_ __ _____ __ _ __ ___ ____ _ __ ___ ' ) / / ') / / ) ' ) ) / ) / ' ) ) / ) / / / / / / /--/ / / / ___ / / / / ___ (_(_/ (__/ ( / (_ / (_ (___/ '__/_ / (_ (___/ ' ____ _ , ___ _ , ___ / ' ) / / ) ' ) / / ' VOLUME 13, ISSUE 028 / /-< / /--/ /-- __/_ / ) (___/ / ( (___, WOTANGING IKCHE - Lakota - Common News Wotanging Ikche and Native American News Copyright c. 1996-2005 nanews.org Aboriginal/AmerIndian Perspective about the First Nations of Turtle Island July 9, 2005 Passamaquoddy Accihte/ripening moon Assiniboine Wasasa/red berries moon Blackfeet niipoomahkatoyiiksistsikaa to's/summer big holy day 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 s ch mA mL tL squee Lux -- Okanogan -- News from 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; N A Circle, Chiapas95-En and Amazon Alliance 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 am disappointed but not at all surprised at this latest decision of the Forest Service to uphold the desecration of Nuvatukyaovi (the San Francisco Peaks). It became evident early on in the process that federal authorities were ignoring the deeply felt concerns of the Hopi Tribe and all native nations. It is our duty and obligation to protect and preserve the spiritual integrity of Nuvatukyaovi and we will never give up in our efforts to do so." __ Wayne Taylor, Hopi Chairman +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ | 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! In the past week Montana news sources reported a federal mediator in the state assessing racial tension after news reports of discrimination against Indians in the state. I also received a note from a prison activist reporting that the Montana prison system is again nipping away at Native inmates ceremonies, now with more subtle slights than previous blatant discrimination, but nonetheless -- insults to Native spiritual traditions. This is in a state whose governor whose public support of the states' tribes has up to this point been outstanding. Granted, he can't control the attitudes of store clerks, but he can do something about the attitude of his state Department of Corrections policies and practices. Meanwhile, one state over, the ACLU has filed a lawsuit alleging racist practices in the Winner, SD school system. It's not the first time Winner's schools have been spotlighted for racism, either. That little town, which borders a reservation, has made itself quite a reputation for anti-Indian bigotry. In South Dakota, Indian voters helped send Stephanie Herseth to the US House of Representatives. And, to be fair, she's stood up for Indian issues in the Congress. But surely she could do something (if only suggest HEW investigate) to get Winner's school officials' attention. In the meantime, as you can see from the lead article, funds for Indian housing took another hit (Bush whacked) because resources are being diverted to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is no secret that Indians, especially Rez Indians with lower education and fewer employment options, end up on the front lines. So now, not only will our brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, fathers and mothers die on the war front, but our grandmothers and grandfathers will suffer, and some of them will die, because their houses will not be repaired to weather the cold winter that is just a few months away. It's all about priorities... -=-=-=- News commentator Paul Harvey showed a side of himself this past week that says much about his true heart. Below are two comments I have been granted permission to share with you. ---- Date: Friday, July 01, 2005 10:58 PM From: Janet Smith [owlstartrading@speakeasy.net] Subj: [NAcircle] Today's news Mailing List: NA Circle Folks, I thought I'd heard everything when I read an e-mail forwarded to me about Paul Harvey's June 23 commentary. Here are a few selected tidbits: "We're standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive because we've declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies--more moral, more civilized," he said. Drawing a contrast with what he cast as the praiseworthy nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, Harvey lamented that "we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq and kept our best weapons in their silos"--suggesting that America should have used its nuclear arsenal in its invasions of both countries. "We didn't come this far because we're made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever. "And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. So it goes with most great nation-states, which-- feeling guilty about their savage pasts--eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy." I used to enjoy some of Paul Harvey's broadcasts, especially his "The Rest of the Story." I don't see how I can anymore, without it being spoiled by remembering this. I know he's old, and I understand that he's conservative and as such, not inclined to be ethnically sensitive, but to suggest that nations become great and should remain great by demonstrating savagery, brutality and dishonor to any who stand in their way -- it's beyond me how an intelligent person goes to that place. Can he not see that those not made of sugar candy might decide that someone such as himself, enfeebled by age, might just be a good victim? After all, great nations are made by great individuals. If opportunistic brutality is the mark of a great nation, then why should it not be the mark of a great individual? ---- Date: Friday, July 01, 2005 10:40 PM From: Art Durand [nanalq@redshift.com] Subj: Paul Harvey's June 23rd address. Dear Mr McConnell, As a Native American I was delighted to hear of Paul Harveys address of June 23rd, wherein he praises the ancestors of the dominant culture for their savage ways... "We didn't come this far because we're made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever." He is your guy, Mr McConnell. I think I'm going to, no, I am sure that I am going to boycott all things Disney and I'm going to ask all my friends to do the same. As for Mr Harvey, I can only hope that the cosmic admonition is true, that what goes around comes around. I realize that he is sick in his spirit and should be pitied but there is a part in me that wants to see his auntie and his relatives suffer as mine have suffered. I'll work on that inferior part of myself. In The Spirit of Crazy Horse, I am Art Durand AKA Whitebear ---- Dohiyi Ani Oginalii , , Gary Smith (*,*) wotanging@bellsouth.net P. O. Box 672168 (`-') gars@nanews.org Marietta, GA 30006, U.S.A. ===w=w=== http://www.nanews.org ----------- News of the people featured in this issue ----------- - BIA Contract Funds lost - Americas Program: to Iraq, Afghanistan Wars Zapatista Red Alert - Coburn fails to get - Crops cutting into Indian Health Care funding Amazon Rain Forest - Help coming for Families - `War on Terror' promised HPL Homes zeroes in on Indigenous People - One Nation's new battle - OPINION: RCMP Interference - Judge halts foreclosure - Kanestake looking to better Days on Oneida Nation Land - Aboriginal Youth - Tribes sue over Snowbowl decision explore Military Life - Federal Mediator examines - Questions raised about Racism in Havre arrests of FN Activists - Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma - Tamra Keepness still missing: initiates Legal Action One year later - Appeals Court tosses - Tribal Police $248M Award to Tribe develop Life saving System - Indian Education for All - Sweat Lodge in the Pen - Patients' Diversity - Notoriety fades is often Discounted for Convict in FBI shootings - Big Snake Bridge: - Native Prisoner Cooperation Theme of Ceremony -- Discrimination - Spiritual Perspectives: at Spiritual Gathering Navajo Enemy Way Ceremony - History: Carlisle Indian School - 'Poia:' - Verse: Hawaiian Book of Days How Blackfeet learned the Sun Dance - Rustywire: - JOHN TIERNEY: Navajo Tortillas-Nunescahdi Bureaucrats and Indians - "Abe" Jones Poem: By the People - YELLOW BIRD: - State of Sequoyah Fourth inspires mixed feelings Centennial exhibit --------- "RE: BIA Contract Funds lost to Iraq, Afghanistan Wars" --------- Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 08:42:46 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="FUNDS SHOT AWAY" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.billingsgazette.com//state/55-tribe-growth.inc Tribe seeks economic growth Associated Press June 28, 2005 HELENA - The Northern Cheyenne Indian Tribe is an impoverished nation, hungry for economic development to provide jobs for tribal members and to reduce the reservation's dependence on shaky federal aid, the tribe's leader told state officials Monday. Tribal Council President Eugene Little Coyote described his reservation as in a "perpetual Great Depression" with about two of every three people out of work, and said the Cheyenne want to work with the state in finding new jobs and revenue sources. "We're the neediest of the needy," he told Gov. Brian Schweitzer and top administration officials. "There's a lot of opportunity for business development, and we wish to partner with state government." Little Coyote specifically mentioned tribal plans for a casino on about 300 acres along the Tongue River. "This is a socially acceptable activity for my people and we want to move ahead with it," he said. Later, Little Coyote said the tribe would like to negotiate a more liberal gambling agreement with the state when the current one expires in two years, in hopes of offering expanded forms of gambling in the planned casino. The tribe already operates a casino on the reservation. It provides 40 jobs and a $2 million annual payroll but makes little money, Little Coyote said. He said finding new sources of money for the tribe is essential at a time when many reservation jobs are tied to federal government programs that are expected to face spending cuts. Dion Killsback of Lame Deer, a self-determination specialist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said the Cheyenne get about $2.2 million a year in federal contracts and grants, but that will decline as the cost of military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan require more money. In the next two years, the tribe will lose three or four BIA contracts worth $500,000 to $750,000 annually and employing as many as 35 people, Killsback said. For his part, Schweitzer pitched his idea to develop a reservation plant capable of producing diesel, gasoline and other fuels from coal mined in the Otter Creek tracts that the state obtained from the federal government a few years ago. He predicted such a plant could operate for 50 years, providing hundreds of high-paying jobs on the reservation for two generations and creating little pollution. Expensive and unsightly power lines would not be needed because the product would be shipped in underground pipelines, he said. The processing has become an economically viable method of producing fuel because oil prices have climbed so high, Schweitzer said. He warned Little Coyote and other Cheyenne leaders that such plants can be located in many sites throughout Montana's coal fields and tribal willingness to embrace the proposal is important. Little Coyote said a vote by all tribal members on such a development would be necessary. "You have presented us with an opportunity," he acknowledged. Schweitzer administration officials also asked tribal leaders to consider a proposal for imposing a tax on tobacco sold on the reservation that would match the state tax. The state would collect the tax on behalf of the tribe and revenue to the tribe would be determined according to formula spelled out in an agreement between the two governments. Copyright c. 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. Copyright c. The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises. --------- "RE: Coburn fails to get Indian Health Care funding" --------- Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 08:51:03 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="NO HEALTH CARE FUNDS" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.newsok.com/article/1538717/?template=news/main Coburn fails to get Indian health care funding By Chris Casteel The Oklahoman June 29, 2005 WASHINGTON - The Senate on Tuesday beat back an attempt by Sen. Tom Coburn to cut money for acquiring more federal land to boost funding for treating diseases that disproportionately affect Indians. Coburn, R-Muskogee, sought to redirect about $121 million within the Interior Department spending bill that was allocated for land acquisition by four federal agencies. Coburn authored an amendment to shift the money to Indian Health Service programs for diabetes and alcoholism. Coburn said the agencies - the Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management - already have unspent money in their accounts for acquiring land, while "we have a real crisis in health care in Indian country." Coburn, a physician, said Indians have a much higher rate of diabetes than the general population and that one study showed 45 percent of Indians between the ages of 45 and 74 suffer from the disease. "If we're going to spend the money anyway, shouldn't we be spending it on something that's going to increase the quality of life?" Coburn said. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., said several programs exist to fund the prevention and treatment of diabetes and alcoholism among Indians. He said the Indian Health Service spends about $100 million a year on diabetes and that there were "significant" amounts spent by other programs. Burns contended Coburn's amendment would violate the budget guidelines and made a procedural motion to block Coburn's amendment. Coburn attempted to waive the budget rules but his move failed by a vote of 75-17. Copyright c. 2005 The Oklahoman/News 9, Produced by NewsOK.com. --------- "RE: Help coming for Families promised HPL Homes" --------- Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2005 13:37:53 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="HPL HOMES" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.navajotimes.com/ Help coming for families promised HPL homes By Marley Shebala Navajo Times June 30, 2005 WINDOW ROCK - The seven-year wait by 48 Navajo families who were promised new homes by the Navajo government appears close to an end, thanks in large part to Ray Denny. Denny, a 50-something contract employee of the tribe, meticulously documented the failure of the tribal government to fulfill its promise to the families, despite receiving $1.5 million in federal funding to build their homes. All the families live on Hopi Partitioned Land, and were to receive modern, foundation-built homes in return for signing an agreement limiting their rights to small plots of their ancestral lands. The homes were part of $22 million in federal relocation benefits allocated to the Navajo government in 1997. The Navajo-Hopi Relocation Commission passed the money and the housing project to the Navajo Housing Services Department, part of the Division of Community Development. Seven years later, the housing department was forced by pressure from the commission to look into complaints from 48 families that their homes had either never been built or had been constructed so badly they were falling apart. Housing services hired Denny, a resident of Kinlichee, Ariz., to investigate the matter. He spent the summer of 2004 compiling a written report, including photographs, from inspections and interviews with the 48 families. His report revealed incomplete exterior and interior housing construction, sinking floors, mismatched kitchen cabinets, missing construction supplies, and the deterioration of about $360,000 worth of construction materials left out in the open for years. "They're promised new houses," Denny said. "But then some of them can't live in their new house. And some just look at their housing materials." He sighed before he said, "I don't know what I would do if I was them. How long could I wait? It's a harsh life out here (HPL). And they lost their land to the Hopis." Denny's report, about 1.5 inches thick, was finished Aug. 20, 2004, but was not accepted by the Navajo-Hopi Land Commission until October. With HPL families demanding to see the report, the commission scheduled a meeting in August 2004 at Hardrock Chapter, the nearest government office for most of the families. The commission took no action until its October meeting, when it voted to accept the report. The Navajo-Hopi Land Commission is made up of council delegates from chapters that continue to be impacted by the Navajo-Hopi land issues. Beyond voting to accept Denny's report, however, the commission took no further action to help the residents. The report was shelved, where it remained for six months until the Navajo Times began interviewing the 48 families for a follow-up story on their plight. On June 22, the commission voted to advertise for bids to complete and repair homes for the 48 families, authorizing the use of additional federal funds for the job. The job calls for a contractor to construct six new houses and repair and finish 42 other houses. Lorenzo Bedonie (Hardrock/Pinon), chairperson of the Navajo-Hopi Land Commission, reminded commission members before the vote that as Navajo leaders, they are responsible for helping the Navajo people living on HPL. Bedonie noted that the families have been waiting since 1998 to have their HPL house completed or built. "I think that even if we were not in office then, we are all equally responsible," he added. Commission member Leslie Dele (Tonalea) argued that the money should come from the tribe, because it received $1.5 million for the project. Bedonie, however, urged that more federal money be used in order to speed things along. "We really don't know what happened to all the money ($1.5 million) that the commission gave to Navajo housing services," Bedonie said. The commission approved the HPL assistance 5-3, with Dele and two other commission members opposing on grounds that the money should come from President Joe Shirley Jr.'s budget. Ray Denny was there to witness the vote, saying, "I want the people out there to get help. They've been suffering long enough. "The leaders should be the ones helping them, going out there to see and talk to them instead of just sitting around with themselves in Window Rock," Denny said. Roman Bitsuie, director of the Navajo-Hopi Land Office, said Wednesday that he was meeting with Hopi officials before he executes the commission's directive. Bitsuie explained that the Navajo government must get approval for the project from the Hopi Tribe since the families live on Hopi land. Copyright c. 2005 Navajo Times. --------- "RE: One Nation's new battle" --------- Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2005 08:48:29 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ANTI-TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY GROUP ALSO ANTI-NATIVE HAWAIIAN" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=6660 One Nation's new battle Anti-tribal sovereignty group trying to kill Native Hawaiian bill Sam Lewin June 30, 2005 A group dedicated to opposing tribal sovereignty is now working to defeat the Native Hawaiian Recognition bill. Barb Lindsay, head of One Nation United, is sending e-mails to supporters and asking them to contact their Senators and urge them to reject the legislation. The bill, which is sponsored by Senator Daniel Akaka, D - HI, and has the support of Republicans such as Arizona Senator John McCain and Alaskan Senators Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens, calls for the federal government to recognize Native Hawaiians in the same way that it recognizes American Indians and Alaska Natives. The measure, first introduced in 2000, would create a framework for Native Hawaiian governance, which would be able to negotiate with state and federal officials over Native Hawaiian assets. The Senate leadership has agreed to bring the bill to the Senate floor for a vote by early August, although some believe it could come up even sooner. "It's a bill to give people recognition and it could lead later to a sovereignty approach if Congress wants to go that far," Stevens said in defending the bill. In her e-mail, Lindsay claims the legislation "is a way to get more federal money sent to the state and get the state off the hook for financial promises it has made to this group over the years. Senators Akaka and [Daniel] Inouye have sat on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee for years for the sole purpose of inserting the two words `Native Hawaiian' into every piece of legislation passed for `Native Americans.' This legislation would divide the people of Hawaii. It would create a group exempt from state and local taxes, and also exempt the new `Tribe' from ALL local and state laws, including zoning, environmental, public health, and safety laws." Supporters say the measure is simply about doing what is right. "This legislation is of vital importance to the State of Hawaii as it reaffirms that Native Hawaiians are both citizens of the State of Hawaii and of the United States, and, like other indigenous, native people of America, have their own distinct status under the law," said Inouye. The Bush Administration has not commented on the bill Lindsay is the director of One Nation's national organization. In 2003 Lindsay defended the group against accusation that they are anti-Native, telling the Native American Times that she is part Western Cherokee, and that her ancestors walked the Trail of Tears. A Western Cherokee spokesman quickly denied her claim of membership and said the Western Cherokees settled into their home 20 years before the Trail of Tears and were not even involved in the forced march. Native American Times. Copyright c. 2005 All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Judge halts foreclosure on Oneida Nation Land" --------- Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2005 13:37:53 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ONEIDA LAND/TAXATION BATTLE" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.syracuse.com//news-0/112029392836200.xml&coll=1 Judge halts foreclosure on Oneida Nation land Too many issues unresolved, judge says. Oneidas ordered to post $3 million bond. By Glenn Coin Staff writer July 2, 2005 A federal judge has ordered Madison County to stop all foreclosure proceedings against the Oneida Indian Nation. In a decision issued Friday, District Court Judge David Hurd said the property tax case should proceed slowly so all the important federal issues can be resolved. "There is no need to rush to judgment in a complex case such as this," Hurd wrote in issuing a temporary injunction. The ruling indefinitely postpones a July 14 hearing in state Supreme Court, where foreclosure proceedings are generally tried. The injunction will be in effect indefinitely while the two sides argue the larger issues in the case. "We're highly disappointed," said Scott Henderson, chairman of the Madison County Board of Supervisors Native American Affairs Committee. "It takes away our enforcement procedure that we have been told we have by everyone in the world except Judge Hurd." Hurd also required the nation to post a $3 million bond, the amount owed Madison County in taxes, interest and penalties on 98 nation parcels. "The nation is gratified that the district court stopped Madison County's foreclosure proceedings, and looks forward to an opportunity to pursue the remaining legal issues," said nation spokesman Mark Emery. The county started foreclosure proceedings in 1999, but the Oneidas filed a federal lawsuit a year later to halt the foreclosures. The case was put on hold until the outcome of a similar foreclosure action by the city of Sherrill was decided. The Sherrill case was decided March 29 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the nation did have to pay taxes to Sherrill. Hurd will ultimately issue a formal ruling in the Sherrill case based upon the Supreme Court decision. After the Supreme Court ruling, Madison County officials resumed the foreclosures this year in state court. Oneida County leaders followed suit in June by taking the first steps toward foreclosure on 59 nation parcels. The Oneidas went back to federal court, arguing Madison County's foreclosure effort is premature and that there are outstanding federal issues that can't be resolved by a state court. Nation lawyers argue that federal treaties put the nation's land out of reach of local governments, and that nation-owned land may be put into trust by the federal government. Lawyers must file papers on those issues beginning Aug. 5, according to Hurd's decision. Copyright c. 2005 The Post-Standard. Used with permission. --------- "RE: Tribes sue over Snowbowl decision" --------- Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 08:42:46 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="SEWAGE NOT WANTED ON SACRED MOUNTAIN" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=6635 Tribes sue over Snowbowl decision Seek restraining order Sam Lewin June 27, 2005 As promised, American Indian tribes in the Southwest are suing over a decision to allow the pumping of wastewater at a sacred site. Local environmentalists have joined the Navajo Nation, the Yavapai- Apache Nation and the White Mountain Apache Tribe in an effort to prevent the U.S. Forest Service from allowing the Arizona Snowbowl to expand its operations and extend its season using artificial snowmaking. The hope is that a judge will issue a temporary restraining order while the lawsuit plays out. The parties are also seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent tree cutting and other developments from starting while the court hears the lawsuit. The Arizona Snowbowl, a wealthy ski lodge with thousands of rooms, has received permission to pump the water in order to manufacture artificial snow. The lodge is located in the San Francisco Peaks, an extinct volcano formed more than 3 million years ago. Tribes regard the peaks as sacred, and unsuccessfully lobbied the U.S. Forest Service to reject the plan. "This project authorizes ski area improvements, including snowmaking using reclaimed water... the study and decision documents acknowledge significant tribal concerns for the spiritual values and religious beliefs and practices associated with the San Francisco Peaks. This decision does not preclude the continued use of the San Francisco Peaks for religious beliefs and practices, and does not violate First Amendment rights," United States Department of Agriculture spokesman Jim Payne said in a statement. In fighting the decision, the conservationists are claiming that there is a potential for danger. "The water they'd use meets standards for irrigating farm land, not for people to drink," said biochemist Paul Torrence. "There are chemicals in the water for which no safety standards have been set, and which may have harmful human impacts. Not only that, but delivering treated sewage water as snow to high elevation mountains changes the entire dynamic, causing potential harmful effects which neither the Forest Service nor the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality have considered." In addition to water quality issues, the opponents of the plan say they are concerned with potential soil erosion and loss of wildlife habitat from cutting thousands of aspen, ponderosa pine and spruce-fir trees to accommodate expanding the ski runs by 47%. The proposal also calls for building two new buildings, a 10 million gallon water tank for the treated wastewater near the top of a ski lift, and building 14 miles of pipeline to bring in the city's treated sewage water. The Forest Service has determined that the entire area around the San Francisco Peaks - some 74,380 acres - is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places as a traditional cultural property. The Forest Service has identified 13 tribes that hold the Peaks sacred. "I am disappointed but not at all surprised at this latest decision of the Forest Service to uphold the desecration of Nuvatukyaovi (the San Francisco Peaks). It became evident early on in the process that federal authorities were ignoring the deeply felt concerns of the Hopi Tribe and all native nations. It is our duty and obligation to protect and preserve the spiritual integrity of Nuvatukyaovi and we will never give up in our efforts to do so," Hopi Chairman Wayne Taylor said. "People should be worried about the unforeseen environmental effects that maybe caused by spraying waste water on a ecologically sensitive and sacred mountain," said activist Robert Tohe. "There is mounting evidence of low levels of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in wastewater. As well, the mountain represents homes to the Holy People, and the mountain is prominent in the culture of all Southwest tribes. Wastewater on the Peaks is like desecrating a cathedral." Native American Times. Copyright c. 2005 All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Federal Mediator examines Racism in Havre" --------- Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 08:51:03 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="RACISM" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.havredailynews.com/articles/2005/06/28//racisminhavre.txt Federal mediator examines racism in Havre Jared Ritz Havre Daily News jritz@havredailynews.com June 28, 2005 A federal mediator recently made a short trip to Havre as part of an assessment of racial tension after a newspaper article about racism in Havre caused a stir in the community. The U.S. Department of Justice Community Relations Service's regional office in Denver sent a mediator here June 21, and she met with about 25 concerned community members, the agency's deputy director, Stephen Thom, said Monday in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C. The mediator will return to Havre in August. According to Thom, the mediator had been sent a copy of the story before coming to Havre. She spent about five hours in town before she continued a five-city tour in Montana. Thom said there are "several situations" she will be looking into while in Montana, but that the story on Havre and the situation it highlighted was the main point of her visit to the state. "That was the impetus of why our facilitator was sent," he said. The story, "Bordering on Racism," was part of a special report on race in Montana by the University of Montana School of Journalism's Native News Project titled "Perceptions." The project included articles about each of the state's seven Indian reservations, and ran as an insert in the May 28 edition of the Great Falls Tribune. The story about Havre reported instances of racism that included store employees admitting to watching Native American customers more closely than whites and accounts by Indians about being treated unfairly in local businesses. "Whenever there are allegations of any kind of racism, we look into it," Thom said. "We just want to know if there's tension in the community." The agency was created in 1964 by the Civil Rights Act to help act as a peacekeeper and conciliator in the racially divided South. Since then the organization has shrunk in size but grown in scope, offering its services to local governments and community groups nationwide to resolve racial tension. The agency has 10 regional offices and 50 agents. Thom said that once the agent is finished with her visit, no findings will be published. The agency's job, Thom said, is to assess whether there is racial tension in a community, and, if so, to try to help community members work through their problems. "We are only going to assess what (level of racial tension there) is and whether there is a desire on the part of the community to resolve these issues," he said. Thom said he doesn't think the article by itself would have been enough to warrant the assessment, but the fact that a community member called the agency provided "some confirmation." He said he didn't know how many people called the agency. Havre resident Charlie Grant said he called the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and was put in contact with the Denver-based mediator. He said he spoke with the agent two days before her visit and asked her to come and make an assessment. While she was here, Grant said, the mediator spoke with people of different races and from different parts of the community. He also said he gave her a copy of the story as well as other opinion pieces and stories that have run in the Havre Daily News since the students' story appeared. The agent is planning to make a longer visit to Havre in August. She will speak with any community groups that have concerns about racism and also with community leaders, whom she didn't have time to meet during the first visit, Thom said. "We will talk to as many parties as we need to to get a true picture of the situation," he said. "All of the stakeholders need to be involved in some way." The agency has many different ways to help communities work through their problems. Thom said town hall meetings and smaller group settings, such as church congregations and school classes, are commonly used when townspeople have broad issues they want to work on. More formal training and mediation are typically used for more specific situations, like police profiling or school situations. Mayor Bob Rice said he was surprised to hear of the mediator's visit. He said he would like to meet with her in August. Carol Van Valkenburg, one of the two University of Montana professors who oversaw this year's Native News Project, said that in her 15 years of teaching the class, she and students have received "lots of feedback, both good and bad." A federal assessment being brought about by the class is a first, she said, and definitely falls into the "good" category. "If townspeople have determined there is a problem and some measures are being taken to correct it, that's a good thing," she said. Copyright c. 2005 Havre Daily News --------- "RE: Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma initiates Legal Action" --------- Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 08:21:53 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="HUNTING AND FISHING RIGHTS" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050630/clth037.html?.v=14 - Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma Initiates Legal Action to Secure Commercial Fishing and Land Rights on Lake Erie and Ohio's North Bass Island - Tribe acts in conjunction with 200th anniversary of Treaty of Fort Industry on July 4 June 30, 2005 TOLEDO, Ohio, June 30 /PRNewswire/ -- The Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma today initiated legal action to lay claim to its commercial fishing and land rights on Lake Erie and Ohio's North Bass Island. The rights are currently being denied by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The Ottawas once controlled a large portion of northwest Ohio in the 1700s and used North Bass Island as an outpost for fishing, hunting and trade. By signing the Treaty of Fort Industry on July 4, 1805, the Ottawas gave up some of their land on North Bass Island and received perpetual hunting and fishing rights in Ohio's waters. Current members of the tribe are challenging the state's regulation and restriction of those rights. Furthermore, the tribe is seeking approximately 300 acres of land on the northern half of North Bass Island, which, despite what state officials say, was never relinquished by the Ottawas. This morning, the tribe filed suit in federal district court in Toledo to seek a declaratory judgment that the fishing and hunting rights granted by the Treaty of Fort Industry cannot be regulated or limited by the state. As a result, the state would not be allowed to regulate methods of fishing and quantities or species of fish to be taken; fishing and hunting seasons; and quantities and types of game to be taken. In addition, to signify its claim to the land, and the hunting and fishing rights, several leaders of the 2,000-member tribe took an hour- -long ride by fishing boat from Port Clinton to North Bass Island. Tribe members landed on the northern half of the island, which is currently an undeveloped state park, located in Ohio's Ottawa County approximately 18 miles off Port Clinton and 2 miles south of the Canadian border on Lake Erie. In taking these actions, the tribe is emphasizing that its current focus is on protecting its fishing and land rights on Lake Erie in U.S. territory and Ohio's North Bass Island. The tribe is not currently reviewing any specific options, and has made no decision, on any uses for the claimed land. Therefore, these disputes have nothing to do with the ongoing controversy over casino gambling in Ohio, which is currently illegal in the state. "We had never seen our homeland and it is beautiful," said Larry Angelo, Ottawa Tribe second chief and tribal historian, who is an eighth- generation descendant of one of the Ottawas' most famous leaders, Chief Pontiac. "Our point is that we have always had the hunting and fishing rights, and the state cannot restrict them. On the land claims, we believe the northern half of North Bass Island remains the Ottawas' rightful territory. It is very meaningful that we are pursuing these actions as we approach the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Fort Industry." If the litigation filed today is successful, the Ottawas would like to begin gill net fishing on Lake Erie, which could yield 2,000 tons of fish or more per year for the Ottawas. The tribe has already formed the Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma Fisheries Corp. in anticipation of being able to begin commercial fishing of the Lake Erie waters. The Ottawas have acknowledged that, by signing the Treaty of Fort Industry, they ceded control of other parts of Ohio to the United States. However, at that time, according to tribal research and several independent experts, the northern half of North Bass Island was on the Canadian side of the border and was not covered by the Treaty of Fort Industry or any subsequent treaty. "The U.S.-Canadian boundary moved north of the island in 1822, and no treaty was ever made with respect to this portion of the island," said Richard D. Rogovin, the Columbus attorney who is representing the Ottawa Tribe. "The Ottawas never ceded their rights to the northern half of North Bass Island, and, therefore, they are the rightful owners of this property. By challenging the land claims, state officials forced us into filing the suit for Lake Erie fishing rights so that the Ottawas have a steady stream of income to support the longer-term land litigation efforts." Later this year, the Ottawas expect to make their legal case in the land rights dispute. Because they may not be able to sue the state directly for the land, the Ottawas will seek involvement from the federal government to take up the land case against the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The Ottawas expect that the income from the fully restored hunting and fishing rights will be used, in part, to support research and litigation related to the land rights dispute. As part of the land litigation, the Ottawas have the option of seeking damages for loss of use of the island over the years. Source: Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma Copyright c. 2005 PR Newswire. All rights reserved. Copyright c. 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. --------- "RE: Appeals Court tosses $248M Award to Tribe" --------- Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 08:51:03 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="LAND CLAIM BACKFIRE" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.nynewsday.com/news/~cayuga-land-claim,0,4998269.story?coll= Appeals Court Tosses $248M Award to Tribe By WILLIAM KATES Associated Press Writer June 28, 2005 SYRACUSE, N.Y. - A federal court on Tuesday tossed out a $248 million award to the Cayuga Indians as compensation for land taken from them in illegal treaties. Lawyers for the tribe said they would appeal. In a 2-1 decision, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cited the Supreme Court's recent ruling in a tax case involving the Oneida Indians and the upstate New York city of Sherrill. In that case, the nation's high court said too many years had passed for the Oneidas to claim that reacquired former reservation lands were tax-exempt. "The present case must be dismissed because the same considerations that doomed the Oneidas' claim in Sherrill apply with equal force here," Justice Jose Cabranes wrote. In 1994, federal Judge Neal McCurn ruled New York state illegally had acquired 64,015 acres of Cayuga tribal land in Seneca and Cayuga counties by entering into invalid treaties. A jury awarded the two Cayuga tribes $36.9 million in damages in 2000 for the land's current worth and the loss of two centuries of fair-market rental value. McCurn added $211 million in interest in 2001. In the current case, the Cayuga tribes, which currently own no reservation land in New York state, were seeking affirmation of McCurn's rulings, but they challenged his determination of damages and interest, saying they were entitled to $1.7 billion. The state asked for the award to be reduced, or dismissed. "This is a complete victory, a complete vindication. The game is over. We win," said attorney William Dorr, who represented Cayuga and Seneca counties. Gov. George Pataki called it "a tremendous victory for the property owners and taxpayers of central New York." "If this ruling stands up, it will be the death knell for all Indian land claims based on a historic taking of land," said Martin Gold, the attorney representing the Cayuga Indian Nation of New York. "But the war is not over." Copyright c. 2005, The Associated Press Copyright c. 2005 Newsday Inc. --------- "RE: Indian Education for All" --------- Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 08:51:03 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="OKLAHOMA EDUCATION" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.newsok.com/article/1538631/?template=news/main 'Indian Education For All' promoted for state schools By Judy Gibbs Robinson The Oklahoman June 29, 2005 NORMAN - A Montana program to educate all children about Indian culture and history could become a prototype for Oklahoma. Educators listened intently Tuesday as Montana Superintendent of Schools Linda McCulloch described her state's newly funded "Indian Education For All" program, which is helping teachers and tribes teach about Indian culture and heritage in the public schools. "That's what we're needing to see within Oklahoma -- Indian education for all Oklahomans, not only for American Indians," said Jerry Tahsequah, associate director of the Native American Center of Excellence at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. McCulloch was the keynote speaker at a conference organized by the Oklahoma Native Education Network to develop a strategic plan for Indian education in Oklahoma. Oklahoma has no such plan, said Grayson Noley, academic chairman of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies at the University of Oklahoma College of Education. "We'd like to bring a plan that everyone can buy into -- one that's not threatening to people but that's seen as looking forward and improving conditions of Indian education," Noley said. Federally funded Indian education programs are geared to raising test scores and lowering dropout rates for American Indian students. What is different about Montana's program is the use of state funds to achieve an expanded goal, said Quinton Roman Nose, director of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Education Department. "I think we can do something very similar and in fact even better. We have more students and we have students who have higher test scores, and we have more Indian students going to college," Roman Nose said. Cultural education Expanding traditional definitions of Indian education to include educating non-Indians about Indians should be part of Oklahoma's plan, Noley said. "Whenever children go to school, their cultures are validated if they're white. But if they're Indian, they're kind of a sidebar in the textbooks. That's what we want to change," Noley said. By making education about Indians a regular part of the curriculum, children will grow up respecting other children, he said. "That's what we're looking for. That's what will make a truly 4pluralistic society in the world," Noley said. State Rep. Doug Miller, R-Norman, said Oklahoma is moving in that direction. "In tourism, what is the brand of Oklahoma? It's Native America. Look at our license tags: Native America. So I think the whole idea of raising awareness about Indian culture is where we are headed as a state," Miller said. Copyright c. 2005 The Oklahoman/News 9, Produced by NewsOK.com. --------- "RE: Patients' Diversity is often Discounted" --------- Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 08:57:23 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="CULTURAL NEEDS" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.washingtonpost.com//AR2005062500982.html?nav=rss_nation/science Mind and Culture Psychiatry's Missing Diagnosis Patients' Diversity Is Often Discounted Alternatives to Mainstream Medical Treatment Call for Recognizing Ethnic, Social Differences By Shankar Vedantam Washington Post Staff Writer June 26, 2005 First of three parts When UCLA researchers reviewed the best available studies of psychiatric drugs for depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and attention deficit disorder, they found that the trials had involved 9,327 patients over the years. When the team looked to see how many patients were Native Americans, the answer was . . . Zero. "I don't know of a single trial in the last 10 to 15 years that has been published regarding the efficacy of a pharmacological agent in treating a serious mental disorder in American Indians," said Spero Manson, a psychiatrist who heads the American Indian and Alaska Native Programs at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Aurora. "It is stunning." Native Americans are not the only group for whom psychiatrists write prescriptions with fingers crossed, the researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles found as they reviewed the data for a U.S. surgeon general's report: Of 3,980 patients in antidepressant studies, only two were Hispanic. Of 2,865 schizophrenia patients, three were Asian. Among 825 patients in bipolar disorder or manic depression studies, there were no Hispanics or Asians. Blacks were better represented, but even their numbers in any one study were too small to tell doctors anything meaningful. In all, just 8 percent of the patients studied were minorities. It is but one example of a larger pattern: Scientists have broadly played down the role of cultural factors in the diagnosis, treatment and outcome of mental disorders. In part, this is because modern psychiatry is based on the idea that mental illnesses are primarily organic disorders of the brain. This medicalized approach suggests that the symptoms, course and treatment of disorders ought to be the same whether patients are from the Caribbean, Canada or Cambodia. This model has produced striking successes. Neuroscientists have uncovered key details about how the brain functions and malfunctions, and drug companies have found many effective medications. More patients than ever before have received treatments that have been proven to work. As the population of the United States grows ever more diverse, however, this approach is facing challenges from within the profession's own ranks. A growing number of advocates for "cultural competence," many of whom are minorities themselves, warn that doctors are harming patients by ignoring evidence about the effects of ethnicity, sex, religious beliefs, social class and national origin on mental health and mental illness. "The [drug] companies are thinking about the average Caucasian, male patient," said psychiatrist Michael Smith, at UCLA's Research Center on the Psychobiology of Ethnicity, who bemoaned the vacuum of information about drug metabolism and side effects among various groups. Some minorities' distrust of drug trials further compounds the problem, he and other researchers said. "This thing called psychiatry -- it is a European-American invention, and it largely has no respect for nonwhite philosophies of mental health and how people function," agreed Carl Bell, a psychiatrist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "A lot of minority groups perceive psychiatric interventions as an ideological approach that discounts their own cultures," added Marcello Maviglia, a psychiatrist who has worked extensively with Native American patients in New Mexico. "A lot of people wouldn't be able to verbalize this, but patients know when you are discounting them, their traditions." Leaders of mainstream psychiatry vehemently reject this critique. Darrel Regier, director of the division of research for the American Psychiatric Association, said biomedical treatments for mental disorders had been objectively shown to be superior to any other system. "To say you want to go back to nature and have all the benefits of close-knit families take the place of psychotropic medications -- that is wishful thinking and likely dangerous," he said. Different Viewpoints Historically, the problem is that psychiatry has been muddled by conflicting theories about the nature of mental illnesses, Regier said. While cultural variations among groups are useful to know about, he added, it is more important for psychiatrists to home in on genetic markers and the brain mechanisms that could be universal to all patients. "Doctors in general are reductionist," he said. "A patient walks in and you have 10 minutes to find out what in their whole life story is significant. There is a tremendous screening process to cut out irrelevant material." Columbia University psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, who played a key role in popularizing the medical model of psychiatry, said the cultural advocates are letting politics trump science: "They don't by and large do controlled studies. They mainly complain about the biomedical model." Spitzer and Regier reflect the eagerness among mainstream psychiatrists to move away from the mushy complexities of culture and the myriad ways in which emotional problems are expressed by different groups, and toward a straightforward system that links groups of symptoms to particular disorders. Ultimately, they hope to find neurological evidence, genetic markers and laboratory tests to differentiate mental problems. If malfunctioning genes and neurotransmitters can be shown to cause depression, for example, these experts say doctors will be able to treat such problems at their root, making diagnosis and treatment more effective, in the same way that the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS led to highly targeted treatments. Advocates for cultural competence counter that no matter how much science learns about the brain, culture and the environment will continue to play a huge role in why people develop emotional problems, what treatments they respond to and whether they recover. Doctors, they say, cannot afford to ignore the numerous effects of culture on diagnosis and treatment that have been documented through various streams of evidence and multiple studies in peer-reviewed publications. Among them: * Patients with schizophrenia, a disease characterized by hallucinations and disorganized thinking, recover sooner and function better in poor countries with strong extended family ties than in the United States, two long-running studies by the World Health Organization have shown. * People of Mexican descent born in the United States have twice the risk of disorders such as depression and anxiety, and four times the risk of drug abuse, compared with recent immigrants from Mexico. This finding is part of a growing body of literature that indicates that the newly arrived are more resilient to mental disorders, and that assimilation is associated with higher rates of psychiatric diagnoses. * Black and Hispanic patients are more than three times as likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia as white patients -- even though studies indicate that the rate of the disorder is the same in all groups. * White women in the United States are three times as likely to commit suicide as black and Hispanic women -- a difference that experts attribute in part to the relative strengths of different social networks. * A host of small studies suggests that the effects of psychiatric drugs vary widely across different ethnic groups. There are even differences in the effect with dummy pills. Keh-Ming Lin, a psychiatrist who formerly headed the UCLA center, said that because psychiatric drugs affect behavior and change how people feel, their effects are powerfully modified by patients' beliefs The effects of such drugs "are not solely determined by their pharmacological properties," wrote Lin and colleagues in a book, "Psychopharmacology and Psychobiology of Ethnicity." "The prescription and use of medication is enmeshed in a process replete with social and symbolic meanings and implications." Cultural Influence Psychiatric diagnoses are similarly influenced by culture, said Maria Oquendo, a psychiatrist at Columbia University. Women from different cultures, for instance, face very different norms about what constitutes an ideal body weight -- and this influences the course of certain disorders: "We consider anorexia nervosa to have biological underpinnings and, therefore, universal, but in less industrialized cultures, anorexia is vanishingly rare. Culture informs our decisions on what we consider normal." "If we understand that our definition of pathological isn't pathological in other countries, we can make better decisions on when to treat, especially with medications," she added. Advocates for culture's role in psychiatry describe many case studies to illustrate their argument: Roberto Lewis-Fernandez was a young doctor in training in Massachusetts when he encountered a patient who was 49 and suicidal at Cambridge Hospital. The Puerto Rican woman begged for help in resolving a conflict with her son, but the Harvard University-affiliated psychiatrists focused on one set of symptoms -- she was hearing voices, seeing darting shadows and sensing invisible presences. They diagnosed her as depressed and psychotic, or out of touch with reality, and medicated her. She was discharged. Soon after, the woman had an argument with her son and nearly killed herself by overdosing on the medication. For Lewis-Fernandez, who is Puerto Rican, the suicide attempt confirmed his fears that his superiors had misjudged the situation. For months, as top psychiatrists ordered him to keep increasing the potency of her drugs, he had told himself that hearing voices, seeing shadows and sensing presences is considered normal in some Latino communities. But he dared not challenge the wisdom of the medical model. "I wasn't sure if she was psychotic, but I treated her as if she was," he said about the case, which he wrote up in a medical journal. "I gave her the medicines." When the hospital's outpatient unit evaluated the woman anew, doctors there came up with a different diagnosis. They concluded that her symptoms were not abnormal in the context of her culture -- they were expressions of distress, not illness. Lewis-Fernandez helped her reconcile with her son. She still heard voices and saw shadows, but now, as before, they did not bother her. Unlike anti-psychiatry groups that wish to do away altogether with drugs and doctors, advocates for cultural competence argue only against one- -size-fits-all thinking. Genetic vulnerabilities and brain chemistry are undoubtedly important, said Lewis-Fernandez, but his patient was badly served because doctors assumed all her problems could be reduced to brain chemistry. "Sure, after a certain amount of suffering for a certain amount of time, your brain reacts," he said. "The idea of mainstream psychiatry is that the pill will correct the chemical imbalance in the brain. Yes, but the imbalance keeps happening because of the situation she is in, and the pill can't correct the situation." Minority patients are not the only ones affected: For one thing, about 40 percent of U.S. doctors training in psychiatry today are foreign-born. "There are so many international psychiatric residents that the real cross-cultural encounters are going to be between foreign physicians and white Americans," Lewis-Fernandez said. "Filipino and Indian doctors [will be] meeting your average Ohioan and saying, 'I don't understand you.' " Nor are misunderstandings limited to issues of ethnicity. Differences between clinicians and patients in language, social class or religious belief can also be pitfalls, the advocates warn. Janice Egeland, a behavioral scientist who has worked nearly three decades with the Amish, said she realized something was very wrong when an Amish man went to a friend's house to watch baseball on TV. In the context of Amish culture, which shuns material luxuries and modern technology, his seemingly ordinary action alerted Egeland to a problem that might have been missed by a less experienced clinician. She soon discovered the man had not merely watched the game. "He was jumping all around, pretending to run the bases," she said. After a thorough evaluation, she realized he was suffering from manic depression, a disorder characterized by alternating bouts of euphoria and depression. In Illinois, a truck driver was diagnosed as psychotic after he said he frequently saw the devil sitting near him, warning that his life was going to take a turn for the worse. Then a doctor trained to pay attention to cultural issues realized the man was an evangelical Christian whose allegorical religious expression had been misunderstood as a hallucination by secular physicians, said Gary Myers, a clinician at Southern Illinois University in Springfield. Mainstream psychiatrists say such examples are interesting but insist that the field stay focused on biology and brain chemistry. That is the only way to integrate psychiatry with the rest of medicine and to produce objectively verifiable treatments, said Regier, of the American Psychiatric Association. "If you had to choose between a Western model of diagnosis and treatment and, let's say, an ayurvedic treatment model, what would you take?" he asked, referring to a traditional system of healing in India. "Whether with AIDS therapy, which the South Africans resisted, or psychotropic medicines, there is something objectively superior to a medical model of treatment of psychiatric illness." A Common Vocabulary Through much of the 20th century, the long shadow of Sigmund Freud hung over psychiatry. Just as doctors today talk about serotonin and brain structures such as the amygdala, doctors at mid-century evaluated patients through the lens of Freudian concepts such as transference and repression. Without common definitions of the symptoms they encountered, psychiatrists often disagreed over what ailed their patients. Show a patient to 10 psychiatrists, the joke went, and you would get 10 diagnoses. In response, Columbia's Robert Spitzer led efforts to update American psychiatry's manual of mental disorders in 1980 and again in 1987. Experts drew up lists of specific symptoms associated with particular mental disorders -- and gave the field a common lexicon. The "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," commonly known as DSM, became the bible of the medical model of psychiatry. Yet, as Spitzer readily acknowledged in a recent interview, the DSM classifications did not rest on new scientific data. "The DSM is not a scientific document," Spitzer said. "It is a bunch of smart people who studied the literature and then came up with the best way to define diseases -- very few of the categories have an empirical base." As doctors wrestled with overlapping symptoms, he said, subsequent editions greatly expanded the number of disorders: "It is not a scientific document, but it facilitates science." Spitzer said he had never oversold the scientific credentials of the manual. But powerful factors heightened its prominence. Drugs were shown to help patients with various symptoms, yielding hard data that most talk therapies and social interventions could not readily produce. Neuroscientists showed that many mental disorders had genetic components. Insurance companies found that paying for pills was cheaper and simpler than paying therapists to address the interpersonal causes of suffering -- especially because general physicians could write most of the prescriptions. Patient advocates realized that defining mental illnesses as brain diseases reduced the stigma attached to depression and psychoses -- a patient could hardly be blamed for having an organic disease. Then came Prozac. Introduced in 1988 and backed by aggressive marketing, the drug brought relief to millions and popularized the notion that depression was essentially an imbalance in brain chemistry. In short order, Prozac and other psychiatric drugs began grossing billions of dollars. Millions flowed back into television advertising, marketing to doctors and grants to organizations that supported the treatment approach. "The pharmaceutical industry didn't create the notion of the biological revolution in American psychiatry, but it hijacked it," said Lawrence Diller, a pediatrician in Walnut Creek, Calif., and the author of "Running on Ritalin." While defending the rise of biological psychiatry, Spitzer said his field had tried to accommodate cultural nuances. The newest versions of the diagnostic manual do include references to the role of culture, he noted. One section describes conditions that affect only small groups of people, such as " ataque de nervios ," the very condition -- limited to Latinos, especially from the Caribbean -- that afflicted the woman whom Lewis-Fernandez treated in Cambridge. But while the section on cultural formulations had a constituency, Spitzer said it lacks scientific support: "They insisted that these things are being ignored, so it is there, but I doubt it is used very much. I don't think the people who have developed that have done any studies to show its value. That's the difference between critics of DSM and us." Regier, at the psychiatric association, said some advocates of cultural competence deserve credit for trying to marry cultural insights with epidemiological studies, but others are unscientific. "You've got the cultural people who don't know how to do statistics and say you must only study individuals," Regier said. "That's like the psychoanalysts who say, 'I can't replicate it but I know it works' -- it is not a scientific discipline." 'Hardly Objective' Advocates for culture's role in psychiatry say such criticism is disingenuous -- because it suggests the medical model itself is objective and free of bias. They point out that doctors cannot examine two brain scans and tell which belongs to a healthy person and which belongs to a patient with schizophrenia, or depression, or bipolar (manic-depressive) disorder, let alone the hundreds of other disorders in the diagnostic manual. "Psychiatry is hardly objective," Columbia psychiatrist Oquendo said. "The instrument in psychiatry is the doctor. You talk to people in making diagnoses -- how can you say that's objective? We don't have a lab test to make a single diagnosis." Despite its limitations, the cultural advocates say Spitzer's diagnostic model has acquired the status of gospel. Psychiatrists are too focused on fitting patients into Spitzer's categories, said psychiatrist Keh-Ming Lin, "instead of finding out from the patient where they are coming from." "Whatever doesn't fit gets ignored, and whatever doesn't lead to medications gets ignored," Lin said. Here and there, the advocates have made inroads. In 1999, a U.S. surgeon general's report concluded that the effects of culture on mental health "have been historically underestimated -- and they do count." Prodded by advocates, professional organizations have added discussions of the role of culture to their meetings, and accrediting groups mandate that young doctors study how ethnicity and culture affect illness and treatment. Insurance companies have also shown interest, said Arthur Kleinman, a psychiatrist and anthropologist at Harvard. Some HMOs, for example, have encouraged immigrants to seek out doctors who speak their native tongue. Kleinman and others welcome such moves but also worry they sometimes amount to lip service: HMO demands for efficiency, for example, have limited interactions between doctors and patients. Discussing cultural issues with a patient might add five minutes, Kleinman said, and "that's five minutes beyond an interview that usually lasts five minutes." Driven by social, economic and technological forces, the reductionist medical approach to psychiatry is increasingly the norm around the world. Clinicians in distant countries are grappling with Spitzer's classifications in the same way that the theories of Freud once traveled from the parlors of Vienna to New York and Washington. "What is happening with neurobiological therapy is the same thing that happened with psychoanalysis in the 1950s," said Renato Alarcon, a psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic, referring to those who once believed Freudian therapy held all the answers. "When science becomes a religion, it becomes scientism," he said. "There are fundamentalists among the scientists." Copyright c. 2005 The Washington Post Company --------- "RE: Big Snake Bridge: Cooperation Theme of Ceremony" --------- Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2005 13:37:53 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="BIG SNAKE BRIDGE DEDICATED" http://www.poncacitynews.com/templates/283674456390226.bsp Cooperation Theme of Ceremony By SHANNON MUCHMORE News Staff Writer July 1, 2005 The dedication ceremony for the Big Snake Bridge Thursday afternoon embodied one of the main elements of the long-awaited $1.25 million project: cooperation The ceremony included representatives from the Ponca Tribe, Kay and Osage counties, the City of Ponca City and the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, all of which contributed to the new bridge. The tribe provided about 80 percent of the money, and named the bridge after Big Snake, a prominent figure in Ponca history and the brother of Standing Bear. A large crowd gathered for the ceremony in the hot, dusty conditions at the site of the bridge. Gary Martin, city manager for the City of Ponca City, was the master of ceremonies for the program. He said the bridge should be open for traffic within two weeks, pending the laying of asphalt and the installation of guard rails and lights. The bridge will be the only county bridge in Oklahoma to have lighting, which will be provided by the City of Ponca City. "It's a great day," Gary Ridley, director of ODOT, said during the ceremony. "Congratulations, you've done well," he said. Ridley said all the communities should be proud of the bridge and the cooperation it took to get the project completed. He said the bridge was an example of the "ultimate solution" to the problems many of Oklahoma's dilapidated roads and bridges currently have. "We dedicate this bridge in the spirit of cooperation and mutual understanding," Dan Jones, chairman of the Ponca Tribe, said. Jones said Big Snake stood as a "symbol of strength" for the Poncas, just as the new bridge will stand as a symbol of strength and a metaphorical bridge between the communities involved in its construction. He also recognized some descendants of Big Snake in the crowd. Jones said there will be signs on either side of the bridge as well as a bronze marker that will list all the entities involved in the bridge project. Martin recognized the six county commissioners from Kay and Osage counties and thanked Kay County Commissioner Dee Schieber in particular for recognizing the need for a new bridge and facilitating the involvement of the Ponca Tribe. Osage County paid the engineering costs for the bridge, estimated at $120,000. Thursday's ceremony also included a song performed by members of the Ponca Tribe and a blessing of the bridge by tribal members Colbert and Gilbert Cole. The dedication concluded with a traditional Ponca City Area Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting. In order to span the width of the bridge, a special 36-foot ribbon had to be used to in place of the regulation 10- foot ribbon. The bridge is 750 feet long and almost 33 feet wide and is constructed of steel-reinforced concrete. Construction began in October 2004 with K&R Builders as the main contractor. The new bridge replaces the "Old River Bridge," which opened in 1973 after repairs from a fire. That bridge had been closed for safety reasons in 1970, after flood waters washed out the previous bridge in the 1940s. Copyright c. 1998-2005 The Ponca City News. --------- "RE: Spiritual Perspectives: Navajo Enemy Way Ceremony" --------- Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 08:57:23 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ENEMY WAY CEREMONY" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.denverpost.com/ci_2824846?rss Spiritual Perspectives The Navajo Enemy Way Ceremony By Johnson Dennison Special to The Independent June 25, 2005 The Navajo Enemy Way Ceremony is a healing ceremony to treat patients and is only conducted in the summer months. This ceremony is almost a week long process for patients who are ill from any form of illness. It was originally conducted for individuals who participated in a foreign war and usually for warriors returning from war. This is why it is called the Nidaa', the Enemy Way Ceremony. Some people call it a "Squaw dance," but that is derogatory. The preparation for the Enemy Way Ceremony begins by building a forked stick hogan. It can also be conducted in any type of traditional hogan as well. Most of the time, a temporary hogan-shaped brush arbor is built for the ceremony. The temporary shelter is dismantled as soon as the ceremony is over. Another small arbor is built in front of the hogan also for a ceremonial purpose. A larger arbor is also built about fifty yards from the hogan on the southwest side. This is to be used as a cook shed where visitors are received and are fed. The relatives of the patients will help build the cook shed. The shed is usually divided into two rooms. The room on the north side is reserved for the main patient and his family to prepare food for the visitors. The south room is reserved for the wife of the patient and her family to use for receiving friends and relatives. The patients will invite their clan relatives and friends to the Enemy Way ceremony. It is a major Navajo ceremony involving a lot of people from communities. It is also a public ceremony, so anyone can attend. There is a meeting night to start the ceremony. Most of the relatives and friends of the patients will come to the meeting night. It is usually on a Monday. The visitors and relatives will come into the hogan and make donations. Because the hogan is small and not everyone will fit, there will be some people standing outside. The people will talk about the ceremonial process and at the same time they will discuss who will receive the ceremonial staff. A ceremonial staff is a foot and half long cut off cedar juniper branch decorated with eagle feathers and colorful yarn. The ceremonial staff is obtain and decorated on the day when it will be carried to the receiver. The receiver of the staff will eventually be considered as the person to treat the patients. The patients and visitors will decide who will receive the staff. The meeting night is concluded in the late evening while singers sing sacred songs of the Enemy Way ceremony as they stand in front of the hogan facing east. Most of the people will leave and go home for the night, except the patients and their family members, who will camp out for the night. Throughout the evening, a reception is provided at the cook shed for the visitors. The main dish is usually mutton stew, roast mutton, coffee and fry bread. It is also a time to socialize and exchange stories and greetings. Most of the people also bring some food with them to help out the family. The ceremony is well announced through a Navajo radio station where every one listens daily, so it is not a surprise event for people. The next morning at dawn, the spokesperson with the patients will drive over to the staff receiver's house or hogan to make an offering. Long ago, it was one person to ride a horse a distance to meet the staff receiver. The person to receive the staff usually does not live in the same community of the main ceremonial camp. When they, patients and spokesperson, arrive at the staff receiver's house, they will offer him the collection of donations, so he will serve the patients as a medicine man. Generally, he will agree to receive the staff. Sometime he may refuse to receive the sacred staff for several reasons. To receive a staff is a huge responsibility. However, when he agrees, he will set a date to receive the staff. He will announce by saying when the staff should be brought to him. The elders tell us that a long time ago people used to announce five days to seven days. But nobody does that anymore. If more than three days is announced, the Enemy Way ceremony will last more than a week or even two weeks. The even number of days are not considered; it has to be an odd number. Three day agreements are most common in Enemy Way ceremonies. The Navajo people always predict it will be three days to carry the staff, so they schedule a planning meeting on Monday night. A proposal is made on Tuesday morning, and three days after Tuesday is Friday. The day the staff is carried over is usually on Friday, so it will become a weekend activity. The day would finally arrive at the ceremony to fix, decorate, and carry the staff to the staff receiver's hogan. Usually a crowd gathers to participate. A number of people ride their horses or bring their horses in stock trailers. While waiting for the afternoon ceremony to start, visitors are received at the cook shed and meals are served. Inside the hogan, people have already brought colorful yarn to be used in decorating the staff, horses, and even vehicles. Another selected medicine man will bring in a straight cut off juniper branch well prepared to be decorated for a sacred staff. The medicine man will sing sacred songs while decorating the staff. A design is inscribed on the staff and colorfully decorated with yarn, eagle feathers and deer hoofs. The patients and relatives pray while making the offering of corn pollen. It is a dramatic ritual activity. When it is done, the main patient takes the staff outside and gets on a saddled horse. He takes off with the rest of the riders. There would be a number of horseback riders joining the patient carrying the staff. The rest of the people that don't have horses will follow the riders in their vehicles. This is a spectacular sight to see on the Navajo Reservation roads in the summer: a convoy of trucks and cars decorated with colorful yarn. The horseback riders will arrive at the hogan of the person to receive the decorated staff. The main patient gets off his horse and comes into the hogan of the staff receiver while carrying the staff. He, the patient, will hand the staff over to the staff receiver while he is sitting on a buckskin in the hogan. The staff is well inspected by the receiver and his helper(s) to see if it was properly prepared. A medicine man will sing a receiving song. Following this, the traditional food is served to all people that came from the main camp of the ceremony. There will be greetings between family members, relatives, and friends from both camps as well. The family members of the receiver are the host. In the late evening, the staff receiver and his helpers will start singing Enemy Way songs. The dancing starts next. A young girl dressed in traditional attire will come out of the hogan and initiate the dances. It is an activity many Navajo people like to participate in. The next day is when the main patient and his family and relatives are served breakfast. After breakfast, the main patient and his family members will come to the front of the hogan and sing more sacred songs. While they are singing, they will be given gifts. After the singing is done, the main patient and family members will go home for the day. They will arrive back at the main camp at mid-morning. There will be visitors coming through out the day and having a feast at the cook shed. Late afternoon, the staff receiver, his family, and relatives will set up camp to spend the night about three miles from the main ceremonial camp. This is the time when more people will also join the dancing, called round dancing. They will camp out along the side of the road. This type of camp is usually visible from the road. The Navajo people called it a "camp out" and some called it second night. The next morning when the sun rises, the campers will move to the main camp of the ceremony. When they arrive, the horseback riders will ride back and forth between the main camp hogan and the staff receivers on horseback. The patients are all sitting in the hogan. As soon as the staff receiver arrives, the people from the main camp will serve breakfast. But the staff receiver and his people still camp about a hundred yards away from the main camp. After breakfast, the people from the staff receiver's camp will come to the front of the main hogan and sing more sacred songs. As they sing, they will be given gifts from the main patient and his family members. Another medicine man specialized in the Enemy Way ceremony will conduct a ceremony most of the morning inside the hogan. The patients will spend most of morning in the hogan. The spouse of the main patient will also participate in the ceremony, but under the small shade especially built for her just outside of the hogan. This is the time that she will be dressed with shawls, robes, fabric materials, and buckskin. She will take all these materials back to her family and relatives and they receive them as gifts from the main patient. This is considered as a main event of the ceremony. Following the main events, there will be more round dancing. The final night of the ceremony is usually quiet, and very few people will stay as most of the people will be too tired to do anymore singing and dancing. The staff receiver stays until at dawn the next morning. There will be some more closing songs sung at this time. The Enemy Way ceremony is over. The sun rises, everything is quiet, and everyone gets to live normal lives again. The total process lasts six days. Again, the Navajo radio stations will start announcing more up coming Nidaa' ceremonies. This is a Navajo cultural and ritual healing ceremony. The culture is still strong out in the Navajo country. Johnson Dennison is a Navajo medicine man who contributes regularly to this column. ---- This column is the result of a desire by community members, representing different faith communities, wishing to share their ideas about bringing a spiritual perspective into our daily lives and community issues. For information about contributing a guest column, contact Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola at the Independent: (505) 863-8611, ext. 218 or lizreligion01@yahoo.com. Copyright c. 2005 the Gallup Independent. --------- "RE: 'Poia:' How Blackfeet learned the Sun Dance" --------- Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 08:21:53 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="OPERA ABOUT SACRED GIFT" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.greatfallstribune.com//LIFESTYLE/506300309/1024/NEWS01 'Poia:'The story about how Blackfeet learned the Sun Dance June 30, 2005 After three years of planning and two weeks of rehearsals, the curtain opens Sunday in Great Falls on "Poia," the colorful opera that tells how Blackfeet learned the Sun Dance. It's a grand story, with epic religious overtones about the Sun God and tragic romantic elements about winning redemption through love. Almost as dramatic is how the opera was written in the first place, why it was last performed nearly a century ago and how it was resurrected as part of the Great Falls area's Signature Event saluting the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial. "It's been 95 years since this opera about a significant story in Blackfeet lore was last performed, and that was in Berlin, of all places," said stage director David Cody, a University of Montana music professor. "It's gratifying taking a piece that hasn't been done in so long and doing it wholly the way we want to do it," said conductor Gordon Johnson of the Great Falls Symphony. "But it took a lot of time working through a 350-page score with notations in German." Renowned tenor Scott Piper performs the title role of Poia, the outcast Scarface, who proves his worth to the tribe by venturing into the heavens to make his case to the mighty Sun God. Piper thinks the cast's and production team's efforts will be worth it. "God I love this music," he said. "It's so sweeping and passionate and romantic. "I've got to really hand it to (composer Arthur Nevin and lyricist Randolph Hartley) for really getting to the heart of this man so desperately looking for love that will save him from despair." Ticket sales through Tuesday were half of what organizers had hoped, but they're confident they'll pick up the next few days as visitors arrive for other events. "The word on the street is that a lot of people regretted not seeing the ballet, 'A Tremendious Journey,' when they heard how good it was," said Peggy Bourne, executive director of the "Explore the Big Sky" Signature Event. "We're saying don't feel sorry twice. Seeing an opera staged in Great Falls about a topic so important to the Blackfeet is a once in a lifetime opportunity. And the performance will be sensational." Opera's origin The opera is based on the writings of ethnologist Walter McClintock who came west in the late 1800s. He lived with the Blackfeet for several years and wrote their myths in his book, "The Old North Trail: Life, Legend and Religions of the Blackfeet Indians." Fascinated with the story of Poia, he persuaded a young Pittsburgh composer, Niven, to come with him and live two summers with the Blackfeet. Niven jotted a lot of their flute tunes and vocal chants and incorporated them into the opera. The opera was performed a few times in Pittsburgh and New York City but without set designs or costumes, Cody said. His research showed the opera was well received, and Niven was described as a promising composer. Attempts to launch a full production in the United States failed, but it was fully staged, finally, in 1910 in Berlin at the Royal Opera House. However, German fans hissed the performance and critics gave only tepid reviews. Looking back Cody and Piper think there might have been some jealousy and anti-American feeling toward the first U.S. opera. Rescued from library The opera might never have been performed again but for the curiosity of Great Falls researcher Sherm Ewing and the desire of Johnson to perform something special for the bicentennial. Lewis and Clark officials were pleased at the success of a symphony about the explorers by University of Idaho composer Daniel Bukvich that the Great Falls Symphony played in 1999, Johnson said. Three years ago organizers of the Signature Event asked if he had another historic theme. Johnson said he'd recently gotten a copy of an old opera that was performed only a few times, was set in Montana and delved into a Blackfeet legend. Ewing, a western writer and retired rancher, got the score for Johnson from the Library of Congress after he read an account of it. Signature Event officials agreed the opera would fit with the spirit of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, which was meant to examine white and native cultures. First Johnson wanted to give "Poia" a smaller trial run to see if it would hold the interest of a modern audience. He ran the idea by his friend Cody, who had more stage experience. Cody liked the idea, and suggested Piper, whom he'd taught in Missouri, as the powerful tenor needed to carry the lead. In March 2004, the Great Falls symphony featured a few "Poia" arias sung by Piper. They were big hits, so the opera was a go. It was still "like a giant scavenger hunt," Johnson said. He scoured the Internet and chatted with German conductors before finally finding the orchestra parts in the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh. Like a premiere The very fact that the opera hasn't been performed presented both a challenge and an opportunity, Cody and Piper said. Performers, stage directors and conductors commonly review CDs or videos of how other groups performed an opera as a starting point, Cody said. But there were no reproductions of how it was performed in 1910, "so the challenge for us was to create within ourselves brand new," Piper said. "Our performance will feel like a premiere," Cody added. "And what we do with 'Poia' will be the base line that future groups review when they do the opera." To help the cast of singers from Montana and around the country, Cody hired a Missoula pianist to record the basic parts for them to listen to as they thought about their roles. Long hours The cast arrived in Great Falls two weeks ago to begin six-hour-a-day rehearsals. Piper, who is on stage performing in almost every scene, said he's had little free time to enjoy other bicentennial events. Besides group rehearsals he works a couple of hours a day privately with Great Falls pianist Cindy Addison and another couple of hours thinking about how to improve his work. Piper also types and retypes the lyrics on a hand-held computer to make them second nature. Lisa van der Plogh, a San Francis opera singer, plays the Medicine Woman. She gets in character by thinking of the subtext, what else her pivotal character might have said. She also spent time at Longfellow School's Native American Resource Library to make sure her outspoken character is keeping with the Blackfeet tradition. Meanwhile the production crew has been busily at work, too. Seamstress Sandy Breau of Sandy's Will Sew made 14 Native American costumes after studying authentic costumes from Longfellow School's collection. "It was the first time I ever did anything like this, so I was pretty excited," Breau said. "We worked several long nights sewing after I closed the regular shop." "It was really fun to meet the cast and get to know their personalities as they came by to get fitted," added Judy Lee, who helped with the fringe work. Laurie Stevens Gilleon of Cascade, a professional artist who did scenery design for Disney theme parks, motion pictures and TV specials, worked on the eye-dropping scenery. The 25-by-50 foot backdrop, which shows the Missouri River from Square Butte to Mount Cecilia, also was used for the Lewis and Clark ballet, "A Tremendious Journey, " earlier in the Signature Event. Gilleon designed other painted sets to change locations for the opera. "It's been fun to work on the opera and the ballet, using my skills to benefit the community," she said. "I'd love to see more performances like those here." Bourne said Explore the Big Sky organizers hope the opera can recoup half of its $100,000 production costs through ticket sales, with the rest made up through grants and other revenue. Through Tuesday about 840 tickets totaling $27,000 had been sold. But she expected a surge of late sales as visitors show up for symposiums, tribal games and other closing events and hear how good the opera is. Johnson said he's always been grateful for the way Great Falls supports music, museums and children's activities, "but I'm not sure many folks have an appetite to try opera." "But if they give 'Poia' a chance, they'll find dramatic acting, magical scenery and lighting, powerful singing and an intensity that simply can't be matched by film or TV," he said. Copyright c. 2005 Great Falls Tribune. All rights reserved. --------- "RE: JOHN TIERNEY: Bureaucrats and Indians" --------- Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 08:42:46 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="TIERNEY: ARMY/BIA" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/opinion/28tierney.html?oref=login Op-Ed Columnist Bureaucrats and Indians By JOHN TIERNEY June 28, 2005 CROW AGENCY, Mont. The Crow Indians rode with Custer at Little Bighorn, but they have since reconsidered. On the anniversary of the battle Saturday, they cheered during a re-enactment when Indians drove a stake through his fringed jacket and carved out the heart of the soldier going by the name of Yellow-Hair in Blue Coat Who Kills Babies, Old Men and Old Women. Their revised opinion is understandable considering what has happened to them since that battle to get their valley back from rival tribes. Today it's a Crow reservation with enough land and mineral resources to make each tribe member a millionaire, yet nearly a third live below the poverty level, and the unemployment rate has reached 85 percent. What went wrong? Before Custer, the Crows had prospered by trading with whites, but he represented a new kind of white: the one who tells you he's from Washington and he's here to help you. As the economists Terry Anderson and Fred McChesney have documented, the downfall of the American Indians correlates neatly with the rise of two federal bureaucracies. The first was the standing army established during the Mexican War of the 1840's. Before then, settlers who wanted Indian land usually had to fight for it themselves or rely on local militias, so they were inclined to look for peaceful solutions. From 1790 to 1840, the number of treaties signed with Indians each decade far exceeded the number of battles with them. But during the next three decades there were more battles than treaties, and after the Army's expansion during the Civil War the number of battles soared while treaties ceased. Settlers became an adept special interest lobbying for Washington to seize Indian land for them. For military leaders, the "Indian problem" became a postwar rationale for maintaining a large force; for officers like Custer, battles were essential for promotions and glory. Indians no longer had any bargaining power, and they were powerless to resist the troops that avenged Custer's death. They were consigned to reservations and ostensibly given land, but it was administered by another bureaucracy, the agency that would grow into what's now the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The agency, in addition to giving some of the best land away to whites, allotted parcels to individual Indians with the goal of gradually transferring all the land and ending federal supervision. But what self- respecting bureaucrats work themselves out of a job? As the land under their control dwindled, they presumed that Indians were not "competent" to own land outright. It had to be placed under the agency's own enlightened trusteeship. They kept allotting parcels of this "trust land" to individual Indians, but an Indian couldn't sell or lease his parcel without permission from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The rules discouraged sales and encouraged parcels of land to be passed on to multiple heirs. Today it's common to find a tract with dozens or hundreds of owners. Instead of inheriting the family ranch, which they could work themselves or use as collateral to start another business, these Indians inherit the right to collect checks from the federal bureaucrats who lease their land to others, usually non-Indians. The system leaves Indians with little incentive to work their land or extract the maximum value by improving it. Not surprisingly, Dr. Anderson finds that trust lands are only half as productive as the other parcels of private land on the reservation that were given outright to Indians under the old system. Some Indians are trying to go back to the old system, but it's not easy, as Gus Gardner has discovered. For five years he has been hoping to exchange his trust lands - tiny portions of more 100 different tracts on the Crow reservation - for one big piece of land for his own cattle ranch. But he figures the paperwork involved will take at least another three years. "Just give me a regular deed to land that I own and let me go on my own," he said. That sounds like a reasonable enough request in a capitalist country, but changing the current system seems politically unrealistic. It has too many defenders at the local and state level whose living depends on it. Cutting paperwork means cutting bureaucrats' jobs, a feat that makes killing Yellow-Hair in Blue Coat look easy. No one has yet figured out how to drive a stake through the heart of White-Collar With Red Tape. E-mail: tierney@nytimes.com Copyright c. 2005 The New York Times Company. --------- "RE: YELLOW BIRD: Fourth inspires mixed feelings" --------- Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2005 13:37:53 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="YELLOW BIRD: FOURTH" http://www.grandforks.com/mld//dorreen_yellow_bird/12039875.htm DORREEN YELLOW BIRD COLUMN: Fourth inspires mixed feelings July 2, 2005 The Fourth of July is a commemoration of that day in 1776 when independence was declared, separating the colonists from an overbearing mother country, Great Britain. In what may be one of the most read and studied of all documents, the Declaration of Independence declares that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" - profound and sage words that became the foundation for this nation. Down a few paragraphs in the same document, however, the writers call the indigenous people - American Indians - "merciless Indian savages." It occurred to me as I read and reread the declaration several times that we have changed roles with those early colonists. The colonists became King George III and the Indians took on the role of the oppressed colonists. Unfortunately, Indians didn't have the Atlantic Ocean to protect them from tyranny. Englishmen, who sat in moated castles wearing ruffles and white leggings, looked at the colonists as ruffians and the lower class. They, the English, were the upper class. The colonists were taxed (without representation), had military garrisons built in their midst, were harassed, injured and killed by these soldiers and weren't allowed to prosper, according to some of the complaints they lodged against George III, the king of England, in the Declaration of Independence. Then, memories of those offenses and the meaning of the document's words faded as dreams of new wealth and land overcame the colonists. The descendants of those who wrote these profound words forgot that it said "all men are created equal" and had a right to a good life. They pushed forward into Indian lands. It wasn't until the early 1900s that Indians were allowed to vote - to be represented in the national government, outside of their own councils. True, Indians weren't taxed in the traditional manner; no money exchanged hands. But land - large amounts of land - disappeared before their eyes. As the new country grew, colonists forged ahead to places where they thought they would find gold and riches or fertile lands to settle. Indian land area shrunk into prisons called reservations. Today in some areas, only remnants of some tribes remain. That's especially true on the East Coast and warmer climates of California and Oregon. Some tribes disappeared completely. Like children in a candy store looking for the tastiest tidbits, the settlers snatched and gobbled up the richer lands first. On the Great Plains, where the Sioux, Chippewa, Sahnish (Arikara), Mandan and Hidatsa lived, extreme climate and the treeless prairie protected Indians somewhat from outsiders - so, at least, we survived. Most reservations had a fort near or on the reservation. Forts usually were placed strategically to make sure the tribes stayed within their reservation boundaries; they also provided protection for trappers, traders and settlers. Many times, the soldiers were unruly and killed and injured the Indians. They also introduced alcohol and diseases such as smallpox to the Indians. For centuries, most of the tribal nations were the poorest in the nation. It wasn't until economic development on reservation began to work and casinos were built that some Indian tribes poked their heads out of poverty. But many tribes live in isolated areas where economic development and casino money have had little effect, and still are in poverty. This Fourth of July reminded me of the words of that very profound and wise document written so many years ago. It reminded me as well of how quickly the patriots forgot those important words. Yet, I'm also reminded that it was those words in the declaration that spoke of equality and rights that forged some of the legislation and laws that have protected Indians, and life has gotten better for us. For that progress, I will thank the Creator on this Fourth of July for the signers and the document that helped protected the rights of all people, especially Indians. ---- Dorreen Yellow Bird's column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Reach her at (701) 780-1228 or dyellowbird@gfherald.com Copyright c. 2005 Grand Forks Herald/Grand Forks, ND. --------- "RE: Americas Program: Zapatista Red Alert" --------- Date: Saturday, July 02, 2005 5:03 PM From: Chiapas95-english [owner-chiapas95-english@eco.utexas.edu] Subj: Americas Program | Zapatista "Red Alert",Jul 02 Mailing List: Chiapas95-English < chiapas95-english@eco.utexas.edu> This message is forwarded to you by the editors of the Chiapas95 newslists. To contact the editors or to submit material for posting send to: . ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2005 18:13:55 -0500 (CDT) From: IRC Communications What's New at the Americas Program "A New World of Ideas, Analysis and Policy Options" http://www.americaspolicy.org/ July 1, 2005 New from the IRC's Americas Program: Americas This Week... is a weekly column written by Americas Program analysts. Reader responses and comments to this column and other Americas analysis should be sent to: americas@irc-online.org. Zapatista "Red Alert" Shakes up Mexican Politics By Laura Carlsen ... The announcement of a "general red alert" by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) has once again turned Mexican politics on its head. In a curt communique' issued on June 19, the Zapatista General Command announced a series of drastic measures including the closure of the "Good Government Board" offices, and the withdrawal of outside support groups from Zapatista territory. Subsequent communique's called the alert a "precautionary defensive measure." The Zapatistas also announced a general consultation with troops and base communities to decide on "the next step" for the organization. The EZLN has only announced two red alerts before, both in the context of a deteriorating national political climate and increased threats to the Chiapas communities. An alert mandates military readiness and in this case was accompanied by the announcement of a reorganization to assure "the conditions necessary to survive an attack or enemy action that takes out the current leadership or tries to annihilate us completely." Although the recent messages make no reference to present hostile actions by the government, they follow an announcement by the Secretary of Defense that it had discovered marijuana fields "in the Zapatista zone of influence." Several reports from human rights organizations and others have confirmed that the zone in question is not in fact majority Zapatista. These groups warn that the staged linkage of narcotics production to the insurgents could be a prelude to intensified military action in the region. There have also been reports of troop movements, fortifying some positions and abandoning others, possibly to open the door to paramilitary action. Reporters in the region describe semi-deserted towns, suspicious residents, and a palpable tension in the air. In its latest message of June 21, the EZLN lays to rest fears that the insurgents plan to launch a new offensive. After thanking civil society for its support over the past twelve years, the message assures that the next phase "implies no military offensive action on our part." The red alert came on the heels of Marcos' harsh critique of the Mexican political class published in national newspapers the day before. Marcos paints a grim portrait of corruption and betrayal among the political parties "above" and contrasts it with the continuing hardships and injustices faced in Zapatista territories "below". He extensively criticizes the left-center Party of the Democratic Revolution and its pre-candidate Andre's Lopez Obrador, and concludes: "the destruction caused by the neoliberal bomb in Mexican politics has been so effective that, from our point of view, there's nothing that can be accomplished from above... Supposedly up above there's a center, left and right. But at election time, everyone piles into the center... shouting 'I'm the one!'" With its critique of party politics and warnings of possible aggressions against the communities, the Zapatista red alert is--first and foremost--a wake-up call to Mexican society. It once again reminds the populace and the world that despite the self-complacency of a president frequently criticized for glossing over the nation's problems, those problems still exist. In Chiapas , they include not only the poverty endemic to the Mexican countryside but continued low-intensity warfare and the suspended promise of indigenous rights. Although the EZLN messages leave many questions open, it is best to await the results of the consultation and further notice before leaping to conclusions that obscure rather than elucidate the situation. For the time being, the clear message is that as Mexico prepares for another round of electoral sideshows, the Zapatistas are no longer willing to accept business as usual. The rejection of their petitions for full rights and justice, the military and paramilitary harassment of their communities, the poverty and displacement still rampant in the zone have led to a need for a dramatic political repositioning that gives new leverage to the movement and at the same time challenges traditional politics to respond to demands from the grassroots. The new stage, however it is defined as a result of the consultation, will likely place the Zapatistas squarely on the national political scene. That gadfly role, backed up by the commitment and conviction of thousands of indigenous communities, has proven to be something at which the Zapatistas are particularly adept. ... Laura Carlsen directs the Americas Program of the International Relations Center (IRC), online at http://www.irc-online.org.... See full article online at... http://americas.irc-online.org/columns/amprog/2005/0506redalert.html ... With printer-friendly PDF version at: http://americas.irc-online.org/pdf/columns/0506redalert.pdf ... Produced and distributed by the IRC's Americas Program ~ A New World of Ideas, Analysis, and Policy Options. For more information, visit http://www.americaspolicy.org.... To report problems or request that we remove you from future mailings, email: communications@irc-online.org.... You can join the IRC and make a secure donation at http://www.irc-online.org/donate.php. Thank you. For our UPDATER newsletter, please see: http://www.americaspolicy.org/updater/index.html Siri D. Khalsa Outreach Coordinator International Relations Center (IRC) http://www.irc-online.org/ siri@irc-online.org | 505.388-0208 vox | 505-388.0619 fax | P.O. Box 2178, Silver City, NM88062 Home of IRC Americas Program | Foreign Policy In Focus | Right Web siri@irc-online.org Siri D. Khalsa Communications Coordinator International Relations Center (IRC) IRC Projects Online: IRC (www.irc-online.org) FPIF (www.fpif.org) Americas Program (www.americaspolicy.org) Self-Determination In Focus (www.selfdetermine.org) Project Against the Present Danger (www.presentdanger.org) -- To subscribe from this list send a message containing the words subscribe chiapas95 (or chiapas95-lite, or chiapas95-english, or chiapas95-espanol) to majordomo@eco.utexas.edu. Previous messages are available from http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html or gopher to Texas, University of Texas at Austin, Department of Economics, Mailing Lists. --------- "RE: Crops cutting into Amazon Rain Forest" --------- Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 08:57:23 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="AMAZON RAIN FOREST SHRINKING" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.boston.com/news//crops_cutting_into_amazon_rain_forest Crops cutting into Amazon rain forest Agricultural boom threatens habitat By Monte Reel, Washington Post June 26, 2005 IRANTXE RESERVE, Brazil - The canoe floated across a current so clear that each pebble shimmered in the riverbed beneath. Farther downstream, the river plunged over a sheer waterfall, where a rainbow arched in the mist. The five Irantxe tribesmen landed their vessel and followed a trail through a dense stand of jatoba trees. When they emerged after 50 yards, the landscape no longer looked anything like the southern edge of the Amazon forest. It looked like Iowa. Corn and soybean fields extended to the horizon. Seven green John Deere combines were parked near a farmhouse. "If we were an aggressive tribe, we would have killed the landowners already," said Tupxi, one of the canoeists, who estimated his age at 77. "But we're peaceful, and we don't want to fight. So all of this has been lost." The tribe's reserve is a forested island surrounded by thoroughly conquered farmland. It sits in the middle of Mato Grosso, a state whose booming agricultural sector has helped Brazil challenge the US position as the world's top exporter of soybeans and beef. In the process, however, Mato Grosso has become the capital of Amazon deforestation. Much of the forest has been cut down, often illegally, and turned into grazing pastures and soy fields. The state's governor, Blairo Maggi, owns the world's largest soy exporting company. In 2004, Amazon tree-cutting reached its highest level in a decade: More than 10,000 square miles, an area roughly the size of Massachusetts, were cut down, according to government statistics released earlier this month. Mato Grosso, one of five Amazonian states, accounted for 48 percent of the overall deforestation. Environmental groups slammed authorities for lax regulation and accused Maggi of sacrificing natural treasures for agricultural wealth. The government recently announced the arrest of 89 members of a large illegal logging ring, half of whom were employees of the agency responsible for enforcing logging regulations. Maggi's environmental secretary was arrested on charges of helping loggers bypass regulations. Maggi fired him and promised to crack down on illegal logging. But the measures did not placate tribes such as the Irantxe, whose members said their rain forest culture has been toppled by buzz saws. "It is all about money," said tribesman Napuli, 31. "If they try to keep land for tribes like us, they would lose the money they would make on farming." The members of a government expedition peered through the trees at a partly subterranean dwelling of mud and sticks. They had walked five hours through the Amazon jungle in the state of Rondonia to find the last member of an isolated tribe. Six previous attempts to contact him were unsuccessful. Two members decided to get a closer look. If the man was inside, they would signal that they were friendly and then warn him that if he strayed too far, he might encounter farmers and jungle-clearing machines. A lopsided confrontation, they feared, might result in his death and his tribe's extinction. One of the men approached the hut but suddenly turned and sprinted away - with an arrow in his chest, recounted Orlando Possuelo, 20, a surveyor with the government agency responsible for protecting Amazonian tribes. "The Indian shot an arrow at him through the opening. It hit him in the chest, but it was above the heart," Possuelo said. "We all started running, even the guy who was shot. He pulled the arrow out while he ran." Possuelo's father, Sydney, a prominent Amazon expeditionist who heads the federal tribal protection agency, noted that if the sole tribesman in his remote Rondonia hut were to die, the entire surrounding area could be legally opened up to farming. "When it comes to protecting the Amazon," he said, "the government is getting progressively worse." Two years ago, environmentalists had cheered when longtime rain forest advocate Marina Silva was named to head the environment ministry. Silva helped enact protective measures that made almost 20 million acres of Amazon land off-limits to developers. Her agency placed protections on another 20 million acres surrounding a road project through the forest, and bolstered monitoring activities that doubled illegal-logging arrests in a year. But the new deforestation figures dealt a disheartening blow. In an interview in Brasilia, the capital, Silva maintained that not enough time had passed since the new protections to show statistical results. Maggi declined to be interviewed, but a statement provided by his office defended Mato Grosso's efforts against deforestation, including tougher licensing requirements on rural lands and stricter enforcement. In 2004, it said, the state registered 755 infringements and issued fines totaling $30 million. Soon after he was elected governor in 2002, Maggi announced a goal of boosting the state's soy production to 100 million tons annually. His business, Grupo Maggi, boasts yearly exports of $430 million. In a 2003 interview, Maggi said environmentalists were exaggerating deforestation problems and threatening the Brazilian economy. "Behind the environmental concerns are economic interests," he said. "They are trying to impede or slow the growth of Brazilian production." Copyright c. 2005 Globe Newspaper Company. --------- "RE: `War on Terror' zeroes in on Indigenous People" --------- Date: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 3:15 PM From: Amazon Alliance [amazon@amazonalliance.org] Subj: Latin America: `War on Terror' zeroes Mailing List: Amazon Alliance Source: The Final Call www.finalcall.com/ Latin America: `War on Terror' zeroes in on Indigenous people By Gustavo Gonzalez Jun 20, 2005 Riot policemen arrest protesters during a demonstration in La Paz, June 7. A day after ousting Bolivian president Carlos Mesa, tens of thousands of protesters descended on La Paz, some detonating blasting caps, to demand that the Senate leader resign, as well. Photo: AFP SANTIAGO (IPS/GIN) - The "war on terror - identified in Amnesty International's annual report as a new source of human rights abuses - is threatening to expand to Latin America, targeting Indigenous movements that are demanding autonomy and protesting free-market globalization. In the United States, "there is a perception of indigenous activists as destabilizing elements and terrorists," and their demands and activism have begun to be cast in a criminal light, lawyer Jose Aylwin, with the Institute of Indigenous Studies at the University of the Border in Temuco, south of the Chilean capital, told IPS. Pedro Cayuqueo, director of the Mapuche newspaper Azkintuwe, also from the city of Temuco, wrote that the growing Indigenous and Islamic activism in Latin America are both depicted as threats to the security and hegemony of the United States in the "Global Trends 2020 - Mapping the Global Future" study by the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC). NIC works with 13 government agencies, including the CIA, and is advised by experts from the United States and other countries. Mr. Cayuqueo described the report as "a veritable x-ray" of potential "counterinsurgency scenarios" from now to the year 2020. In the process of drafting the report, NIC organized 12 regional conferences around the world, one of which was held in Santiago in June 2004. The reporter said the emergence of increasingly organized Indigenous movements and the strengthening of their ethnic identities become, in that view, targets of "the so-called low-intensity warfare doctrine, a renovated version of the National Security Doctrine" that formed the basis of U.S. interventionism in Latin America from the 1960s to the proclaimed end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. The Indigenous question would thus appear to form part of what the United States sees as future threats to its hegemony. In Latin America, the Andean subregion is seen as the "hottest" area, because of the growing political role played by well-organized Indigenous movements in Bolivia and Ecuador, but also because of the impact on Indigenous peoples of armed conflict and drug trafficking in Colombia. Farther south in the Andes mountains, Mapuche organizations in southern Chile and Argentina have become increasingly vocal in recent years in their claims to their ancestral territory, demands for autonomy and the creation of Indigenous reserves, and defense of the environment, which is threatened by transnational mining and forestry corporations that are granted tax breaks and other incentives by governments. "The Indigenous nations exercise and preserve a profound democratic essence in their organizational and decision-making structures, but transnational corporations foment their exclusion from society and push Indigenous people to violence, which could translate into armed struggle," Aymara leader Juan de la Cruz Vilca told IPS in Bolivia. In Bolivia, 70 percent of the population of 9.2 million identify themselves as Indigenous, and the Indigenous movement, along with other sectors, is demanding a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution and "re-found the republic" to grant self-determination to the country's 36 native groups, added Mr. de la Cruz Vilca. The activist, the former president of Bolivia's Confederacion Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia, a peasant farmer union, accused foreign oil companies of backing the demands for regional autonomy put forth by business and large landowners in the wealthy eastern regions of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Pando and Beni, where the country's natural gas reserves are concentrated. "Behind that movement lies a hidden plan aimed at generating a violent reaction by the Indigenous movements, in order to justify external military intervention," he maintained. "It's true that Indigenous peoples are a threat, from the point of view of the political and economic powers-that-be. They see us as terrorists, but we aren't, because our struggle is open, legal and legitimate," said Ricardo Diaz, an Indigenous lawmaker with the leftist Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), the strongest opposition party in Bolivia. In Ecuador, Indigenous people account for an estimated 40 percent of the population of nearly 13 million. For the first seven months of the government of Lucio Gutierrez, who was removed from his post by Congress on Apr. 20 after a week of protests, the Pachakutik Movement, the political arm of the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), formed part of the administration. CONAIE president Luis Macas told IPS that if his movement, "which guides the indigenous struggle along peaceful channels, didn't exist, the poverty in which our communities, and the Ecuadorian people in general, are steeped could become a breeding-ground for the emergence of organizations that could try to change the social situation through violence, but that hasn't happened," said Mr. Macas. "We are not a threat to the world, or to the United States. On the contrary, we hold out a hope, an alternative for humanity," said Feliciano Valencia, coordinator of human rights in the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca, in the southwestern Colombian province of Cauca. The shamans (traditional healers) "had warned that very difficult times lay ahead, with a black cloud hanging over our territories," the Nasa Indigenous leader commented to IPS, saying the Colombian government was already following policies aimed at the persecution of social and Indigenous movements even before the "Global Trends 2020" report was issued. The Nasa people number around 150,000, making them the second-largest Indigenous group in Colombia, which is home to 90 Aboriginal communities that make up around two percent of the population of 44 million. Although Colombia's 1991 constitution granted autonomy to Indigenous peoples in their reserves, that provision is not respected, and there are continuous occupations of land by the military and irregular armed groups, said Mr. Valencia. He also protested the spraying of coca and poppy crops and the displacement of Indigenous peoples from their land by those interested in getting their hands on natural resources. Chilean Deputy Minister of Planning Jaime Andrade Huenchucoy, the government agent in charge of Indigenous affairs, told IPS that the native peoples in his country represent no threat of destabilization or terrorism, as described in the NIC report. Jose Santos Millao, one of the Mapuche members of Chile's National Corporation of Indigenous Development, remarked to IPS that the U.S. intelligence services "suspiciously or stupidly" cast the protests of Indigenous peoples as part of "terrorist" tendencies, in order to distort their "legitimate demands." In Chile, 6.4 percent of the population of 15.2 million identify themselves as Indigenous members of six ethnic groups, although other estimates put the proportion at 10 percent. In neighboring Argentina, meanwhile, native peoples make up between 1.5 and 2.0 million people, out of a population of 37 million. In both Chile and Argentina, the Mapuches comprise the biggest Indigenous group. The land conflicts that are currently raging began with the arrival of the foreign mining, oil, forestry and water companies, Mauro Millan, leader of the Mapuche Tehuelche Organization of Argentina, told