_ __ _____ __ _ __ ___ ____ _ __ ___ ' ) / / ') / / ) ' ) ) / ) / ' ) ) / ) / / / / / / /--/ / / / ___ / / / / ___ (_(_/ (__/ ( / (_ / (_ (___/ '__/_ / (_ (___/ ' ____ _ , ___ _ , ___ / ' ) / / ) ' ) / / ' VOLUME 15, ISSUE 042 / /-< / /--/ /-- __/_ / ) (___/ / ( (___, WOTANGING IKCHE - Lakota - Common News Wotanging Ikche and Native American News Copyright c. 1996-2007 nanews.org Aboriginal/AmerIndian Perspective about the First Nations of Turtle Island October 15, 2007 Abenaki Penibagos/leaf falling moon Yuchi Tsotohostane/corn ripening moon Potawatomi E'sksegtukkisis/moon of the first frost +-------------------------------------------------------+ | 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.indianz.com; www.pechanga.net; www.indiancountrytoday.com; Mailing List: Mohawk Nation News 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 Quotes: + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + "Vernon was a great representative of the Ojibwe Nation and one of the great communicators of our generation." "He was the best at getting across the message of treaty rights, human rights, mascots and racism to people from the grass-roots all the way to national officials." __ William A. Means, Oglala - speaking of Vernon Bellecourt, who took his Spirit Journey October 13, 2007 +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ | Indian Pledge of Allegiance | The Indian Pledge of Alleg- | | iance was first presented | I pledge allegiance to my Tribe,| on 2 December '93 during the | to the democratic principles | opening address of the Nat- | of the Republic | ional Congress of American | and to the individual freedoms | Indian Tribal-States Relat- | borrowed from the Iroquois and | ions Panel in Reno, NV. NCAI | Choctaw Confederacies, | plans distribution of the | as incorporated in the United | Indian Pledge to all Indian | States Constitution, | Nations. | so that my forefathers | | shall not have died in vain | Walk in Beauty! Night Owl +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ | Journey | In the summer and early fall | The Bloodline | of 1998 the Treaty Unity Riders | | rode a thousand miles on horse- | For all that live and live by law | back, carrying a staff and | We Stand, we Call, We Ride | praying each step of the way. | For All that fear and fear by sight | | We Hear, we Listen, we Ride | These prayers were offered for | For all that pray and pray by strength| each of us, and that the Unity | We Feel, we Move, we Ride | of all Peoples might happen. | For all that die and die by greed | | We Hurt, we Cry, we Ride | Tatanka Cante forwarded this | For all that birth and birth by right | poem on behalf of all the Unity | We Smile, we Hold, we Ride | Riders that we might stop and | For all that need and need by heart | ask if the next words we say, the | We Came, we Went, we Rode. | next act we make is for the good | | of the People or is it from ego | Treaty Unity Riders | for self. +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ O'siyo Brothers and Sisters The editorial this week is not from my pen (keyboard). It is straight from the Indian Trust website http://www.indiantrust.com/ maintained by the Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund, Inc. The message is from primary litigant Elouise Cobell, and is one of extreme importance to all of Indian Country. Whether you will ultimately be a recipient of the Indian Trust settlement or not, the decisions arrived at in this eleven-year-long class-action suit will impact every single human in the United States who identifies him or her self as Indian. --- U.S. District Judge James Robertson has agreed to our request for another trial in our case. Among other things this trial should determine whether the government is able to provide a fair and accurate accounting of the thousands of trust accounts in accordance with traditional equitable terms, what has happened to our Individual Indian Money accounts and whether the government has corrected the breaches of its fiduciary duties which the court previously has found to exist. The trial will be a momentous event, one that we have been seeking for 11 years. Not surprisingly, the government resisted our request. It urged Judge Robertson to do nothing while it continues it slow pace of attempting to reconstruct trust accounts. Even the government lawyers had to concede to the judge they have no idea how long this will take or how much money it will cost. True to his promise not to "dawdle" on our case, Judge Robertson has swung into action. We are grateful for his decisiveness. This is his first major decision in our case. It is a hopeful omen for all 500,000 Indian Trust beneficiaries. But the road ahead remains difficult. The trial has been set for Oct. 10 in Washington. It will be preceded by many hearings. One thing is certain. The government will continue to resist our efforts to secure this basic right of an accounting of our trust assets. They will, no doubt, continue to seek ways to reduce the number of individuals covered by the accounting, an issue that they have raised at every court hearing and in Congress. We will resist these moves because both the U.S. District Court and the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia have stated repeatedly that the accounting is our right under the trust laws that govern the conduct of the U.S. government. Yes, the courts have held, the Interior Department is not above the laws that long have govern the trust operations of banks and other financial institutions. That is a principle that we think is crucial to our lawsuit. Be assured we will continue to resist the government's efforts to undo our victory on that point. Meanwhile, a lot of foolish things continue to come out of the Justice Department these days. A March 1 letter from Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has to fall in that category. The letter went to Chairman Byron Dorgan of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and it proposed that Congress spend $7 billion during 10 years on various Indian programs. Some news reports called this a "settlement offer" for the Cobell litigation. As I told the committee at a March 29 hearing, whatever this letter purports to be, it is not a proposal to settle the Cobell case. Make no mistake about it; this letter clearly seeks to terminate the individual Indian Trust. It would eliminate our hard-won right for Indian Trust beneficiaries to an adequate accounting of their Individual Indian money accounts. And it destroy any opportunity for monetary relief for the losses that an accounting is certain to uncover. Consider the $7 billion figure. Interior's own experts have estimated that the government's liability in the Cobell case alone to be at least $10 billion and perhaps as high as $40 billion. But the Kempthorne-Gonzales letter proposes a $7 billion cap that would eliminate "all existing and potential individual and tribal claims for trust accounting, cash and land mismanagement, and other related claims, along with the resolution of other related matters . . . that permit recurrence of . . . litigation." In other words, it would kill our lawsuit, leaving trust beneficiaries no chance of recovering the monies that the government took from their accounts decades ago. It's a cheap fix to problems that the government - not the Indian trust beneficiaries - created. And the administration wants all those problems settled on the backs of the Individual Indian Account Beneficiaries. I have stated repeatedly that we will not sacrifice the more than 120 years of wrongdoing by the government for a quick settlement that would deny Indian people the money that is theirs. Elouise Cobell Copyright c. 2007 Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund, Inc. All rights reserved. ' ' Gary Smith (*,*) wotanging@bellsouth.net P. O. Box 672168 (`-') gars@nanews.org Marietta, GA 30007, U.S.A. ===w=w=== http://www.nanews.org ----------- News of the people featured in this issue ----------- Editorial Section: - YELLOW BIRD: Adoptees . Indian Trust Lawsuit feel Yearning to come Home - Cason concludes testimony - EDITORIAL: ICWA shouldn't in Cobell Trust Trial hurt Indian Children - American Indian Trust Suit - HARJO: could total Billions Restore NAGPRA to original intent - How Interior intends - JODI RAVE: Climate change to fill in Account Gaps hits home with the Sami - Samish Nation argues - GIAGO: for Fishing Rights American Indians are not Mascots - Schaghticoke Tribal Nation - HARJO: seeks Restoration - Part 2 Vernon Bellecourt (1931-2007) - Student Mobility poses challenges - Ontario's violations to Achievement of Indigenous Rights - Tribal Chairmen stung - Attempted destruction over BIA no-show of Ganienkeh Indian Project - Onondaga Nation seeks - MNN Book "Who's Sorry Now" to keep Land Claim alive - First Nation wants apology - Mascots focus from mining CEO of Green Bay Conference - Lawsuits settled - Senecas may enter over Port Angeles Burial Site Energy Business - Band says it will pull out - Grand Traverse Band of law agreement plans Municipal Marina - Omaha Tribe's Court - Chitimacha to develop to hear non-Indian challenge Rosetta Stone Software - Curb sexual violence - ICT EDITORIAL: Who we are against Native Women - GIAGO: - Native Justice Stop trying to rename 'Indians' -- New hotline to report - BARKMAN: Trail of Tears Crime on Tribal Lands starts with Columbus - Rustywire: She was Seneca - Del "Abe" Jones Poem: Jim Thorpe --------- "RE: Cason concludes testimony in Cobell Trust Trial" --------- Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 09:15:44 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="CASON TESTIMONY" http://indianz.com/News/2007/005350.asp Cason concludes testimony in Cobell trust trial October 12, 2007 The Bush administration only plans to account for about half of the money in the Indian trust fund, a senior official testified on Thursday. In December 1999, the Interior Department was ordered to account for "all funds" in the Individual Indian Money (IIM) trust. A federal appeals court upheld the ruling in February 2001. But the Bush administration's latest accounting plan appears to fall short of that goal. Jim Cason, the associate deputy secretary at the Department of the Interior, said only 50 to 55 percent of the money in the IIM trust will be reconciled. On his last day on the stand, Cason also defended the government's management of the trust. He said the accounting work so far -- which is largely based on electronic data from 1985 through the present -- has turned up no "systemic" errors. "Generally, the system works very well," Cason testified under cross- examination by the Cobell plaintiffs. But Cason was forced to admit the department has never fulfilled at least one of its duties to Indian landowners. "It's my understanding that we've never had a regular, periodic accounting," he said. The Indian trust was created in the late 1800s as a result of the allotment of tribal lands to individual Indians. Since the early 1900s, the government says around $11.7 billion has passed through the system. The plaintiffs say at least $13 billion, and possibly more, has been received. Some Interior officials, including Special Trustee Ross Swimmer, have asserted that the government has always had a duty to account for these funds. Cason didn't necessarily think that was the case when asked about the lack of prior reconciliation of the IIM trust. "The Department of the Interior did not anticipate 100 years later that we would have to do this kind of accounting," he said. But the department did anticipate that Indian landowners would have to pay some of the services they receive from the government. Although Cason and other officials have characterized the trust as a "free" system, he admitted to a "handful" of administrative fees. "In large part, we don't charge fees" except for a "few cases," Cason said. The administration's May 2007 historical accounting plan, however, won't tell Indian landowners how much they have paid the government, Cason acknowledged. Cason also said the plan doesn't address an unresolved U.S. Supreme Court decision. In 1997, the justices said Interior violated the constitutional rights of Indian landowners by forcing them to give up their property without just compensation. The Youpee case affected property owned by about 18,000 individual Indians in the Great Plains and the Midwest. Due to fractionation and probate proceedings, the department has estimated that 775,000 land interests need to be resolved. "I don't know the exact figure," Cason said. "They're very tiny interests." The department could revert the interests back to their proper owners or compensate them, Cason said. But when asked whether any final decisions about the Youpee interests have been made, he replied "No." "We're not doing an accounting for land," he added. After a few rebuttal questions from the Department of Justice, Cason concluded his testimony yesterday morning. The government called its next witness, Kathy Ramirez, an employee of the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians. Ramirez works at the American Indian Records Repository in Lenexa, Kansas, where millions of records that are being used for the historical accounting are stored. "It's in a cave," she told the court. Ramirez testified about the massive indexing and retrieval system at the AIRR. "I think it's rather impressive," she said of the overall facility, which houses several government agencies as well as commercial entities. Ramirez didn't have any specific knowledge about the historical accounting of the IIM trust. Her testimony was mainly limited to record keeping practices and a photo presentation of the AIRR. Judge James Robertson, a Clinton appointee who was assigned the case late last year after the removal of Judge Royce Lamberth, has expressed an interest in seeing the facility as part of the trial. The next witness was Michelle Herman, one of the many consultants who has been hired by the government as part of the Cobell case. She took the stand late in the day on Thursday. The proceedings are set to resume today. Robertson has set aside Fridays to address motions, legal issues and administrative matters. Testimony from witnesses is expected to take place Mondays through Thursdays. Copyright c. 2007 Indianz.com. --------- "RE: American Indian Trust Suit could total Billions" --------- Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 09:15:44 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="TRUST SUIT" http://pechanga.net/NativeNews.html http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/ stories/2007/10/12/indian_1014.html American Indian trust suit could total billions Big Atlanta law firm has long history with case By BILL TORPY The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 13, 2007 It has taken 120 years, Elouise Cobell said, but Indians throughout the nation are situated to finally get a glimmer of justice in a Washington, D.C., courtroom. Cobell, a Blackfoot Indian from Montana, is lead plaintiff in a massive class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Interior, demanding an accounting for nearly 11 million acres that was parceled up and put into individual trusts for Native Americans in 1887 under the Dawes Act. The government deemed Indians incapable of handling the land responsibly, so it administered financial matters. The bitter legal odyssey involving a major Atlanta law firm is again in federal court as a judge must decide how the government will determine how much is owed to some 500,000 Indians whose land has been leased to timber, ranching, farming, oil and mining operations. Billions of dollars could be at stake. "This is the big trial, the trial that we have waited for years," Cobell said before opening statements Wednesday. Proponents of the suit - filed in 1996 - say it's a classic case of David vs. Goliath. But in this case, David has a large slingshot in the form of Kilpatrick Stockton, a large, international law firm based in Atlanta. The logistics and the numbers involved in the case are staggering. The circumstances surrounding the case often border on the preposterous. The judge has held three Cabinet members in contempt of court and ordered the Department of Interior to disconnect its computers from the Internet to secure Indian trust data. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth also labeled the department racist. He was removed from the case last year by an appeals court after government attorneys argued that he sounded as if he leaned toward the plaintiff's table. Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, one of three Cabinet members held in contempt, has said a 1999 ruling would cost the department more than $12 billion if it had to trace back every one of the 365,000 "Individual Indian Money" accounts back to 1887. There have been more than 100 million transactions in those accounts. Millions of records have been destroyed. Millions more lost. Many have been contaminated by rat feces and must be accessed by workers wearing moon suits. With the court decisions, the government faces an impossible task, Cobell said. "The government cannot do an accounting [of all parcels] and they know it. And if they can't do it, they have to stand up and admit it," Cobell said. "But they'll be liable for our money. It's our money." The suit is not about money per se. It's to determine who is owed what. But this case almost certainly will lead to another claim, one for repayment. Accountants for Cobell's team have determined the government owes Indians $176 billion, a figure that includes a century of interest. Ross Swimmer, who as head of the Interior Department's Special Trustee for American Indians oversees the effort to fix the trust, said such figures are simply a call for reparations. The government, in response to the lawsuit and a related law, built a facility in Kansas, has collected 400 million pages of Indian documents and is wading through them to trace payments. "We want to prove the system has worked and has paid out the income to the proper beneficiaries virtually from the start," said Swimmer, a former Cherokee principal chief. The government, in a worst-case scenario, owes millions, not billions, he said. Often, because of "fractionalization" or the generational multiplication of heirs for each tract, Indians often receive monthly checks totaling a few cents. Of 30 million trust transactions between 1985 and 2000, he said 20 million were for less than $1. Recipients "tend to take the check and frame it and say how ridiculous it is," Swimmer said. Last year, Congress stepped into the fray and floated a figure of $8 billion to settle this and other Indian cases. Cobell called that figure inadequate and said Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has purposely dragged out the lawsuit to wear down its opponents. "Their tactic was to run us out of money and then we'd finally pick up and go home," she said of the case, which has generated more than 3,500 docket entries, enough to fill a room at the courthouse. Cobell has raised millions of dollars to pursue the suit. But plaintiffs gained staying power a decade ago when they brought in Kilpatrick Stockton, a silk- stocking firm with deep Atlanta roots and deeper pockets. Peter Rutledge, a Catholic University of America law professor who has followed the case, said bringing on a large firm like Kilpatrick allows the plaintiffs "to handle the scorched-earth policy of the government." "Because the stakes are so high," Rutledge said, "everyone feels they must slug it out for a while to get in the best position for negotiations." Kilpatrick partner Elliot Levitas, a former congressman from Georgia, was brought into the case a decade ago by a friend from his days as a student at Oxford University. The 76-year-old lawyer is clearly enjoying himself. Behind his desk is a courtroom artist's rendition of Levitas cross-examining Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who angrily waves a finger at his inquisitor. Babbitt, a lawyer himself, said he felt like he was pistol-whipped. Levitas took that as a compliment. Also, the case is a bit more spiritually rewarding than many others because large firms often represent established interests. "In this case, we're representing the good guys," Levitas said. Asked if the firm was handling the case for free, Levitas replied laughing, "Oh, Lord, no. If so, I'll be sorely disappointed." He added that the firm, if successful, could get a "substantial" fee. Kilpatrick Stockton has spent millions of dollars pursuing the case and has at least a dozen attorneys working on it, including co-managing partner William Dorris. "We bring anyone we can and put them on the front lines," Levitas said. The case has helped the firm expand into another potentially lucrative area. "We have established a considerable Native American law practice," Levitas said. That includes litigating environmental issues on reservations, handling other trust cases, real estate and financing matters, and casinos. "There never has been a case like this" Levitas said with a gush of enthusiasm. "This is an epical, historical piece of litigation. It'll be studied in law school for years." The case has been a history lesson. In 1887, Indian families and individuals were allotted 40- to 160-acre parcels and encouraged to farm or ranch. The thought was this would "civilize" them, Lamberth, the previous judge in the case, noted in a ruling. He added that the system was soon seen as "an abysmal failure." Lamberth wrote that Interior is "a dinosaur - the morally and culturally oblivious hand-me-down of a disgracefully racist and imperialist government that should have been buried a century ago, the last pathetic outpost of the indifference and anglo-centrism we thought we had left behind." But a federal appeals court, at Interior's urging, last year ruled the judge went too far in his rulings and removed him, saying there was an appearance of bias. A new judge will determine which course to take - the plaintiff's desire for a full historical accounting with reconstruction of records for all individual accounts ever held, or the government's request for a limited accounting, including statistical sampling. Few believe any resolution in the case is on the horizon. Asked if the case would still be active next year, Swimmer, the government trustee, laughed and said, "Ohhh, yeah." Copyright c. 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. --------- "RE: How Interior intends to fill in Account Gaps" --------- Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 06:32:11 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="LATEST DoI SHUFFLE" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://newsok.com/article/3145175/1192077364 How agency intends to fill in account gaps By Chris Casteel Washington Bureau October 11, 2007 WASHINGTON - The Department of Interior has a plan to provide all American Indians who have individual trust accounts with an accurate historical record of their account activity and balances, a government attorney told a federal judge on Wednesday. On the first day of a new trial in a long-running Indian trust case, Justice Department attorney Robert Kirschman said the Interior Department should be allowed to continue conducting the historical accounting of individual Indian trust accounts that has cost taxpayers more than $127 million in the past four years. "An historical accounting can be and is being accomplished," Kirschman said. "There is no unreasonable delay." But an attorney for the Indians who sued the government in 1996 said the government's plan was devised not to provide accurate historical records but to limit its own liability. "We are dealing with data that has been distorted over the years and is being used to protect the U.S. government," Dennis Gingold said. What is the trial's focus? * The new trial will focus on the Interior Department's plan to provide an estimated 500,000 Indians - about 53,000 of them in Oklahoma - with reliable information that goes back, in some cases, to 1938. * The government has made a plan that would rely on millions of available records and on statistical sampling to fill in gaps where records might be missing. The government has estimated the accounting could be completed by 2011. What is alleged? * The Indians, led by Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana, claim too many documents have been lost or destroyed to perform a reliable historical accounting. Copyright c. 2007 The Oklahoman/News 9, Produced by NewsOK.com. --------- "RE: Samish Nation argues for Fishing Rights" --------- Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 07:49:34 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="SAMISH TRY TO REGAIN FISHING RIGHTS" http://www.indianz.com/News http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/335064_samish11.html Samish Tribe tries to regain fishing rights it lost 2 decades ago By VANESSA HO P-I REPORTER October 11, 2007 The Samish Tribe was back in federal court Wednesday, arguing for a motion to revisit a landmark ruling that stripped the Northwest tribe of its fishing rights more than 25 years ago. Tribal Chairman Tom Wooten said the tribe isn't asking for anything extraordinary, "just what has been rightfully ours all along." "We want to partner equally in the harvest and production of our shared natural resources," he said. The 2 1/2-hour hearing in a Seattle courtroom was filled with technical terms and references to complex rulings and remands. But what's at stake is clearcut: the dwindling fishing harvests near Bellingham and the San Juan Islands. The U.S. government has taken a neutral position on the motion. The Samish are arguing they are the successors to aboriginal tribes that fished in those areas -- tribes already legally ruled as part of the history of the Lummi, Upper Skagit and Swinomish. Attorneys for opposing coastal tribes argued that the Samish were tardy in filing their motion to reopen the ruling and have "flip-flopped" in their arguments. "We could lose an essential piece of our very identity. Samish wants to strip us of that," said Jim Jannetta, attorney for the Swinomish Indian Tribe. "We will lose these precious rights." The hearing comes two years after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that federal recognition of a tribe "is a sufficient condition for the exercise of treaty rights." The Samish, after losing their federal recognition decades ago, won it back in 1995. The appellate decision reversed an earlier ruling by a judge who said the Anacortes-based tribe had no right to reopen the Boldt decision, the ruling that took away the Samish's fishing rights while giving other Puget Sound-area tribes half the salmon harvest. The Samish have been fighting the federal government off and on since 1969, when a low-level Bureau of Indian Affairs official mysteriously dropped the Samish from a list of recognized tribes, even though the tribe had been recognized since 1855. The tribe then went to court to regain its status. But that was long after U.S. District Judge George Boldt ruled that the Samish and four other tribes were not entitled to treaty status in 1979. His last act on the bench and done while suffering from Alzheimer's disease, it was a virtual rubber stamp of a government-proposed order. "What happens today will benefit my great-grandchildren," said Shirely Olsen, a 71-year-old Samish Indian member, excited to be in court. Around her were fellow tribal members, some in traditional woven cedar- bark hats, who packed the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez. "It's the young people's future," Olsen said. If Martinez rules in favor of the Samish, it would be the beginning of a series of hearings and conferences on whether to allow the tribe to exercise fishing rights. P-I reporter Vanessa Ho can be reached at 206-448-8003 or vanessaho@seattlepi.com. Copyright c. 1996-2007 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. --------- "RE: Schaghticoke Tribal Nation seeks Restoration" --------- Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:34:18 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="RESTORATION OF FEDERALK RECOGNITION - PART 2" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415909 Schaghticoke Tribal Nation seeks restoration of federal acknowledgement by: Gale Courey Toensing / Indian Country Today October 12, 2007 Part two (Editor's note: This article continues the story of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation's motion for summary judgment in its appeal of the BIA's unprecedented decision to withdraw the tribe's federal acknowledgement 18 months after the agency issued a Final Determination recognizing the tribe. The tribe claims that unlawful political influence, an unauthorized decision-maker, and substantive errors of interpretation and methodology resulted in the reversal of its federal status. The tribe's attorneys have included more than 1,200 pages of e-mails and other documents received through Freedom of Information Act requests as evidence to support their claims.) NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Political pressure on the Interior Department to reverse the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation's federal acknowledgement intensified in the fall of 2004 when a group of wealthy citizens in Kent, where the tribe has a 400-acre reservation, formed an anti-Indian recognition/casino group called TASK (Town Action to Save Kent) to try to overturn the tribe's recognition, according to the tribe's motion for summary judgment in its appeal of the BIA's decision to withdraw the tribe's federal acknowledgement. TASK hired lobbyist Barbour, Griffith and Rogers to do the job. "Our role will be to coordinate and enhance local, state and federal political as well as legislative efforts in tandem with legal strategies to convince BIA/Interior to reject the [tribe's] petition," BGR's Loren Monroe said in an e-mail to Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell. "Ironically, the same politicians who had at one time accused the Tribe of hiring high priced lobbyists to place undue political pressure on the Department now welcomed BGR with open arms," the tribe's attorneys wrote. BGR Vice President Bradley Blakeman, formerly President Bush's deputy assistant for appointments and scheduling, used his White House ties to meet and communicate about the tribe with high-level White House staff, including Barry Jackson, President Bush's deputy assistant and deputy to Senior Adviser Karl Rove, and Susan Ralston, Rove's executive assistant, the motion says. State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal encouraged BGR to "go directly to the administration and ask that [a] clear message be sent to the Secretary of Interior and the BIA" at a meeting with TASK founders, even after he was chastised by Senior U.S. District Judge Peter Dorsey for an ex parte meeting with then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton. "The regulations do not permit participants in the process - or their proxies - to present arguments and evidence in secret, ex parte meetings, letters or other communications to the agency, nor do they permit anyone to subvert the acknowledgement process by pressuring agency decision makers to deny a petition regardless of its merits through such ex parte communications," the attorneys wrote. In addition to unlawful political influence, the tribe's attorneys argue that the Reconsidered Final Determination is invalid because Associate Deputy Secretary James Cason was not authorized to issue it. His appointment by Norton as assistant secretary of Indian affairs violated both the Constitution's Appointments Clause and the Vacancies Reform Act, because he was not a presidential nominee confirmed by the Senate - a requirement for those acting as a "principal officer of the United States." "Lacking authority to act as he did, his decision is, by operation of law, null and void" and cannot be ratified retroactively, the attorneys wrote. Even Blumenthal acknowledged the Senate-approved presidential-nominee requirement in a letter to then-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, asking Bush to replace then-BIA head Dave Anderson. "I am making this request to the President rather than to [Norton] because the [AS-IA] is a presidential appointment," Blumenthal wrote. Cason's claim during a deposition that he was oblivious to the maelstrom of political pressure on Interior is belied by his own 2005 job performance self-assessment - a document Interior withheld until ordered by a federal judge in mid-September to release it under the FOI Act. In listing his "accomplishments" under "ability to manage high visibility issues," Cason noted his decision to reverse the acknowledgements of the Schaghticoke and Eastern Pequot tribal nations. "These were particularly controversial decisions involving an emotional Connecticut delegation and Governor's office and Indian entities that had been recognized by a predecessor Assistant Secretary," Cason wrote. Additionally, the attorneys provide lengthy arguments to show that the RFD was unlawfully arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable regarding the issues of state recognition, and the tribe's endogamous marriage rate during a few years in the 19th century. In remanding the tribe's FD back to the BIA for "further work and reconsideration," the Interior Board of Indian Appeals had asked the BIA to provide more analysis of the "probative value" of state recognition to supplement evidence of political authority during periods when direct evidence was minimal, and to re-examine the tribe's endogamous - or intratribal -marriages. "[T]he Department did the exact opposite. As a result of political pressure, or perhaps outright incompetence, the Department misread the IBIA opinion," concluding without explanation that the state's centuries- old recognition of the tribe has no probative value, the attorneys wrote. In so doing, the RFD also ignored a policy decision made by Norton and the BIA/OFA staff after a deliberative process that as a matter of "constitutional principles of federalism," the tribe's hundreds of years of state recognition merited important consideration. The IBIA did not and could not by law reverse that policy decision, the attorneys said. Finally, the attorneys argue that the RFD's claim that the tribe's endogamous marriage rates wrongly counted individuals instead of marriages and therefore did not meet the 50 percent threshold to count as evidence of political authority was arbitrary, capricious and illogical. It ignored precedent, the regulations, and expert testimony that all marriage rates are to be calculated by the number of individuals, not marriages, which would unreasonably require 100 percent of tribal members to marry each other in order to reach a 50 percent threshold of endogamous marriages. Interior and the state have until Nov. 8 to respond to the tribe's motion, followed by the tribe's reply by Nov. 23. The tribe asked the judge to restore its federal recognition, but has maintained its right to a trial if the court rules against its request, and has asked for independent adjudication if the petition is sent back to the BIA. "In light of the agency's susceptibility to undue influence and the significant impact a decision not to acknowledge the tribe would have on the lives of the Tribe's members, should the Court find that remand is appropriate, the Court should require a formal agency adjudication, including a full evidentiary hearing before the agency with the right to present evidence and cross-examine experts before a neutral administrative law judge, or, in the alternative, a U.S. Magistrate Judge," the attorneys wrote. Copyright c. 1998 - 2007 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Student Mobility poses challenges to Achievement" --------- Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:32:51 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="EDUCATION CHALLENGES" http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/10/10/07native.h27.html Mobility of Native American Students Can Pose Challenges to Achievement Educators hope classroom initiatives help overcome impact of turnover. By Mary Ann Zehr Rapid City, S.D. Education Week Volume 27, Issue 6 October 9, 2007 In her eight years as North Middle School's principal, Jeanne Burckhard has been able to point with pride to better attendance, fewer discipline problems, and a program to ensure that low-income students don't go hungry on weekends, so they're better able to learn on Monday mornings. But she continues to be frustrated by an obstacle to achievement that seems particularly pronounced among the Native American students who make up 61 percent of the school's enrollment: high mobility. The turnover rate for North Middle students last year was 50 percent overall - meaning that half the school's 468 students came or went after the start of the school year. Many of them were Native Americans. And instability carries a cost. Ms. Burckhard cites the steady coming and going of students as one reason the school has always failed to make adequate yearly progress, or AYP, goals under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. To improve student achievement, North Middle has launched new teaching strategies, after-school tutoring, and family-outreach efforts that - if successful - could hold lessons for other urban and low-income schools with high student turnover. Missing Out Experts who study student mobility confirm what educators here in Rapid City, S.D., observe: Children who frequently change schools tend to fall behind academically. "Particularly in mathematics, students may miss important content being taught if curricula [between schools] aren't aligned or concepts are taught in different ways," said David Kerbow, a senior research associate at the Center for Urban School Improvement at the University of Chicago, who has studied student mobility in Chicago's public schools. And the risks can be long-term. "One of the consistent findings in the dropout literature is that students who have changed schools many times for elementary and middle school are more likely to drop out in high school," said Mr. Kerbow. Students who don't move, but attend a school with high student mobility, also are shortchanged because the school tends to slow down the pace of covering the curriculum to accommodate those who are mobile, he said. Mr. Kerbow's research also shows a correlation between poverty and student mobility. At North Middle, 89 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. In Chicago, Mr. Kerbow said, the students who tend to move the most are African-American and those who move the least are white or Asian-American. "One thing that is different between the low-income and middle-class families in Chicago, in particular, is that the poor families tend to have multiple school moves across their elementary school careers. Middle-class families have moves, but they aren't multiple moves," which, he said, are the most devastating for learning. Another student-mobility expert, Russell W. Rumberger, the director of the Linguistic Minority Research Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said schools need to pay better attention to the social needs as well as the academic needs of mobile students. "The social side is getting them to feel they fit in," he said. Mr. Rumberger said public schools have something to learn from U.S. Department of Defense schools in that respect. "There's a lot of mobility in the military, but there's a strong social-support system for families moving from base to base," he said. Limited Data Statistics are limited on the mobility of Native American and Alaska Native students, who make up just 1.2 percent of public school students nationally. But an analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics, by an NCES researcher for Education Week, found that 15.7 percent of American Indian or Alaska Native sophomores in 2002 changed schools in their last two years of high school, compared with 7 percent of white sophomores and 8.5 percent of Asian sophomores. That rings true to some American Indian educators, and it can be a particular challenge in at least five states, where the Native American enrollment is more than 10 percent. "We seem to have higher mobility of students when the school district is close to a reservation and economic factors come into play, such as the availability of jobs," said Cathie Carothers, a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the acting director of the office of Indian education in the U.S. Department of Education. Ms. Carothers said schools often use funds under Title VII of NCLB - which authorized $95 million for Native American students under that section of the law last school year - for tutoring, improving attendance, or increasing graduation rates. "Students have a hard time meeting requirements for graduation if there is a lot of mobility," she said. In Montana, where one in 10 students enrolled in public schools is Native American, student mobility is especially high in urban areas, according to Mandy Smoker Broaddus, the specialist on American Indian achievement for the Montana education department. "It's a problem because families in poverty tend not to have stable housing. Kids move around with different family members," said Ms. Broaddus, who is a member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribes. She has experienced some of this mobility in her own family, she noted. When her brother was struggling to support his five children and when she was a single woman attending graduate school, he sent one of his sons to live with her for two of the boy's high school years. Catching Up While North Middle can't yet point to a reduction in its student mobility, the school has implemented a number of strategies to help students who have gaps in their education. Mary Bowman, a member of the Oglala Lakota and Hunkpapa Lakota tribes, is an outreach assistant whose salary is paid with Title VII funds. She works one-on-one with 15 to 20 Native American students in their classes - and never assumes that a student who leaves will be gone for good. "If I start a folder for a kid, I don't get rid of it," she said. The school's principal uses NCLB Title I funds to pay her teachers $20 per hour for after-school tutoring, and to reduce class sizes during the regular school day to an average of 17 students. On a recent fall day, teacher Jackie Swanson credited the workshop approach with helping her to integrate Kiawna Daniels, a new student who arrived that day, into her 8th grade writing class. Ms. Swanson, a Yankton Sioux who was born and raised in Rapid City, had already greeted the new student warmly in the school office that morning. The 14-year-old from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe had started the school year several weeks before at West Middle School, in Rapid City, where she'd enrolled halfway through 6th grade. Before that, she'd attended elementary school on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota. The school also is pushing hard to reduce truancy and absenteeism. Truancy officers - and the principal - visit students' homes if needed, and have been known to coax students out of bed and to school. Coupling that with a softer approach, Ms. Burckhard has begun a reward program in which students receive $20 in "play money" every day that they get to school by 1st period. They can trade that for school supplies, T- -shirts, shampoo, and even more expensive items such as skateboards, all of which come from local donors. Over eight years, the school's attendance rate has increased to 92 percent from about 85 percent. Cultural Approach Other educators here believe that additional efforts, such as offering a Lakota language and culture class, which began last school year, will motivate Native American students to attend and do well in school. In the 16 years that he's worked at North Middle, said Bryant High Horse Jr., a school counselor and member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, the school has come a long way in being more sensitive to Native American culture and "parent connections." He teaches the Lakota language and culture class at the school. But he is well aware of the pressures on Native American families that can result in a transient student population. "In the fall to spring, they are able to find jobs, but no housing, so they will live in motels," Mr. High Horse said. During the summer and the tourist season, the cost of staying in the motels increases, and they move back to reservations. Then comes the fall. The families return to Rapid City, he said, "to a different motel - and a different school." Native American Enrollment While American Indian or Alaska Native students make up 1.2 percent of all public school enrollment nationally, some states have much higher proportions of such students. SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, 2004 data Addressing Student Mobility * Develop a personal connection with parents so they have a direct point of contact at school, even if the family moves. * Create a standard way to quickly assess students who enroll after the start of a school year, particularly in math, reading, and writing. * Devise a portfolio of student work that can travel with the student from one school to the next. * Forge links between schools so that staff members can share information about the needs of students who move from school to school. * Support teachers in helping to integrate students into classes. SOURCE: David Kerbow, University of Chicago Coverage of new schooling arrangements and classroom improvement efforts is supported by a grant from the Annenberg Foundation. Education Week is Copyright c. 2007 Editorial Projects in Education. --------- "RE: Tribal Chairmen stung over BIA no-show" --------- Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:32:51 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ARTMAN DISRESPECTS GREAT PLAINS TRIBAL CHAIRMEN" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415895 Tribal chairmen stung over BIA no-show by: David Melmer / Indian Country Today October 9, 2007 ABERDEEN, S.D. - Leaders of Great Plains tribes who had gathered Sept. 28 to meet with BIA officials walked out when they realized that Assistant Secretary Carl Artman would not be present. Tribal leaders had expected some high-ranking official from the BIA, namely Assistant Secretary Carl Artman, to attend. The meeting was called to gather ideas and information about the bureau's proposed modernization. Thirteen members of the 16-member Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association held a planning session the day before and they expected Artman to be present at the Sept. 28 meeting. Local BIA officials were present, as was Majel Russell, principal deputy assistant secretary. When the chairmen learned that Artman would not be in attendance, they asked all BIA officials to leave the meeting room. Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman Ron His Horse is Thunder then facilitated a meeting; and after each chairman had his or her say, they voted to walk out. His Horse is Thunder said because of the disrespect the BIA showed to the elected tribal leadership and to the tribes who signed the treaties by not sending top-level decision-makers, the tribal leadership voted with their feet and walked out. "As tribal leaders, we expected their leaders to come in. These consultation meetings are held and we are the last ones to know what is going on," said Myra Pearson, chairman of the Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe. "We found it an insult that they sent their support staff." Michael Jandreau, chairman of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and the elder statesmen of the tribal chairmen in the Great Plains, said, "Today the BIA has acted disrespectfully toward tribally elected leaders and at the very minimum they should have sent the assistant secretary to meet with tribal leaders." The tribal leaders have requested another meeting with Artman. Artman told Indian Country Today that he will try to make that meeting as long as the dates do not conflict with his schedule. "I heard the tribal leaders loud and clear in the Dakotas. We will have a meeting specifically to talk about the modernization," he said. "What you saw in South Dakota isn't represented everywhere." Meetings have taken place in the different regions; the final meeting was to take place in the Great Plains. "I understand where the tribal leaders are coming from. It shows a sign that there is a great interest in this. With that kind of interest, I will try my darndest to meet with them," he said. "There was no sign of disrespect. We would not overtly try to offend the tribal leaders; that is my last intent, never an intent. If that is what they left with it was mistaken," Artman said. Artman has asked the tribes across the nation for input that would help modernize the BIA because in the next few years many retirements will take place; and when those retirees leave, so will a vast amount of knowledge of Indian country and the bureau's workings in relationship to the tribes. He also said Congress will not increase the BIA budget anytime in the future, so some creative action must be taken. He added that he wants to hear suggestions and ideas from the tribal leaders. "The raw facts are while we are trying to increase the budget, they [Congress] decrease the budget," Artman said. "In the next five years, a lot of people are eligible for retirement, and if all of those chose to retire we will be in a world of hurt. We want to make sure we are thinking ahead of those issues. "It's always good to try to remain evolutionary and change to the surroundings. We are not your father's BIA or your grandfather's BIA; we have seen a lot of change with gaming compacting and the way that cities, counties, states and tribes relate," he said. Artman said that each region is different: some tribes that are self- governed don't want to see much change, while others have concerns over economic development and gaming and energy. He said the BIA is hearing from some tribes that they want the freedom to run things themselves. At other meetings, Artman said that other meetings have been productive even though there was some hesitation - not resistance - on the tribes' part. "I can understand why the hesitation. We are not the same old BIA; we should be changing how we communicate with tribes. "This [modernization] may be viewed with some suspicion, but this is something we need to work on. This is the BIA reaching out to tribes and we ask 'how can we make this better for you?"' Artman said. Discussions on this issue will take place at the NCAI convention in Denver, Nov. 11 - 16, Artman said. Copyright c. 1998 - 2007 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved --------- "RE: Onondaga Nation seeks to keep Land Claim alive" --------- Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 07:49:34 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ONONDAGA LAND CLAIM" http://www.indianz.com/News http://www.silive.com/newsflash/metro/index.ssf?/base/ news-23/119207737630540.xml&storylist=simetro Onondaga land claim to be argued in federal court By MICHAEL HILL The Associated Press October 11, 2007 ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - The Onondaga Indian Nation's claim to 4,000 square miles of land running down the middle of the state and comprising some of the largest cities in upstate New York was to be argued in court Thursday. The central New York tribe filed claim in 2005 to a swath of land up to 40 miles wide running north to south from the St. Lawrence River to the Pennsylvania state line. They argue that New York state illegally took the land from them centuries ago. New York, among other things, claims the Iroquois tribe waited to long to sue. The state will ask U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Kahn to dismiss the claim, which includes the cities of Binghamton, Oswego, Syracuse and Watertown. The Onondagas are not seeking monetary damages and insist they do not want to evict the roughly 875,000 residents of the disputed area. They say they want to spur a cleanup of Onondaga Lake, a waterway scared to the tribe, and other hazardous waste sites. "There is no attempt to take people off their land and evict them," tribal attorney Joseph Heath said on the eve of arguments. "Our case is about healing." Heath said that if tribal leaders get a judgment in their favor, they would hope to sit down with state officials to consider a range of options, such as a lease payment plan or a plan to help the Onondagas buy additional land from willing sellers. While the Onondagas today maintain an 11-mile-square reservation south of Syracuse, they had been spread over much of what is now central New York centuries ago at the height of the Iroquois Confederacy. The tribe claims the land - which they call their homeland "since the dawn of time" - was illegally taken by New York state through a series of five bogus treaties from 1788 through 1822. The Onondagas say crucial treaties were signed by unauthorized representatives and that the land takings are in violation of the U.S. Constitution, the 1784 Treaty of Fort Stanwix and the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua. Lawyers for the state cite a land claim by the Cayuga Indians that was dismissed by a federal appeals court which found they waited too long to file. The U.S. Supreme Court let that decision stand. New York also claims it is immune from the lawsuit under the Constitution unless the federal government joins as a plaintiff. Heath said the tribe has had "promising" signs from federal officials, though they have yet to say whether they will sign on to the lawsuit. Copyright c. 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. Copyright c. 2007 Staten Island Live LLC. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Mascots focus of Green Bay Conference" --------- Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:32:51 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="MASCOT ISSUE, AGAIN, STILL, YET..." http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2007/10/10/news/z01mascots1010.txt American Indian mascots focus of Green Bay conference By JOE ORSO | La Crosse Tribune October 10, 2007 A shirtless American Indian, wearing a feather in his headband, stands in boiling water with his arms bound. Matt Stewart found the drawing, which reads "Burn The Indians," on a locker at a high school. American Indian mascots, Stewart said, are what come to mind when most people think about native people. "They're trapped into this one-dimensional caricature," said Stewart, 28, a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse graduate student and regional coordinator for the Wisconsin Indian Education Association's "Indian" Mascot and Logo Task Force. This weekend, Stewart and others from the Coulee Region will head to Green Bay for a conference questioning the use of American Indian mascots and logos. The conference will end with a protest at Lambeau Field, where the Washington Redskins - whose nickname some newspapers refrain from printing - will play the Packers on Sunday. The conference and protest are part of ongoing effort by groups to ban images they say are detrimental to Indians and non-Indians alike. The conference also aims to raise awareness about an upcoming state Senate bill. The Senate Committee on Education is expected Oct. 18 to consider the bill, co-sponsored by state Rep. Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, that would require school boards prove their nicknames, logos and mascots don't promote discrimination or stereotyping. Local schools also have wrestled with the issue. The most recent change came in the Tomah School District, which voted last fall to drop its Indian nickname for a new mascot, later chosen as the Timberwolves. Others, such as the Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau Redmen, remain. "Small school districts have a lot more to worry about than logos and nicknames," said Harold Olson, G-E-T School Board president. "We are financially strapped. We're having all we can do to put forth a good education for our students." Olson said he's 50-50 on the mascot issue, but district residents have not expressed major complaints about the Redmen name. If the American Indian community spoke up, he said, they'd consider the issue. Dan Green, a lecturer at UW-La Crosse, said he has protested and criticized the use of American Indian mascots, nicknames and images for years. "How do we know Native Americans in this country? Land O'Lakes butter, Leinie's beer, Mutual of Omaha - the list goes on and on," Green said. Green said how people think about a group influences their behavior toward that group, and also how the group behaves. Suicide rates among American Indian and Alaskan Native people between 15 and 34 years old are 1.9 times higher than the national average for that age group, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We're saturated with one image - Native Americans in the past," Green said. "We learn nothing of their greatness." The Green Bay conference will feature Stephanie Fryberg, a University of Arizona professor whose research was integral to the American Psychological Association's resolution to recommend all American Indian mascots be retired. Joe Orso can be reached at (608) 791-8429 or jorso@lacrossetribune.com. Copyright c. 1997 - 2007 The La Crosse Tribune. All rights reserved. --------- "RE: Senecas May Enter Energy Business" --------- Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 07:35:56 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="SENECA MAY ACQUIRE POWER DAM" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://publicbroadcasting.net/wned/news.newsmain? action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1161835§ionID=1 Senecas May Enter Energy Business Mike Desmond October 8, 2007 BUFFALO - The Seneca Nation plans to take an active role in the future of the hydro-electric plant on the Kinzua Dam on the Allegheny Reservoir, a plant which relies on the lake covering Seneca land. When the dam was built in the Sixties, the Army Corps of Engineers siezed 10,000 acres of Seneca land for the project. Seneca President Maurice John says the nation has recovered that land under water. With the license for the power plant running out in 2015, he says the nation wants to take an active role in who gets the electricity and the profits from a re-licensed dam. "We're looking to maybe get into the energy business as a tribe because we can't just sit still and be a gaming tribe. We need to think about our future and energy may be part of that," said John. John says the Senecas have learned a lesson from being excluded from the re-licensing of the Niagara Power Project. Copyright c. 2007, WNED, PBS Buffalo, NY. --------- "RE: Grand Traverse Band plans Municipal Marina" --------- Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:32:51 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="PUBLIC MARINA PLANNED BY GRAND TRAVERSE" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.leelanaunews.com/blog/2007/10/09/tribe-plans-municipal-marina/ Tribe plans municipal marina October 9, 2007 Tribal officials have unveiled plans to build a 129 to 135-slip municipal marina in Peshawbestown that could be open for business as early as the 2008 boating season. The Tribal Council of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians took actions last week that could pave the way for the dredging and construction project to begin before the end of this year. As a sovereign nation, the tribe is not required to seek approval from Suttons Bay Township where its Peshawbestown reservation is located or from Leelanau County. Last Wednesday, however, the Tribal Council adopted a resolution to work with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a series of studies that will help determine the exact size and configuration of the marina. A second resolution adopted by the Tribal Council last week calls on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to give the tribe up to $950,000 through the federal government's Boating Infrastructure Grant (BIG) program to help pay for the project. Preliminary estimates put the project's overall pricetag at somewhere between $5 million and $6 million. The new marina would be located on West Grand Traverse Bay between Omena Bay and Suttons Bay. The upland portion of the marina would be located in what is now a parking lot directly across M-22 from the Tribal Administration building just north of the tribe's Eagletown Market gas station and convenience store. Most of the money for the marina project has yet to be appropriated, however, according to the tribe's general counsel, John Petoskey. He explained that as planning moves forward, the Tribal Council will be required to consider expenditures in relation to the tribe's Revenue Allocation Ordinance - a process that will require ongoing input from tribal members. In addition, Petoskey said, the permitting process outlined by the state and federal governments could take around six months to complete. Within that process, members of the public - not just tribal members - will have the opportunity to provide comments in writing and in person at several public hearings required by state and federal law. An agreement reached last month between several Michigan Indian tribes and the state of Michigan pertain to inland hunting and fishing rights and are unrelated to the marina proposal. A separate agreement based on the 1836 Treaty of Washington allows tribes to fish commercially in the Great Lakes, and years ago led to construction of a small marina in Peshawbestown that will continue to be used by tribal fishing tugs. Those agreements have little to do with the proposed new marina, however. Nonetheless, tribal officials say they recognize that the Lake Michigan bottomlands - unlike fish and game in the 1836 treaty area - are regulated by the State of Michigan and the U.S. government. The tribe will be required to lease the Lake Michigan bottomland from the state and seek approvals from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the new marina. Petoskey said the marina project is seen by tribal officials as an opportunity to diversify the tribe's economic base and as a complement to the tribe's existing commercial enterprises. Located within walking distance of a new tribal cultural museum now under construction in Peshawbestown - and within a stone's throw of the Leelanau Sands Casino - the new marina could increase gaming revenue at the casino by $1.4 million annually, according to a preliminary estimate prepared for the Tribal Council. If occupancy at the marina averages 60- percent, the marina could add $1.2 million to GTB coffers every year through slip rentals - transient, seasonal and long-term. Waiting lists at established marinas show a market exists for more boat slips locally. At 130 slips, the Northport municipal marina is roughly the same size as the one envisioned for Peshawbestown. "We have about 200 people on our waiting list for slips right now, and it takes years to get a slip," said Northport harbormaster Marv Wittig. "People around here can and will use more slips no matter where they're built." The waiting list is at least as long at the Suttons Bay Marina, which boasts more than 170 slips. The new GTB marina will have some features the neighboring marinas do not have, however. Many of the slips will be designated for larger yachts, up to 80 feet in length. The maximum size in many other local marinas is 60 feet. Current plans for the GTB Marina do not call for construction of a boat ramp, with emphasis mostly on accommodations for larger, "non-trailerable" boats. The tribe also operates its own wastewater treatment plant serving the Peshawbestown community. Its proximity to the marina will allow the tribe to provide "state of the art" pumpout facilities for yachts. Also envisioned are on-site bathroom, shower and laundry facilities as well as a fuel station, convenience store - and shuttle service to the casino and surrounding community. Neighbors just to the north of Peshawbestown in Leelanau Township have noted that tribal officials strenuously opposed construction of a marina at the proposed Timber Shores development. Input the tribe provided to state and federal agencies when the Timber Shores developer proposed a marina ended up scuttling that part of the project. Tribal officials claimed that whitefish spawning beds in the area could be damaged if the Timber Shores marina was constructed. Tribal officials note that no whitefish spawning beds are believed to be located near the proposed GTB Marina. The developer of Timber Shores, Fred Gordon, told the Enterprise this week that he wishes the tribe well in developing its own marina. "We had a very cordial negotiation with the tribe," Gordon said. "Our project has been focused on developing a high quality second home community at Timber Shores - not a marina. The tribe's plan to develop a marina is a great thing for us, and I imagine it will provide a place for some residents of Timber Shores to park their boats. So, we're very supportive," Gordon said. Copyright c. 2007 Leelanau Enterprise. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Chitimacha to develop Rosetta Stone Software" --------- Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 09:15:44 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="CHITIMACHA LANGUAGE SOFTWARE" http://www.nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=9079 Chitimacha Tribe to Develop Rosetta Stone Software ARLINGTON, VA October 11, 2007 Rosetta Stone Inc., creator of the world's No. 1 language-learning program, has formed a partnership with the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana to develop a unique edition of the award-winning software in the tribe's language, Sitimaxa. The tribe will own distribution and sales rights to the tribal language version created through the Rosetta Stone Endangered Language Program, which has developed culturally-relevant language-learning software with the Mohawk of Kahnawake, NANA Regional Corporation of Alaska, and other indigenous communities. Through its new corporate grant program, the global language-learning software company will underwrite a substantial portion of development costs for the Sitimaxa software. Rosetta Stone has pledged to underwrite at least one project per year with endangered language speaking communities interested in developing editions of the cutting-edge immersion learning software. "Our hope is that Sitimaxa Rosetta Stone(r) software will be a tool that will make a difference in the vitality of the language of the Chitimacha Tribe," said Marion Bittinger, manager of the Endangered Language Program. "We look forward to working with the tribe to help realize their vision for a living and growing language." On Louisiana's coast, the Chitimacha tribe endured for century after century ? surviving war, settlement, assimilation. This same determination to survive has allowed the Chitimacha to revitalize their language, which they almost lost. "Language is really the heart of who you are. It's not just about learning the words; it's about learning your past. It's that connection," said Kimberly S. Walden, M.Ed., cultural director of the 1,000 member tribe. The native tongue of the Chitimacha people almost disappeared when its last fluent speaker died in 1934 and its last semi-fluent speaker died in 1940. One generation, then another, grew up knowing no more than a few words of the rich language of their ancestors. Then in 1986, the Library of Congress mailed the tribe copies of wax cylinder recordings made in the 1930s by Swedish linguist Morris Swadesh. Tribal members listened to over 200 hours of their language ? sounds no one had heard in decades, a cultural treasure buried in archives for half a lifetime. The Chitimacha began rebuilding these fragments back into a fluently spoken language. They recovered field notes made by Swadesh and his wife to help decode what was recorded. "The recordings were very hard to understand, especially if you'd never heard the language spoken before," Walden said. "You have to realize that, as long as I was growing up, all we had in Sitimaxa was a few words on a museum brochure that no one could pronounce." In 1995, the Chitimacha tribe established a cultural department. Employees asked archeological contractors in Louisiana if they knew of anyone familiar with the Chitimacha's language ? a long-shot request that, improbably, paid off. Contractors suggested the tribe contact Dr. Julian Granberry, a linguist and anthropologist living in Florida who had worked with Swadesh as a high school sophomore. Granberry, now 80, had studied their language for decades, but had never visited the reservation. The tribe invited Granberry to share his findings. "When Dr. Granberry spoke Sitimaxa to a group of Chitimacha elders assembled at a meeting, some of the elders began to cry," said Walden. "Words started coming back. They remembered." With Granberry's help, the Chitimacha tackled the Sitimaxa challenge, using the returned resources to develop dictionaries, curriculum, primers and recordings. The tribe now offers Sitimaxa classes for students as young as six weeks old at its child development center. Students in kindergarten through the eighth grade learn the language at the Chitimacha Tribal School, and adults in night classes. Rachel Vilcan was one of the first students in the adult class. Now she's an aide in the K-8 Sitimaxa program. "The language sounds natural; it sounds like it fits me, like it fits the area," Vilcan said. "It was scary, at first, to be learning it as an adult, but the desire to learn was stronger. It's our identity." Like other tribes working to bring tribal language back into daily use, the Chitimacha's goal is to develop conversational fluency. "We want to bring the language back to the point where we can use it conversationally when we gather as a tribe," said Walden. Through its immersion-based software that can be customized to reflect unique linguistic and cultural features, Rosetta Stone will help the tribe solve this problem. The tribe will work with Rosetta Stone to translate and record lessons in Sitimaxa. The paired audio recordings of tribal speakers and images from the community will teach this endangered language in culturally relevant context using the company's award-winning Dynamic ImmersionTM methodology. "I think the chances are very great that they will succeed," Granberry said. "There has been for the last decade a strong interest on the part of a large number of the tribal members." Ilse Ackerman, editor-in-chief at Rosetta Stone, said this language teaching tool multiplies existing efforts. "If you have a small number of fluent speakers, student time with these teachers is valuable and limited. The software can give students access to their teaching around the clock, allowing communities to save valuable face-to-face instruction time for conversational practice," said Ackerman. The Chitimacha Tribe will use the immersion-based software to enhance ongoing education programs for children and adults. Tribal members as far away as Guam and Germany will be able to learn Sitimaxa using CDs or through online access when the project finishes. Communities interested in learning more about the Rosetta Stone Endangered Language Program should visit the program's Web site, at: http://www.RosettaStone.com/global/endangered, or call 1-800-788-0822, ext. 5331. About the Rosetta Stone Endangered Language Program The Rosetta Stone Endangered Language Program works with communities to develop unique immersion-learning software. The Endangered Language Program worked with the Kanien'kehaka Onkwawe'n:na Raotitiohkwa to develop Mohawk software for the community of Kahnawake in 2006, and the NANA Corporation of Alaska to develop Inupiaq language learning software in 2007. The program and the Torngasok Cultural Centre in Labrador will produce a version in Inuttitut. About Rosetta Stone Inc. Rosetta Stone Inc. is a leading provider of language-learning software. Acclaimed for the speed, power and effectiveness of its Dynamic ImmersionTM method, Rosetta Stone is a revolutionary language-learning software program. While teaching 30 languages to millions of people in more than 150 countries throughout the world, Rosetta Stone software is the key to Language Learning Success(tm). Inc. Magazine has named Rosetta Stone Inc. one of the 500 fastest-growing companies in the United States, and for the fourth consecutive year Deloitte has named the company one of the fastest-growing technology companies in Virginia. Rosetta Stone was founded in 1992 on two core beliefs: that the natural way people learn languages as children remains the most successful method for learning new languages; and that interactive CD-ROM and online technology can recreate the immersion method powerfully for learners of any age. The company is based in Arlington, Va. For more information, visit www.Rosetta Stone.com. Native American Times. Copyright c. 2005 All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: ICT EDITORIAL: Who we are" --------- Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 09:15:44 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="EDITORIAL: WHO WE ARE" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415896 Who we are, philosophically by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today October 11, 2007 Who are we as Native peoples? Who are we in the contemporary world? Who will we be in the future? Questions like these arose recently at conferences hosted by Harvard University for Honoring Nations, which celebrates tribal governance, and at the National Museum of the American Indian, where Native identity is the dynamic, central theme. Many suggestions about identity and purpose made in these conferences were very thoughtful and philosophical. Some pointed out ancient instructions, as in the Haudenosaunee tradition, the peoples of the Great Peace. Others offered that complex yet beautifully simple sense of duty: we are peoples responsible to the seventh generation. And still others said that we are the ones who live in spiritual balance with the peoples and powers of the universe. Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation, said we are the people who bless the Earth. Translating these comments into philosophical language suggests that we are the peoples who bless being. Being is an expression of all that can be said to exist. We are the peoples who bless being or all of existence, and are blessed by being. Saying we give blessings means that we appreciate, understand and respect the Earth and the universe, both physically and spiritually. We give meaning to being, to the universe, by our self- conscious acts of ceremony, blessings and respect. This worldview differs sharply with some Western philosophical positions, known as materialism or nihilism, where the universe is believed to have no significant meaning or purpose for humans. We can continue on the line of thought by saying we are the peoples who bless becoming. Becoming is the pattern of change and direction of the universe. Becoming is similar to what many indigenous peoples understand as the Great Spirit. We are the peoples who believe there is a plan and purpose to the unfolding of the universe, or becoming. Individuals are part of the overall becoming of the universe, and therefore individuals and nations play a role or purpose in the process of becoming. We are peoples who recognize that being and becoming can be dangerous, out of balance and in need of healing. Many Native peoples believe that becoming and being are influenced by great tricksters, whether they are Raven, Coyote or Nanaboozoo. The antics of tricksters are often the cause of death, disease and pain, but they also are often creators of humans, ceremonies and social and cultural institutions. Tricksters are both creators and destroyers, and manifestations of social and cultural order and disorder. Trickster stories reflect the uncertainties of life and the future; they teach the folly of personal egoism and disrespect for social- cultural rules and the laws and relations of the universe. In this sense, what is colonialism if not a great trickster? What is modernity, if not a great trickster? Who is the God of the Old Testament, if He is not a great trickster? We are the peoples who seek to understand and overcome the tricksters within ourselves, and seek to navigate through the trickster character of being and becoming. We are the peoples who respect the laws of being and becoming in order to turn the uncertainties of life and the future, the trickster character of being and becoming, into blessings and well-being. We are the peoples who bless and consecrate being and becoming through ceremony and thanksgiving, community moral order and individual moral discipline. Copyright c. 1998 - 2007 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: GIAGO: Stop trying to rename 'Indians'" --------- Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 07:25:08 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="GIAGO: POLITICALLY CORRECT NAMING" http://www.indianz.com/News/2007/005282.asp Tim Giago: Stop trying to rename 'Indians' October 8, 2007 Indians, Native Americans, American Indians are all labels foisted upon the indigenous people of America and so what is a newspaper to do when selecting the supposed correct label? In his book "The Day the World Ended at Little Big Horn," Joseph M. Marshall III reviewed all of these labels and then wrote, "We prefer to be identified by our specific tribes or nations, of which there are nearly five hundred ethnically identifiable in the United States." He goes on, "However, in the interest of avoiding confusion within the pages of this work, I have chosen to used the word Indian mostly in those instances when there is a necessary reference to more than a specific tribe or native nation." And so in this era of political correctness even the great Sicangu author, Joe Marshall, has to admit that he is also faced with this recurring dilemma. Any writer covering issues related to events and people associated with Indian country faces this same question and must decide whether to follow political correctness or go along with historic usage. If one visits an Indian reservation (there's that word Indian again) and speaks to the elders of the tribe, he or she will find that they refer to themselves as "Indian," without reservation (no pun intended). I am a firm believer that most historians are wrong when they credit Christopher Columbus for coining the word "Indian" because he thought he was landing his ships in India. In 1492 there was no country known as India. Instead that country was called Hindustan. I think that is closer to the truth that the Spanish padre that sailed with Columbus was so impressed with the innocence of the Natives he observed that he called them Los Ninos in Dios. My spelling may be wrong on the Spanish words, but the description by the padre means something like "Children of God." After many years of usage the word Indios emerged and to this day the indigenous people of South and Central America are called Indios. I am told that as the word wound its way North it evolved into "Indian." Of course some will say that there was a place called the East Indies in 1492 and Columbus may have thought he was headed for that region. So how and when did the efforts to politicize the name start? I suspect that some of it started when Native Americans enrolled in some of the white colleges. I think they found the word "Indian" offensive and set about to remake it. They found that the word Indian was often used in a derogatory fashion such as "drunken Indian" or "rotten Indian." Perhaps the white people would have found it more difficult to say "drunken Native American?" And finally, when some Indian journalists made it to the newsrooms of large and prestigious mainstream newspapers, they reacted to the word "Indian" as they did when they were in college. The went to their editors and tried to impress upon them that the paper should no longer use the word "Indian," but should, instead, switch to Native American or Native. I first ran across this sudden change when I was mailed a copy of my weekly column that had appeared in the Lincoln (Neb.) Star Journal. In every place I had used "Indian" the editorial page editor edited it to read "Native." Of course I was appalled. If I had intended to use "Native" I would have used it and I resented the fact that the EPE had changed the word in order to fit his presumption of political correctness. I immediately dropped him a note and asked, "When you come across organizational names like National Congress of American Indians or National Indian Education Association are you going to change them to read National Congress of Native Americans or National Native Education Association." How about newspapers like "Indian Country Today," my former weekly paper? "Native American Country Today" just doesn't have the same ring to it. The local daily newspaper in Rapid City, SD decided to drop the use of the word "Indian" and replace it with "Native American." I believe they did so when they, with unintended fanfare, used a headline that highlighted the word "Indian" when describing the new education director for the Rapid City Schools. A howl went up in the Indian community, but the howl was less about political correctness than about the bad usage of the name in that particular context. I believe it is a policy that needs to be reconsidered because anyone born in the United States of America is a Native American, but they are not American Indians. It is confusing enough trying to figure out what to call Blacks, Hispanics or Asians without adding to the confusion by trying to rename American Indians. --- Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, was born, raised and educated on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in the Class of 1991 and founder of The Lakota Times and Indian Country Today newspapers. He founded and was the first president of the Native American Journalists Association. He can be reached at najournalist@msn.com. Copyright c. 2007 Indianz.com. --------- "RE: BARKMAN: Trail of Tears starts with Columbus" --------- Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 07:25:08 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="BARKMAN: SOVEREIGNTY" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.cleburnetimesreview.com/opinion/local_story_281160349.html Patrick Barkman: Trail of Tears starts with Columbus October 7, 2007 "The Lord said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, 'Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever." - Genesis 13:14-15 Tomorrow, Oct. 8, is Columbus Day. As you might imagine, it's not much of a holiday in my family. Kind of hard to get worked up about the life of a Genoese mercenary, slave-trader and pirate who stumbled onto the "New World," and whose first dispatches to his financial backers consisted of cooing over how the friendly, curious Taino people he encountered would make excellent slaves. Within a decade of Cristobol Colon's arrival at Ayiti (which he renamed Hispaniola), virtually all the Tainos were wiped out through disease, murder and forced labor. Colon then turned to kidnapped Africans to replenish his supply of slaves. Within 150 years of Colon's arrival, between 85 percent and 90 percent of the population of the Western Hemisphere was dead. Put in perspective, Colon is directly, personally responsible for the deaths of one-quarter of all the human beings on the planet Earth as they existed in the 15th century. So brutal, incompetent and corrupt was he as governor that he was relieved of his duties and tossed in prison. Eventually, he was freed by the king of Spain and restored to the wealth he had stolen. Colon was able to die peacefully in his bed, a rich man, in 1506, still stubbornly convinced against all evidence that the "New World" was really Asia and the Native peoples he had so assiduously exterminated were Chinese or sub- continental Indians. In spite of his dodgy character and questionable skills as a navigator, Colon's name (in its Latinized form) adorns cities, rivers and countries. By the 19th century, he was appropriated as a folk hero for Italian immigrants to America, leading to Columbus Day in 1971. Nowhere has the clash between Christopher Columbus the folk hero and Cristobol Colon the agent of genocide been presented more sharply than in Denver. Colorado in general has a nasty history of relations with Indians, dating at least to the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, wherein Colorado Territorial militiamen ruthlessly slaughtered a friendly band of Cheyenne and Arapaho, primarily elders, women and children, who were camped under an American flag. The Colorado branch of the American Indian Movement has been waging a determined campaign for years to end the annual Columbus Day Parade and the holiday itself, pointing out that even South Dakota - a state legendary for its virulent anti-Indian attitude - replaced that holiday with Native American Day. The parade organizers, either woefully ignorant or deliberately provocative, have taken to having historical reenactors in period U.S. Cavalry uniforms march through downtown. So what's the big deal, you might ask? It's just a parade, and Colon died 500 years ago. In fact, all those massacres and so forth happened a long time ago. Can't you people just get over it? OK, consider this: Congress stripped tribal courts of the power to try most felony cases with the Major Crimes Act of 1885 (an act, by the way, that is utterly unconstitutional since it purports to strip powers from sovereign nations without their consent). In the case of Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe in 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that Indian courts cannot prosecute non-Indians for crimes committed on Indian land. Recently, a study showed than one in three Indian women will be the victim of sexual assault, a much higher rate than among any other population group. In more than 86 percent of those cases, the perpetrator is a non-Indian. Do you see where this is going? Indian country is not just huge empty stretches of land in Montana, New Mexico, Arizona and the Dakotas; it's also large swathes of well-populated Western Oklahoma. The U.S. Department of Justice - the only agency that can prosecute non-Indian felony offenders who commit crimes on tribal lands - doesn't even bother to keep statistics on how many major crimes it prosecutes in Indian country, but the numbers are anemic to nonexistent. So the word has gotten out to sexual predators and pedophiles; come on down to tribal lands and prey on the Indians. Not only will they likely never be prosecuted, but in many cases the tribal police are precluded from even arresting them even if they are caught in the act of committing a crime! These tribes have courts, they have judges, they have prosecutors. They have police; in fact, some tribes (those fortunate enough to be blessed with large amounts of casino money) have better-equipped and -trained police forces than any of the surrounding sheriff's departments or police departments. Yet Congress and the Supreme Court, though acts of callously transparent racism, have transformed large portions of the United States into a lawless Wild West, where criminals can victimize the innocent with impunity. This is happening today, not 500 years ago. Today. Regardless of the motivations of the people who organize and defend Columbus Day, the effect is a gigantic slap in the face to those surviving Indians in this country, not unlike the blasphemous effect of carving the graven images of white rulers into the sacred mountains of the Paha Sapa, the Black Hills, which the Lakota still refuse to surrender, in spite of a $757 million judgment against the Federal government for the theft, money one of the poorest tribes in America will not deign to accept. Congress is holding hearings on the mass victimization of Indian women. The best solution would be to restore tribal sovereignty, repeal the odious Major Crimes Act and overrule Oliphant, which was based on a painfully contorted fiction of legislative intent in the first place. Restore to the tribes the basic power to protect their own women and children from vicious predators. And, while we're at it, stop the parades; put the ghosts of Cristobol Colon to rest. --- Patrick G. Barkman is a Cleburne attorney whose weekly column on politics, religion, culture and American Indian issues is distributed nationally by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., parent company of the Times-Review. He invites you to comment on this column and read more at his blog, thelocalcrank.blogspot.com. Copyright c. 2006, Cleburne Times Review. --------- "RE: YELLOW BIRD: Adoptees feel Yearning to come Home" --------- Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:32:51 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="YELLOW BIRD: ADOPTEES" http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=53247 Indian adoptees feel a yearning to come home Dorreen Yellow Bird October 10, 2007 Over the weekend, the White Earth tribe in Minnesota welcomed home some American Indian adoptees who are struggling to reconnect with relatives. Their struggle reaches deep inside and twists your gut because it brings you face to face with some of the tragic assimilation policies that the federal government once enforced. "After many years, we are home," was the mantra of the adoptees that day. The Adoptee Welcome Home Gathering held in Mahnomen, Minn., was established by the First Nations Repatriation Institute. The institute was created as a collaboration between the First Nations Orphan Association and the College of St. Catherine/University of St. Thomas School of Social Work around 2004. Sandy White Hawk, an adoptee herself, is the program's founder and director. In fact, you could say she IS the program. It came from her experiences and the need to help others like herself. The conference was my first time sitting among a group of people such as this - adoptees, parents and grandparents of adopted children, other family members and relatives of adopted children, social-service workers and visitors. The adoptees were the stars. As one day turned into the next, I learned that the history I've studied over the years was unfolding before my eyes. The federal government's assimilation efforts to civilize "wild Indians," as we were called in the Treaties of 1851 and 1886, were what resulted in the extreme disruption to families. In those days, removing children from families was one way that the federal government and churches used to absorb Indian people in non- Indian society. One-third of the Anishinaabeg people were adopted out, one of the speakers said. Adoption wasn't just among non-Indians. Americans Indian people had their adoption policies too, but they were different. For example, my grandmother was adopted by her aunt and uncle, who didn't have any children. But before you wonder about the thoughtlessness of my great- grandmothers, here is what they considered adoption: Children weren't the property of parents; instead, they were considered gifts. My grandmother maintained her relationship with her birth parents, but lived with her aunt and uncle or "new" mother and father. In essence, she had two parents. This is somewhat similar to a new kind of adoption on the White Earth reservation called customary adoption, in that the adoptees know their tribe and roots. I was jolted back to the current meeting (and the large circle in which I sat) when Joe Bush, White Earth spiritual leader, lowered his voice and began to explain the White Earth cultural ways. When he finished, we divided into smaller circles, and the stories became more frank and heartfelt. A young man with a dark baseball cap pulled down over his eyes told us in a halting voice that his adoptive parents abused him. He set out on his own to find his birthplace as soon as he was old enough. But when he found his birthplace on the reservation, he was disappointed there were no open arms to greet him. As I listened to him, I remembered a young woman I had met while at a conference several years ago. I was drawn to her because she was American Indian. She was adopted, and her parents were wonderful to her, but she wanted to know her birth mother. When she found her birth mother, her birth mother didn't want her. She, too, was disillusioned. Both parent and child must be prepared for those meetings, White Hawk told us. Here's why: There are things an adoptee might not know. He or she may be born from incest or rape, or perhaps the birth mother started a new life and her family isn't aware of this child. These are typical roadblocks that need to be overcome. It seemed, however, that at least among the conferees, the relatives were all elated to be reunited with their adopted children and wanted to teach them about Indian culture immediately. A bubbly middle-aged adoptee told me that she'd always felt something was missing from her life. That theme "something missing" permeated the entire conference. She is from White Earth and a joyous person, although she lived through abuse from her adoptive parents. Most fortunate for her is her many relatives - aunts and grandmothers who welcomed her home. They hugged her and cried with her that day. For me, it was eye-opening to hear the adoptees' stories and to catch a glimpse of their loss and shame. Yes, shame, one woman said, because many adoptees think their birth parents didn't want them. On Sunday evening, my son, Alan Demaray - my sister's son, who also is my son because that's the Indian way - called for a ceremonial inipi. I told him about the adoptees at the conference who don't know their way back home, and we prayed for them. We also thanked the Creator for those people who are helping these adoptees find their way to their birthplaces and introducing the adoptees to our cultural ways. Mitakuye Oyasin. --- Dorreen Yellow Bird is a reporter and columnist. Her columns appear Wednesdays and Saturdays on the opinion pages of the Herald. Reach her at (701) 780-1228 or dyellowbird@gfherald.com Copyright c. 2007 Grand Forks Herald, Forum Communications Co., Fargo ND. --------- "RE: EDITORIAL: ICWA shouldn't hurt Indian Children" --------- Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:32:51 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="EDITORIAL: ICWA" http://www.indianz.com/News/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ article/2007/10/08/AR2007100801420.html Editorial: A Tribal Question Native American children should not be harmed by a law intended to preserve Indian families. October 9, 2007 It was May 2005, and Max was almost 6 years old. His front teeth were rotten, and his mother did not understand how to administer his asthma medicine. Max's sister, Nicole, suffered from dissociative disorder and was struggling with nightmares and memories of fights between her parents. Though she was more than 3 years old, she had not been potty trained. The children's parents had chronic drug and alcohol problems; on at least one occasion, the mother called police because her husband had threatened to kill her. That May, a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge ordered the children placed temporarily in the home of an aunt, where subsequently they seemed to thrive, according to testimony from social workers and therapists. The aunt would later be awarded custody. But a novel ruling this summer from the Maryland Court of Special Appeals threatens to throw Max and Nicole's lives into turmoil again simply because they are Native American. Although the children's biological father is non-Indian, Max and Nicole's mother is part Yankton Sioux, making the children subject to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The 1978 federal law seeks to keep Native American families intact; it applies to Max and Nicole even though they have not had contact with the Yankton Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, and their mother has lived in a non- Indian home since she was a few months old. The ICWA makes it more difficult for courts to remove children from a dysfunctional Native American home than from one of any other race or ethnicity. Government agencies, for example, must prove that "active efforts" - rather than the more typical "reasonable efforts" - were made to rehabilitate drug-addled or psychologically impaired Indian parents before taking away their children. If an agency is unable to help the parents, the law strongly urges a search for Native American guardians. Max and Nicole's aunt - a relative on their father's side - is not Native American. A lawyer for the tribe argued that the Circuit Court had not made the required "active efforts." The Court of Special Appeals, in the first case of its kind in Maryland, concluded that although the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services repeatedly referred both parents to drug treatment and other programs, the county had to do more. For example, the court mused, perhaps the county should have escorted the parents to counseling sessions. The case is now back in Montgomery County, where on Oct. 30 a circuit judge will begin to reconsider what "active efforts" the county should undertake to try to help the mother. The case could drag on for another year or so. In the meantime, the children should be allowed to stay with their aunt. And unless the mother makes a remarkable recovery, the aunt should be given permanent custody of Max and Nicole. It is one of the great shames of this country that Native Americans were treated so horribly by outsiders intent on stealing their land, decimating their people and snuffing out their culture. It would be a modern tragedy if Native American children were deprived of safe and loving homes by the very law meant to protect them. Copyright c. 2007 The Washington Post Company. --------- "RE: HARJO: Restore NAGPRA to original intent" --------- Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 06:32:11 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="HARJO: NAGPRA" http://www.indianz.com/News http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415899 Harjo: It's time to put NAGPRA back together again by: Suzan Shown Harjo / Indian Country Today October 11, 2007 New legislation to restore repatriation law to its original intent has broad support in Indian country and should be supported by all fair-minded people. It has drawn hysterical reactions and misrepresentations in the mainstream press from those who never wanted repatriation law in the first place. The legislation proposes to add 13 words to the definition of "Native American" in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. The definition now reads: "'Native American' means of, or relating to, a tribe, people, or culture that is indigenous to the United States." Under the new legislation, the definition, with the clarifying words in italic, would read: "'Native American' means of, or relating to, a tribe, people, or culture that is or was indigenous to any geographic area that is now located within the boundaries of the United States." This definition is contained in S. 2087, The Native American Omnibus Technical Corrections Act of 2007, which was introduced Sept. 25 by Sen. Byron L. Dorgan, D-N.D., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Dorgan is chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. McCain is a member of the committee and its former chairman. The committee favorably reported S. 2087 for Senate floor action Sept. 27. The legislation has been championed by the other past chairmen of the committee, former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., and Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawaii. They, together with McCain, were primary sponsors of NAGPRA. The reason the new legislation is necessary is because of a misreading of the NAGPRA definition by judges in the case of the Ancient One (aka, "Kennewick Man"). In their zeal to allow federal and federally funded scientists to continue to slice and dice the 9,000 remains, the judges said that when Congress used the word "is" in the 1990 definition, it meant to include only those human remains that post-dated the establishment of the United States. Because the Ancient One pre-dated the United States, they said NAGPRA did not apply. At the time of negotiation and congressional consideration of NAGPRA, no scientific organization, no federal agency, no Native American, no museum and no one on Capitol Hill was confused by the definition of "Native American." Everyone understood that NAGPRA applied to human remains and sacred objects pre-dating the United States. In their 2004 petition for rehearing, the Colville Tribes, Nez Perce Tribe, Umatilla Tribes and Yakama Nation pointed out that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' definition is at odds with a natural reading of "Native American." "Statutory language must be read in context [since] a phrase gathers meaning from the words around it." Using common dictionary definitions of the words surrounding "is," the tribal petitioners argued that the court "erred by solely focusing on the term 'is' in the abstract, rather that seeking the meaning of the entire phrase 'tribe, people, or culture that is indigenous."' The petitioners instructed that Congress had rejected more limiting definitions: "Congress' intent that the statute apply broadly is also evident from the legislation that pre-dated NAGPRA. Congress rejected restrictive definitions ... in four previous bills that would have narrowly defined 'Native American' as including only 'American Indians ... Native Alaskans, Native Hawaiians ... and the descendants of such individuals.' The definition Congress ultimately adopted is more expansive, eliminating the term 'Indian' as a modifier of 'tribe' and eliminating a familial relationship to a present day political entity." The petitioners said that the court "ignored the maxim that where the final version of a statute deletes language contained in an earlier draft, it is presumed that the earlier draft was inconsistent with Congress' ultimate intentions, and erroneously put back in the statute words Congress deliberated left out." The court was unmoved. By redefining the NAGPRA definition, the court was able to hold that NAGPRA did not apply to the Ancient One at all. Instead, the court ruled that the Archaeological Resources Protection Act did apply and gave the human remains to scientists to study. Ironically, NAGPRA was enacted in order to recognize Native American human rights and to get away from ARPA, under which Native people are federal archaeological resources and property and not human beings. The court ruling created a legal fiction that perpetuated a deception that studies had not already been conducted on the Ancient One. Kennewick scientists actually are advancing a white supremacist theory. In obscure pseudo-scientific legalese, they whisper to reporters and others that they are on a mission to find out if Kennewick Man is a white man and to prove that Europeans were here before Native peoples. They leave out the part that they studied the Ancient One before going to court and already concluded that he was Native and not European. Under the loophole the 9th Circuit created, foot-draggers can try to silence Native Americans again and to study remains or cultural objects in order to find out if they are Native American in order to find out if NAGPRA obtains in order to ask Native Americans if studies should be conducted. Kennewick scientists say that no studies would be conducted if it were up to Native Americans. This is a lie and they know it's a lie. They know better than anyone how many past and ongoing studies have the approval of and/or participation by Native peoples. They also say that this amendment would overturn the Kennewick decision, which it would not and they know it would not. Their big lie is that the NAGPRA amendment would give Kennewick Man back to the Indians. The 54 tribal governments of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians met Sept. 20 and called for the "introduction and swift passage" of the 13-word amendment, saying that it "would address the problems created by judicial interpretation of NAGPRA in one circuit and would restore to NAGPRA the congressional intent behind the legislation, the understandings of Native Americans in agreeing to the legislation, and the spirit of the law." The National Congress of American Indians also endorses the NAGPRA amendment. NAGPRA recognized Native Americans' human rights, civil rights, religious rights, family rights and scientific rights. It recognized the rights of living peoples to examine their past under terms consistent with their customs and traditions. This amendment would restore Native peoples' voices in these matters. It's time for Congress to put NAGPRA back together again. --- 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 - 2007 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: JODI RAVE: Climate change hits home with the Sami" --------- Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:34:18 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="JODI RAVE: CLIMATE CHANGE" http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/10/15/jodirave/rave32.txt Native News Column: Climate change hits home with the Sami October 14, 2007 KAUTOKEINO, Norway - Ole Henrik Magga grew up on the Arctic tundra, learning to read the snow and ask questions of it. Has it been frozen? Is it wet? How many layers of snow must the reindeer break through to eat from the earth? Magga's relationship with snow and ice is exact, observations shared and learned from the Sami generations before him. Climate has long been integral to the Sami way of life, an indigenous people who have more than 300 words for snow. "It shows people have observed," said Magga, who grew up reindeer herding in the northern reaches of Norway. Snow conditions determined where his family would move the herds. But global warming threatens to change the lives of the Sami, a distinct ethnic group who have inhabited the polar regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia for more than 10,000 years. On Tuesday, I visited Magga in his office at Sami University College, where he is a linguistics professor. While in Norway, light rain sporadically fell upon the land. Global warming has led to increased rainfall in Sapmi, the Sami homeland. As I sat in Magga's office, I looked past him and out the window to land covered with birch trees. The growth of these trees is a recent phenomenon, the result of increased rainfall in a place normally blessed with snow. I was in Alta, Norway, as an invited speaker at an international indigenous journalists' conference. Indigenous people - communities whose homelands have been invaded by colonizers yet still maintain distinct languages, cultures and customs - share common concerns, including a right to live off the land. The Sami are among the world's indigenous people who have managed to maintain a connection to the land through reindeer herding. More than four million reindeer inhabit the Arctic, including 2.5 million domestic reindeer. Some herders spend up to nine months per year on the tundra and in the mountains, taking care of animals that supply the Sami with meat and hides. But global warming is changing their landscape. On Friday, Al Gore shared a Nobel Peace Prize with a panel of scientists - including University of Montana professor Steve Running - for bringing attention to the climate crisis on Earth. In Alaska, sea ice is melting and the permafrost is thawing. Native Inuit villages are being destroyed. Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chairwoman of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, testified before a U.S. Senate committee in 2004 about the effects of global warming on the Inuit. Coastal land areas are slipping into the sea, in some cases up to 100 feet a year. About 600 homes in Shishmaref, Alaska, could fall into the sea within the next 20 years as wind and water continue to warm. Meanwhile, drinking water supplies in Inuit villages are being contaminated, and a thawing and collapsing ground is destroying roads, airports and pipelines. In Norway, Magga is working with scientists and Sami reindeer herders, uniting the two to better understand the effects of global warming. They hope to develop a forecast of how rain is changing the landscape. They're also asking questions. What's going to happen if the temperature continues to rise? What will happen in Scandinavia and other parts of the Arctic when snow disappears little by little? "The first thing that could happen - given that the winters will be milder with rain in the winter - the whole snowpack could be locked in the winter," said Magga, meaning ice would cover the ground and prevent the reindeer from reaching the food beneath it. "This would be a disaster for all reindeer-herding peoples, not only here but all over the Arctic," said Magga, past chairman of the U.N. Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues. He is now overseeing a study through Ealat, an interdisciplinary project uniting reindeer herders' traditional knowledge with natural sciences, social sciences and technology. The time is long overdue for the rest of the world to "understand the importance of indigenous knowledge," said Heidi Kitti, a biologist at Sami University College. The weather has changed in the Arctic. "You can't blame indigenous peoples for the CO2 release," said Svein Mathiesen, a project leader of Ealat. "But you can use indigenous knowledge to help cope with it." --- Jodi Rave covers Native issues for the Missoulian. Reach her at (800) 366-7186 or at jodi.rave@lee.net On the Web International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry: http://www.reindeercentre.org EALAT, a project that examines reindeer pastoralism in the light of climate change: http://www.ealat.org Copyright c. 2007 Missoulian, a division of Lee Enterprises. --------- "RE: GIAGO: American Indians are not Mascots" --------- Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:34:18 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="GIAGO: MASCOTS" http://www.indianz.com/News/2007/005374.asp Tim Giago: American Indians are not mascots Monday, October 15, 2007 Two things stuck in my mind while watching the New York Yankees lose the last game they played in Cleveland. The first is the three fans the television cameras panned every now and then sitting in the bleachers wearing feathers and hideous painted faces. This detestable display is meant to honor American Indians? Wow, what an honor. Pardon me if I am insulted. The second was the racist cartoon character of a bucktoothed, red faced, caricature of an Indian logo prominently displayed upon the caps of the Cleveland baseball team. What if that dreadful cartoon character had depicted an African American, a Hispanic American or an Asian American? Would members of these ethnic minorities find this cartoon character to be obnoxious? I think so. I suppose it ironic that the Cleveland team now travels to play in Boston against the Red Sox. History taught us that while objecting to taxation without representation a bunch of Bostonians painted themselves up as Indians, donned the attire they had probably taken from the bodies of Indians that had been slaughtered in New England, and raided a ship tied up in the harbor in order to dump its cargo of tea. Did these "patriots" dress up as Indians to honor Indians or did they mimic Indians in order to place the blame for their deeds upon them? History will also tell you that when the Mormons massacred about 120 settlers traveling through Mormon territory at Mountain Meadows on September 11, 1857 they first dressed themselves as Indians. Hey, we all know that no respectable Mormon would take part in a massacre of innocent white men, women and children, so therefore it had to be those savage Indians, right? Everybody should see the movie September Dawn about this terrible massacre. Ask Mitt Romney about it. Many years ago, when I owned the newspaper Indian Country Today, I had my cartoonist, Thom Little Moon, an Oglala Lakota; draw a cartoon using the Cleveland baseball team logo as the model. He drew the same character as an African American, Hispanic and as an Asian American. The caption was, "Now you know how American Indians feel." A poster printed by The National Conference on Christians and Jews, an organization in Minneapolis, MN, portrayed the flags of the New York Fighting Jews, Chicago Blackskins, the San Francisco Orientals and the St. Paul Caucasians. The poster can still be seen hanging on the walls of many Indian organizations and tribes. The poster also said, "Now you know how American Indians feel." But do you really know how we feel? To most American Indians it is absolutely abhorrent for a professional football team to use the color of their skin as their team mascot. As a matter of fact, we oftentimes refer to the mascot of the Washington professional football team as the "R" word because to us it is as hideous as the "N" word is to African Americans. I ask you, how can a supposed civilized nation in the year 2007 still use a racist logo and name like "Redskin" and feel that it is an honor to Native Americans? What a terrible way to be honored! When the four minority media organizations, the National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, National Association of Asian Journalists, and the Native American Journalists Association meet at the UNITY Convention in Chicago in 2008, I pray that the use of American Indians as mascots for America's fun and games is high on the list of subjects they bring to the table. So far the Indian people of America have fought this battle alone. UNITY should know that racism in any form against any minority is racism that impacts all minorities and makes it much easier for racists to extend their form of racism to other races. Perhaps Indians are alone in their fight to shed the dubious honor bestowed upon them by sports team owners, but it is indeed, an honor that should be equally shared by all minorities. I ask anyone reading this column, whether you hate what I am writing here or not, just open your mind when you watch the playoffs between the Red Sox and the Indians and ask yourself if the grinning caricature of an American Indian is racist. Replace that face with another racial minority and see how the shoe fits. And if you saw the Washington professional football game where the team's fanatical fans painted a pig red, planted feathers on its head, and chased it around the football field at halftime and were not repelled by it, you wouldn't know racism if it bit you on the behind. American Indians are human beings and not mascots for America's high schools, colleges or professional sports teams' fun and games. --- Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, was born, raised and educated on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in the Class of 1991 and founder of The Lakota Times and Indian Country Today newspapers. He founded and was the first president of the Native American Journalists Association. He can be reached at najournalist@msn.com. Copyright c. 2007 Indianz.com --------- "RE: HARJO: Vernon Bellecourt (1931-2007)" --------- Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:34:18 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="HARJO: VERNON BELLECOURT" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415941 Harjo: Vernon Bellecourt (1931-2007) by: Suzan Shown Harjo / Indian Country Today October 15, 2007 American Indian Movement leader Vernon Bellecourt would have celebrated his 76th birthday on Oct. 17, but now it is also the date of his burial. Bellecourt died Oct. 13 in a Minneapolis hospital from complications of diabetes and an E. coli infection in his lungs. He was surrounded by family and friends, who said that he passed peacefully within three minutes after being removed from a respirator. "Of all 12 of us siblings, only me and my sister are left," said Bellecourt's brother, Clyde Bellecourt, also a longtime activist in Minneapolis. "It's hard to think about what we'll do without him." Bellecourt will be laid to rest on family land on the White Earth Chippewa Reservation in northwestern Minnesota. Bellecourt's Anishinaabe name was WaBun-Inini, which means Man of Dawn. A White Earth Band of Chippewa Indians tribal member, he once served on the tribal council and was Minneapolis-area vice president of the National Congress of American Indians. "Vernon was a great representative of the Ojibwe Nation and one of the great communicators of our generation," said William A. Means, Oglala Lakota, Bellecourt's friend, fellow activist and community organizer. "He was the best at getting across the message of treaty rights, human rights, mascots and racism to people from the grass-roots all the way to national officials." Means lauded Bellecourt's work as president of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media, his support of our lawsuit against the disparaging name of the Washington football team and his efforts on behalf of the International Indian Treaty Council, which Means served as president for two decades. He commended what turned out to be the final work of Bellecourt's life: "Getting another year's heating oil for 27 tribes from the people of Venezuela and CITGO." Bellecourt returned from Venezuela shortly before being hospitalized. Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota, praised Bellecourt's leadership of the AIM Grand Governing Council in Minneapolis. Westerman recalled a 1968 meeting in Denver "where Vernon, Clyde, DJ [Dennis J. Banks, Leech Lake Chippewa] and I started the American Indian Movement; then they went to Minneapolis and made it official." Westerman's spoke to me from a hospital bed in Los Angeles, where he was recovering from a myelodysplasia syndrome incident. "Now, all of us guys are getting up there. All that traveling - the life's been hard on us." Westerman, 71, is a singer/songwriter and actor who first rose to prominence in 1969, when his collaboration with Vine Deloria Jr. resulted in Westerman's first album, named after Deloria's bestselling book, "Custer Died For Your Sins." I last saw Bellecourt in November 2005, at the public service following Deloria's private inurnment in Golden, Colo. Westerman was closing the service and invited all the AIM people to join him and sing the AIM song in Deloria's honor. Ward Churchill - who arrived late and loudly derided the family's projected images of Deloria on a back wall - started making his way to the front of the room. Westerman cleverly called out the name of the man who had helped expose Churchill as a pseudo-Indian more than 15 years before he was fired for plagiarism by the University of Colorado: "Vernon Bellecourt, come on up here." Upon hearing the name of his nemesis, Churchill threw his hands in the air and left in a huff, taking with him the gathering's only discordant note. Seeing Westerman, Bellecourt and others together that day reminded me that these were brave men and women who had put themselves in danger for the rights of all Native peoples, so I joined them in a show of solidarity. Afterward, a friend said, "I didn't know you were AIM." I wasn't, but that wasn't the point. It was a respect thing. I remember marveling at Bellecourt's verbal skills. He was like an old jazz musician who never had a lesson or needed a rehearsal - he could just play. (In the interest of full disclosure, my late husband, Frank Ray Harjo, Wotko Muscogee - together with an Iroquois ironworker and a Nicaraguan Indian musician - were asked in 1973 by Banks to wrest a New York AIM office from a con artist who started it, and they ran it for six months. Aside from that, Harjo was a radio producer, community organizer and carver of Muscogee stickball sticks and Onondaga lacrosse sticks, whose activism pre-dated AIM). Bellecourt was a stand-up guy, even when he was in a wheelchair, as he often was over the last five years. Never a quisling or fair-weather friend, he had a quick wit and a keen sense of what was important at any given moment. One day at a lunch meeting, I ordered a low-cal/no-carb dish and something in diet brown; he ordered a cheeseburger, fries and a sugary drink. "Is that all you're going to eat," he asked. "Yes, I'm diabetic, you know." "Well, who isn't, but no-taste food? What's the point of even eating?" As his diabetes progressed, he called periodically to ask about my health and to say that we ought to make some public service announcements for Indian young people about what happens if you smoke and don't eat right. He was the first to congratulate me for writing a column saying that frybread wasn't hea