From gars@speakeasy.org Mon Apr 26 16:28:49 2004 Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 16:56:07 -0700 From: Gary Night Owl To: Internet Recipients of Wotanging Ikche Subject: Wotanging Ikche--nanews12.017 _ __ _____ __ _ __ ___ ____ _ __ ___ ' ) / / ') / / ) ' ) ) / ) / ' ) ) / ) / / / / / / /--/ / / / ___ / / / / ___ (_(_/ (__/ ( / (_ / (_ (___/ '__/_ / (_ (___/ ' ____ _ , ___ _ , ___ / ' ) / / ) ' ) / / ' VOLUME 12, ISSUE 017 / /-< / /--/ /-- __/_ / ) (___/ / ( (___, WOTANGING IKCHE - Lakota - Common News Wotanging Ikche and Native American News Copyright c. 1996-2004 nanews.org Aboriginal/AmerIndian Perspective about the First Nations of Turtle Island April 24, 2004 Cree kiskipizun/gray goose moon Mohawk Onerahtokha/budding time moon +-------------------------------------------------------+ | Much more happens in Indian Country than is reported | | in this weekly newsletter. For daily updates & events | | go to http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm | +-------------------------------------------------------+ Otapi'sin Atsinikiisinaakssin -- Blackfeet -- News for All the People Ni-mah-mi-kwa-zoo-min -- Ojibwe -- We Are Talking About Ourselves Aunchemokauhettittea -- Naragansett -- Let Us Share News Kanoheda Aniyvwiya -- Cherokee -- Journal of the People O Es'te Opunvk'vmucvse -- Creek -- People's New News O o O Acimowin -- Plains Cree -- Story or Account O o O Tlaixmatiliztli -- Nahuatl -- News O o o o o O Agnutmaqan -- Listuguj Mi'kmaq -- News O o O Sho-da-ku-ye -- Teehahnahmah -- Talking Birchbark O o O Un Chota -- Susquehannic Seneca -- The People Speak O Ha-Sah-Sliltha -- Ditidaht Nation -- News of the People Ximopanolti tehuatzin, inin Mexika tlahtolli -- Nahuatl -- For you we offer these words It-hah-pe-hah Ah-num pah-le -- Chickasaw -- Together We Are Talking Dineh jii' adah' ho'nil'e'gii ba' ha' neh -- Navajo Nation -- What's Happening among The People News Okla Humma Holisso Nowat Anya -- Choctaw -- People(s) Red Newspaper Hi'a chu ah gaa -- Pima -- The stories or the talk of the People Native American News -- Language of the Occupation Forces ++>If you speak a Native American language not listed above, please send us your words for "News of the People." We'd rather take up this whole page saving these few words of our hundreds of nations than present a nice clean banner in the language of the occupation forces who came here determined to replace our words with their own. email gars@nanews.org with the equivalent of "News of the People" in your tribal language along with the english translation <================<<<< >>>>================> This newsletter is produced in straight ASCII text for greatest portability across platforms. Read it with a fixed-pitch font, such as Courier, Monaco, FixedSys or CG Times. Proportional fonts will be difficult to read. <================<<<< >>>>================> This issue contains articles from www.owlstar.com; www.indianz.com; www.pechanga.net; INDIAN-HERITAGE-L Mailing List; UUCP email IMPORTANT!! ----------- 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 <================<<<< >>>>================> +-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --+ + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + | As historian Patricia Nelson | | Once a language is lost, it is | | Limerick summarized in "The | | gone forever | | Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken | | * Of the 300 original Native | | Past of the American West... | | languages in North America, | | "Set the blood quantum at | | only 175 exist today. | | one-quarter, hold to it as a | | * 125 of these are no longer | | rigid definition of Indians, | | learned by children. | | let intermarriage proceed as | | * 55 are spoken by 1 to 6 elders;| | it had for centuries, and | | when they die, their language | | eventually Indians will be | | will disappear. | | defined out of existence." | | * Without action, only 20 | | "When that happens, the federal | | languages will survive the next| | government will be freed of | | 50 years. | | its persistent 'Indian problem.'"| | Source: Indigenous Language | +-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --+ | Institute | |http://www.indigenous-language.org| This issue's Elder Quote: + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + ======================== "I want to tell you that if the Great Spirit had chosen anyone to be the chief of this country, it is myself." __ Chief Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa Lakota +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ | 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 lead article in this issue comes from the First Nations of Canada. There is a serious movement in Canada to dump the Reserve System and create autonomous Aboriginal Lands. Sounds good, doesn't it? Get rid of the "concentration camps" and treaties that aren't being observed anyway, and provide tribes with their own territories to manage as they please. But read more deeply and with an eye to past history in the United States, when Indian tribes (often looking down the business end of a U.S. Cavalry rifle) accepted similar offers. The Canadian proposal is more appropriately being refered to as Apartheid Canada and is nothing more than a "white wash" of the same damn "Indian Question" that the invaders in the U.S. have been trying to answer for centuries with a resounding, "No Indians!" Does anyone remember "Indian Territory", now known as the state of Oklahoma? After the death marches that were supposed to lead to Indian Land for as long as the grass shall grow, it only took a few years for the U.S. to decide white settlers needed that land, too. The grass never stopped growing, but it's taken tribal people in Oklahoma nearly a hundred years to regain bits and pieces of the land they were guaranteed in exchange for the homeland they left -- and for the most part, they are accomplishing that by paying for it a second time. Hopefully new deeds are more binding than old treaties were. Does anyone in any official capacity remember the Treaty of Fort Laramie? If they do, they sure aren't giving the Black Hills back to the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota. All the above is entirely true. The cited examples all occurred in Amerikka. The people who invaded the U.S. and squatted there were pretty much from the same cultural stock as those who wound up in Canada. And their dealings with indigenous peoples over the years have been strikingly similar. Just as in the U.S., if Indian reserves are dissolved, and Canadian Indians accept "autonomous Indian land," it may well only maintain that status so long as non-Indian Canadians have no reason to covet it. Read this carefully: This effort, no matter what pretty colors it is painted in, is nothing more than a way to wiggle out of treaties. Indian People cannot permit this heinous act to come to fruition. Dohiyi Oginalii , , Gary Smith (*,*) gars@speakeasy.org P. O. Box 672168 (`-') gars@nanews.org Marietta, GA 30008, U.S.A. ===w=w=== http://www.nanews.org ----------- News of the people featured in this issue ---------- - Dump Native Reserve System - Poisons from afar - Tex Hall urges noise in Quiet Crisis threaten Arctic Mothers - Indian Voting Rights Trial begins - Stand Off: - Editorial: Murder Capital of Southern Alberta A break in Indian Trust Case - Young Brazilian Indians - Pain of grandson's death in Iraq find Suicide only Way Out - Editorial: End 'shameful' - No charges in Boys' Deaths Cobell Trust Fund Case - Official calls Tribal Jail - Interior to pay $50,000 conditions 'appalling' for seized Eagle Feathers - Local Inmates in a sweat - Same Place, different Name - Native Prisoner - Dine' Prez: -- Why isn't help being given Until you find a Cure for Cancer.. -- Supreme Court - Rigoberta Menchu rejects Peltier's Appeal to attend Santa Fe PeaceJam -- Supreme Court - YELLOW BIRD: allows Double Jeopardy May want to rethink Drum Policy -- Tribal court rights clarified - Restoring the Oneida Language - Rustywire: Whitehorse's Daughter - Piapot Chief: - Verse: Hawaiian Book of Days UN misled on First Nations Issues - Hawkdancer Poem: Pet - Upcoming Events --------- "RE: Dump Native Reserve System" --------- Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 08:33:11 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="APARTHEID CANADA" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.canada.com/~id=77d24f2e-f527-4262-bade-38a2849ab83a Dump native reserve system report: PM, aboriginal leaders to meet at summit Bill Curry and Sean Myers CanWest News Service; Calgary Herald April 19, 2004 As Prime Minister Paul Martin and more than 20 cabinet ministers meet today for a historic summit with aboriginal leaders, a new report is calling on Ottawa to give up on the entire reserve system. In a report called Apartheid: Canada's Ugly Secret, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's Centre for Aboriginal Policy Change says reserve lands should be handed over to the aboriginals currently living on them. The chief of the Siksika Nation said the report ignores the history behind the creation of the reserves. "They don't understand the whole reason why reserves were created in the first place," said Chief Strater Crowfoot of the report. "For us, it's a part of our treaty rights." Tanis Fiss, the author of the report, says such a change would improve housing on reserves because there would be an incentive for residents to renovate and maintain the properties they inhabit. Phasing out the tax exemption for First Nations who live and work on reserves would also take away Ottawa's "perverse incentive" that rewards aboriginals for staying in communities that are not economically sustainable, the report states. "We're spending $7.5 billion a year on aboriginal affairs and our neighbours living on reserves are living in Third World conditions for the most part. Clearly, it's not working and we need to start talking about solutions other than the status quo because clearly the status quo doesn't work," said Fiss. Crowfoot, a direct descendent of Chief Crowfoot who was a key historical figure in the signing of Treaty 7 more than 125 years ago, says he doesn't oppose eliminating the tax exemption, but he has one condition. "Fine, just pay it out," said Crowfoot. "Just pay us what you owe us." With its oil and gas revenues, Siksika is one of the richest reserves in Alberta and annually puts $200 million back into southern Alberta's economy, according to Crowfoot. The report notes, however, that with the average population of Canada's 629 reserves now at 641 people, their size is often too small to achieve economic self-sufficiency. Fiss says she doubts her solution will be advocated by any of the 70 aboriginal leaders invited into today's summit because they have a self- interest in the status quo. "The Indian industry, as I describe in the study, needs the reserve system to exist and it also needs the communities to be dependent on federal transfer payments," she said. "They need the people to be dependent in order to justify their own existence. So it's a vicious circle, unfortunately, and of course the federal government plays to that with the perverse incentives that they actually offer aboriginals to stay on reserves and probably the most well- known incentive is the tax exemption." Indian Affairs Minister Andy Mitchell rejected the report's main recommendation. "On the surface, what they appear to be suggesting is that we'll simply reject the idea that there may be a different cultural way of approaching things," he said. "The whole idea of property being held by a community, that's a basic tenet of aboriginal life. It's existed for centuries and to simply suggest that those of us who have a European-based idea of land tenure (our) ways are necessarily better . . . I won't accept that as being an absolute. Simply because there's a different approach in terms of how land is held doesn't mean that it's an inappropriate way." Phil Fontaine, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, also rejected an end to reserves. "Reserves are our homeland. Reserves are all that is left of all of the land that we used to occupy and possess so we're not about to give up reserves," he said. "But I think the point that has to be made is that reserves are not inherently flawed. The challenge we have is to ensure there are appropriate resources and that we do better with what we have. I don't think you're going to get much argument from the government that co- ordination among all of the federal ministries is lacking." Both Mitchell and the prime minister are expected to deliver significant speeches at today's summit that will outline the government's priorities for the aboriginal file. smyers@theherald.canwest.com Copyright c. 2004 The Calgary Herald. --------- "RE: Tex Hall urges noise in Quiet Crisis" --------- Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 15:53:37 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="TEX HALL URGES VOTING" http://www.indiancountry.com/?1081522100 Tex Hall urges noise in quiet crisis April 9, 2004 by: Brenda Norrell / Southwest Staff Reporter / Indian Country Today ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Tex Hall, president of the National Congress of American Indians, addressed the National Indian Gaming Association's 13th Annual Convention and urged defeat of the nomination of William Myers to serve on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Hall also urged American Indians to get out and vote in record numbers in the next election and ensure the future well being of Indian country. "Myers most recently served as the Interior Department's Solicitor where he advocated the rollback of protection for Native American sacred sites on public lands. These lands are central to the free exercise of religion for many of our Native American people," Hall told NIGA on April 5. Hall said when Myers served as solicitor he decided to reverse a prior decision and open the way for a gold mine that would destroy several Quechan Nation's sacred sites. "This is just in California. Think of the damage Myers could do as a lifetime federal judge for the appeals court that oversees nine Western states containing more Indian reservations than any other circuit." Urging a filibuster, Hall said Myer's nomination advanced to the Senate Floor after a 10 - 9 party line vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Democratic leaders have said they will filibuster his nomination if it is brought up before the full Senate. "Felix Cohen once likened the treatment of Indian tribes to a canary in a coal mine. To me, it's starting to look more like a canary in a gold mine." Praising NIGA for its accomplishments in serving Indian country, Hall said this is a special year for him, and for the National Congress of American Indians. "It was 60 years ago that NCAI was founded in 1944 in Denver by 80 Indian men and women from a wide range of tribal backgrounds who felt they had to fight the new termination and old assimilation policies of the federal government," he said. The original founders included Flathead historian and novelist D'arcy McNickle and NCAI's first president, Judge Napoleon Johnson of the Cherokee Nation. "Over the past 60 years, NCAI has played a crucial role in stimulating Native political awareness and activism, providing a forum for debates on vital issues affecting reservations and tribes, overseeing litigation efforts, and organizing lobbying activities in Washington, D.C. and other states." NCAI has fought against government efforts to terminate the reservation system, worked to create the Indian Claims Commission, protected the rights of Alaskan Natives, and secured voting, Social Security and other civil rights for Native peoples, he said. "Today, we are fighting harder than ever to protect our tribal sovereignty." Hall said American Indians have power in today's American political landscape. Hall pointed out that NCAI created the Native Vote 2004 initiative to drive American Indian voting participation to record levels in the 2004 elections. "In this year's State of the Indian Nations address, I set a goal of attaining one million Native votes in the November general election. That may seem high. But let me tell you - not only is this possible, it's going to happen." Hall encouraged tribes to look at the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). "In my state, it is being used dangerously to limit tribal voting rights by requiring state driver licenses, instead of tribal identification, and street mailing addresses, instead of rural box numbers. Hall said the Native vote would make a difference. "We have already been given the credit for the 2002 election of Sen. Tim Johnson in South Dakota and the 2000 defeat of Sen. Slade Gorton in Washington. Last year, the Native vote was a key factor in the election of new governors in Oklahoma, Arizona and Bill Richardson here in New Mexico. "Recent polls show Sen. John Kerry and President George Bush in a tie here in this state, so you can imagine just how important the Native vote will be in seven months." In Arizona, the 2002 Governor's election was won by only 1,800 votes out of 1.2 million cast. The deciding votes probably came from one or more of the states' Indian reservations. In 2004, the Indian vote will decide whether Senator Tom Daschle gets re-elected in South Dakota, whether Senator Byron Dorgan gets re-elected in North Dakota, whether Senator Lisa Murkowski get re-elected in Alaska, and whether Congressman Brad Carson is elected to the Senate in Oklahoma. So far, the Native vote in the 2004 primaries and caucuses has been at a reported record level in three states. In North Dakota: 11.5 percent of total votes cast; Arizona: 19 percent of registered Native voters; New Mexico: 18 percent of registered Native voters. "We are going to work night and day to see that that trend continues. Back in North Dakota, the tribes ran radio ads, set up phone banks, and went door-to-door on election day to drive the Native vote to record levels in the Feb. 3 caucuses. "As a result, North Dakota District 4 - located on my reservation - cast more votes than any other district in the entire state, including those in all of the major cities. In fact, the Native vote was the highest percentage ever recorded by North Dakota tribes in a statewide vote." Hall pointed out that already the U.S. Senate voted down on party lines a proposed increase of the Indian Health Service budget of $2.3 billion. "The Bush administration's proposed 2005 budget cuts Indian health hospitals and clinics construction by 56 percent, Indian school construction by 19 percent, tribal colleges by 11.5 percent, including the elimination of all funding for the United Tribes Technical College in my own state of North Dakota and the Crownpoint Institute of Technology here in New Mexico," said Hall. The budget proposal also cuts $52 million from the Bureau of Indian Affairs for law enforcement, roads and Indian Child Welfare Act programs. The Indian Housing Loan Guarantee program is slated to be cut by 83 percent, the Tribal Courts program by 26 percent and the tribal COPS program by 20 percent. "Just a couple of weeks ago, the Interior Department sprang its initial 2006 budget plan on us. We learned the administration intends to cut the bureau of Indian Affairs budget by 3.6 percent, which in real dollars equals $78 million. "Asking us to somehow prioritize which programs in the BIA we think should be cut is like asking Indian country to decide which child should go hungry, which elder should go unprotected, and which of those who need medical help should go untreated." He said all BIA programs should be exempt from any reductions, period. The administration's spending cuts are especially painful in light of the recent report of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission's report on the chronic under-funding of federal Indian programs called "The Quiet Crisis." Hall told NIGA, "Martin Luther King Jr. said, `Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.' Well, you know more than I, that the direction that Indian country is headed matters." Copyright c. 2004 Indian Country Today. --------- "RE: Indian Voting Rights Trial begins" --------- Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 08:51:48 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="VOTING RIGHTS TRIAL" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2004/04/13/~/news01.txt Indian voting rights trial begins By Denise Ross, Journal Staff Writer PIERRE - American Indians have been systematically shut out of the democratic process in South Dakota for more than 100 years, an expert witness testified in a trial over the state's legislative districts. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the state of South Dakota, claiming the newest map of legislative districts disenfranchises Indian voters in the south central part of the state. South Dakota encompasses nine Sioux tribes, and, at 9 percent of the state's population, their members comprise its largest racial minority. The ACLU claims the legislative district encompassing both Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian reservations has packed in a "supermajority" of American Indians and kept them from being a force at the polls in two separate districts. The practice, known as "packing," has been struck down by other courts. Lawyers from the state attorney general's office argue that the state's political map does not take away the voting rights of Indians. On Monday, federal judge Karen Schreier heard the first testimony in the lawsuit launched in October 2001 when the South Dakota Legislature adopted its new legislative district map in the wake of the 2000 U.S. Census. The ACLU is scheduled to call its witnesses through Thursday. The state won't begin calling its witnesses until next week. Political science professor Dan McCool, director of the American West Center at the University of Utah, said the wars between Indian tribes and white immigrants in the 1800s left a legacy of racial separatism and hostility. "It was a war of conquest, a war for the land. It was one of the longest and bloodiest wars in all of history. It was a war for the continent," McCool said. "The Indians lost a majority of the military conflicts. They won a few, but the result was they lost most of their land base." Decades after those wars ended, racially and politically polarized communities live side by side, McCool said. In the early days of the reservation system, about 100 years ago, white laws restricted Indians' behavior. They could not speak their native language, could not travel, could not participate in traditional ceremonies and could not own guns, he said. "I think racism was used as a justification for taking Indian lands and dispossessing Indian people," McCool said. Over the years, Indians have worked to gain equal footing with the white majority through persistent effort, McCool said. First, Dakota Territory laws outright prohibited Indians from voting. Then, state of South Dakota laws banned residents of "unorganized" counties from voting. Those counties were on Indian reservations, so the result was a continued prohibition on Indian voting, he said. "It made it virtually impossible for them to participate," McCool said. When Bennett County was carved out of the Pine Ridge reservation, the law stated that Indians could vote only if they had severed their tribal relations. That determination was subjectively made by unnamed people, McCool said, but it was the beginning of a history of lawsuits whereby Indians fought for and won the right to vote. "It was part of a consistent pattern where Indians wanted to participate, but their efforts were thwarted by local officials," he said. Lawsuits continued over voter registration requirements and practices, and most recently, Indians won a case in 2000 that required the state to carve out a single-member state House district on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. Of the nine voting rights lawsuits filed by Indians, they won eight and settled one, McCool said. The court victories have not erased the legacy of the wars of the 1800s, two witnesses testified. The Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 affects modern-day race relations, according to McCool and Charlotte Black Elk, an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe who lives in Manderson. "There are still hard feelings on both sides," McCool said. "It is part of an atmosphere of polarization." Black Elk's great-grandmother survived Wounded Knee, she said, and the fact that 27 medals of honor were awarded to members of the cavalry is "still raw." "It was the last act of direct genocide by the federal government," Black Elk said. "It marked the transition from direct genocide to genocide by bureaucracy." Black Elk said she agrees that the legislative district at issue, District 27, packs too many Indians into one voting district. Specifically, she objects that a narrow band of the district stretches across southern Bennett County to connect the two reservations but to exclude the mostly white town of Martin. "District 27 is a legislative reservation for Indians," Black Elk said. "It's beneath the dignity of whites to be represented by an Indian. The city of Martin was taken out." If the Indians of those reservations were in two separate districts, not only would they have a greater voice in state government, but also, all people in those districts would get better representation, Black Elk said. "The (supermajority) implies that an Indian should come out of the district whether they're qualified or not. It diminishes my right to vote for a white person, if that's my choice," she said. Black Elk testified that she has been a Republican for 30 years, but American Indians are registered predominantly as Democrats. She chose the Republican Party because Republican President Richard Nixon returned land to Indians, she said. The trial resumes at 8 a.m. today. Contact Denise Ross at 394-8438 or denise.ross@rapidcityjournal.com Copyright c. The Rapid City Journal. --------- "RE: Editorial: A break in Indian Trust Case" --------- Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 08:33:11 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="MEDIATION NEEDED" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.denverpost.com/cda/0%2C1674%2C36%257E417%257E2086750%2C00.html editorial: A break in Indian trust case April 18, 2004 Finally, the two sides in the Indian trust fund lawsuit have accepted mediation. Although it isn't binding, it's the first real breakthrough since the suit was filed eight years ago. While federal courts are directly in charge of the case, Congress should move the matter along in a couple of ways. First, lawmakers should pressure the U.S. Interior Department to accept the mediators' recommendations. Second, Congress should support common-sense changes in how the Indian trusts are structured. The troubles date to 1887, when Congress let the Bureau of Indian Affairs' predecessor agency take control of Indian assets such as mineral royalties and grazing leases. The allotments belonging to individual Indians are in addition to reservations owned collectively by tribes. The government mismanaged the assets from the start. Today, as many as 500,000 Indians nationwide (most of them in the West) may be owed a total of $10 billion, the Indians' lawyers say. The Interior Department, of which the BIA is part, disputes the claims. But after all these years, Interior still hasn't given Indians a full accounting of their funds. In fact, the government isn't sure what Indians should be getting. Given those gaps, it's absurd that Interior wants an appeals court to dismiss the case on grounds the problems have been fixed. They haven't. Meanwhile, the court-appointed official who was helping the federal judge sort through the mess has quit. Alan Balaran, the case's "special master," complained that Interior had tried to stymie his work. Among other things, Balaran had discovered that Interior leased pipeline rights- of-way through Navajo property for far less than similar rights on neighboring non-Indian land. Far from being a historical artifact, problems in the Indian trust accounts are ongoing. While the courts handle those matters, Congress should expand a voluntary program that could solve one of the most frustrating aspect of the Indian trust: fractionalization. Under existing law, when an Indian who owns an allotment dies, the property is passed to his or her heirs in undivided interests. Say a family owned 160 acres in 1887. Today, there could easily be 100 heirs. The heirs don't each get 1.6 acres, which could be usable. They get one one-hundredth of an undivided interest in 160 acres, a practice that makes the land almost unmanageable. But under a program that started in 2000, individual Indians who want to sell their allotments can do so, knowing that the land will go back to their tribe. When combined with mediation of the lawsuit, the consolidation of Indian land could help resolve a matter that should have been taken care of decades ago. Copyright c. 2004 The Denver Post. --------- "RE: Pain of grandson's death in Iraq" --------- Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 08:38:13 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="NO MORE!" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.thenavajotimes.com/20041504/News/war_todacheene.html War comes home Pain of grandson's death in Iraq cause matriarch to say 'no more' By Marley Shebala The Navajo Times LUKACHUKAI, Ariz. - Eva Lee, 70, pointed to the kitchen and remembered her grandson, Sgt. Lee Duane Todacheene, asking her for a pencil so he could mark his height in February. Lee said in a Tuesday interview that she didn't know that would be the last time that she would see her grandson alive. The U.S. Department of Defense, in an April 9 press release, announced the death of Todacheene, 29, who was killed April 6 in Balad, Iraq, when mortar fire hit his guard post. Lee said her grandson telephoned her the day before he was killed. She said she wasn't home when he called and she found out about the call from his mother, Roberta Lee-Todacheene. Lee said Roberta telephoned her from Keams Canyon, Ariz., and told her that Duane had e-mailed her and asked for his grandmother. "I wonder what he was going to tell me," she said softly before she started wiping away tears. Lee's sisters, Lillian Uentillie, 71, and May Bekis, 75, put their heads down and also wiped away tears. The family explained that Duane added the name Lee to his name to honor his maternal grandparents, Eva and Albert Lee, and their children - his eight maternal aunts and two maternal uncles. Lee said Duane was about two or three years old when he came to live with her and her husband, Albert. She said his mother had just gone through a divorce. "What else could she (Alberta) do?" said Lee. Her sisters nodded their heads in agreement as they started sharing memories of Duane, his brother, Rydell, and sister Donna. Lee's adult children joined in and the tears turned to laughter and smiles. The stories were hard to follow simply because they also involved Uentillie's six children and Bekis' eight children. But it was easy to understand that Duane, Rydell and Donna had been blessed with a large loving family that surrounded them with traditional Navajo teachings including hard work. The Lee's own sheep, cattle, horses and farm land which meant all the children - including Duane - learned how to take care of them. His aunts pointed to red rocks in the distance northeast of the Lee homestead and said there's a trail where Duane herded sheep to the family's summer camp, which rested on top of the mesa in the Lukachukai Mountains. They also remembered how Duane spent his childhood climbing the red rocks or cooling off in the water in the wash on the south side of the house. Lee said Duane's favorite food was her fry bread and she remembered him asking her to make some and sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor to watch her. She looked at a fading childhood photo of Duane sitting next to his sister. Another photo, which was taken when he attended Tsaile Elementary School, showed him wearing a checkered western shirt. A high school graduation photo was found that showed Duane and his mother. Another graduation photo was showed Duane with his arms around his future wife, Jacqueline. Lee said Jacqueline and the couple's two young sons, Cody Lane, 9, and Dylan Lee, 8, were with Duane's mother, Alberta, and father, Melvin, on Tuesday. Lee said Alberta and Melvin remarried five years ago. She said Duane was very close with his mother and he told her that if he was killed in action, he wanted to be buried in Lukachukai and then have everyone eat at his grandma Eva's house. "Our mom, dad, two sisters and two brothers are all (buried) down there (cemetery)," said Uentillie. "He's (Duane) with his family up there. We miss him but he's with his family." The matriarchs and their children nodded their heads slowly and then faster when Uentillie said, "We're telling the younger ones, no more (enlisting in the Armed Forces)." She said three of their brothers - Wilson Tso, George Tso and Thomas Tso - served in the Vietnam War. Uentillie said her grand-daughter Ashley, who joined the service for the educational benefits after the Navajo government denied her a scholarship, is having second thoughts about being in the military. "But it's already too late," said May Bekis as she slowly shook her head back and forth. Bekis, whose husband served in the Army, had three of her sons in the military - David was in the Marines and Jimmy Jr. and Jerome served in the Army. She currently has three grandchildren in the service. Bekis said Jimmy Jr.'s son, Jacob, missed his cousin-brother's funeral because the Army is preparing to send his company to Baghdad. She said her daughter Hazel's son, James David "J.D." Bekis, returned from Kuwait where he's served in the Army. Bekis said her daughter Rudy's son, who enlisted in the Navy, is stationed on the U.S.S. Carl Vincent in Seattle, Wash. Eva Lee's son Everette has a son, Conwell Lee, in the Marines. Conwell Lee returned from duty in the Middle East and took a break from military classes in North Carolina to be at the funeral. Lee said that after Conwell Lee finishes school, he'll probably want to go back overseas. Uentillie said, "It's scary. We just keep praying every morning so our children can come back safe." On April 10, the U.S. Department of Defense listed Sgt. Lee Duane Todacheene among the 639 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq War on March 20, 2003. Todacheene was assigned to the Army's 1st Battalion, 77th Armored Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, Schweinfurt, Germany. Copyright c. The Navajo Times Publishing Company, Inc. --------- "RE: Editorial: End 'shameful' Cobell Trust Fund Case" --------- Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 08:30:07 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="CALL TO SETTLE COBELL" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/~/2001900898_indied12.html Settle a shameful case of Indian trust money April 12, 2004 The alternately inept and malicious handling of individual Indian trust accounts by the U.S. government grows more shameful as an 8-year-old lawsuit drags out. Settle this case. Justice is long overdue. Last week, the special master in the Cobell v. Norton Indian Trust case resigned in disgust, amidst claims the Bush administration thwarted attempts to gather information. Alan Balaran, a Washington, D.C., attorney, said he had evidence the administration allowed energy companies to pay Indians less than non-Indians for oil and gas leases. Current failings of the Justice and Interior departments fit into a pattern set more than a century ago. This case involves 500,000 Indian trust-account beneficiaries and will cost taxpayers billions of dollars to replace assets that are lost and cannot be accounted for. Plaintiffs' attorneys expressed hope the appointment of two new mediators might move stalled settlement talks along. Five previous attempts to settle the case failed because past administrations argued everything had been properly managed, the plaintiffs said in a statement. Let the Bush administration's appointment of a new negotiating team be a good-faith signal that a long-running and self-serving federal stance has been abandoned. Dragging out a case the government will not win compounds a shameful history. Copyright c. 2004 The Seattle Times Company. --------- "RE: Interior to pay $50,000 for seized Eagle Feathers" --------- Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 08:30:07 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="DoI PENALTY" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.abqjournal.com/paperboy/text/news/state/160711nm04-12-04.htm Interior To Pay $50,000 By Scott Sandlin Journal Staff Writer April 12, 2004 An eight-year legal odyssey launched by the seizure of eagle feathers from a Silver City man has ended with an order for a federal agency to pony up almost $50,000. U.S. District Judge M. Christina Armijo recently ordered the U.S. Interior Department to pay $48,818 in legal fees and costs in the case of Joseluis Saenz. The Chiricahua Apache, who uses the feathers in religious ceremonials, had his feathers seized in 1996 by the Fish and Wildlife Service, a branch of Interior. The federal agency took the feathers claiming Saenz wasn't a member of a federally recognized tribe and needed a permit under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. However, Fish and Wildlife did not pursue criminal charges because of Saenz's "unique circumstances" of tribal affiliation. Chiricahua Apaches, involved in border skirmishes with the U.S. Cavalry in the 1880s, fled south to a mountain stronghold when other Apache bands surrendered in 1886. The groups that surrendered were relocated and eventually recognized by the government. The Southern Chiricahua were not. Saenz sued the government under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act when wildlife officials refused to return the religious items with feather adornment, including a shield, staff, quiver, fan and dream-catcher. In 2000, the late U.S. District Judge Edwin L. Mechem ruled in Saenz's favor, finding him to be both a sincere practitioner and a "genuine Indian." "Imposition of the government's single and strictly legal definition of 'Indian tribe' for all purposes - historical, social, ethnic, religious, political and jurisdictional - conflicts with the reality of human experience," Mechem wrote. Saenz got the ceremonial items back. But the government immediately appealed to the 10th Circuit. When Saenz won again, he asked to be reimbursed for legal expenses. The award, reduced from the $74,800 requested, will be shared with the Indian Law Clinic at the University of Colorado for work done by directors and students. Copyright c. 1997-2004 Albuquerque Journal. --------- "RE: Same Place, different Name" --------- Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 08:08:37 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="S-WORD" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://bozemandailychronicle.com/~/news/01squawcreekbzbigs.txt Same place, different name: Squaw names taken off map By SCOTT McMILLION, Chronicle Staff Writer April 14, 2004 It took a few years, but Squaw Creek finally has a new name. The stream in the Gallatin Range south of Bozeman now bears the official moniker of Storm Castle Creek, according to Jackie Riley, cartographer for the Gallatin National Forest. Two other features on the Gallatin, Squaw Peak and Squaw Gulch, both in the Absaroka Range, have also been renamed. "Squaw Peak is now Morningstar Peak," Riley said Monday. The gulch is now Travois Gulch. A fourth feature, Squaw Pass in the Absarokas, hasn't been renamed yet because a committee in Washington, D.C., couldn't decide what to call it. The new names are part of a pattern taking place around the country. The word "squaw" is considered by many Native Americans to be an insulting epithet for a woman's private parts. "You just know it's a bad name and a dirty name for an Indian woman," said Carol Juneau, D-Browning, co-chair of a committee trying to rename 76 peaks, creeks, flats, gulches and buttes in Montana. Henrietta Mann, professor emeritus of Native American Studies at Montana State University, is on the volunteer committee as well. She doesn't like to even say the word. "I just call it the S word," she said. Renaming a geographic feature requires the assent of a dense federal bureaucracy called the Board of Geographic Names, which moves slowly and meticulously. For example, Squaw Pass still doesn't have a new name because the BOGN couldn't decide which was proper: Meyer Pass or Meyers Pass. For Squaw Creek, now Storm Castle Creek, an area popular with recreationists, selecting a new name has taken almost five years. Former Bozeman District Ranger Jan Lerum began the process internally in 1999 and the next year asked the public for suggestions for a new name. "We went with the one that was the most suggested," Riley said. Storm Castle is a prominent feature that rises near the creek. Morningstar Peak and Travois Gulch were proposed by the Montana committee, which is called the 412 Advisory Committee, after the 1999 legislation that created it. Before the BOGN would accept those names, Juneau explained, the state committee had to obtain approval for the names - or at least a lack of opposition - from county commissioners and area tribes. The process is taking a lot longer than she expected, said Juneau, who carried the authorizing bill through the Legislature. All committee members are volunteers, who aren't even paid for their travel expenses. That makes it hard to get everybody together. So far, 14 name changes have been changed, Juneau said, and 13 more are before the BOGN. "I though we should be able to get this done in a couple years," she said Tuesday. She and Mann both said they feel strongly about completing the task, which will become more difficult when the committee moves on to features located on private land. Some don't see what all the fuss is about, "I've got many comments in my files saying this is always going to be Squaw Creek and this is silly," Riley said. In addition to creeks and campgrounds, there are a handful of features and peaks referred to as Squaw "nipple," or "teat" or "tit." Juneau noted that years ago many features incorporated the term "nigger, " although they are often forgotten now. "There are some really ugly names out there that we're working on changing," Juneau said. Copyright c. 2004 the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. --------- "RE: Dine' Prez: Until you find a Cure for Cancer..." --------- Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 08:08:37 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="NO MORE URANIUM MINING" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.gallupindependent.com/041304dineprez.html Dine' Prez: Until you find a cure for cancer, ..no more uranium mining in my land By Kathy Helms Dine' Bureau April 13, 2004 FORT DEFIANCE - On July 10, 2000, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendment of 2000 was enacted, providing expanded coverage to individuals who developed one of the diseases related to radiation exposure from the federal government's atmospheric nuclear weapons program or as a result of employment in the uranium production industry. On Nov. 2, 2002, the 21st Century Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act made changes to RECA that included re-inserting a "downwinder" area, clarifying medical eligibility criteria, providing an alternative radiation exposure standard for uranium miners, and correcting drafting errors contained in the 2000 Amendments. The final rule on RECA legislation was published March 23 in the Federal Register. But before it becomes effective next week, on April 22, there is movement once again to change the law. Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. "made history by being the first Native American president ever to come before the National Academy of Sciences to testify on behalf of the Navajo people" recently in Washington, according to Cora Phillips of the president's office. Phillips said the president told the committee, "Until you find a cure for cancer, there will be no more uranium mining in my land, Navajoland." The Navajo Nation president expressed the same sentiment last November and on other occasions. Phillips said, "He has steadfastly maintained that position. Not only is he in opposition to the uranium mining, he wants to go full force with the RECA reform." This would be the second round of RECA reform, but the Navajo Nation and those who work closely with downwinders and uranium workers believe that reform effort is overdue. "There are still weaknesses in the legislation that need to be addressed. So this is what Navajo Nation's interests are to continuously upgrade those services to where cultural factors are not a barricading factor, because right now it is," Phillips said. RECA legislation is more in accordance with the American social structure, rather than the indigenous cultural parameters of the Navajos unique social structure, according to Phillips. "There is a big difference in what's out there in suburbia America vs. a rural isolated setting on Navajo. The social structures are different, but that's not being acknowledged," she said. "We are hoping that the cultural factors are going to be acknowledged rather than overlooking it." Phillips said President Shirley and long-time advocate for radiation victims, Phil Harrison, made some very strong statements and the committee showed deep interest right away "because the questions just started flying left and right. They both did an excellent job in responding to the questions. "Their 3 to 5 minute presentations stretched to 30 minutes, "that's how strong the interest was," she said. On May 18, the National Academies' National Research Council will be in Window Rock to look at how the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) can improve its services for persons exposed to radiation and how the agency could improve its medical screening and public education programs. The National Research Council has been asked by Congress to advise HRSA on the most recent scientific evidence associating radiation exposure with cancer and other diseases. The committee also is looking at whether other classes of individuals or additional geographic areas should be considered under a compensation program for people exposed to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests. The committee will hold a public meeting from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Navajo Nation Education Center, where it hopes to hear from a variety of concerned citizens on issues relevant to its study. Harrison, whose father is a deceased uranium miner and whose uncles, grandmother and grandfather all died of cancer, formed the Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims Committee and has spent years trying to get compensation for uranium workers and widows. Harrison does not receive compensation for his advocacy role. At a congressional hearing held in Shiprock in 1990, Harrison said, "After many years of frustration, hardships, pain and suffering, we are entitled to be recognized and compensated for our losses. The compensation cannot replace our loved ones but will relieve and remedy our burdens. But our work cannot cease. We have yet to address our land, water, livestock and food cycles that are contaminated." More than a decade later, Harrison is still waging the same war. But he is hopeful that the Washington trip has kicked off a crusade that will lead to round two of the RECA amendment. "The trip was really good, the right connections were made, the response was tremendous," he said. Results of the trip will be presented today before the Navajo Health and Human Services Committee and at a meeting later this month in Shiprock, tentatively set for 9 a.m.-3 p.m. April 30. Harrison said one of the things that is being looked at is what kind of changes can be made to Department of Justice (DOJ) rules and regulations. "What can they do to ease the burdens on the clients, the uranium workers and downwinders?" Presently, he said, only a few victims are being compensated. Harrison wants to see that figure jump to more than 50 percent. He, Phillips and others are working on a draft of the proposed changes to present to DOJ. "We're also going to see that the key congressional people that were involved with the past movement, if they can support the proposed changes," Harrison said. "For the hearing that's going to be held here in Window Rock, we have to find presenters from the uranium workers, from the uranium workers' families, and from the downwinders. The committee has their own agenda. I think for us, we have to look and find the people and help them establish their oral and written testimony," he said. "The other thing that we're doing right now is to see if we can get the medical doctors and the scientific people involved. We'll probably have a panel of radiation victims, a panel of medical and scientific experts, and a panel of leadership presentation. "The main problem that we see in this thing is how do you do the translations? How do you carry on to where that the thousands of people that are going to attend will understand what's happening? What we're saying is, 'Let the committee have their hearing,' and then afterward we'll translate so that people can understand. That's the thing we need to work out with the committee, because the audience is going to be the Navajo elderlies, who are all the uranium workers. They do not understand English," he said. Likewise, the panel does not understand Navajo. "So we're going to try and figure out the logistics of it and see how this is going to be done." Harrison and Phillips said President Shirley will be sending out invitations to congressional staff, including Congressmen Rick Renzi, Tom Udall, Utah's Jim Matheson, and Rhode Island's Patrick Kennedy, who spent time in Monument Valley touring radioactive mines. In addition, Sen. Carmen Fernandez of Guam, which has been impacted by nuclear testing, also will be sending a delegation because they, too, want to be included in RECA, Phillips said. Among the changes Harrison hopes to see is: inclusion of Post 71 workers in RECA legislation, an easing of the requirements for downwinders and an extension of the downwind fallout coverage to San Juan-, McKinley-, and Montezuma counties. "The other thing is to pursue an increase for the downwinders, from $50,000 to $150,000 with medical benefits for cancer cases," he said. Also, a big question remains regarding the threshold of working level exposure. "We have people that are exposed to two working levels and they have lung disease. How do you explain that? Chances are that if no changes are made, these men with lung disease are not going to be compensated. They're going to be without medical benefits," Harrison said. Also at issue is streamlining the payment process to nine months instead of 12 to 36 months." Copyright c. 2004 the Gallup Independent. --------- "RE: Rigoberta Menchu to attend Santa Fe PeaceJam" --------- Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 08:08:37 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="POET LAUREATE AT YOUTH CONFERENCE" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.daily-times.com/artman/publish/article_10349.shtml Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu to attend Santa Fe PeaceJam By The Associated Press April 14, 2004 SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - Rigoberta Menchu, Nobel Peace laureate and Guatemalan Indian rights activist, will work with students at this week's PeaceJam New Mexico Youth Conference in Santa Fe. Menchu will work directly with about 250 students and their mentors at the conference Friday and Saturday at Santa Fe Preparatory School and St. John's College. PeaceJam, which includes elementary and high school students, is aimed at inspiring a new generation of peacemakers who will transform their local communities, themselves and the world. As part of the high school program, students study the life of a Nobel Peace laureate and a curriculum centering on world peace. Menchu will use Guatemala and the tools of dialogue, workshops and community service as an example. She also will give a public lecture, "Healing Communities Torn by Racism and Violence" on Saturday in the Student Activities Center of St. John's College. One of Menchu's brothers was killed by government security forces in Guatemala in the late 1970s and her father, a major peasant leader, died in January 1980 after police burned down the Spanish Embassy that he and others had occupied. Menchu was eventually forced into exile in Mexico, returning to Guatemala only sporadically until being appointed to the Cabinet of new President Oscar Berger early this year. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 after her book, "I Rigoberta Menchu," publicized the atrocities committed largely against Mayan civilians during the country's 1960-1996 civil war. PeaceJam students will participate in local service projects ranging from registering young voters to decorating bowls that will be used to feed the hungry to sending friendship bracelets to students in Ecuador, said Jennie Baudhuin of PeaceJam New Mexico. "In their communities, they actually create a plan for peace," Baudhuin said. "When they come, they say what they're going to do." Copyright c. 2004 Farmington Daily Times, a Gannett Co., Inc. newspaper. --------- "RE: YELLOW BIRD: May want to rethink Drum Policy" --------- Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 15:53:37 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="YELLOW BIRD: DRUM POLICY" http://www.grandforks.com/mld/~/dorreen_yellow_bird/ DORREEN YELLOW BIRD COLUMN: Powwow may want to rethink drum policy April 10, 2004 The 35th Annual Time Out and Wacipi is completed, and getting ready for the 36th program probably is far from the thoughts of UND Indian students. After all is said and done, I can say I believe the powwow was a success. There are, however, some issues that remain open. The issue that made this powwow different was its use of "invited drums only." When word of that policy reached the newsroom, I was asked about it, as it seemed to be confusing to some Native and certainly non-Native people. I told the reporters who asked that I thought they'd misunderstood. We don't exclude anyone. Everyone is invited, I told them. To my chagrin, I was wrong. Only nine drums were invited to the Wacipi. The cutoff excluded many of the North Dakota, Minnesota and South Dakota drums. I tried to reach Melissa Street, the contact person for the powwow, for explanation. She wasn't at home when I called. Her husband, Richard, answered. I explained to him I was looking for confirmation about the invited drums issue. Richard Street told me that yes, they did indeed limit the powwow to nine invited drums. Here was his reasoning: The higher caliber of drums would bring in more people and possibly lift UND's Wacipi to the status of a national powwow. The criteria for selecting the drums, he said, was evidence that the drum group had produced a tape or CD. The powwow committee also considered a drum group if it had won a championship. Those drums will bring more dancers to the Wacipi, Street said. When the powwow is open to any drum group, drums come from all over the region, he said. At times, there have been as many or more than 20 drums at the Wacipi in the past, I recall. Sometimes, those drums have inexperienced drummers, or they come without a full team and borrow from other drums, Street said. And some of those drums aren't very good. That, he said, isn't fair to the dancers, who are competing for prize money. He has a point, and the students at UND deserve a chance to explore new ideas and avenues for their powwow. If you're creative and try new things, sometimes great things can come out of these explorations. I attended the powwow Saturday. The dancers seemed fewer than usual and heavy on younger dancers. It also seemed the crowd numbers were down. I don't, however, have attendance figures. Yet, as elders of many of the tribes will tell you, when you are young and a student, it always is good to ask for advice - perhaps from the people who have been doing powwows for many years. Ask what the traditions are and be respectful of those traditions. I have had my ear bent about the issue from many people in the community and from reservations. There are people at both Spirit Lake and Turtle Mountain reservations who were offended by the exclusion of their drums. I didn't search out these comments, either. Because I am from Grand Forks, people automatically think that I am aware of all that is happening with the powwow. Untrue; I am a spectator. I agree with these people. At most powwows, it isn't traditional to exclude anyone. The powwow organizers are students and young people who are learning. I hope that they will look at what happened at the powwow, seek advice from experts who know powwows and learn from the situation. Perhaps, that means developing some way of weeding out drummers who don't meet a certain criteria, but giving everyone a chance to participate. I will add that I have been involved in putting together powwows both on the Three Affiliated Tribes reservation in White Shield, N.D., and at North Dakota State University in Fargo. It is a daunting task. It takes a tremendous amount of time to raise money, guide a large group of students toward working together and still get class work done. So, from that aspect, the students did well. Finally, it is important that this event take place. It is important that the American Indian culture is expressed for the Indian students at UND and for educating the community about Indian people. ------ Yellow Bird writes columns Tuesday and Saturday. Reach her by phone at 780-1228 or (800) 477-6572, extension 228, or by e-mail at dyellowbird@gfherald.com. Copyright c. 2004 Grand Forks Herald/Grand Forks, ND. --------- "RE: Restoring the Oneida Language" --------- Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 15:53:37 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ONEIDA LANGUAGE" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.greenbaynewschron.com/page.html?article=125214 Restoring the Oneida Language Tribe approaches language education from new angle By Anna Krejci News-Chronicle There are few things more important or dear to a culture than its language. To that end, the Oneida Nation is taking steps to preserve its language. On Wednesday, leaders of the Oneida Tribe of Indians will sign a charter outlining a broad language immersion strategy. The charter, developed by the Oneida Language Charter Team, is a plan to help language members become fluent in the Oneida language, according to Dr. Carol Cornelius, area manager of the Oneida Cultural Heritage Department. The team consists of 13 members, two of which are serving on the Oneida Language Revitalization Program and others from the nation's human resources, gaming, education and administrative branches. As called for by the charter, the Oneida Nation has hired a linguist fluent in the Oneida and Mohawk languages who can assist tribal members in learning the Oneida language. Oneida culture outlines a formula for remembering history while making decisions for the future. "We have to look back seven generations to see what our people did," Cornelius said. She added that today's decisions are made with an eye toward the interests of tribal members seven generations from now. The charter's objective, in accord with Oneida culture, states that in seven generations the Oneida people and the Oneida organization will speak the Oneida language, Cornelius said. To begin to realize that plan, the Oneida Nation will form a teacher certification program and the Oneida Business Committee will send communications to 3,000 government employees informing them the Oneida language is the tribe's official language. While short-term plans for language immersion are coming together, long- range objectives to get the nation's 15,000 members scattered across the globe to speak fluent Oneida are on the horizon, according to Brian A. Doxtator, charter team member and member of the Oneida Business Committee. members of the Oneida tribe living on or near the reservation number 5,000. The charter team is a tool to expand bilingual learning, an objective that was present in the establishment of the Oneida Language Revitalization Program in 1995. Under the program, elders fluent in the Oneida language teach the language to younger adults. The program was initiated after a survey found only 25-30 elders who learned the Oneida language as their first language were alive. Lavinia Webster, the first elder in the program, recently died, Cornelius said. Now, two of the teachers, at the ages of 82 and 85, are working 20 hours a week with the program, Cornelius said. The revitalization program's Web site contains the image of a faceless corn husk doll carrying a basket; the basket carried by the doll symbolizes the teaching of the Oneida language from generation to generation. Cornelius recounted the story of the corn husk doll. The doll became so preoccupied with her beauty that she forgot to care for the children for whom she was responsible. As a consequence, the creator took away her face so she would not forget her responsibilities. Cornelius said it is the Oneida tribal members' responsibility to learn the Oneida language from the elders and transfer it to following generations. "Even if you only know one word, use it," she said. Doxtator said he is studying to become fluent - fluent meaning he will be able to speak the language as seamlessly as the water flows when it is being poured, he said. The Oneida Nation is faced with expanding the vocabulary of the Oneida language. About 10 years ago, fluent speakers of the language traveled from Canada and New York to the reservation to work with Oneida tribal members in developing new words. There was a time, Doxtator said, when things such as a floor, hot dog, french fries or computer could not be expressed in the Oneida language. Traces of the Oneida language program can be seen on the reservation, Doxtator said. A grocery store on the reservation sells food labeled in English and Oneida. Part of the charter team's task will be to decide how to change street names and building signs to accommodate usage of the two tongues. "Our language defines our culture and it's important we remember our language and our culture," Doxtator said Copyright c. 2004 Green Bay News-Chronicle. --------- "RE: Piapot Chief: UN misled on First Nations Issues" --------- Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 08:40:53 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="CHIEF CLAUDE SEEKS TRUTH" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://sask.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=summit040414 UN misled on First Nations issues: Piapot chief April 14, 2004 REGINA - First Nations leaders are meeting with officials from the United Nations (UN) in Regina this week. The Piapot First Nation is hosting the Summit of Nations Conference. Chief Claude Friday says First Nations leaders want to tell UN officials what is really happening in their communities, since he believes Canada's reports on First Nations issues are misleading. "They're the leading country in humanity, and we're saying they're not, because of the way we're treated in this country," says Friday. "Our treaties are not honoured, they imposed their government on us, and not only that, they violate their own rules and procedures, and their own regulations." Friday says the conference is also meant to help First Nations leaders form a unified front when dealing with Ottawa on certain issues, such as treaty rights, housing, health and education. Copyright c. 2004 CBC. --------- "RE: Poisons from afar threaten Arctic Mothers" --------- Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 08:30:07 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="FOOD CHAIN CONTAMINATED" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2612-2004Apr10.html Poisons From Afar Threaten Arctic Mothers, Traditions Toxins, Coming North by Air and Water, Enter Inuit Food Chain By DeNeen L. Brown Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, April 11, 2004 IQALUIT, Nunavut -- The dark season had ended, and a fierce Arctic wind was howling across the icy sea as Lucy Qavavauq finished a supper of caribou soup. After dishes were put away at her friend's home, she sat down to nurse her firstborn child. As the baby fed, the mother wondered whether her 9-month-old boy was drinking poison -- contaminants found in tests of Inuit who eat caribou and other Arctic animals. "The idea scares me. The more I think about it, the more scared I get," Qavavauq said. Her baby pulled at her breast and grinned; milk slid down his fat cheek. "I know there is a possibility of passing on contaminants to him. But then I still know breast-feeding is best. I can't imagine not breast-feeding my baby." It is a dilemma confronted by many Inuit mothers. Scientists say the Arctic, once considered pristine and unspoiled, has become a sinkhole for pollutants. The contaminants -- including heavy metals, mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs, DDT and other pesticides -- come north by air and water. "Northerners suffer the public health and environmental consequences of trans-boundary contaminants brought to the Arctic by winds and currents from tropical and temperate countries," said Terry Fenge, strategic counsel for the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, an advocacy group that represents Inuit in Greenland, Canada, Russia and Alaska. He said that many toxins enter the food chain and accumulate in human tissue. "They have a high lipid solubility, which means they concentrate in the fatty tissue of animals, particularly those in the marine environment." "On a human level, we are being poisoned from afar," said Sheila Watt- Cloutier, chairman of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. Canadian government studies have found that many Inuit have dangerously high levels of PCBs, DDT and mercury in their blood, fatty tissue and breast milk. A 1997 government study found that 65 percent of women in the Baffin region of Nunavut had levels of PCBs in their blood that were five times higher than the safety threshold set by the Canadian Health Ministry. The study found that women in Broughton Island off the southeastern shore of Baffin Island had more than five times the levels of PCBs in their breast milk than women in other parts of Canada. The report found that 80 percent of mothers in Nunavik, in northern Quebec, and 68 percent of mothers in Baffin had unsafe levels of mercury in their blood. "The northern women had the highest levels of PCBs ever found in people, except in victims of industrial accidents," according to a report by Heather Myers, an assistant professor at the University of Northern British Columbia. "The fundamental injustice is that virtually no industrial development exists in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. These new environmental threats, which could completely undercut the traditional and land-based lifestyle of the northern native peoples, come from other, more developed areas," the report said. Persistent pollutants are among a number of serious threats to the Inuit, the indigenous people who have lived, hunted and fished in this region for thousands of years. Inuit leaders say climate change, the accelerated melting of sea ice and the possibility of the famed icy Northwest Passage opening to year-round shipping also threaten their people. The Inuit, whose ancestors roamed Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia, plan to petition the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to declare that the pollutants, climate change and the residue from military installations are violating their human rights. "The Inuit are facing the beginning of a possible end of a way of life that has allowed us to thrive for millennia because of climate changes caused by global warming," Watt-Cloutier said. "It is predicted that in some 50 years, polar bears, walrus and some species of seals will be pushed to extinction. What will be left of our culture if this comes to pass?" There is also concern that the Inuit are threatened by contamination at the now-abandoned U.S. military DEW line, or Distant Early Warning line, a series of 21 radar sites built in the 1950s along the 70th parallel to detect enemy planes and missiles. Reports assert the stations are contaminated with PCBs. "In Alaska, the beaches are slumping so much, people are having to move houses. In Tuktoyaktuk, the land is starting to go under water. The glaciers are melting and the permafrost is melting. There are new species of birds and fish and insects showing up," Watt-Cloutier said. "The Arctic is a barometer for the health of the world. If you want to know how healthy the world is, come to the Arctic and feel its pulse." On May 17, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants will become legally binding, requiring more than 150 participating governments, including those of Canada and the United States, to stop the production and use of toxic chemicals such as DDT and PCBs, which have long been cited for their persistence and adverse impact on human and animal health. Despite the elevated toxin levels detected in traditional foods, Inuit leaders have not encouraged people to stop eating them. Long-term studies in the United States, Canada and Europe have found neurological damage in young children with high levels of PCBs. Scientists report increases in respiratory and ear infections in regions where contaminant levels in mothers' milk are considered dangerously high. Yet recent studies have found that Inuit who eat less traditional foods have higher rates of diabetes and cardiovascular problems. "We don't say to mothers, be alarmed," Watt-Cloutier said. "The message is, the benefits of eating country foods outweigh the risks. Mothers are told to eat more char [fish] and caribou while pregnant and nursing. . . . But this is not even just about food, but also about a way of life. We are not ready to give up." Madeleine Allakariallak, 28, a mother of three, is also concerned about contaminants in traditional foods, but she says she will not stop consuming the foods she grew up on. "It's scary to have contaminants in the food we as Inuit eat," Allakariallak said. "We don't know [what] the long-term effects of contaminants will do to our children." She and Qavavauq talked about their concerns in Allakariallak's modern townhouse here. Down the hill, the faint lights of snowmobiles carrying hunters were flickering over the ice. Nunavut, with a population of more than 30,000, became Canada's third territory on April 1, 1999, after the Inuit settled a land claim with the Canadian government giving them title to land more than twice the size of Sweden. Allakariallak grew up in Resolute Bay, a settlement in the Northwest Territories. The Canadian government moved Inuit to the area from northern Quebec to establish sovereignty over the Arctic. The land was bleak and many Inuit died in Resolute. "My grandmother was one of the exiles relocated," said Allakariallak, who hosts a CBC morning radio show in English and Inuktitut. Lucy Qavavauq said she knows there are toxins in the traditional food of the Inuit, but she says the food hunted here is better than the expensive, processed food flown in and sold down the icy road at the North Mart. "I love to eat frozen or raw seal. But I wonder, am I boiling it enough for my son? His immune system is not as strong as mine. If my parents lived here, they wouldn't think twice about giving him frozen or raw meat because that's what we do." Qavavauq says she eats whale meat and ptarmigan, a kind of grouse. "Seal liver is my favorite, freshly caught. But I don't know what chemicals in my country foods are going in me and what are getting into my baby." Qavavauq, who grew up in Arctic Bay, said occasionally a seal would wash up on shore, dead from causes the Inuit did not understand. "Where I lived there was a mine close by and seals suddenly would die. How does that affect the country food and our bodies? I don't know the land very well, but I always wondered how it would affect my son." Copyright c. 2004 The Washington Post Company. --------- "RE: Stand Off: Murder Capital of Southern Alberta" --------- Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 08:33:11 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="STAND OFF" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.canada.com/~id=0eb627d4-14db-4231-8915-fcfcd24ebdff Stand Off: Murder capital of southern Alberta Suzanne Wilton Calgary Herald April 18, 2004 Under the open sky on the windswept prairie of the Blood Tribe reserve, being under 25 can be hazardous to the health. Stand Off residents are dying violently in staggering numbers -- 18 times the national average. The vast majority are youths, but the impersonal statistics don't tell the stories of lives lost. - Casey First Charger, 23, a hereditary chief and native drummer, was found dead last Monday. His body was discovered in a coulee in Stand Off, the main townsite on the sprawling 180,000-hectare Blood Tribe reserve, located 200 kilometres south of Calgary. - Ian Black Plume, 17, was fatally stabbed in the chest in February during a backyard brawl. - Blake Bird, 18, a budding basketball star, was found dead in a ditch in Stand Off last September. His suspected killer is just 13. - Bobby Calvin Holy Singer, 24, was killed last August in Moses Lake, a reserve community near Cardston. And there are others, slightly older but nonetheless dead. They were in their early 30s. "Kids are almost dying monthly on the reserve," says Elvis Shot On Both Sides, First Charger's father. "That's way too many." The violence has left native leaders and residents alike with a nagging question, one that has perplexed them for years: what's wrong at the Blood Reserve? "It's a bad place," Casey Vielle, 32, says simply. "It's getting to be the killer capital of southern Alberta." Vielle, a member of the Blood Tribe, a band of Blackfoot Indians also known as the Kainai, and others worry about the increasingly violent underbelly that permeates life on the reserve. On this day, Vielle is picking up a cheque and hitchhiking back to Fort Macleod, where he intends to get a room at the Queen's Hotel and continue a drinking binge. "It's too dangerous to drink on the reserve," he adds. "There are too many deaths." Besides alcohol, the only obvious links between the murders are the victims' bloodline and their home, Canada's largest reserve, situated only a few dozen kilometres from the Rocky Mountains. If the much-touted Alberta Advantage draws people from across Canada to a land of economic opportunity, this could be the epitome of the Alberta disadvantage, a Third World in our own backyard. It's a place of contrasting beauty, with 40 per cent unemployment, high welfare rates and less than 1,500 homes for its 9,000 residents. Archeological findings place First Nations people here for at least 6, 000 years. In days past, the Bloods were caretakers of these lands, which they roamed with the buffalo that sustained them. They shared the lands with their partner nations -- Siksika to the north, the Piikani to the west and the Ampakapi Piikani to the south. The Blackfoot Confederacy stood strong and defended its territory for centuries. Today, the Kainai still defend their borders, albeit with fences around the boundaries set out by treaties. They also battle an enemy within -- the violence that's earning the reserve distinction as a place with one the highest murder rates in Canada. Of any First Nation, the Blood have the greatest potential for success. The reserve boasts more viable farmland than all reserves in Saskatchewan put together. However, its vast size and population are also barriers to ending the despair. In 2003, the Blood Tribe received more than $80 million in federal funds, some $8,369 per person. By comparison, the $13.5 million given to the Tsuu T'ina Nation near Calgary translates into $9,080 per capita. The Blood, meantime, owe Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. $18 million in bad debts. Although the Blood Tribe receives substantially more federal funds, its dollars are also more stretched. For example, there are higher infrastructure costs for things such as roads and housing because of the vast area to be serviced. There are simply greater numbers of people here, and more jobs and programs needed than can be easily created. Like other reserves, the Blood see education as a key to success. But that, too, poses greater challenges for similar reasons, says Chief Chris Shade. There's only enough funding for 400 applicants for post-secondary funding, half as many as who apply. Those who have it use their higher education to improve life on the reserve, and want to build a better future. That future, however, appears to be a long way off. To an outsider, visiting Stand Off is like stepping off an airplane into a developing country, where encouraging signs of improvement contrast with squalid conditions. An elementary school is under construction and there are plans to boost agri-business and generate wind power. Eighteen new homes were built in Stand Off last year, and more are planned for 2004. Yet the golden horizon is marred by the pitiful landscape of a suburban- style housing development in the middle of the bald prairie. Beyond a row of run-down mobile homes are cul-de-sacs of boxy houses left to ruin. Some have plywood for windows. Most have dirt for front yards. Outside one residence, old mattresses are piled, left to rot amidst abandoned cars. Litter is blown against fences, and spreads across the coulees like a patchwork quilt. The faces of tiny children, curious about the strangers, appear from behind broken windows. There is irony in a "Crime Prevention Activities" board that sits out front an administration building -- it's blank. Interest in initiatives to curb crime has waned. A curfew ordering underage kids indoors after 10 p.m. isn't enforced. Townsite volunteer foot patrols have dwindled. There's little incentive for residents to get involved. Bootlegging carries a fine of $100 and the penalty for committing murder seems only slightly worse. Bobby Calvin Holy Singer's killer is about to be released. He will have spent just 18 months behind bars for a manslaughter conviction. "On this reserve, you can kill someone and get away with murder," Vielle says of the seemingly light jail sentences. Although its youths are most at risk, they are also the Blood reserve's greatest hope. It's spring break, and some teens find productive things to do. One group gathers at a local field to play baseball. The Youth Council is making efforts to offer such activities. Sixteen-year-old Mitch Creighton plays street hockey with his cousin, uninterested in mixing with other kids his age. "There's certain groups of kids who think it's cool to be bad," said Creighton. A boy with dreams of playing professional hockey, Creighton and others like him want to steer clear of trouble. "I'm trying to stay away from the violence, but it's hard because it's all around you." Near his home is a white cross planted next to a culvert and topped with a dirty ball cap and a Los Angeles Lakers jersey. It marks the spot where 18-year-old Blake Bird was found dead. "It feels weird to walk by it," says Creighton. "That's why I don't really walk by anymore." Others avoid walking around town at all, especially at night. There's talk that youths have formed gangs, allegedly wearing red and blue to signify allegiances. Police acknowledge they're hearing these things, too. It surfaced during the latest murder investigation, although Chief Alf Rudd says gang violence wasn't a motivating factor. Still, it's a new phenomenon that has them concerned. "We're going to look into it. Certainly we'll shine a different light on future situations," says the former Mountie. A police initiative launched in January aims to use old native ways to turn around Stand Off's troubled people. Three elders are now patrolling with police, and counselling those in conflict with the law. Its hoped other Blood Tribe members will mirror their efforts. "We're peacemakers, I guess," says elder Martin Eagle Child, whose gentle eyes reveal their years of wisdom. Eagle Child and the other elders want to protect the children like the fierce Blackfoot warriors once did the land they roamed side-by-side with the buffalo. "We know how to survive," adds Bruce Wolf Child. "Us Indian people, we always have faith and hope. We won't give up." swilton@theherald.canwest.com Copyright c. 2004 The Calgary Herald. --------- "RE: Young Brazilian Indians find Suicide only Way Out" --------- Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 08:08:37 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="SUICIDE" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9450-2004Apr13.html Young Brazilian Indians Find Suicide Only Way Out By Jon Jeter Washington Post Foreign Service April 14, 2004 DOURADOS, Brazil - Later, Jaqueline Arevalo's grandfather would remember how content she was. He said he had not seen her so demonstrably happy in months. She chased playfully after her baby brother, hummed while washing the dishes, chatted about having lunch with the family later that day. And then shortly before noon one day last month, Jaqueline climbed onto her bed, tied one end of a red, nylon cord around a wooden ceiling beam and the other around her neck, and jumped. She was 13, a quiet girl with waist-length hair and diamond-black eyes who gave up on her life before she had even shed her baby fat. Hers was the third suicide this year on this reservation of 4,500 Kaiowa Indians. All of them were teenagers, and were guns and not garrotes the weapon of choice in these parts, almost everyone here says the number would be far higher. The day after Jaqueline's death, her 17-year-old boyfriend tried unsuccessfully to kill himself. Her 14-year-old sister had tried a week earlier. "It is a curse to have to cut your children down," said Luciano Arevalo, Jaqueline's uncle and head of the Bororo reservation here. "We are living in a time of a great plague." Here on the plains of central Brazil, suicide bewitches the young and the poor, who see in the lives that stretch ahead of them nothing but grief and unbearable pain. According to news reports, more than 300 of the 30,000 Kaiowa Indians who live here in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul have taken their own lives since 1995; 54 did so last year alone, corresponding to a rate of 180 per 100,000. Brazil's death rate is 6.5 per 100,000, according to the World Health Organization. The Kaiowa often attribute the suicides to a dark magic, a spell that finds its voice in a rustling wind that counts off the days you have to live. But tribal leaders, anthropologists, police and a broad collection of experts say that this reservation and others owe their despair to the perfect noose formed by landlessness, displacement and unrelenting poverty. With a population of 180 million people and an area larger than the contiguous United States, Brazil has in its postwar development efforts squeezed its 300,000 native people into smaller and smaller reserves. The 30,000 Kaiowa who live in Mato Grosso do Sul occupy slightly more than 100,000 acres of arable land - far too little, on average, for even viable smallholder farms. Unable to live off the soil, the traditionally agrarian Kaiowa work at the alcohol distilleries and sugar cane refineries that line the state's two-lane highways like grazing elephants. It is backbreaking work that pays little and requires workers - usually teenage boys and young men - to leave the reservation for months at a time, living in hostels far from home and from everything they know. For much of the year, women greatly outnumber men on the reservations, straining relationships, budgets and families that are historically close- -knit, officials, journalists and residents said. Men find it hard to adjust, shuttling between two demanding, very different worlds. The unemployment rate on the reservation is more than 60 percent, said Luciano Arevalo. Drug and alcohol abuse is rampant and malnutrition common, said Andrea Depieri, a local police officer. Often left behind, adolescent girls and young women from the reservation have increasingly turned to prostitution to support themselves or their families, she said. "The reservations are like a vacuum," she said, "and the only thing that fills it is deprivation. People are just lost." Two years ago police discovered a suicide note written in the sand near the feet of a 15-year-old boy who worked in an alcohol distillery. It read simply: "There is no place for me." Friends and families say that Jaqueline did not leave a suicide note. But they trace the disintegration of her young life back to the breakup with her boyfriend, Waldir Ferreira, three months ago. With no one in her immediate family holding down a full-time job, she moved in with her boyfriend and his family in August of last year. They divided Ferreira's $65 monthly paycheck among the nine of them. When he returned from a two-month stint working at a sugar cane refinery, he accused her of dating another youth while he was away. They argued over money. Jaqueline moved in with an aunt. "I was far away," Ferreira said. "When I came home I heard things from a cousin and she got mad that I listened to him instead of her." Her grandfather, Maximo Arevalo, said Jaqueline told relatives that Ferreira had kicked her out of his parents' home following a squabble over $60 he had given her for food and clothes. "His family was complaining that he was giving too much money to her and not enough to them," Arevalo said. "Everyone could see she was unhappy. She had stopped going to school and she complained to her mother that she didn't have money, that she wanted money to help her family buy food and clothes for herself. It is very difficult here for young people." Antonio Brand, a history professor at Dom Bosco Catholic University in nearby Campo Grande, said efforts to redistribute land to Brazil's indigenous people have proceeded slowly. Since 1988, Brand said, federal laws have allowed indigenous groups to reclaim land if they can prove that it was formerly occupied by native peoples. But wealthy landowners have challenged their claims in court. In 16 years, indigenous groups have won control of about 42,000 acres of territory across the nation, he said. In December, hundreds of Guarani Indians seized portions of 15 farms in the southern portion of this state - posting signs that read "Our Place" - before government negotiators intervened and reached a compromise for the squatters to vacate 12 of the farms. And last year, three Kaiowa Indians threatened suicide if the government did not accelerate the redistribution of land to families on their reservation. The men later hanged themselves simultaneously. "There is this tragic trajectory that begins with the loss of land," Brand said. "And then the physical space and the metaphysical space become quite intertwined. Without their land, where can the indigenous people of Brazil find their space in the world? Certainly not as manual laborers working far from home for very little pay in a refinery. There's no future. People lose themselves in alcohol and in drugs. "Then they go get a rope." A recent memorial service for Jaqueline at a schoolhouse here quickly turned into a political rally, with angry Kaiowa speakers pleading with a contingent of police officers in attendance for social and economic reforms. "We need jobs. We need wages," Maximo Arevalo told an audience of more than 200 people. "This is why our children are committing suicide." For more than 50 years, the Argentine-owned Mate Laranjeiras company leased nearly 15 million acres of land in Mato Grosso do Sul to make the herbal tea that is popular in neighboring Argentina. When the company's lease expired in the 1940s, Brazil's president at the time, the nationalist Getulio Vargas, decided to redistribute the land to white settlers from the northeastern part of the country. Settlers and wealthy landowners continued their encroachment onto Indian lands until the 1988 Brazilian constitution expanded land rights for the country's native people, who make up less than 1 percent of the country's population. But Indian efforts to reclaim lost land have resulted in armed standoffs between militias hired by landowners and throngs of Indian protesters, particularly since December. The ebb and flow of suicides here in this state coincides with the frustration of the Kaiowa's efforts to reclaim land, said Josandro Depieri, a local journalist who estimates that he has covered at least 150 suicides in and around the Bororo reservation over the past 12 years. "It's like watching a genocide," Depieri said. "And until there is some real land reform here, the Kaiowa will continue to cut their children down from trees. There are these storms raging inside the young people, and it only subsides in the hours before they decide to take their lives. Their families always say that there was this calm, this peacefulness in them just before they kill themselves." Waldir Ferreira's father cut him down from a tree when he discovered the 17-year-old hanging the day after Jaqueline's death. The fall saved his life but broke his left leg. "I don't remember it," Ferreira said as he sat with his leg in a cast in front of his family's home. "I just remember that I was upset after Jackie's wake and someone gave me something to drink to calm me down." Jaqueline, he said, was a level-headed girl who rarely lost her temper and loved children. He was swimming in a pond when she caught his eye, and he caught hers. The two flirted. She moved in two months later, a common arrangement on the reservations, where teenagers are recognized as adults. Jaqueline, Ferreira said, was driven to suicide by evil spells cast on her by women in the neighborhood who were envious of her. Similarly, he said, someone must have cast a spell on him, but he was fortunate enough to survive it. "I am going to church tomorrow so that I can rid myself of this curse," he said. He did all he could for Jaqueline, he said. But it was difficult trying to support her, his parents and six siblings on his meager salary. He had never been away from the reservation until he went to work cutting sugar cane at the refinery two years ago. "It's just so far away," he said of his job at a mill nearly 90 miles away. The hard work broke his body. The separation from his family "broke my spirit," he said. But once he cleanses himself of his curse, and his leg heals, he said, he plans to search for another job, this time closer to home. "I'm not going to try to kill myself again," he said. "You'll see. I am just going to work hard, harder than I did before. I'm going to find a way for my family to get out of this situation. "Anything to end this suffering." Copyright c. 2004 The Washington Post Company --------- "RE: No charges in Boys' Deaths" --------- Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 08:40:53 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="INVESTIGATION HALTED" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.billingsgazette.com/~/04/15/build/state/70-boys-deaths.inc No charges in boys' deaths Associated Press April 15, 2004 POLSON - The investigation into the liquor deaths of two Ronan children has been closed after failing to produce enough evidence to charge anyone, the Lake County Sheriff's Department said Wednesday. The department investigated suspicions that an adult gave Justin Benoist and Frankie Nicolai III, both 11, the vodka they drank. But almost from the time their intoxicated bodies were found in a Ronan field March 1, there were claims the boys may have stolen the liquor from area homes. "We cannot disprove that at this point," said Jay Doyle, a detective in the sheriff's department. Doyle said the investigation will reopen if new information warrants. Alcohol poisoning killed Frankie, whose blood-alcohol level was 0.50 percent, more than six times the drunken-driving threshold in Montana. Justin, whose blood alcohol was 0.20 percent, died from a combination of alcohol poisoning and hypothermia. The deaths of the sixth-graders stunned people in Lake County and beyond, raising questions not only about the extent of underage drinking, but on the extent of society's responsibility for their deaths. The boys went missing after they skipped afternoon classes at Ronan Middle School on Feb. 27, a Friday. Another boy found their bodies the following Monday. Doyle said last month that disgust over the tragedies led a number of people to call authorities about possible sources of the alcohol. Justin and Frankie were members of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, which on the day of the boy's funeral issued a statement promising a "thorough internal review of all aspects of this tragic loss." A tribal employee said Wednesday that only Salish-Kootenai Chairman D. Fred Matt could comment on the status of that review, and he was out of his office for the day. Copyright c. 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. Copyright c. The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises. --------- "RE: Official calls Tribal Jail conditions 'appalling'" --------- Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 08:33:11 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="TRIBAL JAILS" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2004/04/19/news/mtregional/znews01.txt Little has changed in decaying Indian jails By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian April 19, 2004 BROWNING - The wafer-thin pillow on K.C. Sherwood's bunk sits perched just a whiff away from a grimy toilet so soiled and befouled it looks like a reject from an Appalachian outhouse. Every night, for the past 30 nights, Sherwood has laid his head down on that pillow and listened to the wet gurgle of the leaking commode. He has 120 more nights to go. "It leaks bad," he said, "and when you flush, you get a real bad smell up out of the sink." The sink, like much else in the Browning jail, doesn't work real well. In fact, of the six sinks in the cellblock, only one is working, and it's not Sherwood's. "The showers are all plugged up," he said, "and we ain't had no hot water for three weeks." As he talks, Sherwood, a thin and smooth-skinned young man who grew up here on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, leans casually on a metal conduit pipe that emerges from the wall of his cell. When he shifts his weight, the pipe gives way with a lurch, pulling several inches out of the concrete. "Man, it's all coming apart," he said, the capped outlet dangling in his hand. "There's spiders coming out of the cracks in the wall." "But you should've seen it before," another inmate is quick to add. "It was really run down. It's a lot better than it was." Better indeed. These days, Sherwood's toilet actually flushes. The toilet flushes in no small part because Ed Naranjo made sure some improvements happened at the Browning jail last summer. There were new locks, Naranjo said, new paint, new bunks and new security cameras. Crews patched the plumbing, and poured acid on the concrete floors to eat away the choking stench of urine and feces. "Mostly though, it was just cosmetic," Naranjo said. "We didn't really make much of a dent in the infrastructure needs." Naranjo heads regional law enforcement for the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, a beat that includes Indian jails spread across six states. In early March, he visited Browning's jail, which, like other reservation jails, houses people arrested on misdemeanors, with no sentence longer than one year. These are, for the most part, petty criminals, jailed for drunkenness or creating a public disturbance or, in the worst cases, minor assault. Over the past three decades, Naranjo said, he's watched as jails all across Indian Country have slowly crumbled down around these inmates. "I've seen a lot of reservation jails," Naranjo said. "The conditions are just appalling. I mean, Jesus, these facilities are pathetic. If they were anywhere else but on a reservation, they'd have been shut down a long time ago." As if to prove Naranjo's point, David Spotted Eagle walks to the back door of the Browning jail and leans against the jamb. The entire door - frame and all - slides a good 4 inches out into the cold March morning. Spotted Eagle, who runs the jail and is Browning's chief of police, has an idea for how to fix up the facility. "It was built in 1968," he said. "I'd tear it down and build a new one." It's an idea echoed by jailers throughout Indian Country. "These jails are so old and broken down," Naranjo said, "it should be criminal to house people in these conditions." Not to mention to ask people to work in these conditions. Last summer, Spotted Eagle said, the front office temperature hit 118 degrees. "There are absolutely safety issues related to facility conditions," said Darren Cruzan, chief of police on the Crow Indian Reservation near Billings. "We put our people at risk every day when we send them to work in these jails." That Indian jails are substandard by any measure is not news. "We have been underfunded and not treated equally with off-reservation jails," said Bill McClure, acting deputy director for the BIA. "We are generally, across the board, lacking resources." McClure, who until recently was BIA's program manager for detention, said reviews of Indian jails show 50 percent are in "poor" condition, 25 percent in "fair" condition, and 25 percent in "good" condition. Back in 1998, Attorney General Janet Reno told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee that "tribal law enforcement agencies are generally understaffed and underfunded, lacking uniformed police, criminal investigators, and detention staff and facilities, as well as basic communications and intelligence gathering technology." Indian jails, Reno said, "are severely inadequate and antiquated. Most Indian Country jails are in such poor condition that they are out of compliance with contemporary building codes and professional jail standards." It was the job of Congress, she said, to meet its obligations to Indian Country. But three years later, in 2001, not much had changed. A Department of Justice report from August of that year showed that more than half of the nation's 69 reservation jails were operating at more than 100 percent above capacity. One in six were holding more than twice their capacity. All but two were determined to be in need of more training for jailers, and all but three needed more staff. (Keeping qualified staff is tough. Spotted Eagle said Browning had eight chiefs of police between 1993 and 1999. The reason, he said - low pay and bad working conditions.) Those who thought the Justice Department report might force change were disappointed. The jails, which serve 55 tribes in 19 states, were, again, not much better a year after that report. A 2002 follow-up by the Department of Justice showed the Crow jail - built to hold 14 prisoners - held 60 on the day officials checked, or 429 percent of capacity. The Northern Cheyenne jail, also near Billings, was at 232 percent of capacity. The Browning jail was at 160 percent, Montana's Fort Peck jail at 146 percent, and the Fort Belknap jail at 148 percent. (According to Naranjo the jail on the Flathead Indian Reservation is not under regional BIA control and the last time he visited, it was in pretty good condition.) Nationwide, Indian jails were at an average 126 percent of capacity. The only real difference, Naranjo said, was that the jails were now a year older. The following year, in 2003, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights produced a report titled "A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country." The report concluded "correctional facilities in Indian Country are also more overcrowded than even the most crowded state and federal prisons... Native American law enforcement funding increased almost 85 percent between 1998 and 2003, but the amount allocated was so small to begin with that its proportion to the department's total budget hardly changed." Naranjo can relate. "We've known about this for years," he said. "Every one knows we need more money for Indian jails. But at some point, the needs get to be so great that they just become overwhelming. The people in Washington, D.C., don't want to hear about it." The Blackfeet Tribal Council actually has a tape recording of a BIA official promising money for a new jail, but according to Naranjo, "there is no money. There's not going to be any money. The reality is, we need to accept that - but it's not acceptable. The funding level is a joke." What's not a joke is Cruzan's story about the broken boiler at the Crow jail. For years, he said, the 30-year-old boiler sputtered along, sometimes making hot water, sometimes not. When he finally nailed down the cash to replace it, there wasn't enough money to also replace the 30-year-old pipes. The new boiler, he said, simply blew holes in the old pipes. Then, when he fixed the pipes, the pressure blew out the cooling system. "The days of being able to repair the problems are gone," Cruzan said. "There's just so many Band-Aids you can put on." Which is why he, for one, finally said enough is enough. There was no ventilation at the Crow jail, he said, no bunks to sleep in. "It stank to high heck," and inmates vied for kitchen duty so they could huddle around the gas range to get a bit of warmth in the winter. Finally, the day he watched inmates "showering" by sitting on a concrete floor and pouring pitchers of water over their heads, with a bank of 220- volt outlets right at hand, Cruzan shut it down. "I looked at it and thought, 'I wouldn't put my family members in here, and I'm not putting my neighbors in here anymore, either.' " Last July, Cruzan closed the doors at the Crow jail and began shipping inmates to Bighorn County Jail and the Northern Cheyenne reservation jail. Farming out inmates cost $40 a day per bed, or about $70,000 for the three months the Crow jail remained shuttered. "It's good enough that we can use it," he said of the emergency fix, "but it's still unacceptable by any reasonable standard." Of course, the standards in Indian Country are not the standards of mainstream America. The level of poverty and joblessness and abuse and violence that are the norm on reservations would not be accepted in mainstream America, Cruzan said. "You can't compare the Browning jail to jails off the reservation," Spotted Eagle said. "This place is like the 19th century." But Indian inmates, he said, don't have a very powerful lobby. Enter Naranjo, who hopes to fix up more than just the Browning jail, and hopes those fixes will be more than cosmetic. With a plan to retire tucked safely under his belt, Ed Naranjo has started making waves at the BIA. "I would come back from seeing these jails and say, 'How can we put our people in these conditions?' " he said. "Finally, we did the video." "The video," as it is known from Browning to Washington, D.C., is a 15- minute production orchestrated by Naranjo detailing conditions at Montana's Indian jails. It is brutally visual, not shrinking from adverse conditions faced by inmates and jailers alike, and it has stirred a hornet's nest of activity at the highest levels of government. But the most controversial part of the video might prove to be its audience. Naranjo, "sick of no action on these things," sent the video straight over the heads of his bosses, straight to the BIA chiefs in Washington, D.C. "Oh yeah," he said. "A lot of people are pretty mad at me right now." Others, however, are quietly cheering him on. The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, for one, has taken up Naranjo's cause. The group - which represents more than 20,000 federal law enforcement officers - watched the video and then fired letters to Montana's congressmen last September, raising concerns about "the poor condition of jails on our Indian reservations." The letter calls conditions "disturbing," and notes that "modern safety and security measures found in other jails are simply not present in Indian country." The result, they told Montana's federal lawmakers, was that "the situation has deteriorated to the point where it is unsafe for the officers in these jails." The BIA's acting deputy director doesn't argue. "If you don't have appropriate staffing and adequate facilities, then there are safety concerns," McClure said. The Montana chapter of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association has placed reservation jail conditions at the top of its priority list, which is exactly the kind of pressure Naranjo hoped for when he produced the video. And the pressure seems to be working. Five months after the officers association launched its letter to Congress, a Department of Interior memo announced that "Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs David Anderson expressed his displeasure with the current reported conditions" in Indian jails. Anderson's response was to create a new task force to identify problems and propose solutions. In addition, a BIA detention office will be formed, taking the jailers' task out of the hands of local chiefs of police and putting it on the desk of detention specialists. "It's a chance to make some headway," McClure said. The plan, he said, is to tackle problems at the 50 percent of reservation jails categorized as "poor." Naranjo, however, will believe it when he sees it. "I've been in BIA law enforcement for 30 years," he said, "and I've seen task forces come and go over and over." This latest, Naranjo predicts, "is another knee-jerk reaction that will have no real impact. The real question is, what can the task force do? I'm afraid it's just a stopgap to please the higher-ups, make it look like we're doing something." He hopes he's wrong, he said, but after decades of failed promises, he feels his pessimism is justified. The first step toward real change, Naranjo said, will come when the money comes, and only the political will of Congress can swing that trick. "Is there the money to fix these jails?" McClure asked. "That's what we're still looking for. A lot of these buildings are in need of replacement," and right now, he admits, "there's no construction money on the table." But that's not what Fred Guardipee heard a handful of years back when the BIA was promising Browning a new jail. Back then, he said, the check was in the mail. Guardipee is a member of the Blackfeet Tribal Council and a representative of the local Law and Order Committee. He also has worked in the jail, and remembers well the broken plumbing, poor ventilation, cramped quarters and "the smells that stay with you." He also remembers when Indian Health Services condemned the building. And when the state of Montana condemned it. And when the BIA condemned it. "But what could you do?" he asks. "That's the only facility we have." Guardipee also remembers the BIA promising a new jail. But that was back when the agency kept a priority list for fixing Indian jails. Called the "PONI" list, the BIA's Planning of New Institutions program put Browning in the No. 2 slot for a new jail. But the year before it was to be built, the BIA handed over jail construction to the Department of Justice, and the PONI list disappeared. The Justice Department made its own list, Naranjo said, and for whatever reason, Browning was not on it. Which has left Guardipee looking for other answers. Poverty is so grinding on his reservation that there is no hope of funding a jail through a local tax levy. And the tribe does not have the spare cash on hand to build its own facility, he said. And so he's thinking they might add a "misdemeanor wing" onto the private prison in Shelby, where felons are housed for a profit. Or perhaps the tribe could get into the private prison business itself. Or perhaps it could pay rent to house inmates in nearby off-reservation jails. Or perhaps a bunch of tribes could pool their money and build a shared jail, located at a site roughly equidistant from each reservation. "We've been meeting with financial institutions," he said, but they're still banking on the federal government to come through, because the feds have "a historic trust obligation to take care of these things." "We need to lobby Congress," Guardipee concludes. Congress, however, has not proved quick to act when it comes to Indian issues, especially Indian jails, Naranjo said. "I don't know what it's going to take to get their attention," he said of federal lawmakers. "They should be ashamed and embarrassed to have people housed like this right here in their state." Sure enough, in recent months, with "the video" fueling the fire, things have been heating up at the Capitol. In September, Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., wrote to the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, asking for more information about conditions at Indian jails and directing the group to a staffer who would head any inquiry. And Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., has been talking with federal law enforcement agencies about what's broken and how best to fix it. "He's currently researching ways we can best serve the communities and the tribes," said Burns' spokesman J.P. Donovan. Serving the tribes means involving the tribes, something Jim Foley says is critical to resolving the Indian jail problems. Foley is Montana chief of staff for Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and says the past few months have ushered in an unprecedented effort to bring all the parties to the table. Meetings have convened, bringing together prison wardens, federal agencies, congressional members, state lawmakers and, most importantly, the tribes. "We intend to continue the discussions with each of the reservations and the elected tribal councils," Foley said, until a solution is found. The process has begun, he said, and is gaining momentum, as the issue floats to the surface and the government begins to work with the tribes to prioritize projects and find funding. "I think that there's positive progress being made because everybody's working together," he said. But again, Naranjo - whose moviemaking sparked the frenzy of interest - will believe it when he sees it. "The proof of their interest will be measured by their actions," he said. "It's that simple. These jails are appalling. We shouldn't have to lobby to get action on something so obvious." The only lobby Sam Eeroche is worried about is the small front lobby of the Browning jail. For five years, Eeroche has been the maintenance man at the jail, and if it were up to him he'd worry less about money for a jail and more about money for his people. "The problem isn't the jail," he said. "The problem is jobs. Without jobs, you get poverty, desperation. That leads to more crime, and the jail gets overcrowded and it starts to wear out faster." From his post near the top of the BIA, Bill McClure tends to agree with the maintenance man. A reservation town with a good alcohol and drug rehabilitation center, he said, is a town with less pressure on its jail. A town with jobs is a town with a whole lot fewer social problems. "What you really need is to not have the jail be the primary stopping place for everyone who has a social issue," he said. "What you need to do is address the overall lack of community resources." Again, the maintenance man and the BIA boss agree. "This jail is falling apart," Eeroche said as he worked to hang a new security door, "but so is the whole town. We need a way to make a living, not just a new jail." But dealing with systemic reservation poverty, obviously, is a much bigger bite for the feds to chew. Certainly, the unmet needs in Indian Country's jails and schools and hospitals and housing departments all can be traced back to joblessness and poverty, but "we don't always know how to deal with the whole poverty issue," Naranjo said. "We do know how to build a jail." But he still doesn't know how to get Congress to fund building new jails. The flagship jail in Indian County is on Colorado's Ute Mountain Reservation, with brand-new beds for 80 adults and 40 juveniles. It was built, Naranjo said, only after the old jail became the center of a lawsuit charging inhumane treatment of inmates. "Inhumane" is a powerful word, he admits, but if the cell fits, wear it. Ask jailers in Indian Country to pick some words to describe reservation jails and they come up with "in desperate need," "disgraceful," "sad." But before long, it always comes back to that word that caught the Colorado court's attention. "It's inhumane," said Browning's Spotted Bear. "They're worse than dog kennels." At least dog kennels have running water. But at these facilities, jailers tell tales of roofs falling in, of broken security cameras, of cells with no fresh air ventilation and no fire sprinklers. They tell about the reservation jail where dust blows in through the cell walls every time a truck passes by, about the jail where the solution to toxic Freon leaking into a cell was to simply get a bigger bucket. The jails are time bombs, Naranjo said, and it's only a matter of time before crumbling facilities lead to a jailer being badly hurt. Already, McClure said, there have been assaults against jailers that were complicated by poor jail design and dilapidated conditions. "Detention facilities in Indian County are back two centuries," Browning's Spotted Eagle said. "Personally, I don't see it changing any time soon. Until we get some folks out here from D.C., maybe put them in the jail for a while to see how it is, then I think it's going to continue on like this." Reporter Michael Jamison can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at mjamison@missoulian.com Copyright c. 2004 Missoulian. --------- "RE: Local Inmates in a sweat" --------- Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 08:33:11 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="INMATE SWEAT LODGE" http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=85745 Local inmates in a sweat By JAKE BACON Sun Chief Photographer April 18, 2004 Every Wednesday morning the chaplain at the Coconino County Jail leads a dawn escape from the jail. Generally, he takes four or five men from their cells each time. The prisoners don't go over the razor-wire fences or tunnel under the reinforced concrete walls. Instead, they file into a fenced side yard of the jail and enter a sweat lodge to pray, meditate and seek some inner peace from the daily turmoil of incarceration. Leaving behind the drab concrete and steel, the men work under an indigo sky to build a huge fire to heat rocks so that they glow orange. Once the task is complete, they step into a sweat lodge built of bent willow and rough green blankets and sit on a floor of fine sand. As the door to the lodge closes and plunges the men into blackness their escape, although only temporary, is complete. Participating in the lodge is a religious right granted to the Native American inmates incarcerated in Arizona prisons and jails by a federal law passed in 1985. Recently, Chaplain Mike Hjalmarson allowed me to photograph and participate in the ceremony. The sweat lodge at the jail in Flagstaff is run by the inmates using materials that have been donated. The chaplain brings in sage that he collects for the inmates to use in the ceremony. The wood to heat the rocks comes from local thinning projects. The lodge consists of a 10-foot-wide dome made of bent willow branches covered with heavy blankets and canvas. Its door faces east towards the rising sun and at its center is a pit to hold the rocks heated in the fire that is built next to the lodge. Michael Doss, a member of the Kickapoo tribe from Wisconsin, led the ceremony that I attended recently. He described the lodge built on the jail grounds as representing Mother Earth's womb. "We go in there and get cleansed and come out reborn." Doss said. The ceremony consists of four rounds of prayer. Participants enter the lodge and walk clockwise around the center pit before taking a seat on a sheet facing the fire. Heated rocks are carried to the pit and the door is lowered. The darkness inside the lodge is complete as Doss begins the prayers. Each round is named and serves a different purpose. The first is called the children's blessing round. This is followed by the women's round, the medicine pipe round and finally the warrior round. With each round, more rocks are transferred from the fire pit to the lodge. As the doorway closed on the children's round there were four rocks in the pit at the center of the lodge. The heat came off in gentle waves, and sitting wearing only shorts it was pleasantly warming compared to the morning chill outside the lodge. As Doss prayed, a sharp hiss drowned out the sound as he used a sprig of sage brush to throw water onto the rocks. A wave of heat bearing the scent of the sage came out of the pit and surrounded me as I sat wondering what I had gotten into. As the prayers continued more water was thrown on the rocks. The heat was just getting to the unbearable level when the first round ended and the door was pulled open from the outside, letting in a rush of cold air. After a five-minute break, it was time to re-enter the lodge for Round 2. Another group of rocks was added to the pile in the pit. As the door closed the temperature inside the lodge was close to the level it had been just before the end of the first round and we were only getting started. At the end of the second round I decided that a third round wasn't an option. By the end of the fourth round the men were on their hands and knees as they crawled out and collapsed on the floor. As the last wisps of smoke trailed out of the fire pit the men left the lodge, formed a loose line and walked back into the concrete and steel of the jail. After the ceremony, it looked as if there was a slight spring to the men's step as they walked back to their cells -- after all, another escape from the jail was scheduled in two weeks Copyright c. 2004 Arizona Daily Sun. --------- "RE: Native Prisoner" --------- Date: Mon, April 19 2004 10:53:36 -0700 From: Janet Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - The following email received by Gary this week printed with permission: Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 07:38:32 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Hyde Subj: Ron Red Bear >To: gars@nanews.org I am writing about an article I ran across while looking for someone I knew at clubfed, Ron Red Bear. His wife had sent a piece written by him in to you. I am curious as to why he is still in. He was 16 yrs old when he came in on the bus with me to FCI Englewood. Incarcerated under the fed juvenile act. That was 25 yrs ago. Typically, he should have been out when he was 21 or so. But as he pointed out, the feds have no jurisdiction to hold him under that law per the Larimie treaty. Why isn't someone from his nation doing something? Why aren't they filing a habeas corpus to get him physically back on the reservation? It is shameful what the government has done to him, but even more shameful his brothers aren't doing something to help him. regards, Mike Hyde =================================== Supreme Court Rejects Indian Activist Peltier's Appeal - Yahoo News Mon Apr 19,10:12 AM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) rejected on Monday an appeal seeking parole for American Indian activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted for the 1975 killings of two FBI (news - web sites) agents. Without any comment, the justices let stand a U.S. appeals court ruling that denied Peltier's bid for a parole hearing and for release from prison. Peltier, whose case has received international attention, has been in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, serving two consecutive life sentences for the slayings of the agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. read the complete article at: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040419/ts_nm/court_peltier_dc -=-=-=- Supreme Court allows federal prosecution after tribal conviction - Bismarck Tribunec WASHINGTON - The federal government may bring its own, separate case against an Indian man convicted in a tribal court of assaulting a police officer, the Supreme Court ruled Monday. The 7-2 ruling reversed a lower court's holding that the separate prosecutions violated the Constitution's guarantee against double jeopardy. The Spirit Lake Tribe of North Dakota acted as an independent sovereign in the prosecution of Billy Jo Lara, a member of another tribe who was visiting the Spirit Lake reservation, the majority found. Because the Spirit Lake tribe was not acting as a surrogate for the federal government, the federal government may still bring its own case against Lara for committing a federal crime, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined the majority. read the complete article at: http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2004/04/20/news/update/upd6.txt -=-=-=- Tribal court rights clarified - Press-Telegram April 20, 2004 - WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that American Indian tribes have the authority to prosecute members of other tribes for crimes committed on their reservations. Because tribes act as independent sovereign nations in such prosecutions, the court said, ordinary principles of double jeopardy do not apply and do not bar the federal government from bringing a subsequent prosecution for the same offense. The 7-2 decision was welcomed by American Indian tribes, which under a 1990 Supreme Court decision had lost their authority to enforce their criminal laws against members of other tribes. Congress promptly amended the Indian Civil Rights Act to restore the right to prosecute nonmembers. The case on Monday required the Supreme Court to decide both the nature and the validity of the congressional action. read the complete article at: http://www.p