News & Observer December 27, 2000 CHEROKEE, N.C. - After enduring forced removal to the West in the 1800s, "acculturation" in poverty, the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation is enjoying a level of economic prosperity that, for the first time in 160 years, is affording the tribe and its members the luxury of investing in their traditions while raising their standard of living. Using profits from Harrah's Cherokee Casino, the Cherokee have been able to bolster a language-preservation project, buy sacred lands long out of their control, expand programs for children and renovate a museum into a state-of-the-art facility. Indirect benefits may be even more important, tribal members say: With steady, well-paying jobs in the area and the twice-annual profit-sharing checks from the casino, Cherokee families can stay together rather than leaving to find work. Practitioners of traditional Cherokee arts and crafts are finding new markets for their wares, including fellow tribal members who until recently could not afford to collect such things as handwoven baskets and articles of traditional dress. And Cherokees are attacking long-held stereotypes of Native Americans by getting off public assistance, getting out of debt and buying goods - new cars, clothes for their children - that most people take for granted. "The biggest effect I've noticed is that we now have a sort of Cherokee middle class who appreciate our own heritage," said Lynne Harlan, a tribal member and consulting exhibit curator for Indian museums around the country. "Twenty-five years ago, for a couple like my parents, it would be a luxury to have money to buy a basket, and the basket maker would have been selling it for whatever she could get to whoever had the money. "The basket maker is able to make a living now, work shorter hours and have a better standard of living. And now I can afford to buy baskets on a regular basis." The Eastern Band first opened a casino in 1995. Harrah's, with its 60, 000 square feet of glittering gambling space, opened in November 1997. Before it opened, the $82 million casino complex was expected to employ 1,100 people and pay $29 million in salaries each year. It has exceeded those expectations, today employing 1,534 people - 568 of them tribal members - with a payroll this year of nearly $39 million, according to company reports. The average hourly wage at the casino is about $9; the average annual salary is slightly more than $37,000. Unemployment in Swain County, although still considerably higher than the state average, is down to about 12 percent. While the casino has clashed in some ways with traditional Cherokee culture, tribal members say that overall the success of Harrah's and related tourist businesses has enabled the Eastern Band to reverse a long cultural decline. Descendants of Cherokees who escaped removal to Oklahoma now number about 12,500, about 9,000 of whom live on the Qualla Boundary, the tribe's 56,000-acre reservation in rugged Swain, Jackson and Haywood counties in western North Carolina. For a long time, the tribe kept to itself. Jerry Wolfe, 76, says the first wholesale changes in Cherokee culture happened during World War II, when the reservation's young men left for military service. "We saw a different way of life from Cherokee life," Wolfe said during a break from his part-time job at the museum. "When we returned from the war, we never went back to tradition. We didn't have an interest in it." By the early 1990s, when when tribal leaders began negotiating to bring in gambling, the town still looked much the same as it had since the late 1940s and '50s. Before the casino opened, Cherokee was still a warm-weather destination, with little to attract tourists or sustain residents from October to April, when most businesses closed. In the years leading up to the opening of the casino, unemployment in Swain County averaged more than 19 percent. The casino is open 24 hours a day year-round, attracting thousands of visitors a day, even in winter. "By Indian standards, we're living like kings," said casino security guard Steve Lambert, who relied on minimum-wage factory jobs and food stamps for years before going to work for the tribe at Harrah's. Today, Lambert earns more than $11 an hour, has health and dental insurance and a 401(k) account. "The stereotype of being Native American is that you have to have the government help you. To me, the casino says that we can make it," Lambert said. Harrah's, whose original five-year contract to run the casino has been extended three years, has found some elements of Cherokee culture to be intractable. While it has been able to require drink servers to dress provocatively, for instance, management had to back down from a demand that Cherokee men working with the public cut their waist-length hair. And non-Indian managers quickly learned about "Indian time", the Cherokee's casual approach to the clock. For the Cherokee, life dictates its own pace. The funeral of an aunt or uncle, for example - who might be seen as a distant relative in white culture but who often helps raise a Cherokee child - may require three days off work. Gains from the casino have certainly attracted attention to the tribe. Since Harrah's opened, membership rolls have swelled by about 1,000, and tribal officials have had to tighten the rules for inclusion, a major shift from when Cherokee heritage was considered shameful outside the reservation. Copyright c. 2000 Raleigh News & Observer Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service --------- "RE: Banks Bet on Tribes" --------- Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 21:56:49 -0700 (MST) From: "Chris Milda (_Akimel O`odham_)" Subj: Banks bet on tribes (Fwd) - - - - - - -- - - - - - - http://www.arizonarepublic.com/business/articles/1210rezbank10.html Banks bet on tribes By Riccardo A. Davis The Arizona Republic Dec. 10, 2000 In the eyes of a bank off her reservation, Iva Casuse didn't have enough collateral for a $3,000 business loan. But when she turned to the Hopi Credit Association near her home in Second Mesa, the loan officer showed her she did indeed have the collateral to qualify for the loan. Casuse used the money to open her Iskasokpu Gallery and Silver Supplies on the reservation in 1992 and is now on her third loan from the credit union. Mainstream banks historically have not wanted to do business on reservations because of what's known as "the land issue" - a bank's ability to repossess property doesn't extend to tribal reservations. At the same time, reservation residents can't pledge homes as collateral because they are owned by the tribe. But the tremendous boom brought by casinos on Indian reservations has changed banks' views of the Native American market. Despite the lack of collateral, banks are examining creative ways to finance restaurants, hotels and shops to serve increasing numbers of tourists. "Right now we are doing a lot of lending in the gaming area, but it is just the start," said Daniel Lewis, senior vice president for Native American financial services at Bank of America in Phoenix. Lewis' unit serves tribes across the country. "We want to be there to help them leverage the profits that come from the casinos to help the tribes do what they haven't done before," he said. BofA, the nation's second-largest bank, has made more than $1.5 billion in loans to the Native American community over the past five years, most of it to finance casinos. In Arizona, about $300 million in loans have been made. Only about 10 banks in the United States are owned or controlled by Native Americans, according to the North American Native Bankers Association. "The Native American market is a tremendously underserved market," said James Ballentine, director of the Center for Community Development for the American Bankers Association, based in Washington, D.C. In November, nine banks that operate throughout Arizona helped form the nation's first nonp-rofit corporation to make consumer and small business loans to members of the state's 21 tribes. The corporation, Arizona Native American Community Development Corp., is funded by the banks. Tribes that want to participate will have a loan committee to review and grant loans. The committees will structure the loans in accordance with tribal laws and then act as go-betweens should there be any disputes. "We are creating a delivery system for the banks," said Charley Wagner, who is overseeing the formation of the Arizona Native American CDC. Banks participating in the Arizona Native American CDC have the incentive of receiving Community Reinvestment Credits to help them meet federal mandates to reinvest in their communities. The CDC is expected to begin making business, home improvement and consumer loans to tribal members next year from the $2.5 million Wagner hopes to raise from participating banks: First Capital Bank, M&I Thunderbird Bank, Valley Bank, Wells Fargo, National Bank of Arizona, Washington Mutual and Bank One. The 48-year-old Hopi Credit Association, a member-owned credit union on the reservation, offers its 10,000 members an array of loans ranging from business and home construction to bill consolidation. "Because we are on the reservation we have to be culturally sensitive," said Katherine Tewawina, a loan and collections officer at Hopi. Delinquencies on revolving loans at Hopi Credit had topped 30 percent in 1982, but by 1997 they had fallen to less than 2 percent. The decline can be attributed to the credit union taking time to educate members about rules governing payment, Tewawina said. Reach the reporter at riccardo.davis@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8894. Copyright 2000, The Arizona Republic. All rights reserved. --------- "RE: Clinton Signs Indian Assistance Bill" --------- Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 09:14:53 -0600 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ASSISTANCE BILL" Clinton signs bill aimed at helping Indian communities Dec. 27, 2000 | 9:12 p.m. WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Clinton signed a bill Wednesday that includes a variety of proposals to help American Indians. The act addresses education, economic development, tribal governance and housing and provides for settlement of a long-running land case in California involving the Torres-Martinez Band of Desert Cahuilla Indians. The measure includes a $14 million settlement with the Indian tribe, whose reservation was flooded accidentally almost a century ago. The agreement with the government and two local water districts will settle lawsuits filed in 1982 over lost use of the reservation. The tribe plans to use the money to buy more land and build a casino. Opposition to the gambling center by congressional lawmakers and from a tribe with a competing casino had blocked a settlement for years. The tribe's reservation was created in 1876 and accidentally flooded in 1905 when the Colorado River burst through a canal, creating the Salton Sea, California's largest lake about 120 miles northeast of San Diego. Agricultural and natural runoff keeps 11,800 acres, about half the reservation, submerged. Under the settlement, the tribe will receive $10.2 million from the federal government, $3.67 million from the Imperial Irrigation District and about $338,000 from the Coachella Valley Water District. A casino was expected to provide economic development for the isolated Torres-Martinez reservation, where about 250 of the 650 tribal members live, some in homes that lack electricity or running water. The bill Clinton signed also: -- Makes it possible for the Navajo nation in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah to grant leases for oil drilling and other activities on reservation land without federal approval. -- Transfers control of a reservation irrigation system to the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community near Phoenix. -- Sets up an American Indian Education Foundation to encourage and accept private gifts to help children attending Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. -- Authorizes new activities to help support and improve tribal governance. AP-CS-12-27-00 2205EST Copyright c. 2000 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, postnet.com --------- "RE: Departing BIA Head says Agency has a Ways to Go" --------- Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 08:27:19 -0600 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="GOVER REMARKS" Departing BIA head says agency has 'a ways to go' to reach competence By MATT KELLEY Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- When he took over as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1997, Kevin Gover's top goal was simply to make the agency competent at providing services to nearly 560 tribes. He commissioned a report by outside experts that found a "lack of credible management" so serious the BIA often inadvertently broke the law. After nearly three years of working on reforms, Gover says the agency has improved but has not yet achieved basic competence in all areas. "We've got a ways to go. Another three years like this, and we'll be in really good shape," Gover said in an interview last week. Still, Gover is optimistic: An increase of about $262 million for the agency's $2 billion budget this year will help, as will a series of administrative changes meant to streamline and energize the BIA, he said. "The reality is, we're not going to finish any of these reform efforts on my watch," Gover said. "The next guy could get the credit for having fixed these things. And that's fine with me." Gover leaves office next month, making way for an eventual successor to be appointed by President-elect Bush. A lawyer and member of Oklahoma's Pawnee tribe, Gover will work in the Washington office of Phoenix-based law firm Steptoe & Johnson. As head of the BIA, Gover has focused on getting more funding and improving oversight for reservation education, law enforcement and land management. He also tried to raise the agency's image with Congress and fought efforts to cut into tribes' autonomy from state and local governments. "I said early on, there's a great deal of goodwill in the Congress toward Indians. There's not much goodwill toward the bureau," Gover said. "What we had to do was say, 'If you want to help Indians, you've got to help the bureau, because we are the vehicle.' And I think that message sunk in, and I think that's why we got a $300 million increase in funding this year." Gover's most prominent symbolic act came in September, when he offered a formal apology to fellow Indians for the BIA's 176-year legacy of attempts to eradicate Indian people and culture. While some tribal leaders dismissed it as a hollow gesture, given the agency's many problems, other Indian leaders praised Gover for saying what they believe should have been said long ago. Gover said the apology was important for two reasons: To help the BIA's majority-Indian work force deal with the paradox of working for an agency that has done harm to their people and to help Indians get beyond "a culture of victimhood." "It's too bad, in a way, that it could not be said to the Indians by the non-Indian (federal) leadership, because there's a great deal of irony for an Indian apologizing to other Indians for what the non-Indians did to them," Gover said. One of Gover's biggest headaches has been a lawsuit by hundreds of thousands of Indian trust account holders. The accounts, which hold proceeds from oil wells and other uses of Indian land, have been so badly mismanaged the government cannot say precisely how many there are, who has them and how much money they should hold. The federal judge in the case held Gover, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in contempt of court last year for problems in handing over documents. Lawyers for the account holders and some of the plaintiffs have bitterly criticized Gover's handling of reforms to the account system. But Gover repeatedly insists that the lawsuit is necessary to keep the pressure on the government to solve the problem. Gover, whose own account has only eight cents in it, said he hopes the incoming Bush administration can settle the case. "I think that the government has got to be willing to pay more than it thinks can be proved, just to be sure that no Indian person receives less compensation than they should," Gover said. Gover, who helped raise money and gather Indian support for Clinton's campaign before joining the administration, said he plans to resume an active role in the Democratic Party, advising candidates on Indian issues. At Steptoe & Johnson, Gover said he expects to represent tribes and companies who want to do business with tribes, both in court and on Capitol Hill. His top priority, Gover said, will be helping tribes with telecommunications and other high-tech ventures. "We were left behind in the agricultural revolution, left behind in the industrial revolution, and we're about to be left behind in the information revolution," Gover said. "And if we don't have tribes establish a foothold in that business, they're just going to be left behind again." The economic and political gains tribes have made, largely through some tribal governments' casinos, have created a turning point for Indians in the United States, Gover said. "For the first time, the tribes finally have control of their destiny," Gover said. "They don't have to rely on the good will of officials of the United States to protect them. They can protect themselves now." Copyright c. The Sacramento Bee --------- "RE: World Conference on Racism" --------- Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2000 13:31:36 -0800 (PST) From: Paul Pureau Subj: Tribal leaders prepare for world conference on racism Mailing List: Our Red Earth Nov 29, 2000 Tribal leaders prepare for world conference on racism By Brian Stockes Today staff Washington Bureau WASHINGTON - Racism is an issue that impacts every nation in the world, including tribal nations in the United States. Tribal testimony and government reports reveal that Indian people not only suffer vastly disproportionate rates of discrimination in America as compared to other groups, they also feel some of the greatest social impacts in their communities. Next September, in Durban, South Africa, the United Nations will convene the World Conference Against Racism, or WCAR, and tribal leaders from across the United States plan to attend. "We believe our continued participation in the conference and the domestic and international meetings is critical to ensuring that issues affecting Indian country are included in the dialogue," said Juana Majel, a Pomo Indian from California. The Department of Justice reports that American Indians in the United States are victims of violent crimes at a rate more than twice that of all races and unlike other groups, a majority of the perpetrators of crimes against American Indians are of a different race. Indian people also suffer discrimination in housing, education and employment rates which result in statistics which rate them poorest in measures of social health. With homeless rates twice the national average and infant mortality rates 1.6 times that of white infants, tribal leaders say they have a legitimate and even critical need to participate in the conference. In December the United Nations has scheduled a regional preparatory meeting in Santiago, Chile, to prepare those participating from the Western Hemisphere. A number of tribal leaders from the United States plan to attend. Tribal representatives will be considered part of Non- Governmental Organizations, or NGOs, even though most tribes consider themselves governments. The issue of government and specifically self-government in connection to racism is also on the minds of tribal leaders. Tribal representatives to the conference say that the "U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People" and the "Organization of American States Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples" will also be discussed as important issues for the international community. They say there is an undeniable connection between the denial of self-determination and racism. "The denial of a tribal nation's right to self-govern and determine its political existence is rooted in racist notions of white superiority and affirms the belief by some that Indians are inferior," said Kim Gottschalk, attorney for the Native American Rights Fund. Those preparing for the conference say that as part of a general concern for the welfare of Indian people, they are concerned about the racism suffered by Indian people individually and collectively. The collective rights of tribes through the practice of self-determination and the denial of those rights within international law is central to their message. They say the United States has been a major obstacle in the acceptance of those collective rights in international law despite U.S. domestic policy which affirms the right to tribal self-determination. "It's absurd that the U.S. would support collective tribal rights at home and then deny them on the international stage," said Gottschalk. There are some 300 million Indigenous people worldwide. However, they have only been allowed to officially address the United Nations through a temporary Working Group set up to draft a U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, a document some hope will finally set minimum international human rights standards for Indigenous people. Over its 18 years in existence, the Working Group has completed several studies, from the relationship of Indigenous peoples to land, treaties and agreements, to the protection of cultural and religious rights. The working group reports that Indigenous people around the world continue to be among the most marginalized and impoverished of the world's peoples, with their ways of life, culture, heritage, and languages under continuous threat. A number of world conferences recently validated this conclusion as well as the importance of Indigenous peoples to sustainable development and the protection of the earth's biodiversity. Brian Stockes reports from Washington, D.C. He can be reached at (202) 783-2012 or by e-mail bstockes@earthlink.net. c. 2000 Indian Country Today ===== Paul Pureau Thank you for your participation at Our Red Earth. --------- "RE: Sovereignty: Law of the Land" --------- Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 08:27:19 -0600 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="SOVEREIGNTY" Law of the land Indian tribes embrace role of self-governing as a way to preserve their language, values and heritage Story by Julie Titone, Photography by Torsten Kjellstrand The Spokesman-Review Defining what sovereignty means to Native Americans often leads to a tangle of legal jargon and historical debate. Lucy Covington knew what it means: the recognition of the right to govern. Which is why she sold her cows. The Colville tribal council member did so to pay her own way back to Washington, D.C., where she dueled with the formidable Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson. That was during what is known as the Termination Era of the 1950s and 1960s. Back then, the United States' approach to Indian nations was to decide they didn't exist. Fifty tribes accepted cash buyouts. In doing so they gave up federal recognition and support promised in their treaties. Some people thought this was the best thing for Indians. It might cut them loose from federal strings that had left them powerless. The impoverished Colvilles were sharply divided on termination. Most tribal council members were ready to accept it, recalled Sherwin Broadhead, former Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendent in Nespelem. Covington was not. In the late 1960s she flew frequently to the nation's capital to confront Jackson, a Washington state Democrat who kept introducing bills to terminate the Colville Confederated Tribes. Other council members traveled with tribal money, recalled Broadhead. "When Lucy wanted to go, she would sell a cow." The rancher with the long braid prevailed. Covington, great- granddaughter of Chief Moses, died in 1982. She is revered on the reservation for hanging on to federal recognition for her confederation of 12 tribes. Today, the federal government has done an about-face, making self- determination the centerpiece of its Indian policy. Tribes are determined to exercise their sovereignty even though threats remain, notably from non-Indians who live on reservations and chafe under tribal rules. Ron Allen, chairman of Western Washington's Jamestown S'Klallam tribe, echoed an Indian political battle cry this year when he said: "We're governments and we're going to act like governments!" Allen was a lead warrior in the successful Indian campaign against the re-election of U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton. The Washington Republican long had challenged treaty fishing rights and tribal immunity from lawsuits. Those issues touch the two types of tribal sovereignty that legal experts consider vital and inseparable: the cultural and the political. Political sovereignty arises from treaties. Those are, by definition, agreements between two sovereign governments. During the European settlement of America, tribal leaders signed treaties first with the British and French, then with the new United States government. What's unique about the U.S. treaties is they recognized that the tribes were sovereign governments before the country was created, according to Mel Tonasket. A Colville tribal member who served in the 1970s as president of the National Congress of American Indians, Tonasket worked to get a non-governmental seat in the United Nations representing aboriginal peoples. He studied other natives, from the Laplanders of Scandinavia to the Maori of New Zealand, and learned that the colonial powers elsewhere didn't recognize pre-existing native rights to govern. "We're even a lot different than Canadian Indians," he said. "The Canadian government only recognizes powers that the (British) Crown gave them." The notion that their people were free and self-governing "from time immemorial" is at the heart of Indian pride. It's why tribal leaders insist on government-to-government relations with non-Indians. Newcomers to the Americas didn't usually recognize native tribes as noble governments, but as bands of savages who stood in the way of a superior white culture. They called their vision Manifest Destiny. The assumed inferiority of tribes was reinforced by Supreme Court rulings of 1823, 1831 and 1832. Those decisions, known as the Marshal Trilogy, described the tribes as "domestic dependent nations" and the federal government as their guardian. Overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of white settlers and their bullets and diseases, tribal leaders signed treaties - some 371 of them before 1871, when Congress banned the practice. The Indians normally were granted the right to fish and hunt in their usual places. Some land was reserved exclusively for them to govern and inhabit, hence the term "reservations." The Indians extracted federal promises of education for their youth. In exchange, they relinquished control of entire regions. The aboriginal lands of the Nez Perce tribe alone covered 14 million acres. "It was one of the largest real estate transactions in the history of the world," said Michael Blumm, who teaches at the Northwestern School of Law in Portland. "The guys who were making the treaties were saying, 'This is the way to keep your fish.' What the whites really wanted was settlement, and they got that." Eventually the whites wanted the fish, too. But first they wanted gold. When it was discovered on the Nez Perce reservation created by an 1855 treaty, the federal government didn't keep white prospectors off Indian land. Instead, it pressed for the treaty of 1863, shrinking the reservation to its current 750,000 acres - about 5 percent of the territory that the Nez Perce once roamed. In the same way, Congress took away the northern half of the Colville reservation in 1892 when gold was found in the Okanogan highlands. The treaty era was followed by a time when reservations were carved up, when the best thing for Indians was thought to be merging them into the white culture. In 1886, Congress approved a law that's still causing grief on reservations today. The Dawes General Allotment Act was named for its author, Sen. Henry Dawes of Massachusetts. It transferred tribal land to individual Indians. When, as anticipated, there was land left over, those parcels went to white homesteaders. The tribes could do nothing but go along. By that time, they had lost all military capability, said Charles Wilkinson, a University of Colorado professor who has written extensively on Indian law. The idea was to bring Indians into mainstream American society by making farmers of them, and it was supported by many who were sympathetic to Indians. But it was ruinous for tribes, and created today's crazy quilt of overlapping political jurisdictions. Homesteaders saw little evidence of tribal sovereignty and didn't realize they might be subjecting themselves to tribal authority by moving onto a reservation, Wilkinson said. Many Indian allotments wound up in non-Indian ownership through sale by tribal members or forfeitures to satisfy debts. "From our point of view, a lot of the land was stolen from us during those years," said Colville tribal council member Mike Marchand. In some cases, Marchand suspects, federal Indian agents and white settlers took advantage of Indians who often spoke little English and couldn't read the language. Many probably didn't realize they owed property taxes or that failure to pay could cost them their homes. Besides, the concept of land ownership was foreign to Indians. "It was like owning air," Marchand said. "How can you own the land?" Today, 20 percent of the Colville and the Spokane reservations are comprised of land that is privately owned and subject to non-Indian taxation. At the other end of the ownership spectrum are the Coeur d'Alene and the Nez Perce reservations, which are, respectively, 81 percent and 83 percent privately owned. Indian-held land dropped from 138 million acres in 1887 to 48 million acres in 1934. What remained was a jurisdictional checkerboard. Law enforcement, water distribution and land-use planning are just three of many areas where conflicts have risen between tribes and the non-Indian residents of reservation lands. The level of tension varies widely, from high to nonexistent. One factor is the approach of tribal leaders, who in deciding what's best for their people sometimes risk upsetting non-Indian neighbors. Another is the attitude of non-Indian government officials. Yet another factor is the presence of anti-sovereignty groups. Tribal casino profits add to the stew of confusion and mixed feelings about Indian government. Even people who rally behind the tribes can feel uneasy about gaming. But for tribes, the right to govern most definitely includes the ability to liberate gamblers from their money. "If we lose sovereignty, you can kiss those casinos good-bye," Marchand told a gathering of Northwest tribal leaders this fall. The tribes spend their casino profits heavily on education, social services and land purchases. The ability to make those decisions for themselves was reinforced by the Indian Self-Determination Act of 1975. The federal government took the reins of reservation decision-making from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and handed them to tribes who want that control. Later laws recognized tribal say-so in the fate of adopted Indian children, the practice of Indian religions and the protection of Native American graves. In short, Congress has been recognizing tribal cultural sovereignty. Rebecca Tsosie, a Native American law professor from Arizona, believes the preservation of language and values is the bedrock upon which political sovereignty is based. "Anglo-American government is afraid to merge church and state," Tsosie said recently at the University of Idaho. "Indian nations are saying those spiritual values are at the core of what they do." For most Indians, she added, sovereignty lies within the community. "We don't think of individual rights trumping group rights. In that structure, the Bill of Rights is as good as it gets. And I don't think that's what we're looking for." Yakama tribal elder Fred Ike Sr. believes his people's sovereignty goes back much further than the arrival of Europeans and the writing of the 18th-century Constitution. "Our ancestors stood tall and strong and maintained their unwritten laws," he said. "It's definitely up to the Indian people to show the outside world we are still Native Americans." Copyright c. Idaho Spokesman-Review --------- "RE: Response to the New Age M