_ __ _____ __ _ __ ___ ____ _ __ ___ ' ) / / ') / / ) ' ) ) / ) / ' ) ) / ) / / / / / / /--/ / / / ___ / / / / ___ (_(_/ (__/ ( / (_ / (_ (___/ '__/_ / (_ (___/ ' ____ _ , ___ _ , ___ / ' ) / / ) ' ) / / ' VOLUME 14, ISSUE 037 / /-< / /--/ /-- __/_ / ) (___/ / ( (___, 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 September 16, 2006 Blackfeet awakaasiiki'somm/deer moon Yuchi Tsogalinetsee/hay cutting moon Lakota Canwahpegi Wi/moon when leaves turn brown +-------------------------------------------------------+ | 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; Chiapas95-En and NetRez-L 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: + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + =================== "If a Native American is buried in a national cemetery, a lot of the rituals cannot be performed because of coding restrictions and regulations." "So it's important to us to have a place on tribal land to bury our veterans." __ Thomas Berry, Choctaw Founder of National Native American Veterans Association +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ | Indian Pledge of Allegiance | The Indian Pledge of Alleg- | | iance was first presented | I pledge allegiance to my Tribe,| on 2 December '93 during the | to the democratic principles | opening address of the Nat- | of the Republic | ional Congress of American | and to the individual freedoms | Indian Tribal-States Relat- | borrowed from the Iroquois and | ions Panel in Reno, NV. NCAI | Choctaw Confederacies, | plans distribution of the | as incorporated in the United | Indian Pledge to all Indian | States Constitution, | Nations. | so that my forefathers | | shall not have died in vain | Walk in Beauty! Night Owl +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ | Journey | In the summer and early fall | The Bloodline | of 1998 the Treaty Unity Riders | | rode a thousand miles on horse- | For all that live and live by law | back, carrying a staff and | We Stand, we Call, We Ride | praying each step of the way. | For All that fear and fear by sight | | We Hear, we Listen, we Ride | These prayers were offered for | For all that pray and pray by strength| each of us, and that the Unity | We Feel, we Move, we Ride | of all Peoples might happen. | For all that die and die by greed | | We Hurt, we Cry, we Ride | Tatanka Cante forwarded this | For all that birth and birth by right | poem on behalf of all the Unity | We Smile, we Hold, we Ride | Riders that we might stop and | For all that need and need by heart | ask if the next words we say, the | We Came, we Went, we Rode. | next act we make is for the good | | of the People or is it from ego | Treaty Unity Riders | for self. +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ O'siyo Brothers and Sisters! A Kiowa elder remarked to me that if we kept hearing the words "homeland" and "security" used together he was afraid it wouldn't be long before we had neither. A look at the increased militarization of U. S. borders north and south demonstrates violations of Sacred places on or near those borders, and infringement of human and civil rights to the indigenous citizens residing there. Whether Quecha, Tohono O'odham, Blackfoot/Blackfeet or Mohawk, guaranteed rights are being violated as a matter of course, all in the name of "homeland security". Further, homes are being invaded and searches conducted by agents with little or no pretext, leaving home repair to the hapless resident. Since very limited income is often a factor, those repairs are often piecemeal, at best. Make no mistake, there is also the NAFTA factor. NAFTA is the underlying reason for harassment and murder of Maya who refuse to give up their centuries-old communal living. International law guarantees the right for indigenous to maintain their cultural and religious ceremonies across the borders, but those rights are largely ignored by government policymakers and enforcement agencies. When the NASCO Super-Corridor from the southern tip of Mexico to Canada as a key part of the transformation United States of America into the North American Union is even partially completed along the Texas portion of I-35, don't look for these violations to become less. The Mohawk and other Six Nation tribes are fighting to maintain their lands against predatory development. It is imperative we each do what we can to support our brothers and sisters in this stand. You can rest assured if the Ontario Provincial Police come out of this with the blood of conquest on their lips it will only embolden other hostile interventions. Ask your grandparents what they learned from the "divide and conquer" and "one nation - one conquest" schemes of the invaders. 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 ----------- - The Theft of Native Lands - GIAGO: in Ketchikan Lawsuit challenges Church on abuse - The Aboriginal - HARJO: Recess is over, Occupiers of the Soil but the games continue - A Brief History - YELLOW BIRD: Work just begins of the U.S.-Indian Relationship to stem Suicides - McCain won't budge - JODI RAVE: Need exists from $8B Cobell settlement for Native Marrow Donors - Campbell warns of consequences - Peguis Treaty Land on Rights of Way entitlement process flawed - Lawsuit draws in Shakopee, - Feds agree on Fishing Rights Prairie Island with BC First Nation - Cherokee told new Constitution - Sit-in staged in protest lacks U.S. approval over Chief's actions - BIA asserts stance - Another Grenade Attack on Cherokee Constitution against Por Esto - Judge defers Oneida decision - Profound Political crisis - Interior dumps N-waste plan shaping Mexico - Bill Would Aid Cemeteries - Blackfeet ruling for Indian Veterans clears way for Housing Lawsuits - Device helps track - Quechan Woman missing Children a judicial voice for Tribe - EPA presents excellence award - Pueblo Artists sue to Chippewa Cree over removal from Committee - UNC to establish - Clint John Family Native American Research Center plans to sue City - ICT EDITORIAL: - Native Prisoner The need for Native formulations -- Clement Brown at San Quention - SHORTMAN: - Rustywire: Shaa AlChin e' Breaking the culture of Silence - Del "Abe" Jones Poem: Running Wolf - JODI RAVE: - Verse: Hawaiian Book of Days Correcting the story of Sacagawea - Upcoming Events --------- "RE: The Theft of Native Lands in Ketchikan" --------- Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2006 11:02:16 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="STOLEN TAAN TA KWAAN LANDS" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.alaskareport.com/opinion10011.htm The Theft of Native Lands In Ketchikan By Aan Kadax Tseen Reprinted by permission from Insurgent49 September 9, 2006 The low tidelands around Ketchikan, Alaska belong to the Taan ta Kwaan (Sea lion People), also known as the Tongass Tribe. Encroachment or theft of Native lands in Ketchikan actually started during the Alaska gold rush late 1880's with so-called mining claims like Venetia Lode and Schoenbar Lode. It was during this time that Alaska Natives were unable to make mining claims on their own lands, because were not citizens of the United States. I will not forget the Saanya Kwaan (Cape Fox People). Cape Fox is our sister tribe and we are inter-married and have lived around each other since time immemorial. Ketchikan Creek was a Saanya Kwaan subsistence creek, or summer fish camp, until a marriage between a Tongass and Cape Fox. Cape Fox gave Ketchikan Creek as a wedding gift to the Gaanax adi Clan of the Taan ta Kwaan. This story was told to me by Ester Shea, Emma Williams and Mickey Denny. "Ketchikan was initially settled because of its proximity to the great Ketchikan Creek salmon run, by the time it was incorporated as a city, nearly half of the 95 individuals who signed an incorporation petition in 1900 were miners or employed by the mining industry", according to a story by Dave Kiffer titled," Mining, Once Ketchikan's Principal Industry". And so the dark days began. Metlakatla was the winter village of the Taan ta Kwaan before it came a Tsimshian Reservation. There were fish canneries built around Ketchikan that lured tribal members in search of new jobs and new way of life. Tongass Tribe owned the low tide lands and lands around the mouth of Ketchikan Creek and was left alone until the newly incorporated City Council Father's wanted more lands to grow. Did you know that "Indian Town" had Reservation status in the early 1900's? Yes, and it could only can be created or extinguished by U.S. Congress. It never was. Illegal taxation and theft of Taan ta Kwaan properties by the City Council Fathers in the early 1900 are in the downtown area of Ketchikan. The City Fathers even went so far as sending a prominent Tongass Native leader to prison because his refused to sell his properties; they had no trials or charges to imprison him in an Oregon prison, but he later died in an insane asylum in Salem, Oregon. There were four other Taan ta Kwaan leaders that would not sell their properties and were imprisoned with no trials or charges. They also died in an insane asylum in Salem. This is how the Tongass Tribe lost their lands in Ketchikan. This is the reason Tongass Tribe People kept quiet all these years, so that we wouldn't get killed in the early to mid-1900s. To protect my mother's generation and my generation, we were not taught our language, history and culture or told these stories. Taan ta Kwaan has land claims to Ketchikan Creek and surrounding lands including: Gravina Island, Pennock Island, Annette Island, Village Island, Cat Island, Duke Island, Percy Islands, Southeast side of Prince of Wales Island to Cape Chacon, Long Island and far south to Tongass Island. Taan ta Kwaan claims two origins the Nass River and Unuk River. Any land claims to Ketchikan belong to the Taan ta Kwaan. Taan ta Kwaan was left out of the initial Alaska Native Land Claims Act and should, at the very least, have Village Corporation status, like Cape Fox Village Corporation of Saxman, Alaska. The Gaanax adi Clan is one of the oldest Clans in the Tlingit Nation, and deserves to get back our inheritance rights to our land claims from the City of Ketchikan and United States of America. In closing, we truly live in a brain-washed society, lead to believe we are created equal in the United States. This history is not taught in our public schools. We will see what happens in the near future. This is my opinion only. Copyright c. 2006 Alaska Report. All rights reserved. --------- "RE: The Aboriginal Occupiers of the Soil" --------- Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2006 08:25:04 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ABA LOOKS AT ABORIGINAL NATIONS" http://www.abanet.org/irr/hr/spring06/dean.html [Editorial Comment: The American Bar Association "Human Rights" Magazine, Volume 33, No. 2, Spring 2006 features articles about Native Americans and leagal aspects. Their Copyright Manager, Nicole M Maggio, Esq. has kindly granted reprint of a few of these in Wotanging Ikche. I strongly urge a visit to their sight and reading the other articles in this Spring 2006 issue] Introduction: The Aboriginal Occupiers of the Soil Spring 2006 Human Rights Magazine By S. Bobo Dean In l832, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, "It is difficult to comprehend the Proposition that the inhabitants of either quarter of the globe could have rightful claims of dominion over the inhabitants of the other, or over the lands they occupied." It remains just as difficult to comprehend today as it was then. Yet, based on cases decided by the courts of the United States, the "courts of the conqueror" as Marshall and others called them, the Indian tribes that were the aboriginal occupiers of U.S. soil remain uniquely "domestic nations," not foreign to the United States. Generally, they are distinct communities, occupying their own territory, with boundaries accurately described, and within those boundaries, they may govern themselves by their own laws except as limited by the plenary power of Congress in Indian affairs. In choosing the title of this issue, "Aboriginal Occupiers of the Soil," which is shorthand for the legal principles developed by Justice Marshall for application to the hundreds of Native communities that occupied the territory that became the United States, the editors did not necessarily intend to indicate agreement with the doctrines of federal Indian law. Indeed, Marshall himself suggested that neither "reason" nor "nature's God" supported these principles. Rather, we want to draw our readers' attention to the continuing anomalies that result from these doctrines. This country, dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal, nevertheless is based, perhaps necessarily so, on the concept that the European discoverers (and the United States) could dispossess those they found here. At the same time, to the extent that the United States has accorded rights to the aboriginal occupiers, these rights can be successfully asserted in our courts. For example, taking of lands reserved by treaty or statute for an Indian tribe violates the Fifth Amendment and requires that the Indians be compensated. This issue of Human Rights provides an opportunity to review the development of the principles of federal Indian law that govern the United States in its relations with the tribes and to review a variety of issues that need to be understood to address the application of those principles in present circumstances. Subjects covered include a review of the development of federal Indian law and policy, the fiduciary obligations of the United States to the tribes and their members as presented in current litigation asserting a breach of those obligations, the effect of the legal status of Indian tribes on their economic development and environmental hazards, the specific status of Alaska Native villages that are recognized by the United States as tribes but often not accorded the same rights as other tribes, an overview of the legal status of Native Hawaiians, the Native effort in the Americas to preserve their culture and sacred sites, and the extent to which the United States has currently fulfilled its legal obligation to raise the health status of Indian and Alaska Native peoples. The ABA has long supported the rights of Indian tribes under the laws of the United States. Most recently, in 2004 and 2005, the ABA urged Congress to reauthorize the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, making improvements in existing legislation as requested by tribes to assure more comprehensive and efficient health care to Indian and Alaska Native people. It has also endorsed S. 147, which would initiate a process to assure a government- to-government relationship between the United States and the native people of Hawaii. Under the sponsorship of the Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, a panel presentation on the Legal Status of Native Hawaiians will be a plenary session program at the 2006 Annual Meeting in Honolulu on August 3. This issue also singles out the outstanding accomplishments of Native American attorney John Echohawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund. The editors hope that this installment of Human Rights will contribute to a just and realistic effort to assure that the future relationship of the United States to the indigenous peoples within its borders will exemplify its best values rather than, as so often in the past, its worst. --- S. Bobo Dean, a partner in the Washington, D.C., law firm of Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker, LLP, has represented Indian tribes and tribal organizations for forty years. He is cochair of the Committee on Native American Concerns of the ABA's Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities and an editor of this special issue. As published in Human Rights, Spring 2006, Vol. 33, No. 2, p.2. --- "Introduction: The Aboriginal Occupiers of the Soil" by S. Bobo Dean, published in Human Rights, Volume 33, No.2, Spring 2006. c. 2006 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association. --------- "RE: A Brief History of the U.S.-Indian Relationship" --------- Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2006 08:25:04 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="US/INDIAN RELATIONS" http://www.abanet.org/irr/hr/spring06/collins.html A Brief History of the U.S.-American Indian Nations Relationship Spring 2006 Human Rights Magazine By Ricahrd B. Collins The European nations that colonized the Americas sought to achieve empire as well as acquire mineral wealth and land for their settlers. Each nation aimed to wrest land from the Indian nations, fend off European competitors, and in time control its own settlers. Indian land was obtained by the British government for its American colonies under the policies of purchase, coercion, and conquest. Another policy was to treat the Indian nations as separate but subject societies. The Crown made treaties with the tribes that ceded part of a tribe's domain and set aside retained lands for the Indians' exclusive use. American Rule After winning independence from British rule, the United States and its state governments followed the same dominant policy, acquiring Indian land for settlers and miners, from the founding until the 1920s. In pursuit of this aim, they adopted most of the British rules and policies, notably dealing with tribes by treaty. At first, the respective powers of federal and state governments were ambiguous. The Articles of Confederation gave Congress "sole and exclusive" power over tribes but also guaranteed states' legislative powers within their borders. In 1787 the Constitution instead gave Congress, in the Commerce Clause, power to regulate commerce "with the Indian tribes." This was understood and has been interpreted to give Congress paramount power over tribes. Congress then passed the 1790 Trade and Intercourse Act, which forbade acquisition of Indian land without federal authority. For purchases from tribes, an amended version of this statute continues in force. The statute also defined Indian Country as a place apart, where citizens needed a federal license to trade. A less strict version of this provision continues in force; retailers to Indians in Indian Country still need a federal license. The Cherokee Decisions Eastern state governments, however, continued to exercise authority over Indians within their borders, purchasing land in violation of the federal statute and regulating Indian affairs generally. Georgia passed laws claiming power to govern Cherokee lands, and a Cherokee was convicted of murder by a Georgia court and hanged. The Cherokee Nation resisted. Represented by former Attorney General William Wirt, the Cherokees challenged Georgia in the federal courts. However, the only path to federal court at that time was diversity jurisdiction, available only to American citizens and foreign citizens and nations. The Cherokees were not American citizens, so Wirt decided to file an original bill in the U.S. Supreme Court claiming to be a foreign nation and seeking judicial enforcement of the Cherokees' treaties with the United States. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1 (1831), the Supreme Court famously held that the Cherokee Nation was not a "foreign state" as defined in the Constitution. Chief Justice Marshall's opinion said that the Cherokees constituted a distinct political body, which he characterized as a "domestic dependent nation," but the federal courts had no jurisdiction to hear cases brought by tribes. (In 1875, Congress gave litigants access to federal courts based on federal issues; a tribe today can readily sue to enforce its treaty rights.) The Cherokee challenge to Georgia reached the Supreme Court the very next year by a different route. Georgia required whites to obtain a state license in order to live among the Cherokees. Failure to comply was a felony. Two Christian missionaries who did not comply were prosecuted and convicted in a state court, which rejected their defense based on the Cherokee treaties. Upon review, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned their convictions. Chief Justice Marshall's opinion in Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515 (1832), interpreted the Constitution to confer paramount authority over Indian affairs on the federal government and held that its treaties gave the Cherokee Nation an enforceable right to self-government within tribal territory, "in which the laws of Georgia can have no force." For the Cherokees, this was a paper victory. Georgia refused to obey the Court's mandate, and President Jackson declined to enforce it. Three years later, he made a removal treaty with selected Cherokee leaders, and most of the Cherokees suffered the infamous Trail of Tears to Oklahoma, then called Indian Territory. But Worcester v. Georgia was not overturned and continues to be a defining precedent on tribal sovereignty. Allotment and Assimilation During the 1850s, the Cherokees and other major tribes in Indian Territory enjoyed relative prosperity. Elsewhere, settlers filled in the nation, and tribes that resisted were defeated in war. Greatly reduced Indian lands came to be known as reservations, where government authority was imposed by agents of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The government adopted new policies toward tribes based on assimilation. It promised schools and instruction in farming, but the central feature was allotment. This referred to division of tribal common land into separate parcels deeded to Indian families as homesteads. From 1854, most Indian treaties included a provision in nearly identical terms in which the tribes purportedly consented to patent allotments to tribal members who requested them. The Civil War accelerated the changes. Factions in the major Indian Territory tribes sided with the South. After the South was defeated, the government imposed new treaties in which these tribes also consented to allotment. However, few Indians sought allotments voluntarily, and in time Congress decided that reservations must be allotted compulsorily and comprehensively. The General Allotment Act of 1887 adopted this policy, and over the next forty years, allotment was imposed on more than half of the reservations, including all Indian Territory tribes. Tribal governments became moribund. Indian agents ran the reservations, establishing police and courts set up by the government. Congress subjected Indians to federal prosecution for reservation felonies. Land sold under the allotment act reduced tribal holdings by a whopping two- thirds. The Kiowa and Comanche Tribes in Oklahoma Territory challenged compulsory allotment in the courts. By statute Congress imposed allotment on these tribes and overrode contrary provisions of their 1867 treaty with the United States. Tribal leaders sued to overturn the statutes, but in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903), the Supreme Court rejected their claim. It applied precedents holding that Congress could override treaties. More questionably, it held that Congress had plenary power over tribes and could compel allotment of tribal common land. In a number of decisions since Lone Wolf, the Court has continued to recite the ruling that Congress has plenary power over tribes and can abolish tribal governments or restrict their powers at will. Another aspect of the allotment era was making Indians American citizens. For many years, federal officials deemed status as a tribal Indian to be incompatible with American citizenship. But in 1890, Congress broke with that policy and allowed residents of Indian and Oklahoma Territories to become citizens without renouncing tribal ties. A 1924 statute made citizens of all other Native Americans, again without relinquishing tribal relations. The New Deal and After By the 1920s, many tribal communities were places of demoralized pov erty, and tribal governments had few means to serve their people. A proposal by President Harding to abolish tribes and reservations might have succeeded but for his scandals and death. More responsible officials then began to reexamine Indian policy, publishing in 1928 recommendations in what became known as the Meriam Report. The Roosevelt Administration broke with the past. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 renounced allotment, sought to strengthen tribal governments, and restored some common land to tribes. Interior Solicitor Felix Cohen and his staff compiled the 1941 Handbook of Federal Indian Law , the first systematic organization of the subject, which articulated tribal treaty and sovereignty rights. The policy pendulum then swung back. Congressional committees published reports and studies favoring rapid assimilation of Native Americans and an end to the reservation system. Policy officially changed in 1953 with adoption of House Concurrent Resolution 108, calling for termination of tribal governments and removal of the federal restriction on sale of tribal land. The same Congress passed a statute known as Public Law 280, subjecting reservation Indians in many states to jurisdiction of state courts. Numerous tribal reservations were terminated, notably those of the Menominees in Wisconsin and the Klamath and Modoc Tribes in Oregon. Indian Renaissance The threat of termination, coupled with the civil rights movement, galvanized Native Americans into activism in the 1950s and 1960s. National Indian organizations began to lobby Congress. Both major political parties endorsed tribal self-determination in their 1960 platforms, as they have in every presidential year since. President Nixon formally renounced termination in 1970. Nixon also proposed that tribes be authorized to operate federal programs serving reservations. Congress responded by passing the Indian Self-Determination Act. Under it, many tribal governments now administer programs funded through the BIA and the Indian Health Service. Tribal police and courts enforce minor crimes, and tribal governments have departments that address many problems of modern resource and environmental law. The other major development of the modern era is involvement of the courts. Except for claims cases against the government for damages, tribal rights were rarely litigated before 1959. The right of tribal sovereignty recognized in Worcester v. Georgia had lain dormant for a century. During that time, there was one judicial development of note. Worcester v. Georgia opined that treaties between the United States and Indian nations must be interpreted as the Indians would have understood them. This was a rule of obvious fairness for treaties written only in English and explained to tribal parties by interpreters, and between parties of grossly unequal powers. The rule was extended to other agreements with tribes in Winters v. United States (1908). Later, the Court held that ambiguities in statutes imposed on Native Americans should be resolved in their favor. Alaska Pacific Fisheries v. United States (1918). In Lone Wolf, the Court held that Congress, not beholden to Indian votes, had p lenary power to impose its will on them. This most undemocratic relation was ameliorated by giving Indians the benefit of doubts in interpretation. The Supreme Court's modern decisions began with its 1959 decision holding that Navajo Indians could not be sued by a white creditor in state court to collect a reservation debt. Williams v. Lee (1959). The Court expressly revived Worcester v. Georgia. Decisions since Williams confirmed the Indian Nations' reservation sovereignty over their members free of state jurisdiction, except when Congress clearly provides otherwise. In California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians (1987), the Court held that states lack regulatory authority over tribal gaming enterprises. Congress reacted by passing the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, the federal statute that is the basis for tribal gaming businesses that have enabled some tribes to improve their economies significantly. However, in 1978 the Supreme Court held that tribes have no authority to punish non-Indians who offend against tribal law, Oliphant v. Suquamish Tribe (1978), and several decisions since have denied tribal civil authority over non-Indians unless based on consent or federal statute. Tribal authority to tax lessees of tribal land was upheld, Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe (1982), but power to tax non-Indians lacking any contractual dealings with tribes was denied. Atkinson Trading Co. v. Shirley (2001). Indian nations in 2006 are distinct sovereigns within our complex constitutional system. Within tribal territory, their authority over tribal members is comparable to that of state governments, which it displaces. They lack jurisdiction over non-Indians in tribal territory, a source of dissatisfaction that tribes seek to change. Whether or not they succeed, they have survived numerous attempts to force them to disband. Tribes have become sophisticated players on the national political scene. Their struggles of the last 500 years are simply a prologue to the next. --- Richard B. Collins is professor of law and director of the Byron White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado School of Law in Boulder. --- As published in Human Rights, Spring 2006, Vol. 33, No. 2, pp.3-4, 24. "A Brief History of the U.S.-American Indian Nations Relationship" by Richard Collins, published in Human Rights, Volume 33, No.2, Spring 2006. c. 2006 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association. --------- "RE: McCain won't budge from $8B Cobell settlement" --------- Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 08:29:31 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="MCCAIN REJECTS CALLS FOR $27.8B CITED BY NCAI" http://www.indianz.com/News/2006/015753.asp McCain won't budge from $8B Cobell settlement September 5, 2006 Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) won't budge from an $8 billion settlement for the Cobell trust fund lawsuit, a top aide said on Friday amid complaints about the figure. At a meeting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, tribal leaders and individual Indians took turns criticizing McCain's settlement to the case. Several cited a $27.5 billion figure proposed by the Cobell plaintiffs and tribal organizations back in June 2005. But David Mullon, the general counsel for the Republicans on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, rejected calls for a larger settlement. He said McCain, the chairman of the committee, is sticking with $8 billion. "We have three weeks and we aren't going to get $27.5 billion," Mullon told the crowd. "It ain't going to happen." Mullon distributed copies of the latest draft of the settlement legislation. He said it hadn't been approved by McCain or the committee yet but it details some of the provisions that may be included in the bill that will be unveiled in the coming weeks. Several tribal leaders, including Jim Gray, the chief of the Osage Nation, and John Berrey, the chairman of the Quapaw Tribe, indicated displeasure with the bill. They said it should include provisions to opt out of the proposed settlement in order to continue pursuing mismanagement claims against the federal government. The Osage and Quapaw are among two dozen tribes with lawsuits that accuse the United States of mismanaging money on behalf of their tribal governments and individual tribal members. The Cobell lawsuit is limited to individual Indian trust funds. McCain wants a broad settlement package that will resolve future trust claims. John Tahsuda, another Republican attorney for the committee, reiterated the desire to end litigation, citing millions of dollars being paid to accountants and lawyers rather than individual Indians. Allison Binney, an attorney for the committee Democrats, was due to attend the meeting but had to cancel due to personal issues, Mullon said. The Tulsa meeting was the last held by the committee to discuss the legislation. Several times, Mullon appeared to lose control of the discussion and had to excuse himself at one point amid criticism from attendees. McCain said he wanted to get input from Indian Country before proceeding with a bill. But time is running out this year to get a settlement passed and signed into law. McCain is stepping down as chairman of the committee in December. Congress returns to work this week after a month-long break. The schedule for the bill has slipped considerably. The most recent delay occurred after a last-minute meeting with Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. McCain said the Bush administration pledged its commitment to resolve the case but officials waited nearly a year to present their views on the proposed legislation. When news reports of the delay surfaced, the Interior Department contacted reporters to deny it had asked McCain to hold off on the settlement. The Cobell case was filed in June 1996. The federal appeals court has affirmed the duty of the government to conduct an historical accounting of "all funds" in the Individual Indian Money (IIM) trust. The plaintiffs and the government agree that $13 billion has passed through the system since the early 1900s. But they disagree on the amount that has been paid to IIM beneficiaries. The $27.5 billion figure is based on the assumption that most of the payments made it to account holders. For the payments that weren't disbursed, the plaintiffs added interest to arrive at their settlement amount, which was endorsed by the National Congress of American Indians and the Inter-Tribal Trust Fund Monitoring Association. Copyright c. 2000-2006 Indianz.Com. --------- "RE: Campbell warns of consequences on Rights of Way" --------- Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 08:29:31 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ENERGY RIGHTS OF WAY PROPOSAL HAS HIDDEN PERILS" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?feature=yes&id=1096413597 Campbell warns of unintended consequences on energy rights of way by: Jerry Reynolds / Indian Country Today September 1, 2006 ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Addressing several dozen Indian leaders and representatives at an Aug. 30 meeting on tribal energy rights of way, former U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell called for greater political engagement among tribes against legislative processes that can end in sneak attacks on self-governance. The occasion at hand was a draft report on tribal energy rights of way that threatens to undermine tribal authority over the use of land reserved for tribes in trust by the federal government. Most of the rights of way in question involve oil and gas pipelines over tribal lands. The law as it stands now requires tribal consent to rights of way authority over tribal lands; the report has raised the prospect that Congress might modify or remove the tribal consent provision. Campbell retired from the Senate in the first days of 2005, at the outset of the current 109th Congress. In previous years, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Campbell and his staff had contributed an Indian title to what became the Energy Policy Act of 2005. But on its way into law, once Campbell's watch had ended, the Energy Policy Act came to include Section 1813, calling for a report to Congress on tribal energy rights of way by the departments of Energy and the Interior. The report is now in draft form, with a final draft scheduled for submission to Congress at the end of September. (The draft report is available through the Internet at http://1813.anl.gov.) Campbell provided the lead-off public comments in Albuquerque Aug. 30, at the last in a series of meetings Energy and Interior have held to gather comments on the draft report. The comments will help to guide the final version of the report. (The last day for comments was Sept. 4, a holiday, though an Interior official on hand in Albuquerque hinted that flexibility may be possible in some instances.) "Many of you know that I was very active in writing the - I should say, too, our terrific staff - the Indian section of this energy bill, which is now the law of the land. But unfortunately it got bogged down in conference two times while I was still the chairman of the Indian affairs committee. [The official mission of a "conference committee" is to reconcile differences between the versions of a bill passed in both the Senate and the House of Representatives - though as noted below, wholly new provisions can be introduced "in conference" and these new grounds for new differences often ground a bill altogether.] "It did get passed and to our benefit. Senator [Pete] Domenici, our great senator from New Mexico, [who] has always in the past been so good on Indian issues, picked up that Indian section and included it in the energy bill, and it did pass. "But as you know, this section, 1813, was not part of the Indian section. It was put in there, kind of at the last minute, in conference as I understand it, and here we are living with it. But it points out, from a general standpoint, why Indian people have got to be more involved. Because even this day and age, after all the bad things that have happened to our people in the history of this nation, we've still got things being snuck through the United States Congress that land on us without us knowing it's coming. Just blindsiding us once again. And I get very upset with that, as you do, too." Campbell added that some features of the draft report justify a sigh of relief. "I don't want to sound too negative, but unfortunately I have focused on some of the things ... that could have been improved." With that he leveled a series of critiques that almost 20 other speakers echoed and re-echoed throughout the morning. They all amounted to two messages for preparers of the final report - Indian country is all but unanimously opposed to changes in present law on rights of way, and the data compiled in the report do not justify any changes to the status quo. But only a former senator could touch as Campbell did on the report's unintended consequences. Congress is always wary of unintended consequences in lawmaking, he said, because the understanding on Capitol Hill is that Washington simply doesn't possess perfect information or knowledge. The draft report has already had unintended consequences, according to Campbell; and according to him, more will follow if Congress modifies the requirement in law that tribes must consent in rights of way decisions on tribal lands. "Number one is going to be, inflame the anger of tribes. I mean they are one voice on this right of way issue ... And I think number two what it has done is jeopardize the ongoing dialogue between tribes and friendly pipeline companies, if I can use that word, who are now in the middle of negotiations that it's kind of brought to a standstill. Neither side is sure what they ought to do in their negotiations because they don't know what this is going to lead to ... Certainly, it's kind of poisoned the waters." Last but not least of the "unintended consequences," he added, is the prospect of a class action lawsuit against the government, modeled on the litigation over the Individual Indian Money trust that has been mismanaged by Interior and its delegate agency, the BIA. (This is the lawsuit informally known as Cobell, after lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell.) No one wants another lawsuit like that, he said. "But when you drive people into a corner, I tell you they'll fight back. And Indian people are no different than anybody else in that respect. They're gonna fight back. They're not going to let this lie. They'll fight back. And if they don't get satisfaction ... as it [the report] proceeds to legislation, I think the next logical stop is going to be the courts. I'd hate to see that happen." Copyright c. 1998 - 2006 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Lawsuit draws in Shakopee, Prairie Island" --------- Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 08:32:58 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="MDEWAKANTON DAKOTA WOLFCHILD v. UNITED STATES" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096413600 Lawsuit draws in Shakopee, Prairie Island by: David Melmer / Indian Country Today September 4, 2006 MINNEAPOLIS - Thousands of people want to be counted as Mdewakanton Dakota and to hold the federal government accountable for a breach of trust. A lawsuit, Wolfchild v. United States, is intended to bring justice and a sense of belonging to thousands of potential Mdewakanton Dakota who want to be counted part of a community. In 1862, many Dakota people pledged loyalty to the federal government during a conflict that erupted into a near-war with other Dakotas, settlers and the military. In return, the Mdewakanton who remained loyal received land as a reward in 1886 under a contract. Wolfchild alleges that the federal government breached the trust responsibility of that 1886 contract when Congress acted in 1980 to turn over control of land to three Mdewakanton communities in Minnesota. That move breached the trust responsibility inherent in the 1886 contract, the suit further alleges. A recent ruling from Judge Charles Lettow of the Federal Court of Claims brought the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community and the Prairie Island Sioux Community into the lawsuit because they acted as agents of the federal government in the management of the land. Lettow ruled that the government violated the trust with the 1980 act that transferred control of the property to the communities. That land was, according to the plaintiffs, to be held in trust for the Loyalist Mdewakanton. "The communities thus have acted as agents of the Department of the Interior. Because the Prairie Island and Shakopee Communities were acting as arms of the federal government and not as independent sovereigns, tribal immunity does not apply," Lettow wrote. Limited sovereign immunity does not prevent the communities from lawsuit in this case, Lettow ruled. The government argued in court that the communities do enjoy sovereign immunity, and insisted in its arguments that tribal sovereignty comes from the federal common law and is set into law as found within the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. The government also asserted that because the tribe had control over its members before incorporation of their territories into the United States, it possessed sovereign immunity against litigation. "Here the United States Court is taking steps to fix a problem the Department of Interior created because it was lazy, and the communities made the matter worse by taking advantage of the lazy sovereign," said Erik Kaardal, of Mohrman and Kaardal of Minneapolis, attorney for the plaintiffs. Shakopee and Prairie Island were not considered tribes before the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. In 1938 the solicitor of the United States stated that neither were tribes but were being organized based on their residence upon reserved land. Because Shakopee and Prairie Island were not historical tribes they may have powers that relate to ownership of land and the carrying out of business, the court documents state. Shakopee and Prairie Island were permitted to refer to themselves as communities and not tribes based on the Powers of Indian Tribes as allowed by the Indian Reorganization Act of Oct. 25, 1934. In a previous court ruling, Lettow stated that because income, profits and proceeds arising from the 1886 lands to individuals who are not lineal descendants, "the United States has allegedly breached its contractual duty to the plaintiffs." Approximately 7,000 trust beneficiaries are represented by Kaardal, and another 10,000 represented by attorneys in North and South Dakota and Nebraska. Criticism has arisen about the number of alleged beneficiaries and their possible lineal connection to the 1886 roles. Kaardal said his clients have passed all the criteria for lineal descent. Anthropologist Barbara Feezor Buttes, Mdewakanton, is compiling a base role which, should the lawsuit ultimately favor the plaintiffs, even considering the appeal process, would be used to determine tribal membership. The most important outcome would be to return the rightful members to the Mdewakanton Tribe and to identify with the land, Buttes said, earlier. The original contract written in 1886 was signed by John Bluestone, Butte's great-grandfather. It included 258 acres of land now used by the Shakopee, 600 acres now used by the Lower Sioux Community and 120 acres now occupied by Prairie Island. The Lower Sioux Community filed a complaint to intervene as a plaintiff. "It's the same old story; we keeping losing our home, the land is confiscated. The Mdewakanton have never had a home, no land, never the right procedures in place to ensure everyone can come home. "Shakopee was founded with the wrong group of Indians," Kaardal said. The Shakopee Sioux Community has donated or loaned more than $70 million to other or sister tribes throughout the Great Lakes and Plains regions. Tribal Vice Chairman Glynn Crooks said they give because it is the Dakota way, and they want to help as many people as possible through their philanthropy. A 2004 federal income tax form 1099 filed in the Minnesota Court of Appeals indicated that members of the Shakopee community received approximately $84,000 in per capita payments. The Shakopee community would not confirm that figure. That amount, according to Kaardal, would provide $10,000 per year for each member of the Loyalist descendants. "So many people are not allowed in, they are losing something as Native Americans. What's bound us together is the notion that it is our land, not their land. I have never come across a case where so few have benefited so much at the expense of so many," Kaardal said. "The tribe is studying the decision, and the tribe is considering its options. It will likely file a motion opposing the summons," said William Hardacker, attorney for the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. A statement issued by the Prairie Island Indian Community reads as follows: "The Prairie Island Indian Community is a federally recognized Indian tribe. Our ancestors have resided along the banks of the Mississippi near Red Wing, Minnesota for centuries, and remained there following the Dakota Conflict of 1862. "We strongly believe that our Community has no interest or interests that are subject to the proceedings before the Court in the Wolfchild lawsuit. The Court's decision to summons our Community to participate in the lawsuit is contrary to well-settled federal Indian law and long- established legal principles regarding our Community's sovereignty and immunity from suit. "The Court of Federal Claims only has limited jurisdiction to consider claims for monetary damages against the United States of America. The Court of Federal Claims does not have jurisdiction to award money damages against the Community or to determine membership issues of federally recognized Indian tribes." Copyright c. 1998 - 2006 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Cherokee told new Constitution lacks U.S. approval" --------- Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 08:29:31 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="CHEROKEE MAINTAIN CONSTITUTION DOES NOT REQUIRE US APPROVAL" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.tulsaworld.com/NewsStory.asp?ID=060907_Ne_A1_Offic11342 Official tells Cherokees their new constitution lacks U.S. approval But the chief says the tribal court ruled that such approval is not necessary. By S.E. RUCKMAN World Staff Writer September 7, 2006 TAHLEQUAH -- A top U.S. Department of Interior official has notified Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chad Smith that his tribe still needs approval of a constitution that it began implementing in June. In a copy of the letter sent to Smith and dated Aug. 30, James Cason, associate deputy secretary of the interior, said he received correspondence from Smith in June that the Cherokees withdrew their request for federal approval. The tribe began enacting a 1999 version of its revised constitution in June. That version was submitted for approval in 2003 by tribal voters but was not approved by the Interior Department. Cherokee requirements, before the 2003 vote, specified federal approval to their constitution. Cherokee voters approved a measure in 2003 to remove federal approval. Cason said that Smith indicated in June that the approval was "moot" after the tribe's highest court, the Judicial Appeals Tribunal, now the tribe's Supreme Court, ruled that federal approval was not necessary because the tribe voted to bypass federal approval in the 2003 election. In the tribal high court's decision, Justices Darell Matlock and Darrell Dowty based their decision on a letter from former Bureau of Indian Affairs Director Neil McCaleb that he approved of the document in 2002. "I read the Tribunal's decision with interest," Cason wrote. "As an elected official, I am sure that you can appreciate the difficulties created when a former official attempts to bind his successor by stating what he had intended to so when he was in office." In the letter, Cason maintains that the Cherokee Nation's constitution requires approval and "neither the secre tary nor any authorized representative of the secretary has approved the amendment." Cason suggests that the tribe resubmit its approval request to the department if it wants the interior secretary's approval. Smith said he received the letter Wednesday and viewed it as a request and not a demand from Cason. The Cherokee Nation will not resubmit an approval request to federal officials, he said. "It is not necessary and is not requested by the BIA in this letter," he said. "We interpret this as a courtesy letter from BIA, which merely asks 'if (emphasis added) the Cherokee Nation would like the secretary's approval. . . .' We appreciate the courtesy and thank Mr. Cason for his kindness." Smith said the tribe was operating under a valid constitution. "They (the Cherokee people) should keep in mind that Cherokee Nation has the sovereign right to decide our constitution," Smith said. "Our highest court and a vote of the Cherokee people made that decision, and it is no one else's decision to make." Cason's letter signals that the Interior Department views the tribe as subject to some degree of federal authority. Cherokee lawmakers said they were reviewing Cason's letter. They expressed concern at the letter's intent but opted to wait for the issue to be resolved between their leader and Interior officials. "The Cherokee people have spoken (in 2003)," said Councilor Bill John Baker. "I have read this three times and it is a serious, important document. But I don't want to throw caution to the wind." Baker said he was concerned that if federal approval were needed, the Cherokee Nation would have its federal funds cut until the tribe complies with Cason's request. Tribal officials estimate that federal money makes up about 80 percent of the 250,000-member tribe's budget. Since the 1999 constitution went into effect, the tribal council has expanded by two seats. A new secretary of state, treasurer, attorney general, police marshal, two justices and speaker of the house were also appointed since June. In the Aug. 30 letter, Cason asks Smith to consider the implications of its high court's March 2006 decision that its membership requirements were unconstitutional. The March decision allowed the descendants of freedmen slaves to become Cherokee citizens as per a treaty agreement. Cason implied another impact of the Judicial Appeals Tribunal's March decision. At present more than 800 freedmen descendants have enrolled in the tribe. "The . . . decision suggests that not all persons who were entitled to membership in the Nation were considered eligible to vote in the 2003 elections, which purported to adopt the constitutional amendments," Cason said in the letter to Smith. But Smith said Wednesday that the results of the 2003 election were certified by the tribe's election commission. Smith said it was business as usual under the new constitution for the Cherokee Nation. "There is no remedy needed, as there is no change to the status quo," he said. Copyright c. 2006 , World Publishing Co. All rights reserved. --------- "RE: BIA asserts stance on Cherokee Constitution" --------- Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2006 11:02:16 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="BIA STANCE ON CNO CONSTITUTION" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.tulsaworld.com/NewsStory.asp?ID=060909_Ne_A1_BIAas16789 Cherokees: Chief Disagrees: BIA asserts stance on constitution By S.E. RUCKMAN World Staff Writer September 9, 2006 Bureau of Indian Affairs officials said their letter specifying the need for federal approval of the Cherokee Nation's constitution was not a request, not a demand, but "a statement of fact, determined within the parameters of our processes," a spokeswoman said Thursday. Nedra Darling of the BIA offices in Washington, D.C., said an Aug. 30 letter from Jim Cason, associate deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior, to Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chad Smith fell within the agency's legal authority to request that the Cherokees seek federal approval of their constitution. Smith maintains that Cason's letter was a request and not a demand, according to an e-mail he sent to Cherokee Nation employees on Thursday. "Nowhere in his letter does Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary James Cason cite any federal authority for the BIA to approve the Constitution," Smith said in the e-mail, sent to more than 1,000 tribal employees. "I can assure you that we will continue to carry out the mission of the Cherokee Nation to work together to support our Cherokee citizens, our sovereignty in full force and effect, regardless of the speculation of a few news articles." Darling said the federal agency was willing to base its assertion that the tribe required federal approval for its present governing document on the Principal Chiefs Act of 1970 and the Cherokee constitution. Bureau representatives specifically pointed to Section 1 of Public Law 91-495, which authorizes each of the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma to select their principal officer by tribal popular vote. The act also reads, "Such established procedures shall be subject to approval by the Secretary of the Interior." Smith said the 1975 federal Self Determination Act ended what he called "bureaucratic imperialism." That statute allowed Indian tribes to govern as independent governments. "With regard to Cason's letter, and the BIA's quote per the Tulsa World, we regard the letter as an official courtesy without any authority over our constitution," Smith said. Cherokee voters chose a 1999 amended version of their constitution in a 2003 election. The tribe submitted the document to the bureau for approval but never received that approval. The tribe's high court issued a decision in June that certified the constitutional approval by the Cherokee people, although it lacked a federal OK. Tribal justices asserted in the decision that federal approval was a self-imposed guideline and removed by voters in 2003. Darling said the federal agency deals with tribal constitutional questions at the rate of up to 10 a year, for both big and small tribes. The Cherokee question involves issues that the agency has experience with, she said. "The same standards that apply to the Cherokees apply across the board to other tribes," she said. The tribe's 1999 implemented version of a constitution allows for term limits, new judges and cabinet seats within the chief's administration. Smith is in the third year of his second four-year term. S.E. Ruckman 581-8462 se.ruckman@tulsaworld.com Copyright c. 2006 , World Publishing Co. All rights reserved. --------- "RE: Judge defers Oneida decision" --------- Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2006 11:02:16 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ONEIDA DECESION DEFERED PENDING FEDERAL RULING" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/index.ssf?/ base/news-4/1157706955267980.xml&coll=1 Judge defers Oneida decision State Supreme Court Justice John Grow is waiting for federal ruling. By Glenn Coin Staff writer September 8, 2006 A judge on Thursday once again delayed a decision on whether the Oneida Indian Nation could drop lawsuits challenging assessments on its property in Oneida County. After hearing arguments from lawyers, state Supreme Court Justice John Grow decided to postpone a decision until a federal appeals court ruling. He did the same thing in April. At issue is whether municipalities can assess and tax nation land. The nation says no; the municipalities say yes. Arguments on Thursday centered on whether the nation could drop the lawsuits it filed in July 2005. The nation wants to end the suits, saying a federal court ruling in a related case renders the assessment cases in state court moot. "The federal courts ruled that these parcels are tax-exempt," said nation lawyer Peter Carmen. "Now Oneida County wants to litigate the same issues again because they lost. We don't need to litigate those issues again here." Earlier this year, U.S. District Court Judge David Hurd ruled that nation land is still part of a 1794 reservation and that Madison and Oneida counties can't foreclose on nation land. Lawyers for the municipalities disagreed. They argued that the assessment case hinges on state not federal law, and should be decided in state court. "It's absurd to say that Judge Hurd is the last word on what a state statute says," Vincent Rossi, attorney for the towns of Vernon and Verona, told Grow. "The last time I checked, the New York State Court of Appeals was the last word on that." Hurd made similar rulings in two separate cases, one involving Oneida County and the other involving Madison County. Oneida County plans to do the same thing, and the appeals court will rule on the two cases together, said attorney David Schraver, who represents both counties. Grow decided Thursday to wait until an appeals court ruling comes down. Schraver said that decision could take a year. Glenn Coin can be reached at gcoin@syracuse.com or 470-3251. Copyright c. 2006 The Post-Standard. Used with permission. --------- "RE: Interior dumps N-waste plan" --------- Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2006 11:02:16 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="DoI REJECTS GOSHUTE NUKE DUMP" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.sltrib.com/ci_4304740 Interior dumps N-waste plan Hatch says Utah site is dead; will PFS fight? By Robert Gehrke, Judy Fahys and Thomas Burr The Salt Lake Tribune In a move that may mean the death of a plan to store thousands of tons of nuclear waste about an hour's drive from Salt Lake City, the U.S. Interior Department on Thursday rejected the lease to build the facility. "We just wanted to put a spike right through the heart of this project and this does it," Sen. Orrin Hatch said Thursday after being notified of the department's action. In a pair of decisions, spanning 47 pages, two agencies in the department rejected a lease Private Fuel Storage signed with the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes to store 44,000 tons of spent nuclear rods on 100 acres of reservation land. PFS is a group of companies that operate nuclear reactors where waste has been piling up for a half-century. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) found it could not approve a rail line to the reservation because it would have to cross a newly created wilderness area. A plan to transfer the waste onto tractor-trailers and truck the waste to the reservation was also rejected because it would significantly increase traffic along the two-lane road and because workers transferring the casks would be exposed to radiation. Those considerations and others - including unanswered questions about the vulnerability of the site to a terrorist attack - prompted the Bureau of Indian Affairs to reject the tribe's plan. The BIA cited inadequate police protection on the reservation, with Tooele County sheriff deputies lacking jurisdiction on the reservation and the nearest BIA officers stationed 4 1/2 hours away. Furthermore, with a planned permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., still up in the air, it is unclear when the waste would leave the reservation, and the department lacks the technical knowledge to monitor the waste. The rulings make it clear that the ultimate decision belonged to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, the former Idaho governor confirmed in May to his Cabinet post. The decisions describe him as a "trustee- delegate" charged with "the complex task of weighing the long-term viability of the Skull Valley Goshute reservation as a homeland for the Band (and the implications for preservation of tribal culture and life) against the benefits and risks from economic development activities. . ." After conducting this balancing test, "we conclude that it is not consistent with the conduct expected of a prudent trustee to approve a proposed lease that promotes storing [spent nuclear fuel] on the reservation," wrote Associate Deputy Interior Secretary James Cason. But nowhere in the 47 pages is there any indication the Skull Valley Band was involved in the decision making. And, in fact, tribal Chairman Leon Bear apparently did not learn about Kempthorne's decision until after Hatch issued a press release, according to PFS spokeswoman Sue Martin. Martin indicated it is premature to declare the project dead. "We do need to see the record of decision and look at it in some detail before we get a good feel for what our options are. I believe Senator Hatch would lead you to believe we have no options and I'm not sure that's true," Martin said. "We'll have to see. Stay tuned." Mary Allen, one of three Goshute leaders who began negotiating the deal 10 years ago, said the tribe would fight the ruling because members want the financial benefit of the project. The exact sum the 125 members could expect from the deal has never been disclosed, although it is rumored to be in the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Allen called Thursday's ruling "just another roadblock." "The lease was recognized" by the Interior Department, Allen said. "The BIA is scared because of the politics and Senator Hatch." Hatch, though, wasn't the only politician fighting the project. Sen. Bob Bennett noted that all five Utah congressional members have lobbied the Interior Department to kill the plan. Their pleas in recent months have been directed at Kempthorne. "I raised this issue with Secretary Kempthorne prior to his confirmation last spring and stressed the importance of it to our state. I am delighted with his prompt response," Bennett said in a statement Thursday. "This ends any possibility that the Goshute facility will ever be used for the storage of high-level nuclear waste." Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. declared Thursday's action "the best news I think our state has seen in recent years . . . And it's one that people have fought very hard for and we're there. We can finally put a period at the end of the sentence." Despite what PFS says, Huntsman added, "This makes it a done deal. It's over." PFS received its Nuclear Regulatory Commission license last year, nine years after applying for it. The license was conditioned on the BLM's approval of a plan to transport the waste to the site and BIA's final OK of the Goshutes' lease with PFS. The Interior Department decision could be challenged in court. "We need to sort through the ashes and put out a few embers maybe, but other than that it's stone cold dead," Hatch said. "It couldn't happen to nicer people." Since the NRC voted to approve the PFS license a year ago, Utah's congressional delegation pushed through legislation creating the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area adjacent to the Skull Valley reservation, blocking rail access to the site. All but two of the project's original 11 backers have said they will not help fund construction of the project. And efforts are underway in Congress to create at least one and possibly several government-run interim storage facilities, potentially making private storage unnecessary. In May, Hatch and Bennett wrote to the BLM, arguing the wilderness designation made it impossible for PFS to build the rail line to the reservation, and that an alternate plan - to build a station to move the nuclear material from trains to trucks and drive it to the reservation - was full of holes. There was no security plan for the proposed transfer facility, it would violate the land management plan for the area, would hurt Air Force training on the nearby Utah Test and Training Range and would be a terrorist target, the senators argued. The BLM received more than 4,500 letters, mostly from Utahns opposed to the nuclear waste site. "These are the largest nails in the coffin, but we know the nuclear industry is desperate to transfer the risks and liabilities away from their own users and to other states," said Vanessa Pierce, director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah. "It just goes to show that when citizens speak up loud and clear, they have more power than they imagine." Margene Bullcreek said she was ecstatic about the ruling because the waste project has torn the tribe apart. "It's been a long, long trial and at this point it's a big, big triumph," Bullcreek said. "We still need to deal with economic development, but I'm glad we will not have this poisonous waste." Rep. Chris Cannon said he expected the Interior Department to reject the PFS plan. "PFS has never made sense," Cannon said. "We should be very pleased that Interior has done what we asked them to do." Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, said the decision was a huge win for Utah and especially for the military and its test and training range, which is three miles from the proposed nuclear waste storage site. "They were looking for good reasons and I think we gave them good reasons and I applaud the Interior for their decision," Bishop said. "I wish it would have been resolved sooner," said Rep. Jim Matheson, D- Utah. "I don't know anyone in America who wants nuclear waste thrown in their backyard." --- Tribune reporter Thomas Burr contributed to this report. * The U.S. Interior Department denied a lease and a transportation plan that were crucial to proposed nuclear waste storage in Utah's Skull Valley, about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. * Critics pronounced the project dead. But the decision could still be appealed in court. * The Skull Valley Goshutes and their commercial partner in the project have yet to say if, or how, they will fight the rulings. Copyright c. 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune. --------- "RE: Bill Would Aid Cemeteries for Indian Veterans" --------- Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 08:32:58 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="TRIBAL BURIAL ASSISTANCE FOR VETS" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/ washington/03cemetery.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Bill Would Aid Cemeteries for Indian Veterans By HOLLI CHMELA September 3, 2006 WASHINGTON, Aug. 26 - Traditionally, when American Indians are killed in battle, their remains are returned to their tribal lands for burial. But for the families of the many Indians who join the United States military, death brings a difficult choice: The veterans can be buried in a national veterans' cemetery with fellow comrades in arms. Or they can be buried close to home on tribal land. There is no way to do both. The Native American Veterans Cemetery Act would change that. Representative Tom Udall, the New Mexico Democrat who wrote the bill, said it would authorize states to provide grants financed by the Department of Veterans Affairs for the development or improvement of veterans' cemeteries on tribal land. At present, tribal governments are not eligible for department money. In June, Mr. Udall's measure was unanimously approved by the House Veterans Affairs Committee. Both the House and the Senate included it in comprehensive veterans' bills approved last month. The next step is for those bills to be reconciled by a conference committee after Congress returns in September. Nearly 20,000 people classified as Native American/Alaskan Native are serving in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force, according to the Defense Department's most recent tally, from December 2005. By the end of 2006, there will be an estimated 181,361 Native American veterans, according to the V.A. The National Native American Veterans Association estimates that 22 percent of Native Americans 18 years or older are veterans. "This is about recognizing that it's not just states that have rights - tribes, too, should have rights," Mr. Udall said in a recent interview. There are 562 federally recognized tribes in the United States. New Mexico alone has 22 tribal reservations, and the population of Mr. Udall's district is 19 percent Indian. Explaining the importance of being buried close to home, Thomas Berry, a Navy veteran and a founder of the two-year-old National Native American Veterans Association, said tribes have sacred ceremonies and rituals to honor the dead and ease passage into the next life. "If a Native American is buried in a national cemetery, a lot of the rituals cannot be performed because of coding restrictions and regulations," Mr. Berry said. "So it's important to us to have a place on tribal land to bury our veterans." Leo Chischilly, 57, the department manager for the Department of Navajo Veterans Affairs in the Navajo capital, Window Rock, Ariz., said having veterans' cemeteries on tribal land was a matter of practicality as well as tradition. "The Navajo Nation would like to bury their loved ones within the four sacred mountains on Navajo land," Mr. Chischilly said. "But the closest veterans' cemetery is in Santa Fe, N.M., four hours' drive from Window Rock. Some families visit the grave sites on Veterans Day or Memorial Day, but most people would prefer something closer to home." Some reservations have cemeteries dedicated to veterans, but they are maintained and paid for by the tribal organization or volunteers, not by the V.A. Fort Defiance Veterans Cemetery in Arizona is one such example. It is full with more than 300 graves of Navajo veterans. Ten acres have been set aside in Chinle, Ariz., for a new veterans' cemetery, Mr. Chischilly said, but money is needed. "Hopefully if President Bush signs the legislation we can submit a proposal to get a veterans' cemetery on the Navajo Nation," Mr. Chischilly said. "We'll be able to provide the land, but we will have to get other sources of funding for the operational costs." Copyright c. 2006 The New York Times Company. --------- "RE: Device helps track missing Children" --------- Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 08:32:58 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="MENOMINEE CHILDREN SAFEASSURED ID ENROLLED" http://nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=8145 Device helps track missing children Enterprising tribal employee gets grant for state-of-the-art equipment MENOMINEE INDIAN RESERVATION WI Native American Times September 1, 2006 The initiative of a tribal employee has led to that tribe receiving a device that will make children in the area safer, officials report. Penny Escalante, a worker in the Wisconsin-based Menominee Indian Tribe's childcare services office, applied for a grant, leading to children in the area receiving the SafeAssured ID kit. The identification features an encrypted mini compact disc containing: up to ten digital fingerprints, digital photograph, streaming video showing mannerisms and gait, voice track providing the youth's voice inflection and accent, general physical description, vital personal information-including street address, date of birth, life-threatening medical conditions, identifying scars or marks, and tattoos- and a family code word. Escalante said the system is proving to be popular with parents and law enforcement alike. "We've received many positive comments from parents who have brought their children to the events" she said. "Our tribal police chief has been so excited... that he's spreading the word and telling other tribal chiefs how great it really is. Workers used to dealing with missing children say that when a vanishes, minutes matter. "Time is the enemy when it comes to recovering a missing child. A critical element to the first few hours of an investigation is for law enforcement to have a good quality, current photograph of the missing child," said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, a non-profit agency that works with the federal U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. "[Our organization] urges parents and guardians to maintain easily accessible, good-quality photographs of their children." Native American Times. Copyright c. 2005 All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: EPA presents excellence award to Chippewa Cree" --------- Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2006 11:02:16 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ROCKY BOY WINS EPA AWARD" http://www.havredailynews.com/ EPA presents excellence award to Chippewa Cree Angela Brandt Havre Daily News abrandt@havredailynews.com September 8, 2006 ROCKY BOY'S INDIAN RESERVATION - Two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency workers traveled to Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation Thursday to present four tribal employees with awards for excellence in solid waste management. Rocky Boy tribal council member Rick Morsette was given a certificate and a paperweight at the monthly council meeting. Tribe workers Joan Mitchell, a grant manager, engineer Ken Fitzgerald and roads supervisor Harvey Friede were later awarded for their efforts. The tribe built a new solid waste facility in 2005. The state EPA duo of environmental scientist Jennifer Wintersteen and deputy office director Julie DalSoglio said they wanted to recognize the tribal leaders for their past and continuing success. The four tribal employees received the Frank Decouteau Award for outstanding work in not only solid waste management but also in the protection of Rocky Boy land from open dumping and environmental pollution. The tribe previously used a Bonneau area site, which was an open dump closed in favor of off-reservation disposal of solid waste. The dump was later cleaned and now is a construction and demolition debris landfill, which saves costs of hauling and disposing. Morsette said the need for a landfill was seen in the late '90s but no funding was available at that time. Through grants, the tribe was able to clean the old dump and begin an new disposal system. "We got a lot accomplished," he said. Tribal council vice-chair Bruce Sun Child commended the crew for their work. Sun Child said he has received comments that Rocky Boy is one of the cleanest reservations. Copyright c. 2006 Havre Daily News, Inc. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: UNC to establish Native American Research Center" --------- Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2006 11:02:16 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="UNC NA RESEARCH CENTER" http://www.heraldsun.com/orange/10-768110.html Local Briefs: UNC to establish Native American research center From Staff Reports : The Herald-Sun September 8, 2006 CHAPEL HILL - UNC will create one of the only centers on the East Coast to focus solely on American Indian issues and research. The Center for American Indian Research and Community Engagement will be a leader in native scholarship and service, said Bernadette Gray-Little, the university's executive vice chancellor and provost. "Establishing this center will enable Carolina to develop the rich cultural and historical legacy of the state's first people into an important area of scholarship and intellectual leadership," she said. The university will conduct a nationwide search for a center director, Gray-Little said. The director will collaborate with faculty, students and staff to initiate new programs, continue outreach to American Indian communities and raise funds for the center, she said. No date has been set for the center's opening; officials hope to locate space on campus for the center soon. "The goal of the center is to make native issues a permanent part of the intellectual life of this university," said Sandra Hoeflich, assistant dean of the UNC Graduate School. "Establishing the center will make Carolina a leading public university for American Indian scholarship." North Carolina is home to the largest American Indian population east of the Mississippi River. Last year, the U.S. Census estimated the state's total population at just under 8.7 million, with 1.3 percent, or about 113,100, listed as American Indians and Alaskan natives. Copyright c. 2006 Herald-Sun, Durham, NC. --------- "RE: ICT EDITORIAL: The need for Native formulations" --------- Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2006 11:02:16 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ICT EDITORIAL: BEYOND SOVEREIGNTY" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096413631 Beyond sovereignty by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today The need for Native formulations September 7, 2006 James Sappier, chairman of the Penobscot Indian Tribe in Maine, often lets loose a provocative statement; and he did not disappoint some time back at a conference on tribal sovereignty. Sappier marveled at the spelling of the term that seems almost indispensable for discussing Indian rights. "It has an 'e' and an 'i' - and look, there's a 'g' in it too. It's a scary word." As Sappier was indicating, the term "sovereignty" has origins far removed from Indian country. It's ironic that so much of the discussion of Native rights in our contemporary society uses terms derived from 16th century French political theory. The fact is that the 16th century French principle only approximates the rights of tribal survival and self- determination that Indian country upholds with near unanimity. As Beverly Wright, former chairman of the Aquinnah Wampanoag, said at the same conference, "We knew this in our hearts before we knew there was a word for it." The question that some are asking, starting with the late Vine Deloria Jr. and continuing with Indian lawyers confronted by a hostile Supreme Court, is whether "sovereignty" is exactly the right word. Is there another formulation that will resonate more persuasively with the mainstream society and explain more clearly what American Indians are struggling to defend? Deloria warned that by relying too heavily on the word "sovereignty," Indian country left itself vulnerable to the snares and hidden meanings that European history has embedded in the term. As many tribes discovered in their dealings with Europeans, the terms of negotiations often turned out to have unexpected meanings. What lawyers now call "terms of art" had implications not obvious on their surface which resulted in depriving the tribes of far more than they meant to give up. "Sovereignty" is one of those words. It has gone through significant changes in European and American usage. It's important just for self-defense to have some sense of the way the term has evolved. Historians trace the theory of sovereignty to the French jurist Jean Bodin (1530? - 1596). This writer was himself a bundle of contradictions. In his youth he narrowly escaped condemnation as a heretic, but he ended his life as a stalwart member of the Catholic League. He wrote one of the first tracts on religious toleration, but he also compiled a study of demonology that became a manual for witchcraft trials. He is known as an advocate of absolute monarchy, but his doctrine imposed significant limits on the French king. Sovereignty, as Bodin described it in his "Six books of the Commonwealth," was actually a reaction against earlier constitutional theory derived from Aristotle, which held that the most effective form of government was a mixture of the three basic regimes: democracy, aristocracy and monarchy. Bodin objected that having three different principles of government in one state was a recipe for civil war. The state had to acknowledge one source of authority. The ultimate source was God, the ruler of the universe. The French king could claim to rule as an agent of divine authority, but he had to acknowledge that he was subordinate to divine right and limited by the rights that the Almighty had implanted in humanity (including the individual's right to property). In other matters, however, the state was the sole sovereign. (This doctrine transformed the earlier understanding of the three basic regimes. Instead of contending principles of government, they shrank to the status of functions of the single sovereign. The civics textbook description of the executive, legislative and judicial functions of the American Constitution traces back to this transmutation.) But too many different interests were burgeoning in European society to sit content with a divine right of kings, the doctrine into which Bodin's theory degenerated. Religious and social struggles in England erupted in the epic conflict of Parliament and King Charles I and the search for a new basis of sovereignty. It was supplied by John Locke (1632 - 1704). His "Two Treatises of Government" appeared in 1689 after England's Glorious Revolution and the final ascendancy of Parliament. He located sovereignty not in God, but in the consent of the governed. There is a fascinating interplay between European contact with American Indians and the doctrine of the state of nature that Locke used as the basis for his social compact. It generally worked to the disadvantage of the Indians. But the doctrine of the social compact has possibilities for the tribes that we will return to. It is certainly preferable to what comes after. Even though Locke's theory of sovereignty still holds sway in the United States, European thinkers began to reject it in the early 20th century. A major change took place with a German theorist named Carl Schmitt (1888 - 1985), who according to some still has surprising influence. Schmitt and his school of political realists dismissed parliamentary government as a facade for the real sources of power. Constitutional law was a deception. The real source of sovereignty was the state power that remained when the illusions of representative institutions were swept aside. His doctrine, a sort of "last man standing" theory of sovereignty, is said to inspire the realpolitik school of international relations. Some legal critics even see his influence in the Bush administration's assertions of sweeping executive authority in fighting terrorism. The trouble is that Schmitt was an unrepentant apologist for the destruction of the Weimar regime in Germany and the rise of Hitler. He was one of a handful of serious political theorists and philosophers who lent their prestige to a thoroughly evil political movement. All minorities have common cause in fighting movements that deny basic human rights and scapegoat entire groups of people because of their identities. But it's important to identify the sources of evil long before the "miner's canary" gives its ultimate warning. The phenomenon that concerns us here is that basic terms begin to change their meanings. The foundation of "sovereignty" changes from divine right to consent of the governed to seizure of power by a tyrant claiming to represent a mystical popular will. The fact that the European mind can put its foundational principles through such radical mutations should make us very wary about relying on its political vocabulary. "Sovereignty" as a means of harmonizing Native survival with the dominant society means, first of all, the right of tribes to self- preservation - cultural, linguistic, religious, territorial and political continuity. Native peoples have this right because they were here first and they haven't gone away, and none of the old European arguments for dispossession make any sense, even to Europeans. It's become inescapably clear that the denial of this right to the tribes has caused massive social misery and that the exercise of this right has become the path to healing and recovery. The task is to explain this right to the dominant society in a vocabulary free of irrelevant historical baggage and unintended meanings, and to show the whole country that it too will benefit. Copyright c. 1998 - 2006 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: SHORTMAN: Breaking the culture of Silence" --------- Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 08:51:40 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="SHORTMAN: VETERAN SPEAKS" Shortman - 'Breaking the culture of silence' by: Phillip Shortman September 7, 2006 Yellow Bird article welcomed I would like to begin by thanking Michael Yellow Bird for his courage in publishing his article regarding America Indians' lack of moral questioning on our role in America's wars. This is the result of the culture of silence that is predominant in Native America. We are afraid to speak out due to our failure to recognize silence as being one of the symptoms of colonization and oppression. Since our forced settlements onto reservation lands and the adoption of a Western model of governance, we have failed to recognize that we have adopted the behaviors and attitudes of our oppressors. In the current war in the Middle East, Israel invaded Lebanon at the encouragement of the United States. It was believed that this would be a fast and easy operation to crush Hezbollah, which is deemed to be a terrorist movement. Hezbollah proved everyone wrong. Our similarities with Hamas and Hezbollah are more than skin color. We have both been forced into situations that are not conducive to our well-being, be it starvation (i.e. withholding funds to the Palestinian Authority), the duly elected branch of government (democracy) and the forced adoption of a foreign governmental model. This similar to the past practices of the United States in its historical dealings with Indian nations. They withheld rations, encouraged tribal nations to adopt a foreign government (IRA) and forced placement on lands that are unable to support a large mass of people. These types of environments will continue to breed hostility within future generations of people occupied by an oppressive government. In a recent article printed in the Great Falls Tribune, a reporter interviewed an Israeli paratrooper who described his face-to-face combat with Hezbollah warriors. He stated that Hezbollah was determined and that many Israelis were killed and wounded. In fact, they were chased back south. I believe that the warriors of both sides deserved to be awarded their respective honors, similar to American Indians and our eagle feathers. Face-to-face combat is the warrior way. The families of both sides will be in mourning for a long time. My family and ancestors have mourned for at least a year and many times longer. This particular article interested me because my great-great-grandfather was shot off of his horse near the U.S./Canada border in hostile engagements with the enemy. My ancestors went back at night to find his body, only to find that it was gone. As a combat veteran I know that many Middle Eastern warriors and their families are unaccounted for. For the past month I have been to our local pow wows and have made an effort to observe the grand entries. I have never seen so many eagle feathers adorned by both local and visiting dancers, both male and female. My initial reaction is that our tribal nations have produced many warriors or enemy killers. I questioned my aunt, an elder, how youthful dancers of both genders have earned the right to adorn themselves with precious eagle feathers? An argument will be made that they have earned them in one way or another. That is for each individual tribal nation to determine. There have always historically been wars and there always will be. For purely economic reasons, the enemies of the potential colonizers have always been people of color who prefer to maintain their lifestyle and lands. It should be noted that forced democracy is not for everybody. Our announcers continually say that our warriors are protecting our land and traditional way of life. They fail to realize that historically in most tribal nations, we were socialists and not capitalists. In most tribal nations of the greater northern Plains, the only capitalists are those with money - which are few in number. The socialists are the majority of the poor people who share with each other. What traditional lifestyle are our young warriors protecting? To me, it is Haliburton and the millions that have been embezzled, not excluding other contractors of whom are unable to account for those tens of million of dollars that have been displaced. The continued wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costly to Native America. We continue to exist on the meager remains of an illegal war while the rich get richer and the poor more poor. Many Native schools are in need of replacement or repair, the health care costs have increased with funds based on past year's needs, and the budget for Native America has been decreased. Yet, we obviously continue to support the tenets of the Bush administration. There appears to be something wrong here. Many young people go to war because of their desire to earn eagle feathers. Oral tradition remains strong in many communities. Others go because of a lack of economic opportunities on America Indian lands. We should remind ourselves that every defeated nation has been financially rebuilt with the exception of Native nations in spite of our participation in the illegal wars of the past 40 years. Clearly, Yellow Bird will be an individual of controversy and attack from individuals who are colonized and support the war in the Middle East. To me, he has allowed an avenue for individuals who were afraid to speak out to express our feelings. His research of this topic provides an admirable, albeit personal, perspective. His forthcoming should allow for tribal leaders to address these issues. More importantly, I believe that his critical essay allows for tribal members at large to develop a discourse to explore. But as tribal nations, we must become more involved in the international political arena and use this opportunity as a springboard to support our brothers and sisters in war-torn areas in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Phillip Shortman is a Vietnam veteran and Legion of Valor member from Hays, Mont. Copyright c. 1998 - 2006 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: JODI RAVE: Correcting the story of Sacagawea" --------- Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 08:32:58 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="JODI RAVE: TRUTH ABOUT SACAGAWEA" http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2006/09/05/jodirave/rave82.txt Correcting the story of Sacagawea By JODI RAVE of the Missoulian September 3, 2006 MANDAREE, N.D - Wanda Fox Sheppard sat beneath a tree-covered arbor with community members for a two-day tribute to a woman many Hidatsa call their relative. Sheppard counts herself among the hundreds of Sacagawea descendants on the Fort Berthold Reservation, homeland of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. Sacagawea's Hidatsa descendants' voices, however, have mostly been unheard, unpublished. Many of her relatives have never been vocal, boastful or pushy about their relationship because she was simply another relative. But others outside the community are hearing their story. Thousands of Native and non-Natives heard the Hidatsa stories of Sacagawea during the Lewis and Clark bicentennial signature event, "Reunion at the Home of Sakakawea," in August on Fort Berthold. The reunion was the second-to-last national commemoration to recognize the 1804-1806 expedition. Several tribal citizens of Fort Berthold recounted stories about Sacagawea's life among the Hidatsa and Mandan. The one many are becoming familiar with is told by Bulls Eye, which was published in the Van Hook Reporter in April 1925. "They say she was a Shoshoni among us," said Bulls Eye, a grandson of Sacagawea. "She was not a Shoshoni. Everybody knew them. They knew her father and mother, too. The interpreter got it wrong and it has been wrong ever since." A lot has been wrong, and never corrected. Bulls Eye's interpreter was Stanley Dean, not Stanley Bean as reported by the Van Hook Reporter, Sheppard said at last month's commemoration. Her family has documentation to support the claim. Many generations of Americans believe Sacagawea was a Shoshone captured by the Hidatsa as a child. But it is the Hidatsa who have full accounts of the woman and her life. Sheppard recently paged through a hardcover book published by the North Dakota State Historical Society in 2005. She pointed to a picture of Hannah Levings Grant, who was used as a Sacagawea model for sculptor Leonard Crunelle, who completed a life-size statue in 1910. The book's photo caption reads that Levings Grant is a "direct descendant" of Sacagawea. "From the very beginning, they got that wrong," said Sheppard. Yet the people who have the platform to correct the story resist. "She is not a descendant of Sacagawea," said Sheppard. "We all know that." Sheppard's connection came from another side of her family. Levings Grant is Sheppard's grandmother - the mother of Sheppard's father, Anthony Guy Fox, who married Grace Parshall, the daughter of George and Ruby White Bear Parshall. And that is where one line of Sacagawea's descendants arise among the Hidatsa. The Hidatsa who claim Sacagawea as a relative say she had four children - Baptiste, Otter Woman, Cedar Woman and Different Breast. Most people know only of Baptiste, the infant carried by Sacagawea as she traveled with the Corps of Discovery to the Pacific. Bulls Eye was the son of Otter Woman. And Cedar Woman had a daughter named Medicine Arm, who married a white man named William Parshall. The couple had three children, including George Parshall, a great-grandson of Sacagawea. Sheppard knows all her relatives going back at least eight generations. Sacagawea's real name was Eagle Woman, or Ma-ishuwea. But interpreters started calling her Bird Woman, or Sacagawea, and that has been wrong all these years, too. The story of being related to a national icon isn't a new one, said Sheppard. Her grandmother Ruby White Bear Parshall and her aunt Pansy Parshall used to talk about how Sacagawea and her daughter Otter Woman were killed while traveling to Fort Buford with 5-year-old Bulls Eye. "My grandmother Ruby would tell me these things even after I was married and had children. I was young and didn't listen I guess. She kept telling me she was buried at Fort Buford." Ruby and her husband George Parshall used to travel to Poplar, in Montana, frequently. Ruby told Sheppard: "Your grandpa stopped at her gravesite, prayed and made offerings to her and then we'd go on." They usually left food offerings of liver and kidney, said Sheppard. One day, her grandmother told Sheppard to prepare for a road trip. She wanted to take her to Sacagawea's gravesite. "I got my babies ready," said Sheppard. She drove Ruby to Fort Buford, between Sydney, Mont., and Williston, N.D. "When we got to this place where she said she was buried, there were no fences. But you could tell where the buildings were a long time ago. And there were burial mounds." It's always been a mystery among historians as to where Sacagawea lies buried. Some claim she is buried in South Dakota. And she has a headstone on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Sheppard returned to Fort Buford a few years ago. "But now they have scouts' monuments and headstones. It's all built up to look like the old fort." Reporter Jodi Rave can be reached at (406) 523-5299 or at jodi.rave@lee.net Copyright c. 2006 Missoulian, a division of Lee Enterprises. --------- "RE: GIAGO: Lawsuit challenges Church on abuse" --------- Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 08:29:31 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="GIAGO: CHURCH ABUSE" http://www.indianz.com/News/2006/015755.asp Tim Giago: Lawsuit challenges church on abuse Posted by request of Tim Giago, Nanwica Kciji. Copyright c. 2006 Native American Journalists Foundation, Inc. September 6, 2006 There is a lawsuit just filed that hopes to take up the slack from an earlier lawsuit that failed. The lawsuit filed on August 7, 2006, in the Seventh Judicial Circuit in the County of Pennington in South Dakota by Attorney Gregory A. Yates of Encino, California is against St. Francis Indian Mission and Rosebud Educational Society, Wisconsin Province of the Society of Jesus, Diocese of Rapid City and Sisters of St. Francis in Denver, CO. The plaintiffs are Lloyd One Star, Kerwin Eagleman, Ralph Eagleman, Lawrence Ford, Marian Sorace, Noah One Star and Antoinette (One Star) Miller, all former students at St. Francis Indian Mission located on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Mr. Yates intends to bring closure to a suit filed several years ago by Jeffrey Herman and Gary Fischer that attempted to sue the Catholic Church for alleged abuses of Indian children. A judge in this case ruled that this suit had exceeded the Statute of Limitations as set down by law. Yates intends to circumvent this ruling with his suit. When Herman and Fischer filed their lawsuit, I wrote that I was apprehensive because as a longtime observer of Indian law I understand its complexities and I didn't believe either Herman or Fischer had the background or the knowledge to bring a lawsuit that so many other attorneys had shied away from over the years. Jennifer Ring, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of the Dakotas, said that Indian law is highly specialized. "It involves a lot of areas of the law that are not commonly taught in law schools in the United States. If you look at the Constitution, one of the powers that the federal government has is, very specifically, the right to regulate affairs dealing with Indian tribes and that is not something that applies to any other minority group. Then you go on to the treaties, interpretation of the treaties, and jurisdictional issues and you will find that there are a lot of rules that apply to Indian country that do not apply anywhere else," she said. The plaintiffs charge St. Francis with attempting to strip them of their Native American family values, religious beliefs and culture in an effort to Americanize them. The also charged "Defendants' agents affiliated with the St. Francis School directed, allowed and/or executed customs, patterns, policies and practices of sexual and physical abuse by failing to supervise, monitor, discipline and otherwise protect Plaintiffs, ultimately leading to the abuse alleged herein." The litany of alleged abuses reads like a horror story in the pages of the lawsuit. The abuses range from inappropriate touching to outright acts of sodomy. Charges were even leveled at some of the mission nuns for forcing sexual acts upon the children, both boys and girls. The lawsuit further states, "At all times, Defendants maintained inadequate policies and procedures to protect the children it was entrusted to care for and protect. As a direct and proximate result of Defendants' negligence, Plaintiffs suffered severe and permanent psychological, emotional and physical injuries, shame, humiliation and/or the inability to lead a normal life." Twelve former Catholic priests and nuns were named as defendants in the lawsuit. All of them were educators at St. Francis Indian Mission. The case is in the court of public records and is listed as Civil C - 04 -594. I considered printing the names of the defendants, but decided not to, at least not for now. If any of the heinous acts charged against them by the defendants are true, they will be judged in a court of law, but the lawsuit is not against them as individuals, but as agents of the St. Francis Indian Mission. I know some of the defendants from St. Francis and I was literally shocked to read some of the allegations against them. I wrote many years ago that the Catholic Church had to issue an apology to all of the boys and girls mistreated at the Indian mission boarding schools since the late 1800s. Not only did the Church need to apologize, it had to find a way to begin healing the wounds of those survivors of the boarding school system. The Catholic Church needs to begin that process of healing. When I visited the Holy Rosary Mission School on the Pine Ridge Reservation recently, a school where I spent 10 years of my life, I discovered that the leadership of HRM, or Red Cloud, as it is now called, is still in denial. They refuse to admit to or face the charges of abuse made by me and by many other former students. Will it take a similar lawsuit to wake them up? In the meantime, I will follow the case as it proceeds and keep you up to date on its progress. If you want to know a little bit more about the history of the Indian mission boarding schools you can get my new book on the subject. It is titled, "Children Left Behind" and it can be ordered at Clear Light Publishing, 823 Don Diego, Santa Fe, NM, or by emailing harmon@clearlightbooks.com. --- McClatchy News Service in Washington, DC distributes Tim Giago's weekly column. He can be reached at P.O. Box 9244, Rapid City, SD 57709 or at najournalists@rushmore.com. Giago was also the founder and former editor and publisher of the Lakota Times and Indian Country Today newspapers and the founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association. Clear Light Books of Santa Fe, NM (harmon@clearlightbooks..com) published his latest book, "Children Left Behind" --------- "RE: HARJO: Recess is over, but the games continue" --------- Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 08:51:40 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="CONGRESS RETURNS FROM RECESS BUT INDIAN HEALTH GAME STILL ON" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096413615 Harjo - Recess is over, but the games continue by: Suzan Shown Harjo / Indian Country Today September 7, 2006 A case example of the urban Indian health program The congressional August recess was over as soon as the Labor Day picnics ended. Congress returned for five hard weeks of legislating and appropriating before it adjourns for four intensive weeks of campaigning. What laws will emerge is anyone's guess. All House members and one-third of the senators are running for their jobs, and voters will decide if they get to keep them on Nov. 7. Control of the House and Senate is at stake, so it's not just the candidates who are campaigning in earnest. Everyone is anxious to hit the campaign trail on a full-time basis. The target adjournment date for both the Senate and House is Oct. 6. With the end of the fiscal year fast approaching on Sept. 30, and not one of the 13 appropriations bills completed, it's crunch time in Congress. This is an annual beat-the-clock exercise, with a predictable outcome. In most years in recent decades, Congress has failed to enact most of the money bills before the fiscal year tolls. Instead, the House and Senate break out the short-term continuing resolution template at the 11th hour and carry over the current fiscal year's funding levels to the new fiscal year. Congress almost always returns to Washington in November and December to enact the separate appropriations bills or a further continuing resolution for the ones they can't agree to pass. A particularly bruising election - as this one promises to be - usually assures limited agreement on anything, a very small number of finished money bills and very large continuing resolutions. If the election results in a leadership change from Republican to Democrat in the House or Senate, or both, the outgoing majority will want to conduct as much business as they can, while the incoming majority will want to conclude this 109th Congress as quickly as possible. Here's how these dynamics could affect a single program: the urban Indian health program. When President Bush sent Congress his proposed budget for fiscal year 2007 at the beginning of this calendar year, the urban Indian health program was targeted for elimination. The administration began taking steps to close the 34 health centers all over the country. In response to a unified Indian lobby effort to save the program, the House restored $32.7 million for the health centers in May. The final vote on the umbrella bill, the Interior Appropriation Act, was 293 to 128. In case anyone missed the point, the House report which accompanied the bill stated that "the proposal to eliminate this program is rejected." The Senate Appropriations Committee concurred in June, adding report language that leaves nothing to the imagination: "The Committee is dismayed by reports from tribes that the Department of Health and Human Services has instructed the [Indian Health] Service to proceed with plans to close down 34 urban centers, despite the fact that the House Committee on Appropriations is already on record as disagreeing with the proposal for elimination. "The Committee stresses that no funds were provided in fiscal year 2006 to effect the closure of these facilities and it expects the Department to refrain from any further action until House and Senate Committees on Appropriations have concluded negotiations on the 2007 budget." There is enough time this month for the Senate to pass the Interior money bill, for the House and Senate to hold a conference to reconcile differences, for each chamber to pass the agreed upon bill and for the president to sign it into law. Or not. If there's a logjam or a veto threat or a game of chicken - or if a senator doesn't like an opponent's campaign ad and puts a hold on the bill to stop further action on it - Interior appropriations could stall and be folded into a continuing resolution on Sept. 30. Where would this leave the urban Indian health program? In limbo. The 2006 fiscal year's appropriations level would be continued. But Congress didn't specify a level for 2006. The administration has the House and Senate bills and reports, and there can be no mistaking what Congress intended to this point. But that intention is not yet law. Administrators intent on mischief could make some for the program, but few would be so foolish as to poke a stick at appropriators who control their budget. While waiting for definitive action, the people who staff the urban Indian health centers, as well as the Indian patients who depend on them, would become increasingly apprehensive about the program's future. Many a program has faltered in its mission because program managers have been turned into crisis managers in this kind of situation. If Congress cannot pass the 2007 Interior appropriation, a handful of representatives and senators could reiterate the appropriations report language on the urban Indian health program in connection with passage of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. The IHCIA is poised for a Senate floor vote, as well as action in the House committees on Energy and commerce and on Ways and Means. Restating the intent of the House and Senate on the urban Indian health program for the record of the IHCIA would be a clear and simple way to formally convey the directives. It also would be an act of kindness for all the people who are totally stressed out about the fate of the urban Indian health centers. --- Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, is president of the Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C., and a columnist for Indian Country Today. Copyright c. 1998 - 2006 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: YELLOW BIRD: Work just begins to stem Suicides" --------- Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 18:19:32 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="YELLOW BIRD: SUICIDE PREVENTION" http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=9535 DORREEN YELLOW BIRD COLUMN: Work just begins to stem Indian suicides Grand Forks Herald September 9, 2006 In the past few months, there have been more than a few suicide attempts among young people on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, Fort Yates, N.D. The attempts follow a number of completed suicides just a few years ago. I followed the story on this Lakota nation in 2004, when there were 10 suicides within a few months. I did so partly because it affected me personally -- two of my nephews left this world that way -- and partly because it is so tragic and seemed out of context with American Indian culture. So, I was extremely pleased when I read the Sept. 7 press release from the office of Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., announcing a $400,000 grant for Lakota people to address suicide on the reservation. I realize there were other legislators involved in getting this funding for Standing Rock, but I also remember that it was Dorgan who set up hearings in Bismarck and Washington. He also went to Fort Yates and personally met with students at Standing Rock about the suicides. I attended and testified at the Bismarck hearings. The meeting room in the Capitol that day was filled with people. The suicides have affected the entire tribe and community. And the "life is so awful, I choose to die" sentiment that seems to motivate the attempts is as unfathomable to the community as it is to me. I talked with Dorgan on Friday about the suicide grant. I wanted to thank him for his concern for our children. Dorgan talked about his role in getting assistance to this reservation. He said an eye-opener was not on Standing Rock but at Spirit Lake, N.D. It was a gut-wrenching incident, and it helped him understand that for the young woman who committed suicide, everything had gone wrong. Some of these young people live in Third World conditions, he added. I agreed. I'm afraid she lived in a world that Dorgan probably never realized existed on reservations. John Eagle Shield, who is the community health representative at Standing Rock, works with suicide attempts and young people on the reservation. They have begun a program they named "Oniyape," or "To live," he said. It's for high-risk individuals or those who have attempted suicide. The program is just beginning, he said, and repeated that they are currently in a middle of a rash of attempts, mostly by young women. This Sundance leader and elder said suicides can start with any crisis - some are short-term and would seem easily solved and or at least solvable, but many of these young people lack skills in problem-solving. For example, he said, a young girl didn't want to go to school. Rather than seeking help for her or probing for a problem, the school staff told her she had to attend classes. What was her problem? She is a young teen who is at an age of change. She didn't have any school clothes or a chance to get school clothes, and that problem seemed insurmountable to her. Eagle Shield grimaces at some of the service providers who are insensitive to the Lakota culture. Young people, he said, who are sent Bismarck for treatment, don't respond to the providers. It is the attitude they hear and feel: "All Indians are alike. All Indians think it's a good day to die." It isn't just the outside institutions, either, Eagle Shield said. Households need to develop resolution skills. They need to find ways to take care of these problems both locally and on the outside without harming ourselves. They haven't had funding for professionals on the reservations. The $400,000 may provide the needed funding for those services. As I listened to both Dorgan and Eagle Shield, I kept thinking of my yearly stay on the reservation. I keep thinking about the Lakota people who participate in the Sundance ceremony. They are strong, spiritual people who provide guidance to their children and work to help others. Yet, Standing Rock won't be known for their spiritual leaders and the tenacious people who survived the uprooting and devastation of late 1800s and early 1900s. They risk being stereotyped with terms such as suicide, self-destructive and mentally ill because of the public exposure of the issue. So, I understand why some of the tribal leaders hesitated to expose the suicides and suicide attempts to the public eye. It is another stereotype that we will have to counter, Eagle Shield said; Indian people have suicide as an option to life, the public will say. Yet, it is the children who are at risk that are most important. It's these children who will grow into men and women who can teach about life and the culture to their children. Little by little, year after year, the Lakota nation will grow stronger -- in spite of the setbacks such as they are experiencing today, they will become a healthier nation. ---- 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: JODI RAVE: Need exists for Native Marrow Donors" --------- Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2006 08:25:04 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="JODI RAVE: MARROW DONORS NEEDED" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2006/09/06/jodirave/rave81.txt Great need exists for Native marrow donors By JODI RAVE of the Missoulian September 6, 2006 Eileen Damone spent years searching on reservations across Montana for a marrow and blood cell donor for an ailing 37-year-old Northern Cheyenne woman, the mother of six children. Leukemia claimed the Native woman's life in July before a marrow donor could help save it. "She fought this disease for four years," said Damone of the Montana Marrow Program. "She had 10 brothers and sisters and no match. It illustrates how difficult this is. You can talk about successes, but the failures are the ones that haunt you." More than 6 million people are listed on the National Marrow Donor registry. Of that number, 75,000 people identify as Native, or about 1 percent of all potential donors. The percentage of Native marrow donors mirrors Native people's percentage of the U.S. population. Still, a great need exists to increase the number of donors because it can be difficult to find a marrow or blood cell donor match. Only about 30 percent of people suffering from a blood disease, such as leukemia, find a marrow match within their own family. That's why the national office of the American Indian Business Leadership organization is working with the National Marrow Donor Program by hosting donor registry drives at six state and tribal college campuses in Wisconsin, Montana, South Dakota and New Mexico. The kickoff is in Missoula at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Bonner Park, which coincides with the annual University of Montana welcome-back picnic for new and returning Native students. Members of the UM AIBL chapter will be at the picnic to sign up potential donors. National Marrow Donor Program representatives will also be present to take mouth swab samples and answer questions. "People get a little nervous," said Angelique Albert, AIBL's development officer. "But it's pretty non-invasive. It's a pretty small thing to do to be able to save someone's life later." Ideally, Albert said, the group would like to sign up at least 30 people. "It would be great to double that." Of the 35,000 men, women and children in the United States who need a marrow or blood cell transplant, only 2,800 found an actual donor in 2005, including 15 Native people. Transplanted bone marrow or blood cells from a donor can be used to treat patients with life-threatening blood, immune system or genetic disorders. The transplanted cells move into spaces inside the bones where they create new marrow. They grow and make healthy new red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. If a person can't find a marrow or blood cell match within their family, they typically have the best luck finding a donor within the same race or ethnicity. "There are so many blood diseases that require transplants," said Pat Thompson, a spokesperson for the National Marrow Donor Program. "The more people we get to join the registry, the chances are more people will find a cure for their blood diseases." "Donors of all races are needed," he said. "Blood diseases are color blind." You can help The University of Montana's American Indian Business Leadership group, working with the National Marrow Donor Program, will host a bone marrow donor registry drive in Missoula at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Bonner Park. --- Reporter Jodi Rave can be reached at 406-523-5299 or at jodi.rave@lee.net Copyright c. 2006 Missoulian, a division of Lee Enterprises. --------- "RE: Peguis Treaty Land entitlement process flawed" --------- Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2006 08:25:04 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="FLAWED TREATY PROCESS" Peguis treaty land entitlement process flawed by Joseph Quesnel September 2, 2006 In a letter released today by a member of Manitoba's Peguis First Nation, Chief Louis Stevenson was accused of failing to "show up at any of the informational meetings for the last four years." Robert N. Sutherland released the letter to the media in response to questions about the low turnout in the recent land entitlement vote. The low turnout caused the results of the vote to be negated. While Sutherland conceded Peguis members may have voted for the land entitlement deal, he cited several reasons why people chose not to vote. Amongst these Sutherland cites a lack of time and information needed to understand a complex agreement, a drastic reduction in people on the voting list which has occurred in the past year. The complete text of Robert Sutherland's letter follows: Winnipeg, Manitoba Sept. 5, 2006 Re: The Peguis Treaty Land Entitlement Process As a member of Peguis First Nation and active member of the majority who care about the historic agreement, I feel that comments made by some members of the media recently were made through ignorance of the facts, in regard to the decision of our people to not vote in the Treaty Land Entitlement Process. There were such comments as irresponsible, disrespect, ridicule, Pathetic, what a joke, deprived, don't care, disappointed, too lazy to vote, and the comment about "the majority don't give a rat's rear end". These comments should be directed at Chief Louis Stevenson who did not show up at any of the information meetings for the last four years. He then spends thousands of dollars on yes signs promoting the Trust agreement and the TLE. In 1907 the people of the St Peters lost the most valuable land in Manitoba through an illegal surrender of their reserve land. It only took one day to explain to the people about the vote, and the vote was held and we ended up in the swamps in Peguis. The corrupt council of the day got what was promised through bribes. This opened the door for the land speculators, the Indian Agents, and Provincial Officials, to gain access to our land and divide it as they pleased. History has a nasty way of repeating itself. One hundred years later the membership of Peguis is given a little over a month to read, understand and accept a 2O0 page document that only a lawyer could understand. Our only alternative was not to vote, allowing membership more time to absorb the information and therefore not killing the agreement altogether. If one were to combine the no vote of 106 and the spoiled ballots of 13 with the members that did not vote (the majority of which would have voted no) the outcome would have been a majority no vote, and the deal would be dead on the table. By not getting a majority 51%, there will be another vote. Therefore giving the Peguis First Nation members more time to understand this historic agreement. Below are some reasons why people chose not to vote: Need more time to understand agreement and possibly recommend some changes in the community approval process? Since the last election which was held in 2005, 2200 members were taken off the list, reducing the members