_ __ _____ __ _ __ ___ ____ _ __ ___ ' ) / / ') / / ) ' ) ) / ) / ' ) ) / ) / / / / / / /--/ / / / ___ / / / / ___ (_(_/ (__/ ( / (_ / (_ (___/ '__/_ / (_ (___/ ' ____ _ , ___ _ , ___ / ' ) / / ) ' ) / / ' VOLUME 14, ISSUE 025 / /-< / /--/ /-- __/_ / ) (___/ / ( (___, WOTANGING IKCHE - Lakota - Common News Wotanging Ikche and Native American News Copyright c. 1996-2006 nanews.org Aboriginal/AmerIndian Perspective about the First Nations of Turtle Island June 24, 2006 Pomo butich-da/moon when bulbs mature Assiniboine wahequosmewi/full leaf moon Western Cherokee dehaluyi/green corn moon Potawatomi msheke'kesis/moon of the turtle +-------------------------------------------------------+ | 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; Certain Home, Certain Talk, Rez_Life, NetRez-L, and Frostys AmerIndian Mailing Lists; UUCP Mail 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 Quote: + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + =================== "We are told that your religion was given to you by your forefathers, and has been handed down from father to son. We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us, their children. We worship in that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all favors we receive; to love each other and be united. We never quarrel about religion, because it is a matter which concerns each man and the Great Spirit. Brother, we do not wish to destroy your religion or take it from you; we only want to enjoy our own." __ Chief Red Jacket (Sagoyewatha), Seneca +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ | 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 Sister! This needs to be said again. The borders between the US and Mexico and between the US and Canada are imaginary lines placed there by the European invaders. Odawa, Cree, Pasqua First Nation, Mohawk (in both the US and Canada), Blackfoot/Blackfeet (in both the US and Canada) and relations in the hundreds of other Canadian First Nations are our brothers and sisters. This is also true of the Hui Chol, Aztec/Mexica, Tarahumara, Tohono O'odham (in both the US and Mexico), Cocopah (in both the US and Mexico) and many others. The hot spots for our brothers and sisters right now lie to the North and South. In both dark places the provincial police are making phony charges against the Peoples who want only to live on their lands that are guaranteed them by treaty. The trumped up charges are then used as the basis for raids that are terrifying and murderous.... yes, murderous. The real intent is to keep Indian Peoples throughout Turtle Island intimidated and pushed back into corners where they are neither seen nor heard. ... and for those who may be reading this who are neither native nor sympathetic, your glibness is being rewarded by a government that is short changing veterans who were injured fighting its wars; and is even now developing a super highway from the Southwest coast of Mexico to the very heartland of the US. It will bypass all customs stops until trucks roll into the Port of Entry in Kansas City, taking yet more jobs and services "off shore". It is no accident the highway (four football fields wide) will sidestep the teamsters, longshoremen and other organizations that are working to keep jobs in the countries where services and goods are rendered. The final leg will then end in Canada, north of Duluth. Before you toss this off as just another stupid conspiracy theory, take a moment to look up NASCO, the North America SuperCorridor Coalition Inc. Maybe, just maybe it would be in everyone's interest to care about the crimes against Native Peoples in Mexico and Canada, regardless of where you live. If you sit wherever you are reading this and say and do nothing, do not cry out when the goons knock on your door. There may be none to listen or care. 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 ----------- - Cobell files contempt charges - Violence and Racism spoil Talks against Kempthorne - Prairie Railway Blockade - Native activists work set for June 29 to protect sacred Bear Butte - Indians say 1787 Land surrender - Ancestors' Remains was invalid returned to Mother - 'Redstock' draws Thousands - Returned Wetlands - Stronghold offers Legal Services sacred to Mdewakanton in Rapid City - Oneida Nation Leader - New Mexico Court affirms takes aim at Critics Pueblo Jurisdiction - NMSU extends Pueblo - Drug Bust: Hitting close to Home Distance Education Program - Message from - Navajo Soldier Leonard Peltier Legal Team welcomed Home with Honor Run - Native Prisoner - Duluth Church holds -- Judge rejects last American Indian service Yellowbear petition - Feds rush to save Ancient Sites -- Corrections Canada pleas - GIAGO: There is a new mindset for community help in Indian Country -- From James Bay to Alberta - YELLOW BIRD: Political Horse Walking for youth of a different Color - Rustywire: - ICT EDITORIAL: She was called Two Gray Hills Girl Doctrines of Injustice - Del "Abe" Jones Poem: - JODI RAVE: Churchill fabricated Mitakuye Oyasin history of People - Verse: Hawaiian Book of Days - YELLOW BIRD: - Ancient tongue, modern software Sioux issue takes a step back - Oldest Pow Wow observes - Arrest Warrants for 7 its 140th Anniversary - Purchase changes nothing - Upcoming Events --------- "RE: Cobell files contempt charges against Kempthorne" --------- Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:45:22 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="COBELL FILES AGAINST NEW INTERIOR SECRETARY" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/2006/06/12/AR2006061200769.html Kempthorne Now Faces Interior Lawsuit The Associated Press June 12, 2006 WASHINGTON - On the job less than a month, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is already being pulled into a 10-year-old class-action lawsuit filed by American Indians that has dogged the Interior Department through the Clinton and Bush administrations. In a motion filed Friday, plaintiffs asked a federal judge to make Kempthorne the third successive Interior secretary held in contempt in the lawsuit. They charge the Interior Department has continued to conceal computer security problems in violation of a 2005 court ruling requiring it to report weaknesses that could put Indian records at risk. The Indians accuse the government of mismanaging more than $100 billion in royalties from their lands since 1887. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth has found Kempthorne's predecessors, Bruce Babbitt and Gale Norton, in contempt and has more than once ordered the department's computers disconnected from the Internet to protect Indians' records. Norton's contempt charge was vacated on appeal. A department spokesman said Monday that officials were aware of the motion and would respond later in court documents. Copyright c. 1996-2006 The Washington Post Company. --------- "RE: Native activists work to protect sacred Bear Butte" --------- Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 08:55:48 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="BEAR BUTTE" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.startribune.com/484/story/491314.html Near Sturgis, a fight over the sacred Development near South Dakota's Bear Butte is pitting Indians against those catering to the annual biker rally. Chuck Haga, Star Tribune June 13, 2006 STURGIS, S.D. - As her boys scamper about the state park at Bear Butte, Anne White Hat gazes at the peak that dominates the grasslands off the northern Black Hills. "I've grown spiritually just by being here," she said. For White Hat and other Dakota Indians, for the Cheyenne and other Plains Indian tribes, this is sacred ground: guidepost and shrine through centuries, the place where Crazy Horse sought spiritual guidance and where today's warriors come for healing fasts after returning from Iraq. But if the mountain is sacred to some, the grasslands surrounding it are prime real estate, each August teeming with the great leathered shoal that converges for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Open-air watering holes such as the Drag Pipe and the Full Throttle Saloon already exist - for a week or two a year - a few miles from Bear Butte. Massive outdoor crash pads such as the Buffalo Chip Campground, where thousands gather to cheer strippers and such acts as Lynyrd Skynyrd, also have brought the Sturgis rally closer to the sacred site. Now, 2 miles from the mountain's base, an Arizona developer has scraped the prairie and poured foundation for a new 22,500-square-foot biker bar, a 150,000-square-foot asphalt parking lot, a sprawling biker campground and an amphitheater with space for more than 30,000 people and a stage "constructed to meet the specifications of the biggest music acts known to mankind," according to his website. Just to the south, a Sturgis developer is seeking a full liquor license for another biker bar, campground and concert complex. In response, Indians have organized the Bear Butte International Alliance to resist what White Hat calls "this boisterous desecration." They seek a 5-mile buffer between the butte and the annual partying near the site in western South Dakota. Last month, the local county board granted Arizona developer Jay Allen a beer license for his 600-acre development, then refused to accept petitions asking that the decision be put to a countywide vote. The landowners' right to develop their property trumps the Indians' concerns, said Curtis Nupen, a Meade County commissioner. "I have granddaughters who are part Native American. I understand the culture pretty well," Nupen said. "Their religious rights are pretty well looked after. But Bear Butte is enjoyed by all people. My sons and I have climbed to the top. "It's not just for Native Americans." Nupen said the county requires only that a person be of good character to establish a business in an appropriate location, and there are precedents in the Bear Butte area. "I don't enjoy the noise and the crowds, but it's something we've learned to live with," he said. "Most people would rather not have more liquor licenses out there, but it's a person's right to start a business. That's always been the philosophy." Hank Bruch, 75, has cattle on land facing three sides of the butte. "Nobody likes the [rally's] disruption of the tranquility," he said. "But we do believe in property rights. It's how we make our living out here." Before the butte became a state park, the Bruchs and their neighbors "used to go up there for sunrise Easter services," he said. "It used to be for everybody, and a lot of what the Indians say now is just made up. "They can make a new Vatican City out of it, but that doesn't change the history." Sacred ground White Hat operates a nonprofit women's health center from her home at the base of the butte. Her husband, Jay Red Hawk, teaches horseback riding and archery to children from Indian schools and helps area ranchers with branding. Each day, he sets out food for spirits at the butte, and he and White Hat regularly gather the boys - Flying Hawk, 7, Bear Shield, 3, and Winter Buffalo, 2 - for meditation there. "When these guys are our age, what's the face of this land going to look like?" White Hat asked as the kids played in the park. "I don't want my babies to have to stand in front of those stone-faced commissioners then and see they still aren't hearing what we're saying." Red Hawk met with Allen at the sprawling Broken Spoke Saloon in Sturgis. Shuttered now, waiting like other establishments that exist only for rally week, it is one of several "world's biggest biker bar" complexes Allen owns in such places as Daytona, Fla. "We were very respectful," Red Hawk said. "We told him it wasn't just a native issue, but a community issue. Nobody wants to stop the rally, but we don't want it coming out here." Allen did not respond to requests through his Sturgis attorney for an interview. Some white ranchers have joined with the Indians, as they did four years ago to stop construction of a firing range near the butte. "It takes all of us, people from all walks of life, to defend this land," Red Hawk said. Center of the universe In June, brilliant patches of wild mustard and blue-flowered flax highlight waves of little bluestem grass lapping at Bear Butte. Sage and pine scent the air. Grazing buffalo crop new grass in the draws beneath the butte's 4,426-foot summit as mountain bluebirds and thrushes flit through yucca and chokecherry trees. In the trees are tobacco bundles and colorful prayer ties. Ceremonial fires flicker. "Feels good to be here," Jodee His Bad Horse wrote in the visitor center log in late May. Days later, 27 Northern Cheyenne teenagers ran a two-day, 190-mile relay from their Montana reservation to Bear Butte. Jacob Tall Bull Jr., 51, rode in a support vehicle. "I've fasted here twice," he said. "I came with my grandfather in 1963. That left an impression on me about the importance of this mountain." Mato Paha, Bear Mountain, the Dakota call it, perhaps after a Kiowa origin story involving a sleeping bear. The Cheyenne call it Noavosse, the Good Mountain, and they believe that their prophet Sweet Medicine received the nation's four sacred arrows there. The Cheyenne have been buying land by Bear Butte since 1970, and in March members of the tribal council celebrated the latest acquisition by raising their blue-and-white flag over 36 acres on the west side. Gathered there, "at the center of our universe," the council adopted a resolution opposing the new rally-related developments. Crazy Horse is thought to have spent much time in prayer at Bear Butte, and in 1857 the largest-ever council meeting of Plains Indians brought 30,000 or so Cheyenne and Sioux together to discuss a common danger: white encroachment. In 1874, George Custer visited Bear Butte. Two years later, he fell at Little Bighorn - to the Sioux and Cheyenne. "We have advocated nothing but peace," Red Hawk said of the current conflict. "We want to solve this ... through the democratic process." In 1897, homesteaders filed a claim on the butte's eastern slope, and in 1940 it was a tourist attraction with burro rides to the peak. The state bought the land in 1961, created the state park and reserved a portion for Indian ceremonies. As a state employee, park manager Jim Jandreau declines to join the dust-up over development. But as a Lower Brule Sioux, he is keen to talk about the land and the ceremonies performed there. "It's every bit as much a church as any in town," he said. Many bikers who come to Sturgis "sort of identify" with the Plains Indians and want to learn more about their culture, Jandreau said. "They have a nomadic lifestyle, too. For the most part, they're respectful. "But tranquility is important to the people who come on prayer quests, and during rally week that tranquility is not there." Chuck Haga - 612-673-4514 Copyright c. 2006 Minneapolis Star Tribune. All rights reserved. --------- "RE: Ancestors' Remains returned to Mother" --------- Date: Saturday, June 17, 2006 08:18 pm From: Peter Webster Subj: Ancestors' Remains Returned to Mother Mailing List: Certain Home Mailing List: Certain Talk Mailing List: Rez_Life From earth to earth, once freed from study Culture - Native Americans retrieve and rebury the remains of 143 ancestors dug up long ago RICHARD COCKLE The Oregonian June 17, 2006 DAYTON, Wash. - Wilson Wewa raised his arms above a mass grave Friday where the remains of 143 Native Americans were ceremonially laid to rest on a windswept bluff above the Snake River. "Each and every one of us are related somehow to these people," said Wewa, an elder of the Palouse and Northern Paiute tribes who lives on the Warm Springs Reservation. The bodies, now concealed under reed mats, had been unearthed in the early 1960s to make way for a reservoir rising behind the newly constructed Ice Harbor Dam. Since then, they've been stored in the anthropology departments of the University of Idaho at Moscow and Washington State University at Pullman. They were returned to the tribes for reburial under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which sets guidelines for the return of cultural artifacts by museums, federal agencies and others. "Now they are home," Wewa told about 100 people gathered by the shallow pit. "They are not sitting in a room in a box on a shelf. Their bones can go back to the ground like it was in the creation times. Our people have to go back to the ground." The ceremony near Lyons Ferry State Park began in the morning and included speeches in English and the Sahaptin language of the Northwest tribes, interspersed with singing. None of the bodies could be individually identified. Tribal members believe some predate the Lewis and Clark expedition and possibly the voyages of Christopher Columbus, said Harvey Moses Jr., chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation's governing Business Council. Dealing "as best we can" Just how many Northwest tribes are represented is impossible to know because the original burial site was a gathering spot for native people from a wide region who passed by over the centuries, he said. "There was no embalming way back then," Moses said. "If you died during travel, you would be buried where you died." The belief system of the Northwest tribes holds that bodies shouldn't be exhumed after burial, he said. "They never should have been moved, period," Moses said. "It is upsetting, but a part of the American way of life is to do this, so we are dealing with it as best we can." Alvin Shuster, a Yakama tribal elder, said he sometimes wonders "what the other side would do if we went to their cemeteries and dug their people up. How would they like it?" A spirit of conciliation seemed to override any acrimony at the ceremony. "Our religion forbids making judgments," Shuster said. "We have to accept things as they come. They took a lot of things away from us." "No hard feelings to the people who have taken them out of the country. No hard feelings," said Charles Axtell, a Nez Perce elder living in Lapwai, Idaho. A sad, telling frequency The reburial was organized by the Confederated Colville tribes and was the largest of its kind outside the boundaries of the 1.4 million-acre Colville reservation, where 5,000 tribal members live. The Colville confederation encompasses 12 tribes, and many are related to tribal people elsewhere around the Northwest. Reburials have become increasingly common since passage of the repatriation act in 1990. The law was restructured last year to ensure that museums comply. In April, Arizona's Hopi Tribe reburied 1,560 sets of human remains, among them 455 nearly complete skeletons, all believed to be 700 to 1,550 years old. Most had been unearthed during archaeological excavations between the 1880s and 1960s at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. Stone tablets near Friday's reburial site marked the undated burial place of 135 people recovered from a desecrated native cemetery at the mouth of the nearby Tucannon River. Beside it was another marker signifying the last resting place of an uncounted number of Palouse moved there in 1962 from where they were exhumed at the confluence of the Snake and Palouse rivers. "It is just the way the settlers and the government work," Moses said. "It is difficult to put a figure on how many times this has happened, how many times it will happen." The problem now will be to keep artifact hunters away from the site, Moses said, though the remains appeared to consist mostly of deteriorated bones. To help ensure security, the remains were partially buried, then the grave was filled with chain-link fencing and rocks before being fully covered. Richard Cockle: 541-963-8890; rcockle@oregonwireless.net Copyright c. 2006 The Oregonian. Peter Webster peterweb@bendnet.com http://disturbingthecomfortable.blogspot.com/ --------- "RE: Returned Wetlands sacred to Mdewakanton" --------- Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:45:22 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="EASTERN DAKOTA REJOICE IN RETURNED TRIBAL LANDS" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/14775398.htm It's wet, but it's theirs Most of the 1,290 acres of land recently returned to the Mdewakanton tribe can't be developed. No matter, tribe members say, it's still sacred ground. BY DAVID HAWLEY Pioneer Press PRAIRIE ISLAND, Minn. June 11, 2006 Technically, the Prairie Island Indian Community nearly quadrupled its property holdings last month when President Bush signed legislation to return 1,290 acres to the tribe. Unfortunately for the tribe, most of the land they got back is under water - covered in the navigation basin created by Red Wing's Lock & Dam No. 3 in the 1930s. But it's no less significant to Prairie Island's Mdewakanton Band of Eastern Dakota. "Even though most of this land is not visible, that doesn't make it any less sacred or less important to us," said Alan Childs II, a member of the community's tribal council. Tribal officials say the submerged property - about 800 acres - contains hundreds of burial mounds, the remnants of ceremonial structures and a number of obliterated village sites. The remaining aboveground land, which includes a chain of small islands and some watershed property on the mainland, is slightly smaller than the tribe's tiny, 534-acre reservation - best known to visitors as the site of Treasure Island Resort & Casino. A recent tour of the mainland property required a heavy-duty four-wheel drive truck operated by a Prairie Island employee who was willing to give it a pounding. Over the years, a few small areas have been used to grow corn or hay, but most of the parcel has been left to nature. After crashing through heavy brush and mud, the vehicle stopped in an area covered with waist-high vegetation under a tree canopy so thick that midday seemed like dusk. To venture outside the truck was to invite an attack by swarms of mosquitoes. "This is what most of the parcel looks like," whispered Craig Wills, the tribe's environmental specialist, as he gazed at the pristine silence. "It probably won't change much." In fact, very little seems destined to change under the terms of the land transfer, which conveyed ownership from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Department of Interior to hold in trust for the tribe. The transfer stipulates that the land can't be used for human habitation or for the building of any structure that isn't approved by federal authorities. It also specifically prohibits the building of any gambling facility on the property. The Corps of Engineers continues to have jurisdiction over land-usage issues pertaining to navigation on the Mississippi, as it does over all privately owned land along the river. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources also retains jurisdiction over one of the natural lakebeds within the property. Ron Johnson, another member of the tribal council, said there will be an effort to restore some native vegetation, grow a small amount of feed for the tribe's buffalo herd and possibly see if wild rice can be reintroduced. "That's a heritage there that will be restored and preserved," he said. LONG-AWAITED TRANSFER The fate of the parcel dates to 1934, when the Corps of Engineers began construction on a series of locks and dams to make the Upper Mississippi more suitable for commercial navigation. At the time, the Indians living on Prairie Island were not a recognized band - the reservation had been dissolved after the 1862 Dakota Conflict - and federal officials handled condemnation proceedings against individual property owners. The Prairie Island Indian Community was federally recognized in 1936. A year or so later, engineers realized that the new lock and dam would flood more land than had been acquired for the original construction project, so a deal was struck with the fledgling tribal government. In exchange for taking additional land on the new reservation that would be flooded, the government promised to give the tribe the 1,290 acres in a section known as "Parcel D." That promise was never kept, though federal officials gave the tribe permanent "surface usage" of the parcel. Over the years, Childs said the arrangement resulted in a few nagging problems - such as conflicts with the state Department of Natural Resources over hunting rights and occasional disputes with nontribal people who showed up on the land. More significant, however, was the sense of lost heritage inexorably tied to lost land. "So getting it back has always been important to us," Childs said. Joe Halloran, a St. Paul attorney hired by the tribe, said he spent almost three years working on details for the recent transfer. His firm, Halloran added, had been involved in efforts to re-acquire the property for the tribe as far back as 1983. This time, however, Halloran said there seemed to be universal agreement that the transfer was appropriate, fair and long overdue. Signing on were Red Wing, Goodhue County, the Corps of Engineers and Rep. John Kline, R- Minn., who is credited with pushing the legislation through the U.S. House. U.S. Sens. Norm Coleman and Mark Dayton also backed the federal transfer. "The political leaders and the tribal elders had the will to do this," Halloran said. "The rest is just details." Tribal Council President Audrey Bennett said the transfer represents a gift to the community's elders and particularly to its children, who number more than half of the community's 711 enrolled members. "It's peaceful back there," she said of the remote parcel. "That's why our ancestors looked at it as a spiritual place." Copyright c. 2006 St. Paul Pioneer Press. --------- "RE: Oneida Nation Leader takes aim at Critics" --------- Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 08:37:25 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="HALBRITTER LASHES BACK" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.oswegocountybusiness.com/LatestNews/06142006nation.html Oneida Nation leader takes aim at critics by Lou Sorendo June 14, 2006 It was high time for a history lesson. Instead of rehashing the many economic benefits that the Oneida Nation has bestowed on the Mohawk Valley, Ray Halbritter, Oneida Indian Nation representative, took a different tack during his guest appearance at a Wednesday afternoon luncheon hosted by the Mohawk Valley Chamber of Commerce at the Radisson Hotel-Utica Centre. Halbritter, whose Oneida Nation is engaged in a bitter land claim battle, presented a historical picture of how supportive the Oneidas have been to not only the Mohawk Valley, but to the country itself. The Nation is seeking to have its land in Oneida and Madison counties put into federal trust, which would exempt it from state and local taxes and regulations. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Nation could not longer exercise sovereignty over any of its reacquired lands. As a result of the ruling, the Nation has asked the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs to take the Nation's land into trust - which is a real estate transaction giving the federal government title to the land involved. Any land held in trust by the federal government will be for the use and benefit of the Oneida Nation and would no longer be subject to local taxes and regulations. The land-into-trust move has been met with criticism by local residents and politicians, and Halbritter took exception to that based on the many contributions the Oneida Nation has made in the region throughout history. Halbritter criticized government officials for waffling on the land trust issue, particularly since he had proof that they were in support of developments such as the Turning Stone Resort & Casino when it was constructed in 1993. Halbritter presented photos of Oneida County Executive Joseph Griffo attending a ribbon-cutting of Turning Stone. Halbritter said Griffo - along with a host of government representatives - knew the Oneida land was non- taxable at that time. 'Angry scar' Griffo has referred to the land trust as being capable of gouging an "angry scar" through Oneida County. Halbritter said the land-into-trust approval is needed from the U.S. Department of Interior to protect the Nation's many business enterprises. The Nation employs more than 4,800 people. The Oneida Indian Nation is third among the top-10 employers in central New York, ranked only behind Cornell University in Ithaca and SUNY Upstate Medical University. To say the Oneida Nation has a positive economic impact on the Mohawk Valley is an understatement. In 2005, the Nation surpassed the 4,800 mark in job creation, making it the largest employer in Oneida and Madison counties. The Nation's employees earned more than $109 million in wages, while the Nation paid another $16 million in health insurance and other benefits. The Oneida Nation also directed $285 million into other businesses around the region, the state and country. In addition, the Nation spent another $66 million in construction and capital improvements for the Turning Stone and other Nation enterprises. Historical view Halbritter cited treaties in which the U.S. government agreed to never make a claim to property owned by Indian nations, including the Oneidas. After the Revolutionary War, the U.S. promised the Oneidas that their reservation lands would always remain in the hands of the Oneida Nation. One-third of the Oneida population was killed in the Revolutionary War while backing the colonists. However, New York state ignored federal law and illegally acquired about 250,000 acres of Oneida land, according to Halbritter. The Oneida land claim is based on treaties with the U.S., federal law, and the U.S. Constitution. The Treaty of Canandaigua - created in 1794 - was a formal acknowledgement by the U.S. government that lands were to be reserved for the Oneidas. "You can't take away the truth of history," Halbritter said. The Oneida Nation leader said he is astounded about how little residents of the Mohawk Valley know about the history of their own region and the benefits gained from being affiliated with the tribe. Halbritter criticized the fact that the Destiny USA project in Syracuse received 30 years of property tax exemptions while the Oneida Nation is under scrutiny for not paying taxes. He would not elaborate on why he felt the two parties were being treated in different ways. Copyright c. 2006 Oswego County Business. --------- "RE: NMSU extends Pueblo Distance Education Program" --------- Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:45:22 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="DIGITAL PATHWAYS REACHES DISTANT PUEBLOS" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/stories/2006/06/12/story7.html NMSU extends distance education program to far-flung pueblos New Mexico Business Weekly - by Haley Wachdorf NMBW Staff June 12, 2006 Students on 12 American Indian pueblos in New Mexico soon will be able to earn a degree from New Mexico State University without ever leaving home, and tribal leaders are hopeful that this will mean a workforce better equipped to manage burgeoning tribal businesses. NMSU's "Digital Pathways" program, a $2 million expansion of the university's distance-education offerings, is a collaboration between NMSU, the Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI) and the New Mexico Tribal Higher Education Commission. For most of the pueblos, it will be the first time college courses have been offered online to their residents. Distance education centers will begin opening this fall on the Cochiti, Acoma, Laguna and Santa Domingo pueblos as well as the cluster known as the Eight Northern Pueblos, which includes Tesque, San Ildefonso, Pojoaque, Santa Clara, Nambe, Ohkay Owingeh (formerly known as San Juan), Picuris and Taos. IBM West Digital Pathways is part of NMSU's efforts to reach American Indian students, a demographic with low levels of college completion in New Mexico. At NMSU in 1998, only 18.6 percent of Native students who entered college graduated within six years, compared to 48 percent of white students. On the pueblos and reservations, this results in a shortage of educated Native workers, meaning that while many of the tribes have created business operations such as casinos, hotels and golf courses that make millions of dollars every year, they are often not managed by Native people. That's why NMSU, in addition to bringing to the pueblos the 28 degrees it usually offers to distance education students, will create four new emphasis programs especially designed to address tribal workforce issues. The four programs will be tribal management, criminal justice with an emphasis on tribal law, tribal health care and hotel, restaurant and tourism management. Carmen Gonzales, vice provost for distance education and the dean of the NMSU College of Extended Learning, says the degrees for which NMSU will develop a tribal emphasis option were chosen by tribal leaders who identified critical shortages of business management professionals and health care workers. "A lot of the tribes have businesses they are running, and they aren't able to find management in the tribe," she says. "They have to go outside for management positions, and they'd like to support their own people so that at least there's a blend. Right now, there's not a blend at all. The unskilled workers are the Native people and the skilled workers are outsiders." Darlene Smart-Herrera, director of education for the Pueblo of Cochiti and chair of the tribal higher education commission, has dreamt of being able to offer distance education to students because many find themselves in a tug-of-war between education and their obligation to the tribe. "I think of it as a greater opportunity for all of our college students and even our high school students who may want to get college credit online," she says. "But we also have tribal officials appointed every year, and some of the younger officials have given up a year of school to stay home and take care of their duties. So this would give them an opportunity to take care of their cultural obligations and continue with their schooling." NMSU has secured $500,000 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, but the university will supply another $1.5 million to cover the cost of the first three years of the statewide program. After that, the university expects that the program will be somewhat self-supporting through tuition and possibly more grants. The hiring process has begun for a program director who will manage NMSU's administration for the program, and by the end of the summer, three mentors who will work directly with students in the tribes and pueblos will be hired as well. SIPI, the state's largest tribal college, with 800 students, will be part of the process, and SIPI instructors will teach some of the courses offered through the NMSU program. NMSU's distance education programs had an enrollment of 2,190 in 2005. The goal for the first stage of the Digital Pathways program is to enroll 80 students from the pueblos. Copyright c. 2006 American City Business Journals, Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. --------- "RE: Navajo Soldier welcomed Home with Honor Run" --------- Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:03:28 -0600 From: Karen Francis Subj: Navajo soldier welcomed home with honor run Contact: Karen Francis, Public Information Officer Navajo Nation Council Office of the Speaker (928) 871-7160 karenfrancis@navajo.org www.navajonationcouncil.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATE: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 NAVAJO SOLDIER WELCOMED HOME WITH HONOR RUN Navajo Nation leaders surprised a visiting soldier with a motorcycle escort to a welcome home celebration at her home chapter of Steamboat, Arizona on June 10, 2006. A dozen Navajo Nation honor riders, including Council delegates Larry Noble, Curran Hannon, Raymond Berchman and Vice President Frank Dayish, surprised U.S. Army Sgt. Elizabeth Noble with an escort home on the final leg of her return trip. Her father - Matthew Noble - picked her up on Thursday from Moreno, California, for a 20-day leave to return home to accompany her younger brother to San Diego as he follows the family tradition by entering the Armed Forces. >From Klagetoh, Sgt. Noble rode in with the bikers to Steamboat, Arizona, where her family and friends awaited her with a huge meal and a ceremony where she was honored with a plaque expressing appreciation for her service from the Navajo Nation Council. Presenting the plaque on behalf of Speaker Lawrence T. Morgan were his staff assistant Angela Barney Nez and Council delegates Hannon, Berchman and Orlanda Smith-Hodge. Ms. Nez read aloud a letter written in 1944 from Maj. General Paul J. Mueller expressing condolences in the loss of Pfc. Bernard Todecoz. Todecoz was the grandfather of Sgt. Noble, as well as the late LCpl. Kevin Joyce who was killed in action last year. "We know that this family has sacrificed. Commemoration was given to this family before and generations later, we welcome a warrior back," Ms. Nez said. "It takes us back to appreciate what sacrifice really means. We learn to appreciate life." Sgt. Noble expressed her appreciation to all who welcomed her, noting that it was significant that her leaders came out to greet her. "It's a big deal for me to ride a bike," she said. "I ride in helicopters all the time, but never a motorcycle." Council delegate Larry Noble announced that there are now 76 registered Navajo Nation honor riders who help with various honor runs for Navajo Armed Forces and veterans held throughout the Navajo Nation. "It's emotional seeing all the bikers come together. It's very moving anytime - not just today - that I see them doing this honor," Matthew Noble said. Since his daughter's leave was approved at the last minute, preparations to pick her up and surprise her had to happen immediately. To the bikers, he expressed his appreciation saying, "You came. You dropped everything. Thank you." He added, "I think these honor runs need to continue." --------- "RE: Duluth Church holds last American Indian service" --------- Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:45:22 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="CHURCH WITH MIXED SERVICE CLOSING" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/14798433.htm Duluth church holds last American Indian service RELIGION:Worshipers look for a new location as a Lakeside/Lester Park church closes. BY BRANDON STAHL NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER June 12, 2006 As the drumbeats faded and the chants gave way to goodbyes, Sunday night marked the last time for the foreseeable future that local American Indians could attend a Christian ceremony that incorporated themes and religious symbols from their culture. Once a month for the past two years, St. Edward's Episcopal Church in Lakeside/Lester Park has offered "Where the Feather Meets the Cross" services, where 40 to 100 parishioners have worshiped using traditional Episcopalian liturgy and songs mixed with American Indian drums, song, dance and other traditional spiritual ceremonies. However, St. Edward's, which opened 48 years ago, will close its doors on July 12 because of declining membership and an aging congregation. St. Edward's Rev. Margaret Thomas, 69, said membership has dwindled to only about 20 to 25 people. Sunday morning's service had only 17 parishioners, barely enough to fill the first two rows of pews. "The people here now are just kind of old and tired," Thomas said. "Once a church gets to a certain point where it's nothing but older people, young people just don't want to come here... and I'm no spring chicken, either." Many of the parishioners lamented their church's closing. "It's terrible that this church is closing. We all are in mourning," said Jean Moberg, Duluth. "The congregation is like an extended family." "I hate to see it close," said Marilyn Minter of Duluth. "The people are so nice, so great, and so willing to help." But the church was an ideal place to hold the American Indian ceremonies, Thomas said. The first and last special services were held around the anniversary of the death of St. Enmegahbown, the first American Indian to become an ordained Episcopalian priest. Rev. Harold EagleBull, 60, who has officiated at the services since they began, said though the Christian and American Indian ceremonies are visually different, many share similar spiritual symbols and themes. The ministers burn sage and cedar in an abalone shell, for example. Similar to incense, Thomas said, the wafting smoke is seen as an offering to God. EagleBull said an authentic eagle feather used in the ceremony is similar to the symbolic dove. "It's a highly regarded symbol of God," he said. EagleBull didn't know when or where new services will begin again, but hoped it would be sometime in the fall and somewhere downtown. Many people who attend the service, he said, live downtown and had to take a bus to the church. Others who wanted to attend the service had no way to get there at all. He hopes a new location better serves the needs of Duluth's American Indian population. "I know they are hungry spiritually," he said. "I believe they find a real meaning in Native American spirituality." Copyright c. 2006 Duluth News-Tribune. --------- "RE: Feds rush to save Ancient Sites" --------- Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 08:42:21 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="SAVING NATIONAL TREASURES" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2006/06/10/ news/regional/f45f36787225155b87257188005f74b6.txt Feds rush to save ancient sites By PAUL FOY Associated Press writer June 9, 2006 SALT LAKE CITY - Government-funded archaeologists are making a major push to survey ancient sites across a remote stretch of southern Utah before looters can scoop up the last artifacts. The team, from the University of Colorado-Boulder, is recovering the best treasures before they disappear from the ground along Comb Ridge, an 80-mile monocline worshipped by American Indian cultures as the very spine of earth. Another team, from Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park, is shoring up crumbing walls of ancient dwellings at 10 sites in the same the same region, about 300 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. Those are some of the activities coinciding with the centennial of the 1906 Antiquities Act, the law that has let presidents since Theodore Roosevelt unilaterally create national monuments to preserve the nation's ancient cultural sites and unusual geological features. The act, which turned 100 years old Thursday, has been used by 14 presidents to establish 123 national monuments, some of which were turned into national parks. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which controls nearly half of the land in Utah, will celebrate the act's centennial with other federal and local agencies on Saturday at Edge of Cedars National Monument near Blanding, Utah. The BLM manages the 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument, one of seven monuments in Utah. The BLM is trying to get out a cautionary message to a growing number of visitors who are loving some ancient settlements to death. "It's like the birders. People keep lists and want to see these special places," said Shelley Smith, BLM branch chief for recreation, wilderness, cultural and fossil resources. "We're starting to call them the 'accidental vandals.' They lean on the walls to get a good picture. They take a corn cob with them, a pottery shard." The University of Colorado is deploying crews of eight to "look for any signs of an artifact, or maybe a pile of rocks that might indicated a storage bin that has fallen over," BLM spokeswoman Adrienne Babbitt said. The five-year survey, which started last fall, will be the most extensive conducted on BLM land. The work is being funded by a $225,000 Save America's Treasures grant from Congress, $75,000 from the Utah Legislature plus $75,000 from private groups. The Mesa Verde team already has repaired one ancient ruin in Arch Canyon, about 20 miles west of Blanding. The remains of a three-story building had only two walls left, with one of the walls undermined by an eroded foot path made by visitors. The team excavated dirt from the wall, reinforced the foundation by piling rocks back against it, and plastering them with mud. They covered up the work so it appears untouched. The team will repair other walls by using mud mortar. Saturday's event at Edge of Cedars Monument will start with a pancake breakfast at no charge to visitors. It will continue with displays of Indian artistry, guided tours of ancient Pueblo settlements and an afternoon symposium at the College of Eastern Utah's San Juan campus. Copyright c. 2006 Casper Star Tribune. --------- "RE: GIAGO: There is a new mindset in Indian Country" --------- Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:45:22 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="GIAGO: THE PRICE OF CASINO GOLD" http://nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=7918 Notes from Indian Country There is a new mindset in Indian Country Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji) June 12, 2006 There has been abundance of viewpoints, or as I like to call them, "mindsets," about Native Americans over the centuries. The mindset of Christopher Columbus and his Spanish crew went from one extreme to another in a matter of weeks. First there was curiosity and then admiration for the innocence of the indigenous people and then there was the attempted exploitation of the innocents in a thirst for gold and other riches. And then there was the wholesale slaughter of the innocents who did not provide the riches demanded by the invaders. And then there was the religious conversion and the enslavement of the survivors. The diseases brought to the islands soon began to devastate the native population throughout the Western Hemisphere. Up on the mainland the new settlers exhibited that same initial curiosity. They brought the same greeds and needs. And as history has recorded a thousand times over, the same patterns of disease, land grabs, and military might soon pushed the natives from their lands and thousands of the refugees died from the diseases to which they had no immunity. The Natives soon discovered that freedom of religion did not apply to them. For the next 400 years it was all about conquest and as the white population exploded and the red population diminished, the edict of Manifest Destiny saw the settlers march from the east coast to the west coast leaving a devastated Indian population in their tracks. The "mindset" going into the early 1900s was one of near total disregard by the settlers. In 1881 a book called A Century of Dishonor by Helen Hunt Jackson brought the image of the Vanishing American into a sharper focus. The census in 1900 showed that there were about 250,000 Indians left in the land they once ruled. Some early anthropologists and archaeologists estimate the Native population at the time of Columbus to be around 10 or 11 million. If that were factual then the near annihilation of the indigenous population of America would be the worst case of genocide in the history of the world. After Helen Hunt Jackson's book, the "mindset" of many Americans and of Congress shifted to one of restricted benevolence. On the one hand the mindset of total assimilation still ruled and on the other saving the remaining Native people became paramount. Between the times her book was published and the Census of 1900, certain acts of Congress had already deprived the Indian tribes and individual Indians of millions of acres of land. The "mindset" connected to greed still held sway in America. Starting in 1900 and for the next 100 years the American mindset of dealing with the indigenous people went from one extreme to another. There was an effort to "terminate" the Indian nations, an effort to "relocate" the Indians from the reservations to the cities, and of course, there were the continued efforts to assimilate them into the mainstream. Each of these efforts had minimum successes and small numbers of Indians never returned to the reservations after relocation and others were totally assimilated into the majority culture. A totally different mindset happened when the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988 exploded on the scene. The new and latest "mindset" traveled down a two-way street. It not only impacted the way non-Indians looked at the Indian people, it also impacted the way Indian people looked at themselves. Many Native Americans saw jobs and opportunity on their home reservations where none had existed before and in bunches they left the cities and returned to their home reservations. In states such as South Dakota, for example, while most rural counties are experiencing annual losses in population the Indian reservations are gaining in population. The IGRA saw some Indian nations become wealthy beyond their wildest dreams and others reach a level of financial comfort they had never known. Other reservation casinos provided jobs and a little financial benefit but not much more. With the new wealth came power and in some cases along with that power came corruption. Fear of losing a foothold on this sudden wealth caused some tribal political leaders to assume near dictatorial rule over their tribal members. Controlling the purse strings meant controlling the tribe. Tribal leaders like Ray Halbritter of the Oneida Nation of New York became near-potentates surrounded by and protected by a wall of lawyers and accountants. There was a major shift in the way America looked at the Indian people after IGRA. As newspapers and magazines reported on the billions of dollars reaped annually by the Indian casinos the feelings of many shifted from sympathy to disengagement. The feeling among the non-Indian was that if Indians are making so much money they can now fend for themselves. They no longer need our support or our empathy. As a matter of fact, much of that empathy turned to anger. How dare the once noble savage, the figment of our frontier mentality, become wealthy and independent? In the new mindset casino Indians ceased to be Indians. And as new tribes appeared in the east, the locals never considered them to be Indians. They simply became a group of people created by the federal government, a group of people that gave itself the name of a tribe in order to build a huge casino. There is still untold poverty amongst many Indian tribes but the new mindset of most white Americans will not recognize it because they are blinded by the glitter of the new Indian and his casinos. This mindset of untold wealth is fostered by the ignorance of the public relations departments hired by the wealthy tribes to promote their casinos. In the end, wealthy Indian nations have become their own worst enemy and, as it would appear inadvertently, the enemy of the poorest Indian nations. --- Tim Giago is the president of the Native American Journalists Foundation, Inc., and the publisher of Indian Education Today Magazine. He can be reached at najournalists@rushmore.com or by writing him at 2050 W. Main St., Suite 5, Rapid City, SD. He was also the founder and publisher of the Lakota Times and Indian Country Today newspapers. Native American Times. Copyright c. 2005 All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: YELLOW BIRD: Political Horse of a different Color" --------- Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 08:55:48 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="YELLOW BIRD: POLITICAL COLORS" http://www.grandforks.com/columnists/dorreen_yellow_bird/14804464.htm A political horse of a different color DORREEN YELLOW BIRD COLUMN June 13, 2006 Now that the media has decided to color states to indicate how that state usually votes - red for Republicans and blue for Democrats, and kept in reserve (in case a state ever votes this way), white for the Reform Party and green for the Green Party - I would argue that they've got the colors backward for the two dominant parties. It might be a tad frivolous to put significance to these colors, but colors do have special meanings. It seems to me we would be better served with red Democrats and blue Republicans. The meaning of the current colors doesn't seem to fit. The media didn't come by its decision easily. With the increasing use of color in the 1960s by television and some newspapers, media mapmakers began to use colors to designate political parties. It was blue for Republicans and red for Democrats at one time. Some media outlets also used other colors such as yellow and white, but by 2002, all media outlets colored their maps the same way: red for Republicans and blue for Democrats. Colors are more important in the national elections than they are in our small-city elections. Party affiliations on the local government level in North Dakota are a well-kept secret, or were at least to me. My boss had a good laugh at my expense one day when I naively thought one official was Republican. It was his wealth that threw me. Not knowing to which party a candidate belongs can be a positive, I believe. To me, it means a candidate takes a stand on an issue rather than following the party line. Such candidates are not "lemming-like." I know the meaning of color is important to many tribes. For example, most Plains tribes have color indications for the four directions. I should add that if you ask one Native person, he might say it's red for west, white for north, black for east and yellow for south while another Native leader might say white/north, red/east, yellow/south and black/west. The consistency is that there isn't a consistency in the designation. Each of the colors has significance attributed to certain animal spirits and/or other meanings and are designated for each direction. Strangely, there are commonalties in the meanings of colors between some Native cultures and political parties. Conservative red is a powerful color - and few Native spiritual leaders would deny that it's the same in the Native culture. Red also is about emotions and passion, while liberal blue is calming like the sky and also cold like ice water. To me, Democrats seem to be the hot party, while Republicans are the icy "blue bloods." Of course, I know that's a stereotype, and I'm saying it half in jest. (As for the other half ...) If we were to designate colors for our current candidates for City Council, School Board and/or Park Board, we would have a rainbow. Some candidates would be magenta (blue and red), and a sparkling magenta at that. Put a little yellow into a blue candidate, and all of sudden we'd have a "greenie." I couldn't identify a "greenie" among those we interviewed. Then there would be a candidate with one red arm and one blue arm, a greenish tint to his face and white feet. But on top, I would guess from the interviews of the editorial board, most of the candidates would have a tall, sparkling crown of tax mills to symbolize property tax relief. I appreciate the concentration on lowering property taxes because it is why some low-income people in our community can't find the low-income houses that supposedly were built for them. There may be some good houses at nice prices, but when you add property taxes, it becomes too high for some - certainly those with low incomes. Then again, perhaps "greenies" would mean those who have enough greenbacks (money) to buy a house. Or a person who turns "green" with envy when they see all those big houses that they can't afford. Today - Election Day - will tell who we are. I wish for a rainbow of many colors arching over our city: To me, that would mean we care about all the people. ---- Dorreen Yellow Bird's column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Reach her at (701) 780-1228 or dyellowbird@gfherald.com Copyright c. 2006 Grand Forks Herald/Grand Forks, ND. --------- "RE: ICT EDITORIAL: Doctrines of Injustice" --------- Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 08:38:12 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="INDOCTRINATED INJUSTICE" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096413149 From John Locke to John Wayne: Doctrines of injustice by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today June 16, 2006 We've been showing in recent weeks that the two legal doctrines used to dispossess Indians don't have a leg to stand on. These are the doctrines of Christian discovery and the right of conquest, still - incredibly - cited more or less openly by the U.S. Supreme Court. But there is a third, more deeply ingrained in the Euro-American psyche than even these two, although the Supreme Court has found it too dangerous to fold into constitutional law. This one could be called the "right of the most productive user." None other than John Wayne gave it pretty good expression. According to his movie biography Web site, he once said of Indians: "I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves." This mainstream contempt for the rights of "selfish" Indians has its origin in one of the most influential works of political philosophy of the past three centuries, John Locke's "Second Treatise of Civil Government" (1690). Native intellectuals widely and with good reason see Locke as the nemesis. Although he lived from 1632 to 1704, he wrote the blueprint for a political system based on economic individualism. It provided the framework for American politics and created a disaster for Native tribes as the principle behind the Dawes Allotment Act. Even in the late 17th century, Locke shaped his theory with an eye to the taking of American Indian land. Locke had both a practical and philosophical interest in American Indians and probably knew more about the tribes of his day than any other thinker of his stature. For several years just before the explosion of Native resistance in 1676, in what is called King Philip's War, he was the bureaucrat in charge of supervising all of Britain's American colonies. Like other writers of the time, he also cited Indians as examples of men in the 'State of Nature.' Locke hypothesized that men living a violent pre-political life came together in a compact to form civil society. (He implied they acted voluntarily as individuals rather than through the natural accretion of families and clans described by Aristotle; this bias against tribal society emerged virulently in the Dawes Act.) For Locke, unlike earlier writers, the purpose of this social compact was the protection of accumulated property. It was in describing the emergence of property that Locke drew most heavily on American examples. Some of his gratuitous - and inaccurate - detail, we think, was aimed at more than proving a theory. Value, he said, came from labor. So, although an acre of land in England and America could grow as much wheat, an English farm produced 1,000 times the value of the land occupied by the hunting-gathering Indians. "Thus Labour in the Beginning, gave a Right of Property." So settlers who could put the New World in cultivation had a superior right to the land, supported by Scripture, than its original Natives. The implications became crystal clear in Emmerich de Vattel's "The Law of Nations," a highly influential authority in the age of Andrew Jackson. After ridiculing the papal bulls dividing the New World between Spain and Portugal, Vattel asked if other European nations could take over a territory peopled by small, nomadic bands. "These nations," he said of the Natives, "cannot exclusively appropriate to themselves more land than they have occasion for, and which they are unable to settle and cultivate." Their nomadic movements, he said, "cannot be taken for a true and legal possession; and the people of Europe, too closely pent up, finding land of which they make no actual and constant use, may lawfully possess it, and establish colonies there." Locke and Vattel, of course, edited the facts to fit their claim. They ignored the extensive Native agriculture, even as it enriched the European diet, and failed to recognize that North America had been depopulated by diseases that came from Europe. Locke even refuted himself internally. At first he said that it was the invention of money, unknown in America, that allowed the accumulation of property. But in a later passage he admitted that Indians also used an imperishable means of exchange, wampompeke, which he named with a close equivalent of the proper Algonquin. But European settlers ignored these inconvenient facts as they eagerly seized an excuse for stealing the land. The stereotype of the Indian as savage, nomadic hunter-gatherer became deeply engrained not simply from racism but from deep economic and psychological necessity, as the justification for dispossession of the Native. It has a powerful hold to this day. New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, now running for governor, used an echo of the theory in a recent brief urging the Supreme Court to kill the Cayuga Nation's land claim. Remarkably, though, the Supreme Court has been far more reluctant than the popular mind to embrace Locke's doctrine. Lawyers pressed the theory forcefully in the seminal 1823 land rights case Johnson v. M'Intosh. They filled their briefs with quotes from Locke and Vattel. But Chief Justice John Marshall didn't bite. "We will not enter into the controversy," he wrote, "whether agriculturists, merchants and manufacturers, have a right, upon abstract principles, to expel hunters from the territory they possess, or to contract their limits." Marshall might have sensed the slippery slope of this doctrine. If farmer-settlers had the right to expel hunter-gatherers, could factory- farmers take over less productive family farms? And can factories expropriate farmlands? How could anyone maintain a property right against someone who could claim to use the land more productively? Squatters from the United States used this doctrine with devastating effect on the Spanish land grants during the California gold rush. It echoed in what was possibly the most controversial Supreme Court decision of recent times, the Kelo v. City of New London case upholding the city's right to take private homes through eminent domain to make way for a luxury hotel. And how about today, when Native enterprises are bringing renewed economic vitality to many stagnant regions? From the middle of Mississippi to central New York to southeastern Connecticut, tribal businesses have become some of the largest, most profitable employers on the scene. By Locke's terms, wouldn't they have superior claim to the lands of marginal farmers and struggling small businessmen? At the very least, isn't it selfish of non-Indians to oppose the full exercise of tribal rights on land that the Indians have already repurchased? We doubt that many non-Indians, not even John Wayne himself, would endorse a "right of the most productive user" when it worked to the benefit of an Indian tribe. And tribes don't have to invoke it. They have already earned their land rights twice over, once as the aboriginal inhabitants and a second time as lawful purchasers under the Euro-American legal system. None of the doctrines so prevalent in the Supreme Court or mainstream society - either discovery, conquest or Locke's theory of property - has any countervailing legitimacy in any tribunal of true justice. Copyright c. 1998 - 2006 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: JODI RAVE: Churchill fabricated history of People" --------- Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 08:44:08 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="JODI RAVE: WARD CHURCHILL" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2006/06/18/jodirave/rave18.txt Colorado professor fabricates Native history June 18, 2006 It's not always easy for university administrators to discern authentic Native professors from those who wish they were - or try to be. Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado tops the list of poseur professors. Throughout the years, he's become a magnet for lost Indians and Native romanticists. But his disputed personal claim of being Cherokee falls below a damning list of professional problems. And on Tuesday, a CU committee recommended firing the ethnic studies professor for research misconduct. This is no light charge. It's the first time the CU Standing Committee on Research Misconduct has voted to ax a professor in its 17-year history. The committee found Churchill guilty of plagiarism and fabricating material in his academic writings. Among his sloppy research, Churchill invented details about my tribe, the Mandans. Tribal oral tradition deserves its due. Churchill, however, succeeded in mangling it. I've never been a fan of Churchill, a professor I met as a journalism student attending CU in Boulder. My mother was a Spotted Bear, a Mandan-Hidatsa from the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. I'm a daughter of the Maetsi-Dogah, or Knife Clan. My great-great-grandfather, Spotted Bear - the son of Raven Chief - descended from the Mandan villages typically built along the tributaries of the upper Missouri River. My great-great-grandmother, Stella Tail, was Hidatsa. Most people know my tribes through the explorers Lewis and Clark, who wintered with my people in 1804 and 1805. The Mandan and Hidatsa villages along the Knife River in present-day North Dakota were the center of a vast trade network on the Northern Plains. By the time Lewis and Clark arrived in 1804, we had already been in contact with white traders. A smallpox outbreak hit our tribes in 1782, more than 20 years before we ever saw men from the Corps of Discovery. A smallpox epidemic in 1837 nearly wiped out my Mandan ancestors, reducing their numbers from about 2,000 people to fewer than 150. Our oral histories speak of a time of incomprehensible despair. This story needs no embellishment. But Churchill decided to make up his own details. Among his fantasies: The U.S. Army intentionally spread smallpox among the Mandan by distributing infected blankets from an infirmary in St. Louis - goods hauled up the Missouri on the St. Peter's steamboat. He then pawned his lies to other scholars. First, the army wasn't even posted around our villages at the time Churchill claims. And no proof exists, orally or in text, to show blankets came from a hospital. But our tribal people have long said the spread of smallpox was intentional. I recently talked with Gerard Baker, a Mandan-Hidatsa and leading oral historian for our tribes. Baker, park superintendent at Mount Rushmore, is a fluent Hidatsa speaker and comes from a traditional family. He's also lived and worked at many of our historical village sites along the Missouri. Baker has talked with tribal elders and spent countless hours looking at the journals of the fur traders. He's convinced traders deliberately spread smallpox to eliminate us as middlemen in the trade network. Bernard Pratte Jr., captain of the St. Peter's, was the son of an American Fur Company owner who bought the Missouri branch in 1834. Three years later, Pratte insisted on keeping a smallpox-ridden man on board as the crew made its way toward the Mandan and Hidatsa villages. The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara populations - known today as the Three Affiliated Tribes - were nearly eliminated within months. The white trade flourished in our area well into the 1850s, said Baker. A CU committee investigating Churchill's work devoted 44 pages to smallpox and Mandans in its 125-page report released last month. The committee concluded Churchill's Mandan writings "created myths under the banner of academic scholarship." Churchill made feeble attempts after the fact to acknowledge the oral history of my people. In his defense, he told an investigative committee he never tried to corroborate any of his writings because he considered his account to be "rather self-evident - such stories have been integral to Native oral histories for centuries. I've heard them all my life." Among his sources, he cited a TV series, "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." The committee said he "disrespectfully introduced Indian sources only belatedly as a defense against this allegation." Far be it for Churchill to seek out a real Native expert, such as Baker. But Churchill has already done his damage in trying to be a voice for Native people. My tribe's oral history fades in light of his self-made scandal. The CU professor demonstrates how artificial Native thought can damage legitimate indigenous views. Jodi Rave covers Native issues for Lee Enterprises. She can be reached at 406-523-5299 or jodi.rave@lee.net Copyright c. 2006 Missoulian, a division of Lee Enterprises. --------- "RE: YELLOW BIRD: Sioux issue takes a step back" --------- Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 08:44:08 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="YELLOW BIRD: UND NAME" http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/columnists/14842774.htm DORREEN YELLOW BIRD COLUMN: Sioux issue takes a step back June 17, 2006 My 12 years in Grand Forks doesn't compare with the length and experience of my sister, Elizabeth Yellow Bird (Demaray), who came to Grand Forks in 1971. She graduated from UND in 1976. After graduation, she went to work for UND's INMED program. While there, she was able to complete her master's degree. She then was hired by the university for several more years. My brother, Don Yellow Bird, graduated in 1973 and worked with the Upward Bound and INMED programs. Since then, a sister and several relatives have graduated from UND. Our family is familiar with the UND campus and the logo and mascot issue. Liz returned to the UND campus two years ago to pursue a doctorate degree. She tells me each time the mascot and logo issue hit the headlines, she regrets coming to UND. While she was at the university, the "Sammy Sioux" logo was changed to a geometric design. But Liz is reminded of their work 35 years ago each time she recognizes some sports organization has returned to using an Indian depiction for their logo. When you look at the imposing Engelstad Arena, it's as if the campus itself has become one huge mocking logo, she said. I know she is disturbed with what's happening on campus and especially irritated with those in power -- leaders such as the president of the university, Board of Higher education members, attorney general of the state -- who supposedly have the best interest of all of North Dakota at heart yet seem to be using their authority to try to overpower the NCAA's desire to eliminate stereotypes. So why does she stay? The university offers something she can't easily acquire anywhere else. The doctoral program fits her needs, and the location of the university allows her to stay connected with home -- with the family -- which is important to her. When Liz first came to UND, she said there were few American Indian students on campus. She said she remembered some better than others. Here are some she remembers because they struggled with the logo issue: Ken Davis, chairman of the Turtle Mountain tribe, a member of that tribe; Dave Gipp, president of UTTC, a member Lakota Nation; Twila Martin Kekabah, former tribal chairman of Turtle Mountain, a member of that tribe; Art Raymond, former professor and director of native programs at UND and a few others. As a freshman and a sophomore, she said she didn't help the cause as much as she should have. They focused on the "Sammy Sioux" logo that was a cartoonish Indian with a very large nose. The atmosphere on campus wasn't good, but with the help of Tom Clifford, former UND president who was sympathetic to Indian people, they were able to change the logo to a geometric symbol. In a conversation with Twila Kekabah on Friday, she remembered the fight over the logo and mascot. "If we'd known then what we know now about the logo, we would have demanded that it be changed then," she said. They were lulled into thinking that taking the "Sammy Sioux" logo off the table and providing education about and by Indian people things would change. They did -- a little, she said. But it seems "racism is starting to bubble to the surface again." They thought they came a long way from the 1960s, when some fraternity students built a snow sculpture of a Sioux woman breast-feeding a wolf. It so angered a Lakota man, George Whirlwind Soldier, that he pulled off his belt and knocked it to pieces, she said. Kekabah said she never advises students to come to UND and won't until the name is changed.What has evolved from those days when things were beginning to change? There has been an array of T-shirts with less than complimentary messages on the front. Most were taken out of the system, but they pop up occasionally. The most popular probably was "Sioux suck." There still is some hooting, hollering and threatening Indian students. The Engelstad Arena and the statue are another smirk and poke at Indians. So, things haven't changed much, and some will say have gotten worse. Those students of the 1960s are shaking their heads. They thought things would improve with understanding and education. It seems that small group of Indian people who took on the university to try to bring about understanding realize their efforts were for nil. Honor and respect for all people doesn't seem to be in the big plans for the state and the university. ---- Dorreen Yellow Bird's column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Reach her at (701) 780-1228 or dyellowbird@gfherald.com Copyright c. 2006 Grand Forks Herald/Grand Forks, ND. --------- "RE: Arrest Warrants for 7" --------- Date: Monday, June 12, 2006 06:20 pm From: frostyca2000 Subj: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Arrest Warrants for 7 Mailing List: Frostys AmerIndian FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 11, 2006 Six Nations Haudenosaunee Confederacy --- The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) have issued arrest warrants for seven (7) people from the Six Nations Reclamation site. Charges include attempted murder, robbery, intimidation and causing bodily harm. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy deliberated this issue during Council on Saturday June 10th, 2006. The individuals involved in these incidents were brought before the Confederacy Chiefs and Clan Mothers, on Sunday, June 11, 2006, to discuss and understand the incidents. The Confederacy Chiefs and Clan Mothers spoke with these individuals about the Great Law of Peace and how it is to guide our actions. Our investigation is continuing. It was decided that for the safety of all involved, these individuals would be removed from the site until our investigation is complete. We are working with the Ontario Provincial Police and the Six Nations Police to ensure the safety of all people within our respective jurisdictions. Our investigation has indicated the "Border Securtiy" vehicle being driven by the "police officer" was actually an Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearm (ATF) vehicle from the United States of America. Two officers in the vehicle were from the United States of America accompanied by an officer with the Ontario Provincial Police. We have found evidence that indicates these officers were in the area since April 2, 2006 assisting in the current policing of the occupation of the Six Nations Reclamation site. This is particularly concerning due to the reputation of the ATF. The Haudenosaunee are dismayed that the OPP gave permission to these officers from the United States of America to assist in this situation without any prior communication to our people, this has incited an already tense situation. We are working with the Ontario Provincial Police to clarify this situation. The Haudenosaunee has legally binding treaties with the Crown. The Two Row Wampum belt and the Silver Covenant Chain affirms the parameters of the relationship between our two governments. These treaties acknowledge the Sovereignty of our people and Nation. The Silver Covenant Chain speaks of a relationship between our two governments based upon Respect, Peace and Friendship. To have a good strong Friendship, there needs to be a commitment to exercise "Kanikonriio" that is the "Good Mind" which means equality, justice, and the Commitment to help each other in times of need. The Two Row Wampum Belt identifies the nation to nation basis which are people are to deal with. The Two Row Wampum Belt depicts our governments operating within our own "canoes". This means that each of our respective governments will continue to operate under their own laws and will not interfere with the affairs of the other governments. Under our treaties the only issues which fall under the Crown's jurisdiction are Murder, Rape and Theft. According to the Treaty of Fort Albany made with the Crown there is an extradition process which must be followed in order to address any of these three issues. Our people follow the Great Law of Peace and are not a people of violence. The Haudenosaunee are committed to ensuring that the Great Law of Peace is respected and followed at the Reclamation Site. Haudenosaunee Media Contact: April Powless (519) 717-3921 --------- "RE: Purchase changes nothing: Protesters" --------- Date: Saturday, June 17, 2006 05:29 pm1` From: frostyca2000 Subj: Purchase changes nothing: protesters Mailing List: Frostys AmerIndian Purchase changes nothing: protesters Caledonia, hold signs asking for law and order. By John Burman, Paul Legall and Daniel Nolan The Hamilton SpectatorCAYUGA June 17, 2006 The Ontario government believes the purchase of the occupied Douglas Creek Estates will pave the way for the peaceful resolution of the explosive Caledonia land dispute. The province also announced another $1 million will be paid to Caledonia businesses hurt by the dispute. But native protesters say they will not leave the subdivision site until title is back in their hands. The government announced yesterday the land will be held in trust while negotiations over its ownership and use continue between the federal and provincial governments and the Haudenosaunee/Six Nations. "Are we going to leave? No. Not at all," aboriginal spokesperson Janie Jamieson said. The purchase, which compensates a corporation, changes nothing because the government hasn't "even begun to address the land issue," she said. Caledonia residents living near the disputed land -- an area which has been marred by violence, vandalism and near riots since native protesters took over the site 110 days ago -- also say the purchase changes nothing for them unless the protesters leave. Kevin Clark, 43, whose property is near Douglas Creek Estates, said after the announcement, "This is far from over. We still live in a state of terror. Nothing has changed for us in 110 days." He said the occupiers of the site have been harassing and intimidating residents. Members of the Six Nations reserve have claimed the land as part of their territory and prevented the developers, John and Don Henning, from completing a residential development on the 40-hectare site. More than 100 people attended a joint band council-Confederacy meeting yesterday afternoon at Six Nations Polytechnic to get an update on negotiations. Six Nations is negotiating with provincial appointee Jane Stewart and federal appointee Barbara McDougall. Mohawk Chief Allen MacNaughton told the gathering Henco almost became part of the negotiations at the end of April, however, after 20 hours of talks Henco balked at becoming part of the talks because it did not want that made public. MacNaughton said no financial figures were talked about at the time between the province and Ontario. While it was announced the province is buying Henco out, MacNaughton noted it is only an agreement in principle and it is not a done deal. In other developments, the crowd was told: * New archaelogy work has begun on the site because of native worries it might contain burial grounds. * Six Nations farmers have moved onto the former site of the Burtch Correctional Centre -- which the province agreed to hand over -- and have planted 267 acres of soybeans. David Ramsay, provincial minister responsible for aboriginal affairs, told The Spectator yesterday the agreement to purchase the Henco land makes continued native occupation of the site "a moot point now that the land has been neutralized." Asked if the land will be turned over to Six Nations, Ramsay said he can't predict the final outcome for the property. Michael Bruder, a lawyer for the Henning brothers, described the purchase deal as a "framework agreement" which will take about two weeks to finalize and will need to be approved by cabinet. He said the main issue will be determining a fair market value for the survey which has 10 houses in various stages of construction. Two weeks ago, he told reporters the Hennings had expected to earn about $45 million from the project. Dennis Brown, a lawyer for the Ministry of the Attorney General, announced the transaction when he and other provincial, federal and local officials appeared before Justice David Marshall in Ontario Superior Court yesterday. Yesterday, Brown and other parties assured the judge they expected a peaceful resolution. But the judge concluded the day with some sobering words. He didn't want to leave the impression everything was back to normal and that everybody should go home happy. "This is not a peaches and cream case. It's a case that has a nasty underside." jburman@thespec.com 905-526-2469 plegall@thespec.com 905-526-3385 dnolan@thespec.com 905-526-3351 Copyright c. Hamilton Spectator 2006. --------- "RE: Violence and Racism spoil Talks" --------- Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 08:38:12 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="SIX NATIONS NERVES ON EDGE" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?feature=yes&id=1096413156 Nerves on edge at Six Nations as violence and racism spoil talks by: Jim Adams / Indian Country Today June 16, 2006 OHSWEKEN, SIX NATIONS RESERVE, Ontario - Nerves are fraying at the Six Nations Reserve of the Grand River as sporadic violence alternates with secretive talks over the ongoing Native "land reclamation" occupation of a projected housing subdivision. At latest report, negotiators were scheduled to hold their regular Thursday meeting on June 15 after Six Nations elders ordered the removal of the last barricades blocking traffic in and out of the reserve. But tensions remained high as Native residents reported innumerable displays of hostility from non-Indian residents of nearby Caledonia, and non-Indian residents near the Douglas Creek Estates occupation expressed fears of attacks by the protestors. "The people in Caledonia are fed up. A lot of Six Nations residents are fed up. We're all fed up," said Lisa Van Every, Mohawk, an activist on the reserve. Reserve elders expressed dismay over incidents June 9, in which protestors swarmed two vehicles near the occupation site, including a sport utility vehicle apparently belonging to a U.S. law enforcement agency. A Six Nations resident commandeered the official SUV. Ontario Provincial Police charged that he drove it at one of their officers, who was injured as other officers pulled him from its path. The OPP issued seven arrest warrants. The most serious leveled charges of attempted murder and assaulting a police officer against Ohsweken resident Albert Douglas, 30, alleged driver of the seized SUV. In a June 11 release, the Six Nation Haudenosaunee Confederacy said it had brought the individuals named in the warrants before confederacy chiefs and clan mothers "to discuss and understand the incidents." It said the chiefs and clan mothers "spoke with these individuals about the Great Law of Peace and how it is to guide our actions. Our investigation is continuing." In the meantime, it said, "for the safety of all involved," the seven individuals were removed from the occupation site. Although the release disavowed violence, it also cited treaties giving the Haudenosaunee government jurisdiction over most crimes within its territory and pointedly stated "there is an extradition process which must be followed" for the exceptions. The release raised questions about the relations between the traditional Confederacy leaders and the Six Nations police force, which answers to the elected reserve government dating to 1924 and which the OPP said was cooperating in executing the warrants. Questions also deepened about the role of the United State officials. Although the two U.S. officers in the "Border Security" SUV were initially described as Border Patrol, the Haudenosaunee said the vehicle actually belonged to the former Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency. Ontario Police subsequently revealed that it was carrying classified documents including lists of undercover officers, details of the surveillance of the occupation and reports from confidential informants. According to the Toronto Star, notes also dealt with investigations of human smuggling across the Niagara portion of the U.S. border. Copies of the documents reached a Native newspaper on the reserve and the main regional paper, the Hamilton Standard. According to the Haudenosaunee report, the U.S. officers were in the area since April 2, several weeks before the early morning OPP raid on the occupation site April 20 that seriously escalated the confrontation. Native protesters took over the construction site on Feb. 28, saying the land had been illegally taken from the Six Nations Reserve in the mid-19th century. The 45,000-acre reserve is the vastly diminished remnant of the Haldimand Tract, a 950,000-acre British land grant to its Haudenosaunee allies in the American War of Independence. The Iroquoian fighters, led by the famed Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant, were driven from their lands in New York state during the American Revolution. The Douglas Creek Estate, a projected subdivision of 200 homes under construction by local developers Donald and John Henning, is located on one of several dozen land claims filed by the elected Six Nations government. In the aftermath of the latest violence, the Hennings' company, Henco, announced it had lined up a deal with a national real estate developer to build an additional 2,500 homes around Caledonia. It said that Native land claims "were not a concern" for the potential investor. Copyright c. 1998 - 2006 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Prairie Railway Blockade set for June 29" --------- Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 08:46:11 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="BLOCKADE CALLED" http://www.firstperspective.ca/fp_template.php?path=20060614rail Prairie railway blockade set for June 29 Press release from Chief Terrence Nelson of Roseau River First Nation, Manitoba Ultimatum meets Ultimatum! As Premier Dalton McGuinty and Minister of Indian Affairs Jim Prentice pull out of the Six Nations/Caledonia land claim with ultimatums that the "barricades must come down," First Nations across Canada are issuing their own ultimatums. Last week, 100 Ontario Chiefs walked to the site of the land claim dispute and issued their own warning to Canada. Today Union of British Columbia Chiefs issued full support to Six Nations. In Manitoba, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, representing 64 First Nations, passed a resolution supporting a 24-hour railway blockade set for June 29th 2006, "to force the Canadian government to establish a reasonable time-frame for settlement of land claims." Chief Terrance Nelson moved the resolution to "send a message, that resource wealth of our lands are what supports every Canadian." Canada is the third largest producer of diamonds, has 10 per cent of the world's forests, and mines 60 metals and minerals. Oil is now over $72 a barrel, up from $10 a barrel in 1999, and there are 1.4 trillion barrels of oil in the tar sands plus hundreds of other oil and gas producing areas. Canada had eight straight federal government budget surpluses, a 2005 reported net worth of $4.5 trillion, and GDP over a trillion dollars. Today the federal government raises far more revenue from its share of resource royalties than it does from income taxes. Roseau River will block two railway lines going into the United States. At least six other Manitoba First Nations have vowed to block railway lines at the same time. The financial cost of the railway blockades will be in the millions but the real impact is likely to be the international image of Canada. Canada was the United Nations choice as the "best country in the world to live in" for seven straight years, but while Canada was number one on the index, Canadian First Nations communities mired in extreme poverty were set at the 63rd level on the UN scale. Over 6,000 First Nations land claims are now in limbo. "What pisses me off when I watch the Caledonia violence" said an angry Chief Nelson, "is the immigrants to our lands didn't bring the diamonds or other resources from Europe in their little wooden boats, yet they have the gall to demand we, the owners of the land and resources, must now pay taxes to them on top of their theft." Treaties 1 to 11 representatives went home last week from a Winnipeg conference to seek support in their regions to initiate railway blockades in traditional territories. Copyright c. 2006 First Perspective. --------- "RE: Indians say 1787 Land surrender was invalid" --------- Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 08:46:11 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="TORONTO NEXT CALEDONIA" http://www.firstperspective.ca/fp_template.php?path=20060611treaty Indians say 1787 land surrender was invalid... shades of Caledonia? by Bob Aaron So you think you have good title to your home in Toronto? Think again. It turns out that a huge portion of the City of Toronto is in fact subject to a valid native land claim, which affects the title to millions of Toronto properties. I was reminded of this claim when I received an email from Stanley Dantowitz, a law clerk at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP in Toronto. "An aboriginal land claim in the present city of Toronto (and to the north and east of it) is not as remote a possibility as some may believe," Dantowitz wrote. He referred me to the website of the federal Indian Claims Commission ( http://www.indianclaims.ca) where I obtained and read the 42-page report on the Toronto Purchase Claim made by the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. The report was issued by commissioner Daniel J. Bellegarde in June 2003 and makes fascinating reading. In the 1780s, the British colonial authorities in this area became interested in a tract of land on the north shore of Lake Ontario, which included the "Carrying Place" of Toronto. A meeting was eventually held in 1787 between Sir John Johnson, the chief superintendent of Indian affairs, and three native chiefs. The parties concluded the meeting by signing an Indian surrender of lands "on the north side of Lake Ontario." The surrender document was essentially a blank signed deed of Indian land in favour of the Crown, and the intention was that the dimensions would be inserted in the deed when the land was later surveyed. A year later, British surveyors arrived and ran into a dispute with a local Mississauga chief who claimed that the natives had not sold any land east of the Don River. The British officials then began to have serious doubts about the validity of the 1787 Toronto Purchase surrender, and in 1805 an attempt was made to rectify it. That year, a new Toronto Purchase agreement was signed. Although it was portrayed as a simple affirmation of the 1787 transaction, the record shows that the boundaries were much larger than those intended by the British to be in the earlier deed. The Indian chiefs who signed it received the magnificent sum of 10 shillings in total for their co-operation in signing over 392 square miles of land. In 1998, the Mississaugas of New Credit First Nation filed a land claim alleging that the government in 1805 failed to inform them that the 1787 surrender was invalid. They also assert that the second surrender in 1805, intended by the government to ratify the 1787 purchase and validate the surrender, included more land than was originally agreed to by the First Nation in the 1787 surrender. The 1805 surrender, for example, included the Toronto Islands, which the First Nation claims were explicitly excluded from the 1787 surrender. The First Nation also claims that they never accepted the boundaries laid out under the 1805 surrender. In 2002, Robert Nault, then minister of Indian Affairs, informed the chief of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation that the Canadian government accepted that the circumstances surrounding the 1805 surrender constituted a breach of a lawful obligation of the government. The basis of the decision was that the agreement between the Indians and the Crown had not been fulfilled. Since 2003, negotiators have been trying to agree on what constitutes fair cash compensation for the losses to the First Nation as a result of the 1805 Toronto Purchase. A government statement at the time announced that the current ownership of that land is not in question and is not at issue in the claim. Fortunately, no one is blockading the Don Valley Parkway over the 1805 land surrender. Court orders are not being violated and everyone is behaving civilly. Ultimately, it seems that blame will fall where it should - at the hands of the government. Too bad the Caledonia natives couldn't settle their land claim in the same way. Now it seems that those of us who own property in Toronto don't really have good title to it, but the government is going to bail us out with our own money. I wonder how much all of Toronto is worth, from the Don River to the Etobicoke Creek? Maybe the British should pay the claim, since they created the problem in the first place. Bob Aaron is a Toronto real estate lawyer. Email him atbob@aaron.ca. Copyright c. 2006 First Perspective. --------- "RE: 'Redstock' draws Thousands" --------- Date: Monday, June 19, 2006 02:52 pm From: frostyca2000 Subj: 'Redstock' draws thousands Mailing List: Frostys AmerIndian 'Redstock' draws thousands By Susan Gamble Saturday, June 17, 2006 - 01:00 Local News - If you didn't like the music at the Concert for Kanenhstaton on Friday, all you had to do was wait 15 minutes. So many Canadian and American performers wanted to appear at the giant event at Chiefswood Park, nicknamed RedStock, the schedule had to be tightened and extended by two hours to fit in almost 40 acts. Organizers ended up saying no to some musicians after a swell of support in the arts world left them with a packed program that ranged from traditional drumming and flute music to blues and an Elvis tribute artist. "We had to turn away quite a few performers," said Tuesday Johnson- MacDonald. The hastily-organized concert raised funds for Kanenhstaton, or the Protected Place, which is how natives have been referring to the protest site in Caledonia. Money has been needed for food, shelter, fuel for generators, cell phones and now, legal fees. There was little in the way of politics at the concert however, except for those found in song lyrics. Every 15 minutes a new performer or band rotated to the stage and the program was extended from ten hours to a full 12, ending at midnight. Hundreds turned up during the afternoon hours and thousands rolled in during the evening. "It has been one of the easiest projects I've worked on," Johnson- MacDonald said, estimating that up to 8,000 people had visited during the day. Final tallies weren't yet available at 10 p.m. but the organizer said $18,000 had already been counted. "We tried not to spend any money we didn't have to and people were very generous with their help." More than 100 volunteers were on the site to deal with security, parking and manning gates where all bags were checked for contraband. The rules specified that no alcohol or drugs were allowed. "People have been driving five and six hours to get here, coming from Toronto, London and Cornwall." And the performers came from even further afield, busing or flying in on their own dime from across Canada and as far as New Mexico and California. Many Six Nations' artists also played, including Juno- winner Derek Miller, Mohawk songstress ElizaBeth Hill, popular oldies' band Old Chicago, country singer Rebecca Miller and the traditional Old Mush Singers. The day of peace and unity was first envisioned by Tyendinaga musician David Maracle, who was thrilled to look across the sprawling grounds of Chiefswood Park and see his dream become a reality. Maracle's own father died of a heart attack after making a rousing speech at a protest and he feels a kinship with those fighting over issues of land claims, water problems and health. "We've got to make something happen. Everybody has to stand and show there's a lot of support for native issues." Many non-natives turned out at the concert to show that kind of support and to enjoy the variety of music. Glen Marshall of Jerseyville -- and no relation to the Cayuga judge who has been ruling on injunctions against the protesters -- brought his family of five as an act of solidarity. "I was brought up in Caledonia and went to a school that was 40 per cent native, but their history was never told. Now I think the news clips on TV are just a version of the story through a limited window." Marshall said he can't help but be disappointed in the events that have unfolded in Caledonia over the last three months. It points, he said, to a need for the government to negotiate settlements to the various outstanding land claims. Don Brown, a Halifax man who came home to Brantford to deal with cancer, said he attended the concert for both musical and political reasons. "This is an excellent place by the river," he said. "I can see why they want to keep their land." Caledonia protest spokesman Clyde Powless stopped by the concert in the afternoon. "It's good to see this many people gathered at one place," he said. "It's wonderful to know everyone's here supporting us from coast to coast." But, said Powless, he would see a different side of the coin when he returned to the protest site for what the natives refer to as "Idiot Night". "On Friday nights the people in Caledonia come out to the barricades." Police have had to intervene in numerous clashes over the past few weeks when townspeople come to yell and taunt the protesters. --------- "RE: Stronghold offers Legal Services in Rapid City" --------- Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 08:42:21 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="LEGAL SERVICES" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2006/06/10/news06.txt Stronghold offers legal services in Rapid City By Jomay Steen, Journal Staff Writer June 10, 2006 RAPID CITY - A civil legal service for domestic-abuse victims on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation has opened an office in Rapid City. Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and administered by Cangleska Inc., a domestic-abuse program, Stronghold Civil Legal Services has provided legal help to more than 1,100 battered Lakota women from its offices in Kyle and Martin, during 2005 and 2006 to date. On Friday, staff attorneys Lisa F. Cook, Brett Lee Shelton and legal secretary Rebecca Brewer greeted visitors at the new office in Suite 209 at 2040 W. Main St. Shelton said that 10,000 to 20,000 American Indian people live within the city from five different reservations. The Stronghold organization can offer battered women a haven after they flee the reservation with their children. "It is a crucial link to provide services to people who really need it," Shelton said. Cook said that statistically, Indian women are the most victimized minority population in the U.S. The need for legal services in Rapid City will mirror those statistics on the reservation, she said. Cook said that when women leave a violent relationship, often their lives fall apart. "They flee their homes, lose their housing, suffer trauma and ongoing harassment from relatives of the abuser," she said. The legal services provided by Stronghold are available to all victims of battering and are not limited by race or gender. Last year, the legal service group also helped three battered men, she said. Stronghold legal staff offer help in securing protection orders, restraining orders, child support, child custody, legal separation, divorce, housing issues, property rights, collection actions and more. It also deals with employment-discrimination issues based on a woman's status as a victim, and landlord and tenant issues. They also have a program that provides a place for supervised visits for the noncustodial parent and their children, Cook said. "We're assisting women to get healthier lives," she said. In 2002, Cangleska received a U.S. Department of Justice grant to provide civil legal services to address the legal needs of battered women. Karen Artichoker, director of Cangleska Inc., said battered women often face complicated legal struggles that threaten their health, safety and other fundamental rights. Stronghold was developed to assist abused women through this confusing maze of barriers that a batterer and the legal system put between the woman, her safety and her children's safety, she said. "No woman should have to stand alone when dealing with domestic abuse," she said. For information, call Stronghold Civil Legal Services Pine Ridge office at 867-1035; or its Rapid City office at 716-9126 or 716-2094. Copyright c. 2006 Rapid City Journal. --------- "RE: New Mexico Court affirms Pueblo Jurisdiction" --------- Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 08:37:25 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="TRIBAL COURTS AUTHORITY PREVAILS" http://www.indianz.com/News/2006/014496.asp New Mexico court affirms Pueblo jurisdiction June 15, 2006 The New Mexico Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked the state from prosecuting Indians for crimes committed on private lands within Pueblo reservations. The court said the boundaries of Pueblo reservations haven't been diminished by Congress even though some private lands may be owned by non- Indians. Therefore, only tribes and the federal government have jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed by Indians. The decision came in two cases where the state prosecuted Indians for crimes that were committed on privately-owned lands in Taos Pueblo and Pojoaque Pueblo. The state argued that the lands no longer met the definition of Indian Country. The state Supreme Court disagreed and said Pueblos are "dependent Indian communities" that fall under federal supervision. While the case was proceeding, the House and Senate considered bills that would have clarified the issue in the same way the Supreme Court ruled. Copyright c. 2000-2006 Indianz.Com. --------- "RE: Drug Bust: Hitting close to Home" --------- Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:45:22 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="DRUG BUST ON WIND RIVER" http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2006/06/11/news/ wyoming/828202260aacc67e872571880003423b.txt Hitting close to home By JARED MILLER Star-Tribune staff writer June 11, 2006 ETHETE - The day of the bust, a helicopter chopped the 80-degree air above the Wind River Indian Reservation, and teams of police moved across the reservation like phantoms. "I seen helicopters, and I know the only time there are helicopters is when they're going to drug bust," said Tashina Medicine Cloud, a 19-year- old Northern Arapaho who lives south of Riverton. By week's end, 43 people had been swept up in Wyoming's biggest-ever drug bust. If convicted, they face years of federal incarceration for running a mafia-style methamphetamine ring that targeted the reservation because of perceived loopholes in law enforcement. A similar bust a year ago netted two dozen suspects, including a tribal judge, but the latest crackdown still came as a shock to many.* Ethete resident Millie Friday scoffed when she heard rumors about another bust. "Usually, they do one big thing and that's it," Friday said. The sense of awe grew when the U.S. attorney for Wyoming released a list of suspects, including several common reservation names and some from Riverton, Casper, Pavillion, other states and Mexico. Ten suspects were still at large. "It's surprising to see and hear who all is in there," said Maryjane Goggles, a Shoshone who attended a meth awareness conference last week in Ethete. "Maybe one is your relative or your next-door neighbor or an acquaintance." A week after the bust, reservation residents were still grappling with the implications for the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone people at Wind River. For many, the bust more fully revealed the scope of meth addiction on the reservation. Others couldn't see beyond the grief of losing loved ones in the police crackdown. The most optimistic hoped the bust is the spark that eventually will drive meth from the central Wyoming reservation. Others were trying to adjust to the weight of another evil heaped on the backs of the Arapaho and Shoshone people. The bust is just one more black eye for the reservation, they said. "When they know it's cooled off, the (drug dealers) will come back," said Cassie Oldman, an elderly Arapaho who lives in the Beaver Creek housing project just south of Riverton. "It's like a worm crawling back into an apple." An emerging problem Until about 2000, meth was nearly unheard of on the reservation. Alcohol, long the bane of the Arapaho and Shoshone, seemed the drug of choice. Fremont Counseling Service in Riverton and Lander reported about 15 meth-addicted clients in 2000. Today, the number is around 100, and meth users far outnumber those who seek treatment strictly for alcoholism, said Becky Parker, recovery services manager in Riverton. The nonprofit counseling service also sees more clients with mental problems linked to meth-related losses of family and pregnancies. Also on the rise is the number of children who suffer because their mothers ingested meth during pregnancy, Parker said. The tribes run two limited programs for addicts. Fremont County, where most of the reservation is located, has no inpatient treatment centers. Meth users smoke, snort or inject the drug for a high that can last all day. The highly addictive stimulant can cause extreme paranoia, delusional thinking and violence when the high begins to crash. Long-term use can lead to brain damage and death, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. How it worked The drug gang at Wind River trafficked in a nearly pure form of meth manufactured in "super labs" probably located near the U.S.-Mexico border. Authorities are clear that the drug gang targeted the reservation because of loopholes in law enforcement jurisdictions that granted a level of immunity to the dealers. The dealers established a meth pipeline and funneled the drug from Mexico to the reservation, police say. Some believe Mexican men sought out and married American Indian women and exploited ties to their families to further shield their operation. "The Native American girls are easily lured in by Mexican men who flash a little money," said Diane Yellowplume, a Sioux from South Dakota who raises 11 children and foster children at Beaver Creek. Authorities think the drug gang was selling about 7 pounds of meth a month. That's about 15,872 "hits," with a street value of around $430,000, they said. "We see people on meth every day," said 13-year-old Malia Means, a ninth-grader at Wyoming Indian High School. "You know that they are on it. They're twitching, and their eyes are all weird." 'Going downhill' It was hard to find anyone who was not pleased that the alleged drug gang is out of business. Even those with relatives caught up in the mix were loath to say the crackdown was wrong. Shawn-tey Brown's three cousins were arrested in the sting. The Arapaho woman is sad for her relatives but encouraged that law enforcement is taking meth seriously, she said. "Our reservation was going downhill," said Brown, a mother of four who said she dated a man who hid his meth use from her for months. Yellowplume said she's ecstatic about the arrests, but she still knows of one drug dealer living in her neighborhood. "I feel they need to do more (busts) to get the point across," Yellowplume said. Goggles, the Shoshone woman who attended the meth conference, said the authorities should make an example out of drug dealers. "Us old people, we're scared," said Goggles, 67. "If they give them stiffer fines, stiffer jail terms, maybe they'll wake up to realize what they are doing." Federal authorities have promised just that. "If you choose to target the citizens of the reservation and the citizens of Wyoming to distribute meth, Wyoming law enforcement will target you," warned U.S. Attorney Matthew Mead the day the bust was made public. The message may be sinking in. Drug dealers caught in last year's bust and their families were mostly stoic at initial court appearances. After the recent bust, tears flowed freely in the courtroom, Wind River Police Chief Doug Noseep said. "I think that after this round, people will finally realize that if you want to go into that business, there's probably going to be some consequences," Noseep said. Children were terrified Not everyone at Wind River was cheering the bust. Valorie Means, whose uncle was indicted after the raids, said no amount of police action will strip meth from the reservation. Meanwhile, families continue to lose mothers and fathers who are accused of dealing and using meth. "I thought it was wrong for them to come here and take families apart," said Means, a 22-year-old Arapaho who lives at Beaver Creek. Craig Oldman, a 20-year-old Arapaho from Beaver Creek, said the bust was terrifying for children who witnessed the police helicopter and armed officers barging into homes, arresting family members. And he doubts that all those arrested were the big-time drug dealers they are being made out to be. "Drug dealers," Oldman said, "they have all these cars and money. These guys they arrested, they didn't have nothing." Several tribal members criticized what they perceive as inequities in punishments doled out in Fremont County drug crimes. Goggles and others noted that while tribal members received long prison for involvement with the first drug ring, former Sheriff Dave King, a non-Indian, was sentenced to probation after stealing cocaine from an evidence locker in 2001. Medicine Cloud, the 19-year-old from Beaver Creek, said drug arrests make the tribes look bad. "We're supposed to be good people," she said, referring to her tribe's core spiritual believes. Gov. Dave Freudenthal, in a speech last week, warned against painting meth addiction as a problem of the Wind River reservation alone. "It is a state problem and a national problem," he said. What the future holds Cassie Oldman, who uses a wheelchair and raises her four young grandchildren, blames widespread poverty on the reservation for the appeal of meth. She said tribal members snort, smoke and inject the drug to escape a life that's "hard enough" without the pitfalls of meth. "I've seen a lot of kids do real good, and then in a year they are hit real hard with this drug and you don't even recognize them," Oldman said. And while meth seems to be hurting young adults the most right now, she predicted that the youngest Indian children will pay the heftiest price. Motioning toward a group of bare-footed youngsters toddling through sagebrush in her yard, Oldman said: "Look at all these little kids. If the leaders don't do nothing about meth, what's going to happen to all of them? Will they go down the same path?" Copyright c. 2006 Casper Star-Tribune. --------- "RE: Message from Leonard Peltier Legal Team" --------- Date: Saturday, June 17, 2006 03:07 am From: info@leonardpeltier.net Subj: Message from the Leonard Peltier Legal Team and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee From: Leonard Peltier Legal Team and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee Subject: Case # 06-1405-cv United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan Dear Supporters, The legal team has filed the following brief with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan. In this case, the legal team is seeking the production of FBI documents which the government is withholding on, among other grounds, national security. This is the first of several legal filings that have been prepared to require the FBI to produce the documents it has been withholding for over 30 years. Put simply, it is our position that the government would not be fighting so hard to keep these documents secret unless it had something to hide. Leonard Peltier Legal Team and Leonard Peltier Defense Committee Please click here: http://www.leonardpeltier.net/documents/6162006.pdf --------- "RE: Native Prisoner" --------- Date: Monday, June 19, 2006 22:07:26 From: Janet Smith [owlstar@bellsouth.net] Subj: NA News Item -- Three articles on Native Justice http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2006/06/17/news/ wyoming/446e58cab894263d8725718d007ca4d9.txt Judge rejects Yellowbear petition By CHAD BALDWIN Star-Tribune staff writer June 17, 2006 Convicted murderer Andrew Yellowbear Jr.'s contention that Wyoming had no authority to prosecute him won't be considered by a federal judge until the state Supreme Court rules on the matter. U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer has rejected Yellowbear's petition seeking to overturn his first-degree murder conviction and sentence of life in prison. Yellowbear must first take his argument through the state court system, Brimmer ruled in a document filed this week. "Mr. Yellowbear is being tried for the murder of his young daughter," Brimmer wrote. "Charges of that nature traditionally involve violations of state law. The State, therefore, is better suited to resolving such prosecutions." Yellowbear was sentenced to life in prison June 1 after being convicted by a jury of first-degree murder in the death of his 22-month-old daughter, Marcela Hope Yellowbear, on July 3, 2004, in Riverton.* Yellowbear, a member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, contends that because his daughter's death took place in Riverton - considered by the tribe to be within the exterior boundaries of the Wind River Indian Reservation - the case should have been handled either by tribal or federal courts, not state courts. The Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes supported that argument in filings in federal court. Fremont County prosecutors and the state attorney general's office argue that three previous Wyoming Supreme Court rulings determined that Riverton is not within the reservation and that the state has jurisdiction there. While not ruling on the merits of Yellowbear's argument, Brimmer noted the previous state Supreme Court decisions on the issue. And before a federal judge could consider the issue, Yellowbear must appeal to the state Supreme Court, Brimmer said. "He has the opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of this conviction by direct appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court," Brimmer wrote. "If he is unsuccessful, he can seek state court post-conviction relief. If he is still without success at that time, his case will be ripe for review in the federal court." If Yellowbear were to prevail, the jurisdictional issue could pose problems for Fremont County and the state of Wyoming. Though their argument has been vigorously disputed by the state of Wyoming and Fremont County in the past, the tribes say a law called the 1905 Act defines land north of the Big Wind River and east of the Popo Agie River as "Indian country." That includes the city of Riverton, but not the Bureau of Reclamation lands to the north and northwest of Riverton. In simple terms, "Indian country" is any land granted by treaty or allotment to American Indian nations, tribes, reservations, communities, colonies or individuals and recognized by the federal government. Lands which used to be part of an Indian reservation, but are no more, are said to have been ceded and that the reservation was "diminished." According to research done by Fremont County Attorney Ed Newell, the historic position of Fremont County and Wyoming is that Riverton lies north of the Big Wind River boundary of the reservation, and the Riverton area was "diminished" from the reservation by the Wind River Cession Act of 1905, giving the state judicial and law enforcement systems authority there. Newell said the boundary issue has been decided three times by the Wyoming Supreme Court - in 1957, 1960 and most recently in 1970, in a case called State v. Moss. The state has hung its jurisdiction on the Moss case, but some academic and tribal legal experts believe that case is "ripe for relitigation," according to earlier statements by University of Wyoming law professor Deb Donahue and Shoshone and Arapaho Tribal Judge John St. Clair. The legal question of "diminishment" of the Wind River reservation through the loss of Riverton "could cut either way" based on Donahue's readings of U.S. Supreme Court decisions. State Editor Chad Baldwin can be reached at (307) 266-0583 or via e-mail at chad.baldwin@casperstartribune.net. Copyright c. 20006 Casper Star Tribune. -=-=-=- http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/nunavik/60616_01.html Corrections Canada pleas for community help "Any kind of support is good for the inmate" JANE GEORGE June 16, 2006 KUUJJUAQ - Corrections Canada officials want Nunavik communities to help inmates when they're let out of federal penitentiaries. And they came to the Kativik Regional Government's recent council meeting in Kuujjuaq with a plan. But the KRG regional councilors saw many reasons not to collaborate more with Corrections Canada on the release of federal inmates - among these, a lack of community resources and a concern for confidentiality. Offenders may be able to better adjust to life outside of jail if they receive more support from their communities, said Diane Archambault, aboriginal community development officer for Corrections Canada in Quebec. If offenders know what their communities expect from them, she said they will "feel a need to change" when they're serving time, she said.