From gars@speakeasy.org Fri May 7 00:09:36 2004 Date: Tue, 04 May 2004 16:54:37 -0700 From: Gary Night Owl To: Internet Recipients of Wotanging Ikche Subject: Wotanging Ikche--nanews12.019 _ __ _____ __ _ __ ___ ____ _ __ ___ ' ) / / ') / / ) ' ) ) / ) / ' ) ) / ) / / / / / / /--/ / / / ___ / / / / ___ (_(_/ (__/ ( / (_ / (_ (___/ '__/_ / (_ (___/ ' ____ _ , ___ _ , ___ / ' ) / / ) ' ) / / ' VOLUME 12, ISSUE 019 / /-< / /--/ /-- __/_ / ) (___/ / ( (___, 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 May 8, 2004 Hopi hakitonmuyaw/waiting moon Mohawk onerahtohko:wa/time of big leaf 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; News and Information Distribution, Iron Natives, Indian Heritage-L and First Nations Mailing Lists; 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 do not want to settle down in the houses you would build for us. I love to roam over the wild prairie. There I am free and happy. When we sit down, we grow pale and die." __ Chief White Bear, Kiowa +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ | 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! If you can assist these families in finding and reuniting with their son and daughter, please do. There are a lot of preditors on the street prowling for just such children. http://www.indianz.com/News/archive/001998.asp Families seek help in locating missing Native teens Friday, April 30, 2004 Two Native teens from the same First Nations reserve in Manitoba, Canada, have gone missing in recent months. Their families are seeking help in locating them. Dwayne Ross, 18, was last seen in October 2003. Sunshine Wood, 16, was reported missing more than two months ago. Ross and Wood are from the isolated God's River First Nation. Wood had been attending school in Winnipeg when she went missing. Copyright c. 2000-2004 Indianz.Com. =================================== Among our charges is the need to care for future generations. There are some articles in this issue that tell us our children are having a real hard time. They are suffering. One thing is very clear. It is up to us to care for them. The dominant society continues to only use and abuse our youth. The Anglican and Catholic churches barely got a slap on the wrist for decades of abuse. You will read in this issue of a judge who used his position to brutalize young Native women and girls, and is looking at a minimal sentence. Unfortunately, many abuses also occur right in Indian homes. It must stop. We must care for the next and next ... and next beyond generations starting right here, right now. 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 ---------- - The Makah honor fallen Guardsman - Alaska Natives swap Land - Tribes attack BLM with Government for Broken Trust over Mines - An Elder speaks - Native Woman works - Tribes regain right to get Tribes involved to prosecute other Indians - Tribes learn how - Story of Darryl Headbird to deal with Epidemic and Sierra Goodman - Foes of Paseo Extension - Former B.C. Judge dominate Forum admits to sex assaults - Disaster declared - Missing Native Teens ignored on three Montana Reservations - Native American Prisoner - Some Tribes still see to fight on Promises broken - Native Prisoner - Cayuga Tribe wins broad right -- Prison Pow Wow to control Land - Rustywire: - Schools need to preserve He was sitting at the Mall Indian Language/Culture - Verse: Hawaiian Book of Days - Bill Virgin: Tribes that diversify - Hawkdancer Poem: Wind Talker looking ahead - Upcoming Events --------- "RE: The Makah honor fallen Guardsman" --------- Date: Mon, 3 May 2004 08:13:05 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="MEMORIAL" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/171550_wardead01.html?source=rss The Makah honor fallen guardsman By MIKE BARBER SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER May 1, 2004 Nathan and Pattie Bruckenthal met and married in Neah Bay. Though a full-time Coast Guardsman during his 2001-2003 tour of duty there, Petty Officer "Nate" Bruckenthal immersed himself in the Makah Nation community, volunteering with the local fire company, Police Department and football team. Last night during a memorial service in Neah Bay, the 24-year-old, six- year Coast Guard veteran who gave of himself to the community, before he gave his life in Iraq last week, was given something by the Makah: their songs and prayers, wrapped in a blanket destined for his widow, who carries the couple's unborn child. Special Coast Guard "ambassadors" are charged with carrying it to Arlington National Cemetery for her before his funeral Friday. It is a spiritual gesture as hallowed to the Makah as is the folded American flag she will receive. "He showed us respect and helped our community. We show him respect," said Arnie Hunter, traditional chief of Neah Bay, a former Marine and commander of Native American Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 11418. "A lot of people knew him, and it hit home. Kids especially knew him from football practice and games. We want to honor him for the honorable things he's done in the service and for the community." Bruckenthal, born in Stony Brook, N.Y., became the first Coast Guardsman killed in action since the Vietnam War and one of three servicemen with ties to Washington state to die in April. Bruckenthal and two U.S. Navy sailors were killed last weekend by suicide bombers as they protected oil terminals 100 miles from Iraq's main port of Umm Qasr. It was Bruckenthal's second tour in Iraq. Army Sgt. Jacob R. Herring, 20, of Kirkland, a member of Fort Lewis's Stryker brigade, died Wednesday of wounds from an improvised bomb that hit his vehicle near Talafar, Iraq. Army Cpl. Patrick Tillman, 27, who was stationed at Fort Lewis before he was sent to Afghanistan, and whose wife lives near Tacoma, died in combat April 22. The former professional football player who gave up a lucrative sports career after Sept. 11, 2001, to become an Army Ranger, was posthumously awarded the Silver Star yesterday, credited with saving his platoon in the ambush 25 miles southwest of a U.S. military base at Khost that took his life. Their deaths bring to 28 the number of soldiers with ties to Washington state who have been killed since the war on terror began after 9/11. Bruckenthal's death brought the war home to remote Neah Bay in the northwest corner of Washington, home to the nearly 2,000-member Makah Tribe. Nate and Pattie Bruckenthal met in Neah Bay when he was stationed there. She was a student from Pacific Lutheran University, which has a special educational program with the Makah. Married only two years, the couple never spent an anniversary together because he was on duty in Iraq. When they were together, they were inseparable, friends said. Bruckenthal, looking forward to coming home in 30 days, was excited about impending fatherhood. "This is family, their extended West Coast family," Chief Warrant Officer Mike Tumulty, commander of Coast Guard Station Neah Bay, said of the mourning Coast Guard and Makah communities. "He asked Pattie to marry him on Bowman Beach," Tumulty recalled. Tribal member Joe McGimpsey, an emergency medical technician, said Bruckenthal "was well-liked. Volunteering was the first thing he did; he helped the community." Lending an unconditional hand was a trait many recall about the 6-foot-2, 220-pound Bruckenthal. As a teen he was a Ridgefield, Conn., volunteer firefighter. After 9/11, he flew to New York to escort funerals for two firefighters and a police officer killed in the terrorist attacks. He stayed into October, spending vacation time at ground zero to pass out refreshments to firefighters, police officers and construction workers. It was consistent with Bruckenthal's respect for a family tradition of public service -- his dad is a police officer, his stepfather a career Army veteran, and his grandfather a World War II veteran. He also embraced life optimistically, his father said. "He was a very fun-loving boy," his father, Ric Bruckenthal, of Northport, N.Y., told The Associated Press. "He was always a happy child, and he turned into a happy young adult. We're very proud of what Nathan did." In addition to his father, Bruckenthal is survived by his mother, Laurie Bullock, of Herndon, Va.; a sister, Noa Beth, 26; and brothers Matthew, 15, and Michael, 12. Bruckenthal and his wife left Neah Bay last year when he joined the Tactical Law Enforcement Team South in Miami. The Coast Guard unit sent detachments to Iraq to provide security, humanitarian aid and train the new Iraqi Coast Guard. In a recent e-mail, Bruckenthal told of anxieties, saying he wondered if each day would be his last. Last night's memorial service was "a mix of military, for God and country, and of the sovereign nation of Neah Bay, respecting tradition," Tumulty said. Lt. Cmdr. Ed Carroll, the Coast Guard District 13 chaplain, led the service. Five empty chairs represented Bruckenthal's five local personas - - fallen warrior, rescuer, fireman, police officer, assistant football coach. Then the diverse communities merged. The Native American VFW Post 11418 honor guard brought in the colors. A Coast Guard boatswain's whistle piped. Prayer songs, or ci-qa's, were sung and drummed. The blanket-wrapping ceremony blessing the robe with songs and prayers drew special attention. Coast Guard officials assigned a special escort, Petty Officers James King and Fred Wilson, representing the local station and the Makah Nation, to ensure it properly reaches his widow in Arlington National Cemetery next week The ceremony isn't something often done for non-tribal members, Hunter and McGimpsey said. "That's from the community. It's to give her our strength to hold her up," McGimpsey said. The gesture affected Bruckenthal's family and friends on the East Coast. "It is really so heartfelt," was all an emotional family member at Bruckenthal's father home could say. In Florida, Kristi George, who knew Bruckenthal and is helping coordinate donations for his wife, said, "I am in complete awe. What a complete honor this is for the Bruckenthal family." HOW TO HELP A tribute to those who have died The Seattle Post-Intelligencer each month honors those men and women in uniform who have died in the Mideast and who have ties to Washington. For a list of those with Washington connections who have died in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq, go online to seattlepi.com/national/apmideast.asp. For a full list of those killed in Iraq, see www.militarycity.com/valor/honor.html P-I reporter Mike Barber can be reached at 206-448-8018 or mikebarber@seattlepi.com --------- "RE: Tribes attack BLM for Broken Trust over Mines" --------- Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 08:33:24 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="BLM NEGLECT" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.greatfallstribune.com/news/stories/20040504/localnews/350786.html Tribes attack BLM for broken trust over mines By KAREN OGDEN Tribune Regional Editor May 4, 2004 MISSOULA - An attorney for the Fort Belknap Tribes argued in federal court Monday that the Bureau of Land Management has broken its trust obligation to the tribes in its permitting and oversight of the Zortman- Landusky gold mines. "Not even the most basic requirements were followed by the federal government," Mike Axline, an attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center, told federal Judge Donald Molloy. The Fort Belknap Tribes sued the BLM and two other federal agencies in 2000, saying the government neglected its duties to protect the tribe's natural resources and historic sacred lands in its dealings with the now- defunct mines. But a federal attorney argued Monday that the BLM followed state and federal laws in regulating the mines, which are on public and private property adjacent to the reservation's southern border. "The (BLM) has taken great strides and spent millions of dollars to stem the source of pollution that the tribe is concerned about," said John Martin, an attorney with the Department of Justice. The hearing was held at the request of both sides, which asked Molloy to issue a judgement instead of going to trial. Martin also asked that the other agencies named as defendants, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service, be dropped from the suit. The judge is expected to issue a decision based on Monday's arguments within the next several months. Axline did not specify what damages the tribe is seeking. He suggested a round of settlement meetings if Molloy decides in the tribe's favor. Axline argued Monday that the BLM failed to use its full power to protect the Fort Belknap Reservation from environmental damage from the mining operation, which used a heap leach cyanide technique to extract gold from the Little Rocky Mountains. The mines' operator, the Pegasus Gold Corp., went bankrupt in 1998, leaving behind arsenic and other toxins, hills of waste rock and exposed mountainsides whose rock generates highly acidic runoff. Contaminated water from the site will have to be treated for as long as 80 years. Attending the hearing were at least 20 tribal members, including elders, community college students and staff, and employees from the tribes' environmental protection office. Axline argued that the BLM shirked its trust duties to the tribe and directly violated several environmental laws. The BLM permitted Pegasus Gold Corp. to expand the mines on 21 occasions over 15 years and failed to consult the tribes about the expansions, a breech of its trust responsibility, Axline said. What's more, the entire Little Rockies Mountain range is nominated for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, making the agency's failures there a violation of the National Historic Preservation Act, he said. The tribe's traditional sun dance ceremonies are held in the Little People's Creek area just downstream from where it flows off the mine site on the southern end of the reservation. "Blasting at the mine would often interrupt those sun dance ceremonies," Axline said. "Children during the sun dance ceremony played in that water right at the reservation's edge." In later years, the BLM halted mining for four days each year during the sun dance. But Axline said that only shows "how meager" the BLM's attempts to fulfill their trust responsibility to the tribe have been. He also said the BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for the site until 1996. The violation of NEPA also is a violation of the Federal Land Policy Management Act, he said. The BLM says that, according to case law, the tribe's argument that the agency violated environmental regulations is moot because it has since satisfied NEPA requirements. The BLM already has addressed environmental threats to tribal land, Martin said. The state and federal government have spent almost $30 million moving earth, lining the heap-leach cyanide pits and other measures to clean up or seal in contamination at the mine site, he said. The reclamation project is basically complete. The tribe was extensively involved in the reclamation plan, on which it signed off, Martin said. He added that when concerns about acidic runoff first arose at the site in 1992, the BLM issued a press release and held a meeting with the tribal council a month later. Martin said a long administrative record shows that the BLM aggressively monitored the mining operation. "It's imply untrue that the BLM slept on this site," Martin said. What's more, water flowing from the mine site onto the reservation does not violate state drinking water standards, Martin said. "There are no impacts to tribal resources as a result of the Zortman Mine," he told Molloy. "...It's hard to see what remedy the court could grant when there is no actual impact to the tribe from the Zortman Mine." The Landusky mine site, which is closer to the reservation, is of greater concern to the tribes. Tests taken in 2003 showed that levels of iron, manganese, arsenic and cadmium are increasing in the upper reaches of the Swift Gulch drainage below Landusky. Although those contaminates aren't increasing where the water crosses the reservation boundary, sulfate levels have increased, which the tribe says is an indicator of acidic runoff from the mine site. The state and the BLM are conducting tests to determine how much of that acidity is natural. Drought also could have influenced the higher acidity, said Scott Haight, mineral resource specialist with the BLM's Lewistown office. Linings installed in the mine pit floor next to Swift Gulch should stop any new contaminated runoff from flowing into the drainage, Haight said. But Ben Speakthunder, chairman of the Fort Belknap Indian Community Council, isn't satisfied with the remediation efforts. "The government's arguments as far as Swift Gulch are pretty weak," he said after Monday's hearing. The tribe's research shows contamination coming down Swift Gulch is increasing and will only get worse, he said. And although the damaged land is off the reservation, "that whole area is an ancestral land," with cultural value to the tribes, Speakthunder said. Catherine Halver said she was satisfied that the judge heard the tribe's arguments at Monday's proceeding. Thirty years ago, Halver helped found the Island Mountain Protectors group to fight environmental damage at the mines. Back then, "nobody could give us any answers as to what the long-term impacts were going to be," she said. "Hopefully today we will see good results. In the last 30 years, it has been nothing but a constant fight." Copyright c. 2004 Great Falls Tribune. All rights reserved. --------- "RE: Native Woman works to get Tribes involved" --------- Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 08:22:19 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="IN SPITE OF LEWIS & CLARK" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.billingsgazette.com/~/build/nation/26-lewisandclark.inc Native woman works to get tribes involved By KEVIN ABOUREZK For The Gazette April 27, 2004 RED ROCK, Okla. - Standing before the gathering of Otoe-Missouria tribal leaders, Amy Mossett doesn't mince words. The Lewis and Clark Bicentennial should not be considered a celebration. But maybe there is something to celebrate today, 200 years after the explorers paved the way for settlement of the West and the eventual removal of many tribes from their homelands. "We are celebrating the fact that we have all survived Lewis and Clark," she says. Mossett is the tribal involvement coordinator for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, commemorating the 8,000-mile round-trip journey from the lower Missouri River to the Pacific Coast near Oregon. She is a member of North Dakota's Three Affiliated Tribes. "People are listening to us," she told the Otoe-Missouria to bring them on board. "It's your stories that people are going to want to hear." Under her stewardship, the bicentennial has increased the number of tribes involved from 13 in 2000 to 40 today. Part diplomat, part activist, Mossett is sensitive to Native concerns, including their fear of being used simply as cultural performers. "For the most part, we're not re-enactors," she tells the Otoe-Missouria. "We're real Indians. This is an opportunity to educate America." In the 1980s, Mossett did spend two years portraying Sacagawea in a dramatization of Lewis and Clark's return to North Dakota. She has been a student of Lewis and Clark since then, paying particular attention to Sacagawea's contribution to the expedition. Mossett traces her ancestry to the Hidatsa village where Sacagawea - "Bird Woman" - lived. Mossett has worked to dispel the myth that Sacagawea was a scout. Think of the famous and oft-bronzed image of Sacagawea pointing into the distance, as if showing Lewis and Clark the way to the sea. Wrong, Mossett says: Sacagawea served the expedition primarily as an interpreter. Greg Pitcher, a member of the Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, described Mossett as a "firebrand" with a sharp wit and mind. She's not afraid to attack the Lewis and Clark legend to point out how tribes were affected by the expedition, a stance that has cost her the goodwill of some expedition enthusiasts, he said. But the passion for righting history's wrongs has also gained her tribal support, he said. "I've been impressed by the job she has done," he said. Gerard Baker, superintendent of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, said Mossett has been indispensable to the bicentennial. "She's just done a fantastic job of bringing the tribes on board," he said. Kevin Abourezk, a reporter for the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star, can be reached at kabourezkjournalstar.com. Copyright c. The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises. --------- "RE: Tribes learn how to deal with Epidemic" --------- Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 08:13:05 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="METH" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=4359 Tribes learn how to deal with epidemic Meth becoming way too popular TULSA OK Sam Lewin April 28, 2004 Representatives from Oklahoma tribes attended a conference today and heard from law enforcement officials, child-care specialists, psychologists and environmental officials on the destruction methamphetamine wreaks on families, society and the user. The Cherokee Nation organized the "Regional Methamphetamine Conference," after evidence of an epidemic became too obvious to ignore. "About a year ago we started looking at these former meth labs. We didn't want to reoccupy these residences if they were contaminated, so our office started looking at the meth lab problem and it just grew from there" said Cherokee Nation environmental specialist Wayne Issacs. The tribe used a grant to pay for the daylong conference. Sometime in the past ten years, many Oklahoma residents tried methamphetamine and found they really, really liked it. Once used almost exclusively by counter-culture elements and bikers on the West Coast, meth, occasionally dubbed "the poor man's cocaine," has steadily gained popularity in Indian Country in the past decade. Oklahoma was first in the nation last year in the number of per-capita methamphetamine lab seizures. Those on the frontlines of the war on meth have watched as it exploded in their communities. "We have seen a lot of it. The Chickasaw Nation is south central Oklahoma and we encompass fourteen and a half counties in our jurisdictional area. The rise in the labs that we have seized in our housing is probably ten times the amount it was a few years ago," said Bill Ward, section head of the Chickasaw Nation's Drug Enforcement Program. "We see quite a bit of it with children involved in the house. We just busted [a lab] a week or two ago," said Comanche tribal police officer Darrel Nieto. At today's conference, held at the Southern Hills Marriott in Tulsa, Ward was able to hear from a host of experts, including Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmonson. Inside one conference room, Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics expert John Duncan told a room packed to standing room only capacity about the drug's lasting impact on users. "Meth is not something that affects you just when you are on the drug," Duncan said. "It causes permanent, irreversible brain damage. It never goes away." He said that brain damage mirrors the clinical definition of long term psychosis. Other seminars focused on children with meth-using parents, recognizing a lab and other forms of education and prevention. Even though meth has found a home on the reservation, there is one advantage tribal police have compared to other law enforcement. The penalties are tougher on Indian land. "We have the counties and the city and a lot of times people who are doing these meth labs are thinking that if they go on tribal land they won't be prosecuted. We can prosecute them. We have the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of Justice. In most cases it will be federal," said Comanche tribal policer officer Donna O'Brien. Native American Times is Copyright c. 2004 Oklahoma Indian Times, Inc. --------- "RE: Foes of Paseo Extension dominate Forum" --------- Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 08:40:47 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="PETROGLYPHS AT RISK" http://www.abqjournal.com/text/news/metro/166887metro04-28-04.htm Foes of Paseo Extension Dominate Forum By Andrea Schoellkopf Journal Staff Writer April 28, 2004 Opponents dominated more than three hours of debate Tuesday in the first of two planned public forums on the proposed extension of Paseo del Norte. Being outnumbered three-to-one before the Albuquerque City Council didn't thwart supporters of the controversial road, however. "We are going to get a road out there," said state Sen. Joe Carraro, who kicked off the forum with a 10-minute speech. "Once again this community is being divided," Carraro said. "We're sick of people telling us where to go. People transcend the politics of it." Paseo opponent Eli Lee blamed past city councils for opening up the Northwest quadrant of the city to rampant development. "From a planning perspective, the Paseo extension makes little sense," said Lee, whose political consulting group Soltari Inc. actively campaigned last year against road bonds that included the Paseo extension. "Roads do not solve congestion." Earlier this year, after the bond election, Carraro had introduced legislation that would have allowed the West Side to secede from Albuquerque. "It's going to be done either by the city of Albuquerque or (by some) other venue," he said. The City Council is scheduled to vote on the 1,200-foot Paseo extension Monday to fulfill a condition by Gov. Bill Richardson that is tied to $3.3 million in legislative funding. Richardson wants the new council vote despite numerous votes of support by previous councils. Six of the nine councilors were in attendance at Tuesday's meeting, Council President Michael Cadigan, Brad Winter, Miguel Gomez, Martin Heinrich, Craig Loy and Debbie O'Malley. An estimated 200 people attended this forum at the Albuquerque Convention Center. A second forum is planned for May but has not yet been scheduled. "There is a real effort to look at this as an Albuquerque issue," said Heinrich, a Paseo opponent who co-sponsored a resolution that would delay any vote on Paseo until the Mid-Region Council of Governments updates its transportation study and public forums are held. This would "give the council one more chance to get this right," he said. Opponents repeatedly said the city tried to "hide" Paseo in the last street bond election, and said the issue had been decided then. "It seems to me that this has already been decided," said resident Ray Garduno. "We were not tricked. We voted them down because we did not want that Paseo extension." Petroglyph supporter Barbra Rossnagle said whatever Paseo road deal that politicians made in the 1980s wasn't revealed to others working to get the petroglyph monument established. "That really doesn't obligate all the rest of us who were working for the monument," Rossnagle said. "(The goal was) to protect the petroglyphs from urban encroachment and preserve them for study." Native American Leah Weaselboy found it ironic that area residents seemed to be seeking Southwestern influence in their homes, but would be destroying Native American art in the petroglyphs by building a road. "Now just to save a few minutes commute, they want to destroy a piece of history and culture that has been here long before they or their ancestors were even in this country," said Weaselboy, who moved here 10 years ago from Montana. Paseo backers also lined up in support, some indicating that this is just the latest public debate in 18 years they have been asking for the road. "The polarization has ripped our city for far too long," said Ventana Ranch resident Bruce Nyberg. "We need to build a transportation grid on the West Side." Supporters said that traffic congestion makes driving dangerous, as well as impossible to access hospitals or other emergency needs during peak commuting times. "It is almost impossible for me to get out of my street," said Paradise Hills resident Richard Meyerhein. "I fear for my life." Former Bernalillo County Commissioner Ken Sanchez said he had spent two years looking for alternatives to Paseo. "The road is no longer going through the national monument," Sanchez said. "I would hope this City Council takes courage and votes in the affirmative." A handful of pueblo leaders held a news conference earlier in the day with the Sage Council opposition group to voice their opposition to Paseo. "This hurts all of us as Indian people," said Zia Pueblo Gov. Peter Pino. "We're all adults. We can figure out a solution to the problem." Benny Atencio, former chairman of the All-Indian Pueblo Council, denied that the pueblos ever had an agreement for Paseo. "We are still opposed," Atencio said. Sage Council director Laurie Weahkee said the Sage Council is considering a lawsuit against the city to prevent Paseo del Norte from being built, citing the state Historic Preservation Act. Copyright c. 2004 Albuquerque Journal. --------- "RE: Disaster declared on three Montana Reservations" --------- Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 08:40:47 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="DROUGHT" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.billingsgazette.com/~/state/55-disaster-declaration.inc Disaster declaration extended in 11 Montana counties and 3 American Indian reservations Associated Press April 28, 2004 HELENA - U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman has extended a disaster declaration for 11 Montana counties and three American Indian reservations, citing continued drought conditions this spring. The designation, which was announced Tuesday by Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., makes farmers and ranchers in the counties and reservations eligible for low-interest emergency loans through the Farm Service Agency. Veneman declared a statewide drought disaster in December, making farmers and ranchers who suffered losses caused by drought during the 2003 crop year available for similar loans. Gov. Judy Martz had sought extensions for a number of counties, citing continued drought. The disaster declaration includes the following counties - Chouteau, Granite, Petroleum, Prairie, Garfield, Mineral, Pondera, Missoula, Ravalli, Roosevelt, Treasure and Valley. The reservations in the declaration include the Flathead, Fort Peck and the Blackfeet. In a letter to Martz approving the declaration, Veneman said loans will be approved based on eligibility requirements, including the extent of losses a farmer suffers and repayment ability. Copyright c. 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. Copyright c. 2004 The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises. --------- "RE: Some Tribes still see promises broken" --------- Date: Mon, 3 May 2004 08:13:05 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="THWARTED DREAMS, BIA LIES" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/~/2001918251_tribe03m.html Some tribes still see promises broken, dreams thwarted By Alex Fryer Seattle Times Washington bureau May 3, 2004 It was a day Chinook Indians had waited for since treaty talks collapsed in 1855. On Jan. 3, 2001, the tribe's chairman, Gary Johnson, his shoulders wrapped in a blanket depicting the mythical Thunderbird, signed papers in Washington, D.C., recognizing the Chinook as a tribe. Yet that same day, a Bureau of Indian Affairs official - who shook Johnson's hand at the ceremony - wrote a memo saying the Chinook had failed to make a case for federal recognition. The government later reversed its decision. "It was the most two-faced thing you could think of," Johnson said. The Chinook reversal of fortune illustrates the confusion and hostility that often surround tribal recognition, a Byzantine process that bestows chosen tribes with aid for education and health care and can open the door to casino riches. For the Chinook, recognition would have meant a reservation near the town of Chinook in southwest Washington's Pacific County and federal dollars to help ensure their cultural survival. Now, while Chinook members raise money selling coffee and doughnuts at a freeway rest stop, their neighbors 50 miles east, the Cowlitz Tribe, embark on a $300 million-a-year casino, a privilege limited to tribes that are federally recognized. As one congressman noted, BIA researchers "are basically determining who's going to be a billionaire." The BIA's focus on historical evidence means even a tiny clue can tip whether government researchers decide a group of Indians truly is a tribe. But critics say the recognition process is rife with political abuses, unclear standards of proof and irrational results. With so much at stake, some recognized tribes with casinos have tried to thwart those seeking recognition, fearing a smaller stake in the $23 billion-a-year Indian gaming business. Meanwhile, investors of all description circle the tribes, offering help in gaining federal recognition in return for a percentage of their future casino take. "I've gotten calls from people who say 'Let's find some Indians and build a casino,' " said Dennis Whittlesey, a Washington, D.C., Indian- gaming attorney representing Washington's Cowlitz Tribe. "I say, 'It doesn't work like that.' " No more recognized tribes here? In the 1970s, Washington had more tribes seeking recognition than any other state. But that pace has slowed, and there may never be another federally recognized tribe here. The Cowlitz in Longview and Snoqualmie in Fall City won recognition in recent years. But the Chinook, Edmonds-based Snohomish and Seattle's Duwamish watched in dismay as their applications were denied in the past couple of years. Though the courts or Congress can decide to name a tribe, it rarely happens. Had the Duwamish succeeded, Seattle likely would have had its first tribal gaming. Duwamish Chairwoman Cecile Hansen said she met twice with investors interested in building a casino minutes from downtown. Nothing came of the discussions, and the Duwamish, just like the Chinook, were granted federal recognition, only to see it reversed by the Bush administration. The political leadership of the BIA under President Clinton acknowledged the Duwamish over protests from the agency's professional staff. After the White House changed hands in January 2001, the Duwamish lost what they had sought for 25 years. "I'm tired of the process," Hansen said. "I was a young woman (when the tribe first filed for recognition in 1977). Now, I'm an elder." Casino investments Although it may help them put together a strong petition, taking investors' money can be divisive for tribes, which fear getting taken by a bad business partner. The Chinook voted six years ago against accepting a casino investor who had promised to help with the federal-recognition process. "We have had groups approach us with offers and money, but we almost unanimously turned them down. It's not 'Here's some help, no strings attached,' " he said. "We don't want to be obligated to other folks. We want to do it our way." Instead of investors, the Chinook relied on federal grants to help them research their recognition claims, $195,000 from 1998 to 2001. The government gave the Duwamish $273,000 during the same period. The most strident opposition to a tribe's petition often comes from established tribes such as the Tulalips and Quinault, which worry about threats to revenues generated by their casinos. Those tribes sometimes flood the BIA with information arguing against recognition for a new tribe. A contentious history But the act of proving a shared heritage has been controversial ever since the BIA enacted new tribal-recognition rules 26 years ago. Even before casinos, the acknowledgment process has brought Native American groups into conflict. Some established tribes believed they bought with blood whatever federal health and education benefits they received, Yakama Indian Nation Chairman Leonard Tomaskin told Congress in 1978. "My ancestors who signed the treaty were hung and they were shot," he said. "We gave the supreme sacrifice to retain what we have today and what little we have." Applications now can run to more than 30,000 pages, as tribes try to prove they meet a seven-part federal test. Tribes typically can prove Indian ancestry, and they can provide evidence they existed as a community until about 1900, said Steve Austin, an anthropologist who worked for the BIA from 1993 to 1999. But the evidence often fades after the early 1900s. The reasons are many: death and disease; children forced into boarding schools and marriages outside the tribe. After visiting the Chinook in southwest Washington, Austin concluded the tribe had existed until 1880 and then resumed political and cultural activity in about 1970. In the intervening decades, the evidence did not prove the Chinook to be a tribe, he said. "It was too long for us to basically overlook," Austin said. "There was no evidence of community. There was no evidence of governing authority over the people." Austin describes himself as "an old-time lefty" to contradict the notion the BIA staff members who opposed petitioners were anti-Indian. Though the process may appear inconsistent, Austin said acknowledgment decisions at the BIA were made on their merits. The Cowlitz, which have a similar history to the Chinook, were recognized in 2000. The Samish went to court to reverse a BIA decision before they were acknowledged in 1996. The BIA recognized the Snoqualmie in 1999, despite a strong protest from the Tulalips. Last November, the BIA ruled against the Snohomish. "There is a bias among some groups that the big, bad BIA is standing in their way," Austin said. "But we're not doing anyone any favors to loosen up the process because of some misplaced sense of injustice. Not everyone who walks through the door and claims to be a tribe is a tribe." Austin said he never felt political pressure during his time at the agency. At least not until a member of the Pawnee Tribe named Kevin Gover became assistant secretary for Indian Affairs in 1997. Gover would eventually play a critical part in the history of the Chinook. Overruling BIA staff Appointed by Clinton, Gover clashed with BIA staff, but it wasn't about casinos. It was about history, he said. Gover urged his staff to relax the requirement that tribes prove they maintained a cultural identity and political organization since historical times. "I don't take a back seat to anybody in terms of what I know about Indian history," Gover said in a recent interview. "Tribes were under assault of their identity, their Indian-ness. As a survival strategy, they went underground. That was the basis of our disagreement over the Chinook. I thought the level of proof they (BIA staffers) were requiring was too high." Over the objections of BIA anthropologists and historians, Gover recognized the Chinook on Jan. 3, 2001. The Quinault Tribe appealed the ruling, citing a BIA staff memo disagreeing with Gover's decision. In July 2002, under Bush administration leadership, the agency reversed itself and denied the Chinook recognition, arguing that by the 1940s, the tribe "became indistinguishable from the rest of the population." Northwest tribal scholar Stephen Beckham, the Chinook's anthropologist, has a simple response: "These people are who they say they are. I have staked my career on that." The friction between Gover and his staff attracted attention from Congress, especially after Gover left to join a Washington, D.C., law firm that solicited business from the Chinook. Adding pressure was the Connecticut congressional delegation, which feared Gover's philosophy would lead to the development of more casinos in the Northeast. "The Chinook ... (were) denied recognition because the Connecticut delegation was bitching," Gover said. "I think it was politically cowardly to do what they (BIA officials) did." Dim prospects Today, the tribes formally rejected by the BIA - the Chinook, Duwamish and Snohomish - plot their next moves, which may include the nearly impossible task of persuading Congress to overrule the agency and acknowledge them through legislation. Last year, Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, introduced a bill to acknowledge the Duwamish. So far, the bill has only a single House co- sponsor and no companion legislation in the Senate. No legislation on the Chinook has been introduced, but the group's prospects don't look bright, said Rep. Brian Baird, D-Vancouver. Lawmakers tend to defer to the BIA when it comes to recognition, he said. "That's a bit of a Catch-22 for us," he said. "We've got to not just make the argument but have the votes." Meanwhile, though the review process can take decades, the BIA has a team of nine anthropologists, historians and genealogists reviewing petitions and is hesitant to hire more. Office of Federal Acknowledgment Director R. Lee Fleming - the same man who wrote the memo denying the Chinook were a tribe in 2001 - told lawmakers: "It would not be helpful to hire somebody and fire them because of a (later) lack of funds." So tribes hope, wait and search for ways to pay the bills. For the Chinook, that means holding fund-raisers to maintain tribal offices in an empty elementary school in the tiny town of Chinook, about nine miles from Long Beach, Pacific County, and hire someone to answer the phone in case the BIA calls. They are confident that, someday, somehow, the call will come. "Right is right," said Chairman Johnson. "And right never changes." Alex Fryer: 206-464-8124 Copyright c. 2004 The Seattle Times Company --------- "RE: Cayuga Tribe wins broad right to control Land" --------- Date: Sat, 1 May 2004 08:38:13 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="CAYUGA LAND" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://biz.yahoo.com/law/040429/c8a23331d5427f1f0934fb4d79ba4038_1.html Indian Tribe Wins Broad Right to Add, Control Land John Caher, New York Law Journal April 29, 2004 In an extraordinarily broad declaration of Indian land rights, a Northern District judge has held that the Cayuga Nation can buy up property in its former Central New York homeland, declare it "Indian country" and operate a gambling hall immune from local building, zoning and tax laws. U.S. District Judge David N. Hurd's first-of-its-type ruling affords the Indian nation a chance to gain through real estate purchases that which it could not directly gain through litigation: control over land it once occupied. In a decision three years ago, the Cayugas were awarded nearly $248 million in damages for the wrongful appropriation of their land in violation of an 1838 treaty. Senior U.S. Judge Neal P. McCurn, however, refused to order all non-Cayugas ejected from the land. This left the Cayugas with a lot of money -- pending an appeal -- but not the land they wanted most. Now, the Cayugas are buying some of that property and arguing that their purchase transforms the land into Indian country that cannot be regulated by local authorities. Judge Hurd said in a decision released late last week that the Cayugas are right. The municipalities involved are preparing an appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Cayugas are in the process of converting a former auto parts store into a hall for high-stakes bingo. The Cayugas expect to take in $14,000 to $17,000 daily, tax free, at the gambling parlor. They intend to operate 50 electronic bingo machines. Their tribal relatives, the Seneca Cayugas of Oklahoma, have purchased land in nearby Seneca Falls and have similar plans. Cayuga Indian Nation of New York v. Village of Union Springs, 5:03-CV- 1270, resulted from a clash between an historically cheated tribe of American Indians and the residents of a lakeside community 35 miles west of Syracuse. Union Springs is a small village located on the northern shores of Cayuga Lake. It is included in the 64,015 acres of Cayuga ancestral land that was illegally sold to New York state. Those improper conveyances resulted in the $240 million award against the state. The damages award is on appeal to the 2nd Circuit. Last year, the Cayugas spent $105,000 to buy a vacant Napa auto parts store in Union Springs and promptly secured a license from the National Indian Gaming Commission to operate a bingo hall. Union Springs sought a temporary restraining order to halt the conversion. Judge Hurd found that when an Indian tribe holds a treaty-recognized title to land -- as it does here -- only Congress can strip the tribe of title to a reservation. "Since Congress has not divested the Cayugas of their title to the land claim area, it stands to reason that the reservation status of that land remains in place to this day," Hurd wrote. "Moreover, a formal reservation, as is the property here, falls within the definition of Indian Country, and such status is not precluded when a tribe holds fee title to the land." COMMUNITY IMPACT The court wasn't persuaded that the impact on the community, especially if the Cayuga nation is permitted to ignore fire and safety codes, trumps other concerns. "[I]t is clear that the overriding federal goals of promoting tribal self-sufficiency and economic development outweigh the interests set forth by defendants," Hurd wrote. "Moreover, Congress knows how to legislate to allow such regulation, but has failed to do so." Hurd's ruling adds a new and apparently unprecedented wrinkle to the lengthy dispute over how to make amends to Indian nations improperly divested of their most cherished resource -- land. "Declaring land 'Indian country' allows them to have Class I and Class II gaming without the need for state or local permission," said attorney Raymond J. Heslin of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthall. Heslin, who works in the firm's Manhattan office, represents the Cayugas along with Stephen L. Brodsky. "They can set up electronic gaming on any land they acquire and are unaffected by local building, zoning, tax and traffic [concentration] laws. It's like a sovereign nation being created by the state," he said. Class II gaming includes bingo and other games of chance. It does not include casino games and slot machines. They are Class III category games that can be offered by the Indian nations only when there is a compact with the state. Alan R. Peterman of Hiscock & Barclay in Syracuse, N.Y., counsel for the municipal defendants, agreed the decision is exceptionally broad. "It allows the tribe, the nation, to construct whatever they want on the property, including a bingo hall," said Peterman, who is co-counsel on the case with Judith M. Sayles. "This is right in the village, 300 yards from a high school." Peterman said he will argue on appeal that there are "exceptional circumstances" -- the impact on the local quality of life, law enforcement and traffic -- that permit the village to regulate activity on the property. Heslin, however, said the Cayugas have every intention of being good neighbors and no intention of exploiting their sovereign status in Union Springs. "The Cayugas never wanted to come in and just steamroll over everybody," he said. "Despite the fact that we don't have to comply with the local laws -- the laws they used to try to put us out of business -- we have adopted the international building code, which is much more comprehensive than the state code." Go to Law.com for legal information and services on the web. Sign up today for a free subscription to the Law.com daily legal newswire. Copyright c. 2004 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. --------- "RE: Schools need to preserve Indian Language/Culture" --------- Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 08:13:05 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="PRESERVE WAYS" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.casperstartribune.net/~2dd2725312d4ec7287256e83006021dc.txt Schools need to preserve Indian language and culture April 28, 2004 OACOMA, S.D. (AP) - Incorporating native language and culture into South Dakota's curriculum will help Indian students achieve more success in school, a Todd County educator says. "Losing the language means losing the culture," says Dottie LeBeau, Todd County's school improvement coordinator and curriculum director. "We need to know who we are because it makes a difference in who our children are." Studies suggest that 90 percent of Lakota people will be unable to speak their language within a decade, LeBeau says. She wants to revive the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota languages, both in schools and among adult Indians, as a way to connect a people with their culture. LeBeau last week headed a language advocacy committee that recommended weaving Lakota language and culture throughout tribal, public and private schools. She and other committee members made several recommendations during the Oacoma summit hosted by state Education Secretary Rick Melmer: - Make sure language policies and practices in school are consistent with the desires of parents and community. - Provide follow-through support for local language curriculum advisory committees and incentives for students to participate in language programs. - Set aside times and places where students can practice language skills in an immersion environment. - Incorporate appropriate traditional cultural values and beliefs in all teaching. - Provide an in-depth culture and language orientation program for all new teachers and administrators, including participation in an immersion camp with local elders. - Provide Nakota, Dakota and Lakota language courses for students in every high school in South Dakota, especially those with native students enrolled. "Children who are most proficient in their native language are also most proficient in another language and other courses," LeBeau told participants. "When we're talking of achievement, when we're talking of No Child Left Behind, we need to have the language. We need to have the culture for our children to succeed." Some officials at schools with a high percentage of Indian students agree. The Smee School District near Wakpala last year added an instructor to teach the Lakota language in each classroom and planned to integrate Lakota and culture at all grade levels. For the first time this year, Marty Indian School hired a Lakota language teacher, Redwing Thomas, says Russell Leonard, elementary principal and acting superintendent. "Each day, he goes into each of the classrooms, kindergarten through fourth grade, and spends time on the language," Leonard said. "In addition to that, once a week he does an Indian studies program for each class, going in and talking about the culture, history, the things these students should know." Native language and culture has been stressed at tribal colleges and universities for several years, says the head of graduate studies at Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. But Stephanie Charging Eagle says the effort can't be limited to schools. "The schools can't do it alone," Charging Eagle says. "The whole community has to get involved." Copyright c. 2004 by the Casper Star-Tribune Published by Lee Publications, Inc. --------- "RE: Bill Virgin: Tribes that diversify looking ahead" --------- Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 08:33:24 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="DIVERSITY KEY TO SUCCESS" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/virgin/171729_virgin04.html?source=rss Bill Virgin: Tribes that diversify looking ahead By BILL VIRGIN SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST May 4, 2004 Given the unpleasant history of land deals involving Native Americans - from incompetent land surveys to outright swindles and brazen thefts - the rise of the American Indian-owned gambling casino has been an effective method for many tribes to reclaim some of that lost wealth, and a sort of karmic payback. But even in this country there is a finite pool of suckers to be tapped, and with the proliferation of gambling into nearly every venue, the number of wells being drilled to tap that pool threatens to drain it to the point no one is pumping much money from it. Which leaves the big question - what next? For those tribes generating income from casinos (or who have natural resources such as timber, coal or natural gas to sell), what do they do with that money? Is there a way to lessen the dependence on casinos? Is there a way to turn the proceeds into permanent economic investments that generate jobs and wealth for the tribe and its members? And if that's something they want, how do they invest the money to avoid being taken a second time - such as putting money into the next sure-thing, can't-miss technology? Those are questions Rex Rhoades has pondered, as a Native American himself (Chinook) and tribal officer (former economic development director for the Lummi Indian Business Council, and current secretary, treasurer and council member for the Chinook Indian Tribe Southwest Washington). Last month he was named the Native American business development specialist at the Small Business Development Center at Western Washington University. He'll manage the Native American Entrepreneurial Outreach Program, which works with the Lummi, Nooksack, Upper Skagit, Tulalip, Swinomish, Sauk- Suiattle, Stillaguamish and Samish tribes. Ask Rhoades what's ahead for Native American economic development and he'll first ask at what level you're asking - the individual or the tribal. The individual level is the bigger challenge. Many Native Americans don't have the tools such as access to capital that would allow them to elbow into entrepreneurship. There are some opportunities in tourism if tribes try to increase traffic to their reservations, but that can be both good and bad, Rhoades says. "There's no multiplier effect" from much of the money spent on tourism, he says. "For most tribes, the dollars don't stay." The tribal level is the bigger opportunity, particularly when tribes partner with non-Indian companies to capitalize on the tax advantages of doing business on reservations. If an energy developer wants to put a cogeneration plant on a reservation, for example, "they don't pay sales tax on any of that equipment coming in," Rhoades says. Pairing with someone else also has its advantages in that "tribes don't have the expertise to make widgets," Rhoades says. Hiring that expertise would hardly be new; Rhoades says most tribe-owned casinos are generally run by contracting the operations to others. One secret for success, Rhoades says, is isolating the business venture from the sometimes-raucous world of tribal politics. An unstable political climate within the tribe "will kill a business as fast as it gets started." But if a tribe chooses the right ventures and the right partners, and exercises the right management, it can generate discretionary income for the reservation that eventually translates into entrepreneurial activity, he adds. The notion of Native American tribes becoming significant and successful players in economic development is not, pardon the expression, a pipe dream. The model example is the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, whose extensive portfolio of tribal-owned businesses and joint ventures with non-Indian firms produce such items as automotive wiring harnesses, car loudspeakers and greeting cards (although interestingly the Choctaws, according to their history, seem to have done things in reverse, starting with industrial development and later moving to casinos). Alaska Native corporations, using the proceeds of a 1971 congressional act to settle land claims, have invested in businesses inside Alaska and beyond. Down in Oregon, meanwhile, the Oregon Native American Business and Entrepreneurial Network strives to help startups and small firms. Harvard University for more than a decade and a half has had a research center tracking American Indian economic development. In this state tribes from the Tulalips (the Quil Ceda Village Business Park along Interstate-5) to the Muckleshoots (the White River Amphitheatre, developed as a joint venture with radio giant Clear Channel) are exploring what the next generation of economic development might be. It won't be easy. Plenty of states, counties, cities, economic development authorities and port districts, not to mention private-sector developers, can attest to how uncertain and unpredictable such ventures can be. But an undiversified economic base of separating people with more cash than sense from their money isn't a promising long-term gamble either. P-I reporter Bill Virgin can be reached at 206-448-8319 or billvirgin@seattlepi.com. His column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays Copyright c. 1996-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. --------- "RE: Alaska Natives swap Land with Government" --------- Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 08:13:05 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="LAND SWAP" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4033618,00.html Alaska Natives Swap Land With Government By MATT VOLZ Associated Press Writer April 29, 2004 ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - The Ninglick River is nibbling away at the remote western village of Newtok, pop. 300. In a decade, the river's edge will be at the outskirts of town. The school will be underwater by 2022. The idea of not having a town doesn't sit too well with the residents, Alaska Natives who hunt and fish to survive. They want to move and have figured out a way how: swap land with the federal government. Dozens of Alaska Native villages are affected by erosion and flooding, according to a General Accounting Office study. Besides Newtok, three others - Shishmaref, Kivalina and Koyukuk - have decided to relocate. The residents of Shishmaref recently picked a new site for their village. On Wednesday, Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Newtok Native Corp. President Larry Charles signed the documents the Anchorage headquarters of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sealing the deal. Newtok gets nearly 11,000 acres on Nelson Island, about 10 miles away in the Yukon-Kuskokim Delta. The United States adds more than 12,000 acres south and northwest of the village to the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. "I think the actual move may happen within five years," said tribal administrator Nick Tom Jr. "It's still too early yet to really tell." The Ninglick is now about 1,000 feet away from the village and is taking out about 90 feet of shoreline a year. "At this rate, the very earth beneath many of the village's homes, schools and businesses could disappear within the next eight years," Norton said. The next big obstacle for Newtok will be finding the money to fund the relocation. Building roads and an airport, installing utilities and transplanting structures could cost between $50 million and $100 million, Tom said. The village is in the early stages of communicating with federal agencies about grants, he said. For the residents of Newtok, the new site has good points and bad. It has plenty of fresh water, something that's disappearing fast from Newtok. But Nelson Island means a change to residents' subsistence hunting. In the fall, the villagers hunt mink on the mainland and fish for blackfish from tributaries. "We'll be confined to the island; we'll not be able to move across," Tom said. "We will not be able to hunt those species." He said a bridge over the Ninglick could solve that problem, and may be included in future grant applications. Moving the houses, some of which are deteriorating, and the village's cemetery are other logistical problems. But Tom said the move has been accepted by most residents since serious discussion began about 10 years ago. "At first there were a lot of doubts. So many people were afraid, they were uncertain," Tom said. "A few people still might not be, but I think a majority of people are getting comfortable with it." Guardian Unlimited c. Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004. --------- "RE: An Elder speaks" --------- Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 08:22:19 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="DEATH OF ARTIC WILDERNESS" http://www.adn.com/alaska/v-printer/story/5007627p-4938787c.html An elder speaks Part 3 of a multipart series Thomas Itta Sr. lends a historical perspective By Charles Wohlforth April 26, 2004 Asking around the Inupiaq village of Atqasuk for an elder knowledgeable about snow led me through Bernadine Itta, a secretary at the school, to her father, Thomas Itta Sr., age 70, whom I met when he came to the cafeteria to eat lunch with the children, as he did every day. He was thinking that day about making ptarmigan snares in the willows with the leg sinew of caribou, a skill that he learned at 6 or 7 but which children weren't learning anymore, and made a plan with the principal to take a few students out to show them. Thomas himself had reached only the fourth grade, but he was a teacher with profound understanding of the area around Atqasuk and how to thrive there, deeply respected by both the white teachers and the Inupiat. He had eight children and thirty grandchildren, most of them still in the village - a significant chunk of the population - and had lived there almost since its founding in the mid-1970s. His wife, Flossie, grew up in a camp on the Meade River near where Atqasuk came to be, on the flat North Slope 60 miles inland from Barrow. Thomas hunted and ranged far afield on his snowmachine every day, despite his age. After lunch we sat at his house near a table with a half-finished jigsaw puzzle while Flossie sorted pieces, watched television, and contributed sporadically to the talk, sometimes in English and sometimes in Inupiaq. Thomas was lean and healthy looking, sharp-eyed and brimming with information. Listening to him was like following the very smart and active scientists I was used to interviewing. As the master atop the food web, he was as wiry, fit and aware as a winged predator, ready at any moment to rise from the chair and fly. He knew how to navigate on the tundra by the stars and how to use the intersecting wind angles carved in the snow as a compass. He knew how best to preserve fish in permafrost and when the bloom of certain flowers indicates a change in the taste of caribou meat. He knew how to follow birds and small animals to the animals he was hunting, and also which birds would give him away to his prey; such as seagulls, which had become much more common than when he was younger. "They're always telling where I am to those caribou," he said. "That's why I don't like them." Thomas easily summarized the differences he had seen in the environment over the last twenty years, simple highlights to represent the enormous changes he had observed. Open river ice in April - the first time ever this year. Riverbanks eroding much faster. Small ponds on high spots breaking through to the next lake or the river, something that began in the 1990s. Temperatures reaching 90 degrees F in the summer and warmer winters, with snow coming later and melting earlier. He used to be able to hunt with a dog team into mid-May. The rivers didn't break until mid-June. Now the rivers broke in mid-May or the first week in June. When snowmelt came, it was much quicker now. Mosquitoes arrived in the later part of June; they used to come only after July 4. The tundra bloomed earlier now, with more flowers. Hunting was no longer possible in June and July because the weather was too warm to keep the meat from spoiling. Far more sea gulls and jaegers were flying in the area, and hawks appe ared for the first time. Waterfowl were declining - maybe the hawks were killing them, maybe the foxes, which had overpopulated since fur trapping stopped - and some species had virtually disappeared. Foxes like to migrate out to the sea ice to follow polar bears, because the bears eat only the skin of the ugruk, not the meat, leaving plenty for foxes and ravens. That had happened much later as the sea ice was late in arriving. Some of the ravens overwintered inland now, guiding Thomas to find wolves. He described the waterfowl and other migratory birds arriving in May. "It looks like lots of people are coming. They fill up the sky. It looks like lots of people coming in. They're singing and they fill up the air. That's the best time of year, when they come in May." It seemed I had finally met a man living a real life. I greedily sucked in as much as he would tell me. But Flossie broke in, speaking Inupiaq. Then Thomas became more cautious. "When white men find out they start doing what we do," he said. "So I have to keep it secret." Soon he got back into the flow, but Flossie spoke again. Thomas slowed down, noting that his elders predicted that one day he would be kicking whiskey bottles and dodging cars - and they were proved right. "That's what I learned from my grandparents. When I know where I am, maybe I better keep what I know about subsistence secret." The start of the changes that white contact brought far predated Thomas Itta Sr., but they continued all the time. For example, the televisions that were on nearly continuously in Alaska Native homes - they came with the oil wealth of the 1970s, when the state government installed improved communications in villages all over the Alaska. As everywhere in the world, television was a wedge between young and old, a competitor to indigenous culture beamed as an ideal image from the world outside. When they had TV distracting their attention, young people were less interested in hearing stories or learning skills from elders such as Thomas and Flossie. Some absorbed the seductive allure of televised teenage rebellion, currently manifested by hip-hop culture, and adopted its attitude, alienation and even baggy urban clothing - a choice that was laughably inappropriate in the Arctic. Thomas said some young people wanted to learn, but no one was teaching them. The elders were busy watching TV , too. When Thomas was a boy, he was prohibited from speaking Inupiaq in school, even though he didn't know how to speak English. Today the school wanted the children to speak Inupiaq, but they didn't know how. The constant bath of English via TV made it difficult for children to think in any other language. Less than 10 percent were growing up with Inupiaq as the primary language at home. These changes and the changes in climate interwove in Thomas's discourse. "Our grandparents, our great-grandparents, they told us, something will be happening in your future. And they're right. It's happening right now. They're gone now, but the change is happening now. Our grandparents told us, You will have everything in your future. Everything will start declining." Scientists studying Alaska's glaciers, permafrost, plants and forests, records of temperatures and seasons, and many other lines of evidence, also found patterns of warming. With many environmental trends pointed in the same direction - even the 84-year record of the Nenana Ice Classic statewide betting pool on spring breakup on the Tanana River - the case was strong for warming beyond the natural swings of warmer and cooler cycles of weather. Natural cycles might exaggerate the upward trend sometimes and hide it at other times, but the peaks and troughs stepped progressively higher like saw teeth on an incline. The burden of proof had shifted to skeptics, in my judgment. Papers by teams of eminent Arctic scientists gathered up the changes, piling up circumstantial evidence until, as a reader, I was tempted to say, "OK, OK, I believe you, move on." Nonetheless, with the conservatism of science, authors hedged and called for more research. As I read these compilations of evidence, I was struck by how similar they were to the testimony of Thomas Itta Sr., Kenny Toovak, and Arnold Brower Sr., and of other elders in Arctic and Interior Alaska, and of non- Native people who spend their lives outdoors in Alaska. Those observers didn't need to remember the details of the weather a century ago to say something about climate change. They knew their world. When Thomas saw tundra permafrost melt so that it changed the shapes of rivers and streams in unfamiliar ways, he was aware of unprecedented climate change. But he didn't draw a conclusion from that alone. He and the other elders looked at many changes in nature, some unequivocal and some suggestive, discussed among themselves what they had seen, and reached a consensus based on broad evidence. Over long time spans, natural systems synthesized change into recognizable signals; people who lived within those natural systems synthesized the signals they perceived into an understa nding of the whole. After all, the human mind, with its capacity for subtle perception, communication, comparison, pattern recognition, and intuition, is the most complex natural system on earth. Why not look there for a summation of the climate's variation and trend? ----- Excerpted from "The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change" by Charles Wohlforth (www.Wohlforth.net), published this month by North Point Press, a division of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, LLC. Copyright (c) 2004 by Charles Wohlforth. All rights reserved. Series at a glance SUNDAY: Bad ice - and getting worse MONDAY: What the Eskimos taught scientists TODAY: Open river ice in April WEDNESDAY: Rain on the sea ice THURSDAY: "All hands!" A whale is caught FRIDAY: Whale on the ice SATURDAY: Adapting to change Copyright c. 2004 The Anchorage Daily News (www.adn.com) --------- "RE: Tribes regain right to prosecute other Indians" --------- Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 21:56:29 -0700 From: "Chris Milda (_Akimel O`odham_)" Subj: Tribes regain legal right to prosecute other Indians (Fwd) Mailing List: News and Information Tribes regain legal right to prosecute other Indians New York Times Apr. 20, 2004 12:00 AM WASHINGTON - The U.S. 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, principles of double jeopardy do not apply and do not bar the U.S. government from bringing a subsequent prosecution for the same offense. The 7-2 decision was welcomed by 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 non-members. The case required the Supreme Court to decide both the nature and the validity of the congressional action. The question in the new case was whether, in exercising its restored authority to prosecute non-members, a tribe continues to act as a sovereign. The Indian defendant in this case, Billy Jo Lara, is a Chippewa who married a member of a different North Dakota tribe, the Spirit Lake Tribe, and was living on the Spirit Lake Reservation. The Spirit Lake Tribe prosecuted and convicted him in its tribal court for assaulting a police officer of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. --------- "RE: Story of Darryl Headbird and Sierra Goodman" --------- Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 08:22:19 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="MURDEROUS RAGE" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.startribune.com/stories/103/4741051.html A murderous rage: The story of Darryl Headbird and Sierra Goodman Larry Oakes, Star Tribune April 25, 2004 Darryl Headbird remembers getting a good grip on the bat and adjusting his stance. He stood next to the bed in the darkened room. His father's eyes were closed. Darryl could hear his rhythmic breathing and see his chest rise and fall. Darryl, 14, raised the bat above his head. But a sudden twinge of concern stopped him. What if he doesn't die after the first swing? He lowered the bat and thought. Then he tiptoed out of the little house where he lived with his father on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation. The night was black; it was well after midnight on May 25, 2001. Darryl whistled their chained dog over to where he stood and patted its head. The nameless brown dog lay down at his feet in the dark. Darryl took a step back and swung the bat. The sound of the dog's skull splintering reminded him of the noise a cracker makes when bitten, he said later. More significant to him, though, was the way the dog collapsed and died without a whimper. He dragged the warm, limp carcass through the back yard and heaved it into the brush. Then he walked back into the house, bat in hand. The Leech Lake Indian Reservation is a place of breathtaking natural beauty. Majestic stands of pine ring three of Minnesota's largest lakes. Tourists come here to fish, hunt or snowmobile in a place where bald eagles soar above sugar-sand beaches. But in the midst of this tremendous beauty, there is tremendous misery. Here, alarming numbers of Indian children are lost to alcohol, drugs, prison and violence. Leech Lake is not the only Minnesota tribe facing such problems. But lately the reservation has become an especially violent place, where murders - such as the beating death of blind Cass Lake resident Louie Bisson in 2002 - are no longer surprising. The Leech Lake Reservation is, statistically, among the worst places in Minnesota to grow up. Cass County, where most of the reservation's people live, ranked last among 77 Minnesota counties in a 1999 government study that measured the health and safety of children. (Ten of Minnesota's 87 counties were not ranked.) In 2002, Cass County had the state's highest percentage of children living in foster homes and other county-supervised care. Most of them were Indians from the reservation, taken away from their parents, or given up by them, because of abuse, neglect or delinquency. In many cases, alcohol is a cause. Mothers damage their babies' brains by drinking their way through pregnancy. Many of those babies are born with fetal alcohol syndrome, a brain defect that severely impairs judgment. Those babies often grow up to become neglectful or destructive parents themselves, and the cycle begins anew. Mothers and fathers abandon their children, sometimes for a few days to go on a bender, sometimes for longer stretches when they're sent away to prison. Some of the children are taken in by relatives, often grandparents. Others are shuttled through a series of foster homes. And some more or less raise themselves. Many of these neglected children have learning disabilities and behavior disorders. Some have mental illnesses that aren't identified until they commit a serious crime. Many are physically or sexually abused. Starved for family, they find substitutes in gangs. Many abuse drugs and alcohol. A statewide study of ninth-graders in the mid-1990s found that Cass County had the highest rate of heavy drug and alcohol use and the highest rate of alcohol abuse within their families. The county also ranked first in numbers of people admitted to detoxification centers. Police, prosecutors and judges in the county estimate that at least 90 percent of Indian offenders commit their crimes while drunk. Death comes earlier here. In Minnesota, Indians' average life expectancy is about eight years less than for the population as a whole. The hopelessness has surfaced in a string of deaths, including the beating deaths of Bisson and a tourist, an arson that killed a young mother, a drug overdose that killed a teenage girl, the fatal shooting of a young father and the death of a teenage boy who was run over while lying on a highway - all in less than two years. As a result of those six deaths, five other young people are in prison, one awaits sentencing and three await trial. A year before this string began, hopelessness boiled over in another murder case involving two particularly troubled Ojibwe children - Darryl Headbird and Sierra Goodman. Tract 33 Ernestine Morgan gave birth to Darryl Headbird on Sept. 23, 1986. Not long after - some say a few days, Morgan herself says a few months - she left, and Darryl rarely saw her after that. The boy's father, Darryl Sr., didn't think he could care for a baby, so he asked his mother for help. Helen Headbird lived in a crackerbox house on Tract 33, a cluster of run-down government houses and mobile homes on the northern edge of Cass Lake. Tract 33, also known as Moccasin Flats, is home to a few hundred of Leech Lake's most impoverished Indians. It is not much of a place for a baby. On Tract 33, it's not uncommon to see an adult staggering at midday, teenagers passing a joint in plain sight, or a diapered toddler waddling unsupervised down the street. Gang members deal drugs and sometimes take shots at one another. People sometimes settle scores by setting fire to their enemy's house. The charred shells can stand for months. Still, Helen knew her grandson was better off with her than with either parent. Such family arrangements are common on the reservation, where nearly 5 percent of adults age 30 and older are caring for grandchildren, a rate seven times greater than for the state as a whole. So for seven years, Darryl lived on Tract 33 with his grandmother. When Darryl was 7, his grandmother got sick, and he moved out to the country to live with his father. Darryl Sr.'s two-bedroom house was in a grove of aspen and hardwoods 10 miles north of Cass Lake. Young Darryl had acres of forest to play in, but he felt uncomfortable. The house was isolated. Things there felt strange. His father had left his lumber-mill job after injuring his back, and he went on welfare. The emotional and mental problems that he had wrestled with for years grew worse. Family members said Darryl Sr. suspected that the farmer across the road was poisoning their water. Darryl Sr. claimed that he was the real author of the script for the movie "Men in Black." He refused to get a telephone because he feared wiretaps. He wrote long, rambling letters to judges and then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. Not long after young Darryl moved in, a Beltrami County judge looked at Darryl Sr.'s record of intimidation and threats against a former girlfriend, with whom he'd had a daughter, and ordered him to stay away from the little girl. But no mother went to court to protect Darryl Jr. No judge heard how his dad once belt-whipped the boy for spilling coffee. Photographs show that Darryl Sr. let garbage pile up in the kitchen. This attracted rats, which he poisoned. Darryl Jr. said he wasn't allowed to join after-school activities. Stuck at home, he learned how to skin deer and put down rabid dogs. The boy said his father let him look at pornography, claiming that it would make him a man. Sometimes Darryl Sr.'s mind seemed clearer, and he'd talk about the history of their family and tribe. One night, the boy remembers, his dad called him out onto the back porch to look at the stars as frogs chirped in the nearby swamp. Darryl Sr. told him that those were the same stars their Indian ancestors had studied when they roamed freely through the north woods. Then came the invasion of white explorers, fur-traders, soldiers and missionaries. Eventually, the government forced the Ojibwe onto reservations. Darryl's ancestors were relegated to shacks in villages such as Cass Lake, Ball Club and Inger. They existed on low-wage jobs or government handouts. The federal government prohibited their religious practices and sent their children to distant, English-language boarding schools. The Ojibwe culture was systematically dismantled. The new culture offered a way to forget - alcohol. Alcohol wreaked havoc on generations of Indian families. For the Headbirds, its legacy can be found in the Prince of Peace Cemetery north of Cass Lake. Many Headbirds lie there, in graves mounded in the Indian tradition. Most died prematurely, sometimes violently, and alcohol was usually a factor. Darryl's uncle, Randy Headbird Sr., died in 1993 at age 42 after slitting his wrists in the back of a squad car. An alcoholic, he was being taken to the Cass County jail for cutting his girlfriend with a knife while drunk. Darryl's cousin, Brenton Headbird, died at 14. The death certificate says he killed himself by running in front of a car. Another burial mound belongs to Darryl's aunt, Patricia Headbird. She died at 47 from lung cancer and chronic hepatitis after years of struggling with alcoholism. And a small mound marks the grave of Darryl's brother, Ronald. He was a year old when he died in 1986. He was run over by his parents' car in their driveway on Tract 33, three weeks before Darryl was born. His parents told police the car slipped into neutral and rolled while children played in it. Hearing voices When Darryl was 12, he found a way to escape, if only in his imagination: His father bought a box of horror movies at a rummage sale, and the boy watched "Halloween" and "Dracula" and others over and over again. He felt drawn to the macabre themes. He listened to heavy metal bands - Korn, Coal Chamber, Cradle of Filth. He read about vampirism and Satanism. Like his father, he sometimes said things that struck people as odd. He talked to himself. He said he heard voices and saw balls of light fly out of people. He toyed with the idea of suicide. Once, he said, he sat with the barrel of a gun in his mouth and his thumb on the trigger, and another time he picked up a handful of rat poison and stared at it, daring himself to swallow it. He was artistic, but he found learning basic subjects slow and difficult. His school had a high percentage of children with learning disabilities. In 2002, 18 percent of Cass Lake-Bena High School's students had learning disabilities severe enough to qualify them for special education services vs. 11 percent for the state as a whole. Education officials say that with some of the kids, fetal alcohol damage is a factor. Some of Darryl's relatives say they believe he was damaged in this way, too. They say Ernestine drank while she was pregnant, though she denies it. At school, kids called Darryl "Satan's son" and "freak." But in 1999, at age 13, he met someone who liked him just the way he was. He was at a roller rink in Bemidji, out on the floor, tripping and catching himself. A girl glided up to him. Like Darryl, she had dark hair and glasses. She, too, was Indian. She took Darryl's hands and skated backward, gracefully leading him. "Don't look at your feet," she says she told him. "Look at my eyes." Sierra Goodman had been in and out of foster homes since she was 2 months old, court records show. By the time she turned 16, she had lived with 20 families and had attended 13 schools, by her own count. Many of the Leech Lake Reservation's children bounce from foster home to foster home. More than 60 percent of children removed from Cass County homes are Indian, though Indians account for only 21 percent of the county's children. Every year on her birthday, Sierra said, she waited by the window, believing her mother would choose that day to come and get her. But she never did. Sierra's mother, Alice Whipple, drank while she was pregnant. When a pregnant woman drinks, the brain of her fetus can fail to develop properly. Fetal alcohol syndrome and its related disorders can cause learning disabilities, hyperactivity and difficulty understanding cause and effect. Some medical research indicates that a large proportion of the young people in prison or juvenile detention have some form of fetal alcohol brain damage. Studies suggest that it disproportionately afflicts Indian children. Leech Lake social workers estimate that 50 to 100 of the reservation's 1,000 Indian families have children with this kind of brain damage - children such as Sierra, who has a diagnosis of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Long before a psychologist put a name to her problem, Sierra attracted the attention of social workers. When she was 7, Sierra and her sisters, 5-year-old Amber and 3-year-old Velvet, went to live with foster parents Eugene and Carol Campbell of Bemidji. The Campbells said that Sierra was one of the most heartbreaking kids they had ever seen. She arrived at their house carrying all of her clothes in a half-full grocery sack. At first she seemed unable to bond or trust. She responded to their kindness by regressing and insisting that Carol rock her to sleep each night. She said, "Mommy, I wish I could get inside of you." The Campbells showered her with affection. They painted and carpeted her room in her favorite color - pink. Carol filled her closet with clothes - purple and pink dresses for church, and black patent leather shoes. They bought toys and games, including a cooking set that Sierra liked most of all. The sisters bounced down the dock and jumped into the lake nearly every nice day all summer. After a year and a half, the Campbells began to realize they were violating an unwritten rule of foster care: They had fallen in love with the girls. They petitioned the court to adopt Sierra, Amber and Velvet. Sierra was happy; by now, she considered the Campbells to be her mom and dad. But the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe did not. The Campbells were white, and the filing of those papers stirred a hornet's nest. A 1978 law - the federal Indian Child Welfare Act - requires that Indian children be placed in Indian homes whenever possible to help preserve tribes and Indian culture. While the Campbells said they agreed in principle with the law, they also knew that Leech Lake had a shortage of Indian foster families. None of the foster parents had been willing to care long-term for all three girls. No one had objected to the girls' prolonged stay at the Campbells until the Campbells wanted to make it permanent. When the tribe objected, the county took the girls away. But when the girls proved too difficult for the next two foster families, the county sent them back to the Campbells. In May 1993, the court ruled that the Campbells could adopt the girls, but the tribe appealed. The legal battle that ensued continued for nearly two years. Indian bands and adoption professionals across the nation watched closely. The girls were, once again, removed from the Campbells' home. The Minnesota Court of Appeals sided with the Campbells, but the state Supreme Court overturned the ruling. That became the last word; the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case. By then the Campbells had remortgaged their house and spent $80,000 on attorneys. Sierra, then 11, was devastated. "We love them so much," she vented in a letter to the state Supreme Court. "... You are mean, crude and evil like the devil." Sierra, Amber and Velvet were placed with their aunt and uncle, Melvin and Audrey Goodman. The family moved to a split-level home on a hill outside Cass Lake. Sierra was back in the homeland of her ancestors. But, she said, she didn't feel at home. Dark forces Over the next three years, Sierra ran away seven times, trying to get back to the Campbells. Late one night, she sneaked out of the house, walked the 15 miles that separated them and pounded on their door at 5 a.m. Gene and Carol held her close but explained that they either had to send her back or go to jail. As Gene walked her out to a patrol car, Sierra clung to him and sobbed. Living with the Goodmans, Sierra grew more and more unhappy. She said she felt drawn by the darker forces she sensed in horror movies and heavy metal music. She experimented with blood-letting. She read about Satanism. She told people she was angry with God. She described how she tried several times to kill herself. Once, she said, she hung herself from a tree, only to get scared and regain her footing. Another time she climbed Cass Lake's water tower but decided not to jump. One night, she said, she piled sticks around the Goodman home, intending to burn the house down with them in it. But she couldn't figure out how to get her sleeping sisters out without waking her uncle and aunt, so her plan fell apart. The Goodmans asked authorities for help. At juvenile detention homes, in a hospital psych ward, in another foster home, Sierra, now on the antidepressant Prozac, insisted that all she wanted to do was go back to the Campbells. In March 2000, the tribe, concluding that all other options had been exhausted, agreed. She and the Campbells had a joyful reunion. But Sierra was no longer the little girl who wanted to be rocked to sleep. She was a teenager, angry, depressed and deeply troubled. Once she met Darryl, they were inseparable. They dressed in black and brushed liquid paper onto their eyelids. They decided that they were vampires and shrank from garlic and the sun. Although still children - Darryl was 13 and Sierra was 16 - they became lovers. Darryl wrote poems to her with a pen dipped in blood. At school, students scattered and screamed when Sierra pulled out a vial of Darryl's dried blood and sprinkled it over her lunch. When the Campbells and some Headbird relatives grew alarmed and tried to limit the couple's contact, the two decided they had had enough of the adults in their lives. They planned to run away and start a community of devil-worshipping teens, they said later. But first they would kill Darryl's father, Sierra's foster parents and anyone else who tried to come between them. "I have a murderous rage within me," Sierra wrote to Darryl in red ink. "... Soon, my love, we shall take over the world." A strange dream They chose Memorial Day weekend. The Campbells were out of town, and Sierra was staying with an aunt. Darryl, they decided, would kill his father and then ambush the Campbells upon their return. Late that night, after killing his dog with the bat, Darryl decided that killing his father the same way would be too difficult. He put the bat away and waited for another chance. In the morning, Darryl's father remarked on the strange dream he had had. In his dream, he said, his copper-colored skin had turned gray. Later that day, Darryl rode his bicycle to a friend's house. No one was home. Inside, he said, he found a 12-gauge shotgun and shells. He sneaked them home. Darryl later described what happened next: That night, he crept up and put the muzzle of the Remington pump shotgun an inch or two away from his sleeping father's head. Heart pounding, he watched his father's chest rise and fall. He held his breath and squeezed the trigger. A quick flash lit his father's face and a loud bang sounded, followed by a high-pitched ringing in Darryl's ears and the sharp, expanding smell of burnt gunpowder. And then, silence. After a day, Darryl recalled, the body had started to smell. He washed it with bleach, talking to it as he worked, and covered it with a tarp. Then he blew the corpse a kiss, got on his bike and pedaled to Bemidji. Sierra sneaked out of her aunt's house, and she and Darryl spent the night at her foster parents' home. In the morning, they decided they wouldn't wait for the Campbells to come back; they would run away. Sierra packed a special razor for bloodletting, a red devil toy, a black cape and a red and black velvet gown. They hitchhiked to Darryl's house. He lifted the tarp to show Sierra his father's body. Darryl stuffed some clothes into a backpack along with five CDs, a pocket-sized skull and two hunting knives. They then set off on foot down the highway toward Cass Lake. Meanwhile, Gene and Carol Campbell had returned to find Sierra missing. They set out separately - Carol in her van, Gene in his truck - to look for her. Carol was driving behind Gene when they came upon the pair trudging up the road. Darryl hugged Sierra as if to say goodbye, slipping her a knife and whispering instructions in her ear. All four recalled what happened next: Darryl said he knew where to aim - his dad once told him the most effective places to stick a knife if he ever had to kill someone. As Gene walked up to Sierra, Darryl stepped behind him and plunged the knife into the base of Gene's neck. Carol screamed. Gene was stunned, but he saw the blood spurting, and from his days as a military medic he knew that he had only seconds to act. He slid his forefinger and thumb inside the wound, found the sliced artery, and pinched it shut. He said: "Darryl, you don't have to do this." But Darryl was looking at Sierra. The terror in her eyes told him she wasn't going to do her part - she was not going to kill her foster mother. Carol ran to the van. Darryl bounded after her. Run, Carol! Gene remembers yelling as he tried to block Darryl, who pushed past. But the van was locked. Carol ran on down the highway, Darryl at her heels. Both Sierra and Gene saw him grin as he raised the knife. With the second stab, Carol felt everything below her shoulders become dead weight. Gritty pavement rose and smacked her in the face. I can't move! she shouted. Gene rammed his body into Darryl's and then fell on top of Carol. He expected to die there with his wife. But a car was approaching. Gene looked up and said: Darryl, if you stay here, you're going to get caught! Take my truck and go! Darryl and Sierra ran to the truck and sped away, Sierra at the wheel. Still their daughter The doctors said Gene and Carol were lucky to be alive. She spent two months in a hospital, healing and learning to use a wheelchair. The knife had severed her spinal cord, paralyzing her below the shoulders. Gene underwent three surgeries. They knew that Darryl and Sierra had been picked up almost right away. But even as Carol and Gene recovered, they wanted Sierra back. In their hearts, they said, she was still their daughter. Just days after getting out of the hospital, Gene pushed Carol's wheelchair into a juvenile detention center in Bemidji, where Sierra was being held. All three of them cried. Sierra begged their forgiveness. They hugged her. Gene said: You are our daughter. We love you. They told authorities that she needed help, not prison. They said she always would have a home with them. Darryl and Sierra were certified to stand trial as adults, but there were no trials. Both pleaded guilty, Darryl to murder and assault, Sierra to aiding Darryl in the assaults on the Campbells and to helping him escape. Court-appointed psychiatrists concluded that Darryl suffered from schizoaffective disorder. This fairly rare mental illness has symptoms of both schizophrenia and a mood disorder - depression, in Darryl's case. Fetal alcohol brain damage and schizoaffective disorder can produce similar behaviors. But Darryl was never tested for fetal alcohol damage. This wasn't unusual. A 1998 task force warned that fetal alcohol damage is a major hidden cause of crime and dysfunction in the state. But few juvenile offenders in Minnesota are screened for the disorder. Beltrami County Attorney Tim Faver said he felt sorry for Darryl, but he also felt obligated to get him off the streets. Sierra was a different story. Faver came to believe that with the right kind of help, she would no longer be a threat. On Sept. 25, 2001, the Campbells were at her side when Judge Terrance Holter sentenced Sierra to 22 years in prison. He stayed the sentence, placed her on probation for 20 years, and ordered her into treatment at Woodland Hills, a juvenile rehabilitation home in Duluth. He also ordered her to have no more contact with Darryl. An aunt's plan Darryl's mother had been little more than a shadowy figure in his life, but she showed up for his court appearances. So did his grandmother and a few other relatives. His Aunt Tina couldn't bear to think of such a young boy spending the next 30 years in prison. Confinement, she thought, would crush his soul. She had an idea she shared with other family members: At Darryl's sentencing, she would sneak a gun into the courthouse and shoot him. Death would save him from decades of imprisonment. But she never had the chance to carry out her plan. The day before Darryl's sentencing, a judge ordered her into drug treatment. She had been convicted of trying to pass a forged prescription for OxyContin, a painkiller peddled illegally on the reservation. On Nov. 6, 2001, Darryl was sentenced to 40 years in prison. With good behavior, he would serve almost 27 years. In court, the judge granted him the right to speak. Darryl held an eagle feather that a relative had brought, to give him strength. "I am sorry for the wrongs in my life that I cannot undo. I used to be a lovable boy," he said. " ... I wish I could go back to those days when ... people that I didn't even know loved me for how cute I was. Now you fear me." As Darryl was led away in handcuffs, the deputy paused as they passed Darryl's mother. In 15 years, she had almost never touched him. But now, as he was heading off to prison, she enveloped him in a hug. 'You'll always be mine' A few months after Sierra arrived at Woodland Hills, two ministers drove her to a deserted picnic ground. She held a T-shirt that Darryl had painted for her. Once one of her most prized possessions, it featured satanic symbols, flames and skulls. The ministers built a fire. While they prayed, Sierra held the shirt over the flames. It was a long time before she let go. Even as it burned, Sierra said later, she felt the shirt speaking to her: "They're deceiving you. You'll always be mine." She shivered. During the year and a half Sierra lived at Woodland Hills, she underwent intensive therapy and continued high school classes. She graduated last May. A month later, Woodland Hills released her to a group home. On July 28, Sierra, now 19, appeared in court once again - this time on a happier occasion. Carol, 64, and Gene, 49, were by her side. It took 10 brief minutes for their adoption petition to be granted. At long last, Sierra Goodman became Sierra Campbell. "We're hoping for a much better future," Carol said, reaching up from her wheelchair to hug her daughter. Sierra's little sisters have not been as lucky. Cass County removed them from the Goodman home after hearing evidence of problems there. The Goodmans voluntarily gave up their parental rights to the girls. A judge sent Amber, 17, and Velvet, 15, to separate treatment facilities for troubled young people. The Goodmans did not respond to requests for interviews. In prison On Jan. 30, 2003, a guard escorted Darryl into the visitation room at the 115-year-old granite prison just outside of St. Cloud. Barely 16, he was the second-youngest inmate in Minnesota's adult prison system. He was already more than a year into his sentence. His visitor, a reporter, was his first. He works on his GED, he said, and composes heavy-metal songs on his guitar. He paints pictures, mostly in blue and black. He reads the Satanic Bible and pinpricks tattoos of satanic symbols on his arms. He calls himself "D." He fights and gets thrown into segregation. He lies on the cot in his 10-by-12-foot cell and stares up at a Britney Spears poster. He has not heard from Sierra or tried to contact her. His mother has not written. "Its almost as if my past life was all a dream," he wrote later to the reporter. "I sometimes think that this place isn't real. Like when I wake up in the morning. ... but every morning, in that one moment before I remember, I truly wonder where I'm at. ... "And please try not to make me look like some type of monster." One hundred fifty miles to the north, on the Leech Lake Reservation, the pines whisper above Prince of Peace Cemetery. Another mound lies in the Headbird area. Someone has given it a stone border and stuck an eagle feather and an American flag, now faded, into the dirt. A small metal marker reads: Darryl Kent Headbird Sr., 1959-2001. Murdered by his second son, he is buried quite near his first son. Copyright c. 2004 Star Tribune. All rights reserved. --------- "RE: Former B.C. Judge admits to sex assaults" --------- Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 08:33:24 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="CLOAKED SEXUAL PREDATOR" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.theglobeandmail.com/~/20040504/JUDGE04//?query=aboriginal Former B.C. judge admits to sex assaults against 4 teen girls By JANE ARMSTRONG With a report from CTV May 4, 2004 For more than two decades, David Ramsay was a respected jurist in the rough-and-rumble northern B.C. city of Prince George. Yesterday, the former provincial judge became a defendant, admitting to a stream of disturbing sex charges against teenage girls. With his wife and victims looking on, the 61-year-old retired judge stunned a crowded courtroom by pleading guilty to three counts of buying sex from minors, one count of sexual assault causing bodily harm and one count of breach of trust relating to the duties of his office. The surprise guilty plea was made just minutes into what was supposed to have been a three-week trial. Five other charges against Mr. Ramsay were stayed. The four victims are aboriginal women. At the time of the assaults, they were all under 18 and one was 12. Reading from an agreed statement of facts, special prosecutor Dennis Murray confirmed what some prostitutes in Prince George had been saying for years: that the judge was also a john. In one attack, he picked up a 16-year-old prostitute, drove outside town where the two agreed he pay $150 for sex. But he flew into a rage when she asked him to use a condom, smashing her head on the dash of his car until she bled and chasing after her when she tried to escape. He caught up to her on the highway and sexually assaulted her before she ran away. The girl later recognized him in the courthouse when she was appearing as a witness in another case. In other instances, he slapped the girls, chased them, simulated rough sex or left them naked on the highway. He also called them names and threatened one girl with death. Calling the crimes "callous" and "abhorrent," Mr. Murray said Mr. Ramsay abused his position of trust and authority, believing he was "untouchable." Mr. Murray said the girls were young and vulnerable, suffering the attendant problems that come with life on the street. They used drugs and had been abused by others, and some were suicidal. Mr. Murray said the judge was aware of the damage he was inflicting on the girls, yet he regarded them as "unworthy." Mr. Ramsay is to be sentenced on June 1 and Mr. Murray is seeking a jail sentence of five years. The crimes date to 1992, the year after Mr. Ramsay was appointed to the bench. In court, the victims hugged one another and cried. All the girls had at one time appeared in Mr. Ramsay's court. At the time of the attacks, they were 12, 14, 15, and 16. The former judge began his career as a legal-aid lawyer in the 1970s before moving on to practise at various firms. As a judge, he had a reputation as fair and hard-working in this city of 75,000. Harry Pierre, tribal council chief of the Carrier Sekani First Nation near Prince George, said the crimes were unconscionable, leaving the women with crippling, life-long problems. "The young ladies - their lives have been wrecked," he said. Mr. Pierre said the judge's actions have the ring of crimes committed in a "corrupt, Third World country" - not Canada. "A judge is supposed to uphold the law," he said. "You think you're safe and sound." Mr. Pierre said he would like to see a review of all Mr. Ramsay's cases that involved aboriginal people. The case against Mr. Ramsay made headlines across the province last year when nine sex charges were announced, alleging offences against four girls. Rumours about Mr. Ramsay first swirled in 1999 when RCMP received a complaint about him. In the summer of 2002, he was removed from duty after B.C. Chief Judge Carol Baird learned there was a criminal investigation. He resigned abruptly in October of 2002, the day a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate accusations that he sexually exploited teenage girls between 1992 and 2001. Early on, there were grumblings that the justice system was treating the ex-judge with kid gloves. At his first court hearing last spring, he was permitted to enter the courtroom through a side door, bypassing the public. Copyright c. 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Missing Native Teens ignored" --------- Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 08:33:24 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="MISSING" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.com http://www.canada.com/winnipeg/story.asp?id=CDDAB57B-DSC5-4641- Missing native teens ignored: chief April 24,2004 WINNIPEG - The chief of a northern Manitoba reserve where two teens have disappeared says missing aboriginal youths draw less attention than those involving non-aboriginal children. Moses Okimaw, of the Manto Sipi First Nation, compared the cases of the two teens missing from his reserve to the case of Dru Sjodin, a 22-year- old University of North Dakota student. Sjodin's body was found this month after she disappeared November 22nd. Okimaw says people from Manitoba went to North Dakota to help look for the woman but he says there is no similar outrage when an aboriginal disappears. Police have appealed for help in finding the teens. Sunshine Wood was 16 when she was last reported seen in Winnipeg February 20th. Dwayne Ross was 18 when he was last reported seen in Thompson on October 1st. Both teens are from Manto Sipi at Gods River, about 850 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg. Copyright c. 2004 Canadian Press. --------- "RE: Native American Prisoner to fight on" --------- Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 08:13:05 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="PELTIER" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3654785.stm Native American prisoner to fight on by Chris Summers BBC News Online April 24, 2004 Native American activist Leonard Peltier has spent 28 years in prison for a crime he says he did not commit - the cold-blooded murder of two FBI agents on an Indian reservation in the summer of 1975. On Friday, as another activist was jailed for life for a murder on the same reservation, BBC News Online spoke to Peltier's lawyer Barry Bachrach. A ticker on the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee website counts the days, hours, minutes and seconds that he has served in prison. It currently stands at 10,305 days. Peltier was convicted of the murder, on 26 June 1975, of FBI agents Jack Coler and Ron Williams. The pair had been involved in a firefight with members of the American Indian Movement (Aim) on a property, known as the Jumping Bull site, on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Both were finished off, at close range, by their killers. Peltier has always admitted he was on the Jumping Bull site on that day but he claims he escaped, along with other Aim activists, before the agents were killed. 'He knows who did it' His lawyer, Barry Bachrach, told BBC News Online: "He has heard rumours about who did it but he will not reveal it." Mr Bachrach is currently preparing an appeal, challenging the Parole Commission's right to set Peltier's parole date, bearing in mind its record of "arbitrary and capricious" decisions. On Friday a former AIM activist, Arlo Looking Cloud, was jailed for life for the murder of a colleague, Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, whose body was found on the Pine Ridge reservation in February 1976. The trial heard she was killed because she was suspected of being an FBI informant. Pine Ridge is home to the Oglala Sioux tribe, whose famous ancestor was the warrior Crazy Horse. Mr Bachrach said: "Arlo's trial was a farce. It was a set-up. This was not a trial about Arlo Looking Cloud. They couldn't care less about Arlo. It was about putting to rest the AIM and getting some more shots in at Leonard. They want to make sure he never gets out." He said: "What is important to bear in mind is that this (Pine Ridge) was a war zone. At the time - between 1973 and 1976 - it was known as the "reign of terror". 'Terrorising people' "During this time Dick Wilson (the former tribal chief, now deceased) hired a group known as the Guardians Of the Oglala Nation (Goon), and they were terrorising people. "Wilson was leasing and hiring land, rich with uranium deposits, to energy companies. "The US Government and the FBI were supporting Dick Wilson and his Goons, who committed more than 60 murders which were uninvestigated." Mr Bachrach said: "The only one of these 60 murders which anybody has bothered to reinvestigate was Anna Mae's." Arlo Looking Cloud's trial heard evidence from Darlene "Kamook" Nichols, the former wife of one-time Aim leader Dennis Banks. She claimed Anna Mae was challenged about being an FBI informant at a convention in New Mexico in June 1975. Ms Nichols testified that Peltier threatened Anna Mae with a gun and added: "She told him that if he believed that he should go ahead and shoot her." Mr Bachrach said he visited Peltier last week at Leavenworth penitentiary in Kansas: "I asked Leonard about what Kamook said. He said he was asked to inquire of Anna Mae if she was working for the FBI and he took her into a teepee in Farmington, New Mexico to talk to her. But it's false to say he struck a gun in her mouth." Ms Nichols also told the trial that Anna Mae had said Peltier later bragged about killing the two FBI agents. Mr Bachrach said: "This case was nothing more than smearsay. They coached Kamook and she admitted she had been paid $40,000 by the FBI. Her evidence should never have seen the light of day." 'Betrayed' He said: "Leonard feels very betrayed by Kamook. It's very hurtful for someone you think is a friend to lie about you." He added: "Why would he brag about killing the agents if he suspected she was an informant?" Peltier is one of the best-known alleged miscarriages of justice victims in the United States. In the past he has received messages of support from Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, British MP Tony Benn and numerous actors, including Robert Redford and Winona Ryder. Mr Bachrach said: "We are not going to go away. This is an injustice and a government cover-up and we are just not going to go away until Leonard is released and even when he is released we will not go away." He recently wrote to the US Congress asking them to widen an investigation into FBI misconduct in Boston, Massachusetts (involving mafia boss James "Whitey" Bulger) to include alleged misconduct among FBI agents in South Dakota in the 1970s. Copyright c. 2004 BBC News. --------- "RE: Native Prisoner" --------- Date: Mon, May 3 2004 10:53:36 -0700 From: Janet Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 22:45:14 -0700 (PDT) From: charmaine oldman Subj: Prison Pow Wow Mailing List: Iron Natives The Native American brothers at Arizona State Prison Complex - Lewis in Buckeye (Morey Unit) are in need of volunteers for their First Annual Spiritual Pow Wow. They are seeking drummers, dancers, speakers, entertainer (e.g. flute player) and medicine man/woman. The Pow Wow is June 20, 2004, the time has not been confirmed. For further information and if interest in attending their First Annual Pow Wow please contact the following individuals: Chaplain Baldwen at (623) 386-6160 or Frank Espinoza #38044 P.O. Box 3300 3A #21 Buckeye, AZ 85326 ===== --------- "RE: Rustywire: He was sitting at the Mall" --------- Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 08:40:47 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="RUSTYWIRE: MALL" http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Nook/1574/Starmtn/mall.html He Was Sitting at the Mall by Johnny Rustywire He sat alone at Rio West Mall in Gallup, New Mexico, I almost past him and looked twice.... he sat alone, he was dirty, hair going every which way, his head tilted to the side. Everyone said, stay away from that Glahnee (wino). His wife had called me some days before, have you seen him, he left from work early payday and he's not home, if you get a chance look for him.... it was him....we had played together in the shadows at Mount Eldon camp.... we went to junior high, we were Flag Eagles then Shiprock Chieftains...I had slept at his house on more than one occasion... We had been drafted the same year..Gesho (Look at that), I heard them say, he doesn't belong here, they should do something people passing would say.....his mother died when he was young....I went over to him, he surely did smell bad it is true.....come home with me my friend, it's me....so we left.........today he stands with his children, working and has found a place, we joke about arranging a marriage between my son and his daughter His wife is his strength, she is a good woman...I haven't seen him for a while but I know if the time should come when I would need a helping hand that he will be there. For now I wish him well and he has found his way and I have not seen him on the streets for a long time...so it is said, when you see them the glahnees, they each have story to tell... Copyright c. 1999, Johnny Rustywire, all rights reserved. --------- "RE: Verse: Hawaiian Book of Days" --------- Date: Sun, 2 May 2004 14:28:38 -1000 From: Debbie Sanders Subj: Hawaiian Book of Days A HAWAI`I BOOK OF DAYS, week of May 3-9 MEI May Ikiiki 3 True peace lives within the wondering heart. 4 There was never a dreamer, never a visionary, who did not know the virtues of nature. 5 Find the perfect music of the spirit, and know fulfillment. 6 Dance the joy your heart feels. 7 Feel the winds blowing through you, cleansing your spirit of all sorrow. 8 The joyous heart has as many blessings as the stars in the sky, na hoku. 9 Give me the wings of a bird, and I will possess all the world! (c) Copyright 1991 by D. F. Sanders Me ke aloha i ka nani, ... Moe'uhanekeanuenue (With love and beauty, ... Rainbow Dream) --------- "Re: Hawkdancer Poem: Wind Talker" --------- Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 19:18:16 EDT From: Charles Hawkdancer Myrick Subj: Poem: Wind Talker Mailing List: INDIAN-HERITAGE-L@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU Siyo nigada (Hello everyone) Here is a poem I just finished while walking in the yard. I hope you all like it. Hawkdancer of the AniKawi (`\o/`) Tsalagi ale utlvquodi vhnai nasgi (Cherokee and proud of it) ========================= Wind talker By: Hawkdancer Wind talker, what does it say. Legend of old, what does it say. Lesson of new, what does it say. Wind talker, what does it say. Lessons of life, what does it teach. Way of life, what does it teach. --------- "RE: Upcoming Events" --------- Date: Mon, 3 May 2004 15:39:14 -0700 From: Gary Smith (gars@speakeasy.org) Subj: Upcoming Events =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= EVENTS ARE FEATURED IN ODD NUMBERED ISSUES ONLY =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Events are too numerous to list for the entire year and are updated periodically. =================================== Augusta Pow-Wow May 7-8, 2004 Sponsored by the Augusta Pow-Wow Association Please come join us at our new location: The AJCC on Three J Road Augusta, GA Head Singer - Billy Horse Head Man - Mark Alexander Head lady - Teresa Alexander Arena Director - Orville Gates Craft Contest - Raffles & Auction Approximated Times: Friday 6:30PM - Grand Entry Saturday 12:30-3PM - Gourd Dance 3:00-4:30 - Intertribal 7:00PM - Grand Entry Auction to Immediately follow Saturday Night Dance Information: Bill Medeiros (706) 771-1221 Email: krazywilly@knology.net Pets welcomed on a leash (Owners MUST clean up behind their pets) =================================== Date: Mon, 3 May 2004 14:21:52 -0700 From: Patricia Gunter-Hernandez Subj: Upcoming Pow Wow Mailing List: FN Stanford campus May 7-9, 2004. The Stanford Powwow is held every Mother's Day Weekend. Open to the Public | Rain or Shine. Donation for admission. http://www.stanford.edu/group/powwow/ =================================== Euharlee Native American Festival Osborne Park, Downtown Euharlee, GA Special Tribute to ALL veterans. ALL VETERANS INVITED!!! October 22 - 24, 2004 Grand Entry Sat 12 Noon Sun 1 PM Hosted by Native American Honor Guard & Warrior Society Host Drum: Buffalo Heart Guest Drum: Aracoma Lightning Head Man: Jerry Smith Head Lady: Ellen Rasco Emcee: Gary Smith AD: Tommy Smith No Drugs, Alcohol or bad attitudes. Bring your blankets and lawn chairs. Info: Joey Pierce 404 377 4950 or Sam Hinson 770 546 7191 or Jerry Lang 256 492 5217 =================================== June 4-6, 2004 Blackwater Creek American Indian Festival and Pow-wow At Black Water Creek RV Park off Airport Road & Curry Highway (Hwy. 257) Jasper, Alabama This event is sponsored by Native American Girl Scout Troop #389 and Aracoma Boy Scout Drum and Dance Team. Admission donation: $5.00 - adults; $1.00 for Seniors & students. Head Man: Bill Jolly (Ojibwa); Head Lady: Betsy Jolly (Echota Cherokee); Head Veteran: don Nelson (Potawami): Junior Head Man: TBD; Junior Head Lady: TBD; Arena Director: Little Hawk Gatty (Cherokee); Emcee: John Ferguson (Creek); Storyteller: Vickie King (Cherokee Tribe of NE Alabama) and Steve Bison (CRIC); Host Northern Drum: TBD; Host Southern Drum: Caney Creek Singers; Invited Drums include: Gun Powder River singers; Aracoma Lightning Singers & NoNaMe Singers. All traditional drums are welcome. Ambassador contest for those age 11 to 21 at time of event. This is for males and females. Contact kcooper@uabmc.edu related to details. Gourd dance will be available at 10 AM on Saturday and 12 Noon on Sunday. Prayer Circle will be conducted by Paul Whitehawk & Elizabeth Lightwalker. Host Motel: Holiday Inn Express 205-302-6400 ($57.00 + tax); RV camping is $12.00 per night, tent camping is $5.00 per night. Schedule: Friday: gates open at 4pm