_ __ _____ __ _ __ ___ ____ _ __ ___ ' ) / / ') / / ) ' ) ) / ) / ' ) ) / ) / / / / / / /--/ / / / ___ / / / / ___ (_(_/ (__/ ( / (_ / (_ (___/ '__/_ / (_ (___/ ' ____ _ , ___ _ , ___ / ' ) / / ) ' ) / / ' VOLUME 16, ISSUE 011 / /-< / /--/ /-- __/_ / ) (___/ / ( (___, WOTANGING IKCHE - Lakota - Common News Wotanging Ikche and Native American News Copyright c. 1996-2008 nanews.org Aboriginal/AmerIndian Perspective about the First Nations of Turtle Island March 10, 2008 Cherokee nvda kola/windy moon Passamaquoddy siqon/spring moon Anishnaabe bebookwaadaagame-giizis(oog)/snow crust moon +-------------------------------------------------------+ | Much more happens in Indian Country than is reported | | in this weekly newsletter. For daily updates & events | | go to http://www.owlstar.com/dailyheadlines.htm | +-------------------------------------------------------+ Otapi'sin Atsinikiisinaakssin -- Blackfeet -- News for All the People Ni-mah-mi-kwa-zoo-min -- Ojibwe -- We Are Talking About Ourselves Aunchemokauhettittea -- Naragansett -- Let Us Share News Kanoheda Aniyvwiya -- Cherokee -- Journal of the People O Es'te Opunvk'vmucvse -- Creek -- People's New News O o O Acimowin -- Plains Cree -- Story or Account O o O Tlaixmatiliztli -- Nahuatl -- News O o o o o O Agnutmaqan -- Listuguj Mi'kmaq -- News O o O Sho-da-ku-ye -- Teehahnahmah -- Talking Birchbark O o O Un Chota -- Susquehannic Seneca -- The People Speak O Ha-Sah-Sliltha -- Ditidaht Nation -- News of the People Ximopanolti tehuatzin, inin Mexika tlahtolli -- Nahuatl -- For you we offer these words It-hah-pe-hah Ah-num pah-le -- Chickasaw -- Together We Are Talking Dineh jii' adah' ho'nil'e'gii ba' ha' neh -- Navajo Nation -- What's Happening among The People News Okla Humma Holisso Nowat Anya -- Choctaw -- People(s) Red Newspaper Hi'a chu ah gaa -- Pima -- The stories or the talk of the People s ch mA mL tL squee Lux -- Okanogan -- News from the People Native American News -- Language of the Occupation Forces ++>If you speak a Native American language not listed above, please send us your words for "News of the People. "We'd rather take up this whole page saving these few words of our hundreds of nations than present a nice clean banner in the language of the occupation forces who came here determined to replace our words with their own. email gars@nanews.org with the equivalent of "News of the People" in your tribal language along with the english translation <================<<<< >>>>================> This newsletter is produced in straight ASCII text for greatest portability across platforms. Read it with a fixed-pitch font, such as Courier, Monaco, FixedSys or CG Times. Proportional fonts will be difficult to read. <================<<<< >>>>================> This issue contains articles from: www.indianz.com; www.pechanga.net; www.indiancountrytoday.com; bsnorrell.blogspot.com; www.owlstar.com/Headlines Mailing Lists: Frostys AmerIndian, Mohawk Nation News, Chiapas95-En, Native Poetry; UUCP Mail IMPORTANT!! ----------- In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, all material appearing in this newsletter is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for educational purposes. <================<<<< >>>>================> This newsletter is a way of keeping the brothers and sisters who share our Spirit informed about current events within the lives of those who walk the Red Road. ++ It may be subscribed to via email by sending a request from your own internet addressable account to gars@speakeasy.org ++ It is archived at http://www.nanews.org <================<<<< >>>>================> +-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --+ + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + | As historian Patricia Nelson | | Once a language is lost, it is | | Limerick summarized in "The | | gone forever | | Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken | | * Of the 300 original Native | | Past of the American West... | | languages in North America, | | "Set the blood quantum at | | only 175 exist today. | | one-quarter, hold to it as a | | * 125 of these are no longer | | rigid definition of Indians, | | learned by children. | | let intermarriage proceed as | | * 55 are spoken by 1 to 6 elders;| | it had for centuries, and | | when they die, their language | | eventually Indians will be | | will disappear. | | defined out of existence." | | * Without action, only 20 | | "When that happens, the federal | | languages will survive the next| | government will be freed of | | 50 years. | | its persistent 'Indian problem.'"| | Source: Indigenous Language | +-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --+ | Institute | |http://www.indigenous-language.org| This issue's Quote: + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + "They want us to follow their model of English-only, which has never worked ever since formal education has been introduced to Indian people across the country," __ Deborah Dennison-Jackson, Ganada Unified School District Superintendednt +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ | 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 My half-side. The Lovely Janet, read the comments by St. Regis Mohawk Chief Lorraine White (see "WHITE: We won't let Interior off hook so easily" in the op-ed section), and makes the following observations about the new Bush Administration "management tool" trotted out by Interior Secretary Artman: --- On many reservations, Native people are enduring the crushing poverty that comes with joblessness, poor nutrition, inadequate housing, and underfunded educational facilities, and health care faciities more poorly funded than that provided for our country's worst felons. And yet, some of those same reservations are sitting on motherlodes of valuable resources - precious metals, uranium, coal, oil, grazing lands, forests, waterways, and more. As soon as the US signed treaties with these tribes, stripped them of the vast hunting lands their lifeway required for survival, and tucked them away in remote, and presumably useless land, it also assured the Indians they would not be left defenseless against cheats and con artists in the private sector to take what little was left to them. Their land would be held in trust with US officials acting as trustee to safeguard tribal interests. One small problem. The people the government have put in charge of this trustee responsibility were and are at best less competent than the Indians ever could have be. Whether or not they are more honest than the con artists and cheats they were protecting the Indians against is a matter of judgment--a judgment soon to come. The judge hearing the Indian Trust case indicates it's about to come to a close. Some Indian Nations have thrived, possibly because they had no physical resources to steal--only ingenuity or the good luck to be located near traffic corridors or tourist destinations. These Nations were able to set up lucrative casinos, shopping malls and other businesses, and have established schools, hospitals, roads, and industries for their people. Their children are doctors, lawyers and business executives. Still other tribes who were not geographically convenient to a tourish mecca, with the help of the BIA, took some of their historical land not located on the reservations given them into trust and developed them. They, too, have flourished economically (and so, incidentally have the states where they were located). But now, suddenly, the door has been slammed on tribes seeking to take off-reservation land into trust. Is it a coincidence that every time an Indian nation finds a way to sustain itself, the US has changed management tools -- and generally that new managemen t tool is a sledge hammer? +/// Janet Smith owlstar@bellsouth.net /*/+ P. O. Box 672168 OwlStar Trading Post + / * Marietta, GA 30008, U.S.A. http://www.owlstar.com * + jewelry, music, flags, herbs --- ' ' Gary Smith (*,*) wotanging@bellsouth.net P. O. Box 672168 (`-') gars@nanews.org Marietta, GA 30006, U.S.A. ===w=w=== http://www.nanews.org ----------- News of the people featured in this issue ----------- Editorial Section: - YELLOW BIRD: . Interiors new History comes alive at UND Party "management tool" - YELLOW BIRD: - Judge sets June 9 Trial Campaign calls up old Stereotypes to resolve Cobell Case - ABOUREZK: Native Superdelegates - Government will head mulling Candidates back to Court over Trusts - COULTER: Real Apology - ROBERTSON: End in sight means you won't do it again for Cobell v. Kempthorne - YELLOW BIRD: `Powwow Fever' - EDITORIAL: spreads before event Deception by Secretary Kempthorne - WHITE: We won't let Interior - UN Body Expresses off hook so easily concerns about Racism in US - Brian 'Old Crapper' Crane - Recognition flaps has Balls continue for Abenaki - Fontaine considering - A push in Wisconsin 'direct action' over Budget for Tribal Sovereignty - MOU between AFN and Prospectors - Snohomish sues - Is Campbell failing the Chiefs? to overturn recognition denial - Red-X finds Chris 'ODB' - Bill creating Urban Indian & Robin Aitken theft strategy Health Group signed - Maori post '20 ways - Bill would end Utah's role to take away Treaty Rights' as Tribe Trustee - Action demanded - Longest Walk parade on `New Relationship' with Shoshone Elders - Chiapas/Zapatista - Longest Walk: News Summary, Feb 2008 Apology to Indians is diversion - Zapatistas Lose Supporters - English proficiency in Orchestrated Rally not just a Black, White Issue - Graham's attorney - Distant Native Languages asks for later Trial bridge Bering Sea - Native Justice - NEWCOMB: Examining -- PERRY: No tribal the oral arguments in Dann jurisdiction over non-Indians - RUSSELL: - Rustywire: My Daughter's Yeis The borders of the Wanabi Nation - Lee Goins Poem: - GIAGO: Yupik woman Go Rest High On That Mountain stands up to sexual abuse - Upcoming Events - CONWAY: Sovereignty is more than just a word --------- "RE: Judge sets June 9 Trial to resolve Cobell Case" --------- Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 07:31:02 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="COBELL CASE: END IN SIGHT" http://www.indianz.com/News http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gROdMVQAH9z-mC2MwbMKM576BOVwD8V7H8HG0 Judge Wants to Resolve Indian Lands Case By MARY CLARE JALONICK March 5, 2008 WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal judge says he wants to resolve a 12-year lawsuit over government mismanagement of Indian lands this June. In a decision last month, U.S. District Judge James Robertson said government accounting for billions of dollars owed to Indian landholders has been "unreasonably delayed" and is ultimately impossible. At the same time, Robertson said the task is not hopeless, and he asked lawyers for both sides to lay out their cases again at a status hearing on Wednesday. The June trial "is meant to bring this matter to a conclusion," Robertson said. The suit, first filed in 1996 by Blackfeet Indian Elouise Cobell, claims the government has mismanaged more than $100 billion in royalties held in trust from Indian lands dating back to 1887. Copyright c. 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. --------- "RE: Government will head back to Court over Trusts" --------- Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 07:31:02 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="12-YEAR COBELL ORDEAL" http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2008/03/06/news/state/150439.txt Government will head back to court over American Indian trusts March 6, 2008 WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal judge said Wednesday he wants to resolve a 12-year lawsuit over government mismanagement of American Indian lands this June. In a January decision, U.S. District Judge James Robertson said Interior Department accounting for billions of dollars owed to American Indian landholders has been "unreasonably delayed" and is ultimately impossible. At the same time, Robertson said the overall task is not hopeless, and he held a status hearing to determine what happens next. At the hearing, he set out a schedule for the next few months that will allow both sides to argue how the trial should proceed. The June trial "is meant to bring this matter to a conclusion," Robertson said. "It is time to bring this matter to a close with a decision of one kind or another." The suit, first filed in 1996 by Blackfeet Indian Elouise Cobell, claims the government has mismanaged more than $100 billion in royalties held in trust from American Indian lands dating back to 1887. Lawyers for the government disagreed with Robertson at the hearing, saying the Interior Department's complicated methods of accounting are not impossible. Those efforts have already cost the government $127 million. Lawyers for the American Indian plaintiffs said they were pleased with the prospect of the new trial and they hope it will determine the value of the trust accounts. "This case can be resolved fairly and expeditiously," said Dennis Gingold, the plaintiffs' lead attorney. Robertson also hinted that he may be ready to allow the Bureau of Indian Affairs to reconnect to the Internet. The bureau is under court orders to disconnect its computers from the Internet to secure American Indian trust data. Copyright c. 2007 Bismarck Tribune, a division of Lee Enterprises. --------- "RE: ROBERTSON: End in sight for Cobell v. Kempthorne" --------- Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2008 07:49:32 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="JUDGE ROBERTSON: COBELL TRUST CASE" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416771 Robertson: End is in sight for Cobell v. Kempthorne by: Jerry Reynolds / Indian Country Today March 7, 2008 WASHINGTON - As far as his court is concerned, Judge James Robertson declared from the bench at a March 5 hearing, the case known as Cobell will be over by the end of summer if not before. After hearing from both plaintiff and defense attorneys on the subject of monetary restitution due, or not due as the government argued, to Individual Indian Money trust account holders, Robertson said he had heard too much rhetoric and needed more concrete specific detail. Among the rhetoric was a subdued debate on the precise legal definition of "damages" (the plaintiffs seek recovery or restitution) and the actual nature of the trust "corpus" or revenue-generating resource (plaintiff lead attorney Dennis Gingold later said the corpus includes some 40 and more million acres of land lost to Indians since Interior took over its management). Gingold emphasized that plaintiffs do not seek interest on any losses - "That would be damages" - but only restitution or recovery of unaccounted- for funds that rightfully belonged to IIM beneficiaries. Against the government's proffered interpretation of "law in the case," as determined by a 1994 reform act of Congress, Gingold argued that it is for plaintiffs, not a trustee in breach of fiduciary duty through failure to account, to define a remedy. Accordingly, Robertson called on Gingold and his team to submit a detailed written request for "equitable disgorgement" (in layman's terms, recovery of revenues lost to government failure to account for the IIM trust). He added that it "had better" address so-called "Section 23," a specific provision of class action law much dwelt upon by the government's Department of Justice attorney, Robert E. Kirschman Jr. Robertson said, without further elucidation, that it could represent a "significant snag" in the case. The government will respond, plaintiffs will revisit in light of the government's responses, and a trial will begin on June 9 if all goes according to Robertson's schedule. "The purpose of this is to bring this thing to a conclusion. ... A result of some kind should come of this," Robertson said. Robertson stirred much of Indian country in January, when he issued a lengthy opinion that the federal government (as represented by its delegate agency, the Interior Department) simply cannot deliver an accounting, now or ever, of revenue due in each Individual Indian Money account. The accounts, managed by Interior, have been set up to receive revenues from assets - among them land, timber, water, oil and minerals - on trust land. According to a host of reports, the accounts have been mismanaged by Interior since their inception. Robertson's January ruling put paid to the government's marathon argument that it would deliver an acceptable IIM accounting if unimpeded by the plaintiffs. The Cobell case takes its informal name from lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell, a Blackfeet banker. Robertson encouraged Kirschman that the activities long construed by Interior as an "accounting" haven't been wasted, even though they don't amount to an accounting. And in a somewhat arch-seeming aside, he told him that he will not consider it a good use of federal judiciary resources to pull his trial up short only to see it start up again somewhere else. On an issue Robertson characterized as "collateral," he gave the plaintiff attorneys until March 26 to argue a case for keeping Interior's trust-related computers disconnected from the Internet. Without a showing of substantive reasons for maintaining the disconnection order of a previous court in the case, he said, he'll be inclined to throw the switch on again, as it were. Copyright c. 1998 - 2008 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: EDITORIAL: Deception by Secretary Kempthorne" --------- Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2008 07:49:32 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="EDITORIAL: A LITTLE PULL, A BIG LIE" http://www.indianz.com/News http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/ hc-colorado.artmar07%2C0%2C6084939.story Mr. Kempthorne's Deception March 7, 2008 With the pull of a lever, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne released a 60-hour torrent from the base of Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, shooting water at a rate of 300,000 gallons per second down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park. Interior officials painted the event an environmental green, predicting the so-called "high-flow experiment" would scour the river bottom and restore sandbars along the river, creating backwater areas essential to native plant and fish species. "This gives you a glimpse of what nature has been doing for millions of years," Mr. Kempthorne gushed as he flushed. Actually, it's more like what man has been doing to the Colorado River for the past 45 years. Before 1963 when the Glen Canyon Dam was built near the Arizona-Utah border, the Colorado River was warm and muddy. Since then, the river's flow has been artificially regulated - principally for power generation. The dam traps virtually all the river's sediment, and the Colorado today is so clear and cold that it's extinguished four fish species and pushed two others to the brink. Environmentalists don't object to this week's high-flow release. Similar "high-flow experiments" were conducted on the Colorado twice before, in 1993 and 2004. Pointing to a decade of studies, however, the Interior Department's own experts have argued that unless the surge is followed by a more natural ebb and flow - including occasional high-flow releases - the river's new sandbars will erode and crucial habitat will be lost. But leaders in the Interior Department appear unmoved by the fate of the endangered humpback chub and other species in the Colorado. Their five- year plan looks past the Grand Canyon to the hydroelectric power needs of Las Vegas and other downriver cities and towns. Their five-year plan makes no provision for more high-flow releases. Instead, agency officials are proposing a two-month regimen of steady flows from September to October each year for the next five years. In other words, the pulse of the Colorado will be timed to meet the needs of man, not of fish and other wildlife in the Grand Canyon. The plan has drawn a withering blast from Steve Martin, superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park. "It is not apparent where the $80 million in research, conducted over the last 10 years, has been used in this decision-making process. "Our analysis shows that this document is not consistent with the current best information." Time and again, appointees of the Bush administration at the Interior Department have made it a practice - some might say even a point of pride - to override the advice of the agency's scientists and make decisions that exploit natural resources at the expense of the environment. Mr. Kempthorne's plan for the Colorado River is the latest example. For hosting a media event on Wednesday and cynically portraying his "high-flow experiment" at Glen Canyon Dam as strategy for improving the health of the river and its species, Mr. Kempthorne is guilty of deception and "green washing." Copyright c. 2008 The Hartford Courant. --------- "RE: UN Body Expresses concerns about Racism in US" --------- Date: Sat Mar 8 6:21 From: shawn Subj: PRESS: UN Body Expresses Concerns about Racism in US Mailing List: Frostys AmerIndian PRESS: UN Body Expresses Concerns about Racism in US, Calls for US to apply the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Posted by: "Alyssa Macy" nativeshare@yahoo.com nativeshare Fri Mar 7, 2008 4:29 pm (PST) Regards, Alyssa IITC Communiations INTERNATIONAL INDIAN TREATY COUNCIL PRESS RELEASE Contact: Alberto Saldamando IITC General Counsel Email: alberto@treatycouncil.org Phone: 415-641-4482 March 7th, 2008: United Nations Body Expresses Concerns about Racism in the United States, Calls for the US to apply the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Today, March 7th 2008, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) publicly released its recommendations in response to the United States' Periodic Report which was submitted to the Committee last year. A number of Indigenous organizations, tribes and communities, including the International Indian Treaty Council, filed alternative or "Shadow" reports for the CERD's consideration in reviewing the US' compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination ("ICERD"). The ICERD is a legally-binding international instrument to which all State (Country) Parties, including the US, are accountable. Periodic reports are required to be filed by all State Parties to the ICERD. The CERD's recommendations to the US reinforce the position of Indigenous Peoples and a range of international legal experts that the provisions in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13th 2007, apply to all UN Member states, even the four States including the US which voted against it. The CERD recommended that the Declaration be used by the US as a "guide to interpret the State Party's obligations under the Convention relating to Indigenous Peoples". Under international law, the Rights recognized for Indigenous Peoples apply to all Indigenous Peoples, whether or not they are "federally recognized" by the State. The CERD also voiced strong concerns regarding environmental racism and the environmental degradation of Indigenous areas of Spiritual and Cultural significance, without regard to whether they are on "recognized" reservation lands, noting the negative impact of development activities such as nuclear testing, toxic and dangerous waste storage, mining and logging. The Committee recommended to the US that it consult with Indigenous representatives, "chosen in accordance with their own procedures - to ensure that activities carried out in areas of spiritual and cultural significance do not have a negative impact on the enjoyment of their rights under the Convention." The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples calls for the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples to any development activity as well as legislative and administrative measures that may affect them, without regard to any "federal recognition." The Committee expressed concerns about the adverse effects of exploitation of natural resources in countries outside the United States by US transnational corporations, "on rights to land, health, living environment and the way of life of indigenous peoples living in these regions." It "encouraged" the United States to take appropriate legislative and administrative measures to prevent transnationals registered in the United States, "from negatively impacting on the enjoyment of rights of indigenous peoples in territories outside the United States." The CERD Committee also recommended that hold these corporations accountable, and, "to inform the Committee on the effects of transnational activities on Indigenous peoples abroad and on any measure taken in this regard." This echoes the CERD's finding in 2007 regarding the obligations of Canada to monitor human rights abuses carried out by Canadian mining companies. In addition to the IITC delegation, Indigenous delegations representing the Western Shoshone Defense Project (including the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program from the University of Arizona), the Boarding School Healing Project, the Navajo Nation, the Cherokee Nation, the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council and Indigenous Peoples of Hawai'i, among others, also filed Shadow reports and were present for the examination in Geneva Switzerland. Representatives of the US government were questioned regarding the contents of its own report as well as the "Shadow reports" filed by Indigenous Peoples and a number of other groups on February 19th and 20th. The CERD voiced strong concerns in response to information in received regarding rape and sexual violence against Indigenous women, particularly American Indian and Alaska Native women, noting the "insufficient will of Federal and state authorities to take action with regard to such violence and abuse." It recommended to the United States, among other things, that reports of rape and sexual violence are independently, promptly and thoroughly investigated and that the perpetrators are prosecuted and appropriately punished." The Committee further asked the United States report to the Committee on the numbers of victims, perpetrators, convictions and the types of sanctions imposed in its next periodic report. The Committee requested the US to provide detailed information on the measures adopted to preserve and promote the culture and traditions of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander Peoples. The Committee requested information on textbooks and curricula for primary and secondary schools that should provide sufficient information on the history and culture of different racial, ethnic and national groups living in its territories. The Consolidated Indigenous Shadow Report filed by the IITC on January 6th 2008 raised all of these and a range of other issues. It included data of the great disparities between rates of poverty and illness of Native Americans compared to the US population as a whole. The report highlighted that Indigenous men have life expectancies 10 years less than the general population, are incarcerated at much higher rates that the general population, and receive longer sentences than the general population.. The CERD raised serious concerns about the US interpretation of the ICERD, specifically its definition of racial disparities such as these as resulting from "socio-economic factors" as opposed to the systematic and institutionalized racism that the data reflects. For example, the US argued that Indigenous persons are incarcerated at a much higher rates than the general population and receive longer sentences because they commit more crimes, and not as a result of institutional racism within the judicial and prison systems. The CERD called upon the United States to review its definition of racial discrimination to include practices and legislation that may not be discriminatory in purpose but are discriminatory in effect. Indigenous representatives attending the CERD's examination of the US provided powerful and eloquent testimony about a range of human rights violations affecting them, which the US has not taken action to correct or prevent, as it is obligated to under the terms of the Convention. And in some cases, such as Treaty violations, land and natural resource appropriations, the US is directly involved in carrying out the violations. IITC Board Member Lenny Foster, Dine' (Navajo) and representative of the Native America Prisoners Rights Coalition, was a member of IITC's delegation to the CERD. He observed during the examination that the United States was "in denial." Mr. Foster presented testimony to the CERD Committee on desecration of Sacred Lands and the denial of access to spiritual practice of Indigenous prisoners in the US: "Spiritual wellness and spiritual healing is paramount to the very survival of the Indigenous Nations of North America. There are efforts to prohibit and impede the spiritual access to the Lands considered Sacred. These Lands are being utilized by Indigenous Peoples for prayer offerings, vision quests, pilgrimage and ceremonies. Corporations cannot be allowed to prohibit access and to destroy and pollute and desecrate the Sacred Lands". He provided examples to the CERD which included San Francisco Peaks (Arizona), the Black Hills and Bear Butte (South Dakota) and Medicine Lake (Northern California) and Mt. Graham (Arizona). The Navajo Nation Delegation, led by First Lady Vickie Shirley of the Navajo Nation testified eloquently on violence against Indigenous women. First Lady Shirley and Virginia Davis of the National Congress of American Indians made a strong case that Indigenous women on reservations have little or no protection against abuse and under US law, as most tribal governments are denied the jurisdiction to arrest and prosecute abusers. Larsen Bill of the Western Shoshone Defense Project Delegation and Charmaine White Face of the Teton Sioux Treaty Council Delegation testified to the Committee, making a strong case concerning environmental racism and the deadly pollution caused by mining on their ancestral and Sacred Lands. In March of 2006, the Western Shoshone approached the CERD and received a favorable response to its complaint that the US was not respecting their human rights, with reference to the denial of their ancestral lands. The had Committee called on the US to "take immediate action to initiate a dialogue" with the Western Shoshone and to freeze, desist and stop further harmful activities on Western Shoshone ancestral land until a final decision or settlement with the Western Shoshone is reached. The CERD, in their Conclusion and Recommendations issued today, reiterated this previous decision "in its entirety," expressed "regret" about the US' lack of compliance with its previous recommendations, and urged the United States, "to implement all the recommendations contained therein" with regard to the Western Shoshone and the denial of their ancestral lands. The United States was called upon to again report to the Committee "within one year" on its follow up to their decision. "It is important that all Native Peoples within the US know that they have rights that are recognized by international law even if the United States refuses to recognize them or act upon them," said Alberto Saldamando, IITC General Counsel and delegation member. "Now it is not just us, but the international community that has recognized that Indigenous Peoples within the United States are subject to racism on many levels and has called for effective steps by the US to remedy this situation. The IITC looks forward to working with other Indigenous Peoples and organizations to make sure that the US fully implements these recommendations, as it is required to under its legally-binding international human rights obligations. We will be watching closely to see if the US finally decides to become a country which operates under the rule of law". The CERD US Conclusions and Recommendations can be found online, at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/docs/co/CERD-C-USA-CO-6.pdf. The Consolidated Indigenous Shadow Report is found at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/docs/ngos/usa/USHRN8.doc. --------- "RE: Recognition flaps continue for Abenaki" --------- Date: Mon 3, Mar 2008 07:37:41 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ABENAKI RECOGNITION ISSUES" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416737 Recognition flaps continue for Abenaki by: Gale Courey Toensing / Indian Country Today March 3, 2008 MONTPELIER, Vt. - An Abenaki master basketmaker who has received grants from one federal agency for his work has been warned by another federal agency to refrain from selling his work as Indian, Native American or Abenaki products until his tribe is recognized by the state of Vermont. Jesse Larocque, a member of the St. Francis Sokoki Band of Missisquoi Abenaki, received an e-mail Feb. 19 from Indian Arts and Crafts Board Program Support Specialist Ken Van Wey, explaining the labeling requirements of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act and telling Larocque to stop advertising his work as an Abenaki product. The board, which is part of the Interior Department, administers the act. The act is a truth-in-marketing law designed to prevent the marketing of art and craft products as "Indian" made when they are not made by Indians as defined by the IACA, Van Wey wrote. The board found Larocque's work at the St. Francis Sokoki Band of Abenaki Web site. "While the IACB has been in communication with the state of Vermont regarding the state recognition of Indian Tribes, and understands that the state of Vermont may be recognizing some groups as Tribes in the near future, you should refrain from selling your work as Indian, Native American, or as the product of a particular Indian Tribe until your group is officially recognized as an Indian Tribe by the state of Vermont or the federal government," Van Wey wrote, disregarding Interiors' final determination last July declining to recognize the St. Francis Sokoki Band. Larocque responded the same day. "Perhaps you may want to level your guns in a different direction," Larocque wrote. "I have been a grant recipient as a master Abenaki basketmaker through the National Endowment for the Arts, an independent federal agency," Larocque wrote. In an additional twist of irony, the St. Francis Sokoki Web site was also funded by federal grant money, a tacit acknowledgement of the tribe's American Indian identity, Larocque said. Mark Mitchell, chairman of the Vermont Commission on Indian Affairs, has posted Van Wey's e-mail on the commission's Web site at www.vcnaa.com under the heading "The Feds have arrived," a parody of "The Russians are coming," he said. The Web site documents the commission's year-long efforts to convince the state Legislature to clarify a flawed state recognition law - S. 117 - that passed in 2006. The law created the commission and appeared to give the authority to develop criteria for recognizing tribes and bands for the purpose of protecting the state's indigenous artists under the federal IACA. But when the commission began developing the criteria early last year, state Attorney General William Griffin stepped in and claimed the commission only had authority to recognize individuals, not tribes or bands. That's when the commission discovered through communication with the federal board that S. 117's language recognizing the state's "Abenaki people" fails to meet the IACA requirement that Native artists be from a federally recognized tribe or officially state-recognized tribe. The commission supports a proposed amendment to S. 117 submitted to the Legislature by state Sen. Vincent Illuzzi that would provide a two-step process in which the commission would recommend recognition of a tribe or band to the Legislature for final approval. In an interview with Indian Country Today, Larocque said the IACB should uphold the law. "The spirit of the law is in fact more important than the letter of the law. The law was designed to protect Native artists, not prosecute them," Larocque said. Larocque said he would like to see the amendment to S. 117 given an opportunity to succeed before any further actions are taken. He said that the IACB has been "canvassing" the Abenaki community for information about Native artists, citing further e-mails from Van Wey that are posted online. "He shouldn't be going on a fishing expedition hunting for people he feels might be breaking the law. That is above and beyond the scope of his jurisdiction. It's tantamount to extralegal activity to persecute and prosecute people that may not have done anything wrong yet," Larocque said. IACB Executive Director Meredith Stanton said the board is not "on a witch hunt or fishing expedition." She said that 95 percent of letters such as the one sent to Larocque are based on complaints the board receives. "We're obliged to respond to any complaint so long as it's within the scope of the act," Stanton told ICT. "What we like to do is handle these things administratively with various degrees of letters putting people on notice. We spend a lot of time and money trying to educate people about the act - that's our primary focus - but that said, there are still civil and criminal penalties for those not in compliance," Stanton said. At the state's request, Stanton submitted testimony to a recent state senate hearing on the propose amendments to S. 117. "I think the state has good intentions. I think they want to do the right thing in trying to work through it. We know the situation in Vermont is in flux right now and this lies on the shoulders of the state of Vermont, not on the IAC Board to make the decision of whether or how they officially recognize groups in their state as officially recognized Indian tribes," Stanton said. Copyright c. 1998 - 2008 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: A push in Wisconsin for Tribal Sovereignty" --------- Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2008 07:22:42 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="RECOGNIZE SOVEREIGNTY OF 11 WISCONSIN TRIBES" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.wrn.com/gestalt/go.cfm? objectid=76D33AAE-E23C-F405-3A32789B5434C131 A push for tribal sovereignty By Andrew Beckett March 4, 2008 A push at the Capitol to recognize the sovereign status of American Indian tribes living in Wisconsin. State Representative Terry Musser (R-Black River Falls) says too many people don't recognize the sovereignty of the 11 tribes living in Wisconsin, so he's co-sponsoring legislation to change that. Musser says the people of Wisconsin need to be educated about the importance of sovereignty. The bill would acknowledge American Indian Tribes as their own independent political communities. The Black River Falls says it would essentially mean the state would deal with the tribes in the same ways it would deal with the governments of foreign countries. Musser says the bill is in response to last week's State of the Tribes address at the Capitol, in which leaders called on lawmakers to take up the issue. He says it's important to them, even if many lawmakers don't even want to discuss the issue. Past efforts to pass similar legislation have failed. Musser isn't too optimistic about the chances of the bill this session, but he still feels it's important for the state to have the discussion. Copyright c. 2008 WRN.Com (Wisconsin Radio Network), Learfield Communications, Inc. --------- "RE: Snohomish sues to overturn recognition denial" --------- Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 07:31:02 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="SNOHOMISH RECOGNITION" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://heraldnet.com/article/20080306/NEWS01/69429435 Snohomish Tribe sues to overturn denial of U.S. recognition By Krista J. Kapralos Herald writer March 6, 2008 The Snohomish Tribe of Indians filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Wednesday to overturn a 2004 decision that denied it federal recognition. The suit states that the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs denied the tribe due process of law by applying the wrong legal standards when it considered and denied the tribe federal recognition. "There are certain standards you have to meet to get recognition, and our point is that we met that standard but the government didn't apply the facts," said John Devlin, the tribe's Seattle-based attorney. The Tulalip Tribes have long opposed the Snohomish Tribe's appeal for recognition, arguing that the Snohomish people were among those tribes that originally settled on the Tulalip reservation. To gain federal recognition, the BIA requires that tribes prove that they've existed continuously as a distinct community, with political authority over its members, despite the federal government's historic initiatives that tribal members submit instead to nontribal governments. In the suit, the Snohomish Tribe argues that it was a primary signer of the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott, the agreement that turned over much of Western Washington's land to the federal government in exchange for medical care, reserved land and other benefits. The tribe also argues that poor living conditions on the Tulalip Indian Reservation kept many Snohomish Indians from living there, one factor that led the BIA to reject the tribe's 2004 appeal for recognition. The tribe argues that it has existed in an organized fashion continuously since long before the Treaty of Point Elliott was signed, but that it suffers now because it doesn't have access to federal assistance or rights including fishing and hunting. It could be a year or more before the tribe gets to argue its case in court, Devlin said. Only about 8 percent of the nation's 562 recognized tribes have gained recognition since 1960, according to the BIA. Hundreds of groups are currently seeking recognition. Copyright c. 2008 The Daily Herald Co., Everett, WA. --------- "RE: Bill creating Urban Indian Health Group signed" --------- Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2008 07:22:42 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="NEW MEXICO URBAN INDIAN HEALTH CARE BECOMES LAW" http://www.indianz.com/News http://www.kvia.com/Global/story.asp?S=7958823 Governor signs bill creating urban Indian health group Associated Press March 3, 2008 SANTA FE (AP) - Governor Richardson has signed into law a bill aimed at improving health care for Indians who live in urban areas. The legislation creates the Off-Reservation Native American Health Commission in Bernalillo County, which is where the largest concentration of urban Indians in New Mexico live. The nine-member commission will collect data about off-reservation Indians, identify where the gaps in services are and work to find funding for health care. Richardson says the new commission will serve as a planning and advocacy group at a time when funding for Indian health programs is in jeopardy. Copyright c. 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Copyright c. 2002-2008 WorldNow and KVIA. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Bill would end Utah's role as Tribe Trustee" --------- Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2008 07:22:42 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="UTAH BILL REMOVES STATE AS TRIBAL TRUSTEE" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_8446182 Bill would end state's role as tribe trustee By Cathy McKitrick The Salt Lake Tribune March 4, 2008 Utah senators on Monday passed legislation to get Utah out of its role overseeing millions of dollars in gas and oil royalties reserved for residents of the San Juan County portion of the Navajo Nation. Rep. Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, sponsored HB352 and its companion resolution HCR4 to remove the state as trustee of the Utah Navajo Trust Fund. The measures ask Congress to find a new overseer. "We're the only state in the nation to be a trustee for tribal trust funds," Clark told a Senate committee in late February. At that meeting, Ruby Nakoli, a Navajo from San Juan County's Aneth Extension, spoke out against the legislation. She fears the trust funds, if administered by the tribe's Navajo Utah Commission, could be misused to advance its agenda rather than to benefit the people. "I looked into it and I'm quite perplexed by [the concerns]," Sen. Scott Jenkins, R-Plain City, told fellow senators Monday. "You don't want to hurt the local people, but on the other hand it costs the state money to manage these funds." San Juan County and its part of the Navajo Nation are in Sen. Mike Dmitrich's district. The Price Democrat agreed with Jenkins' concerns and he supports getting Utah out of the role of trustee. However, he acknowledged tribe members' resistance to the proposed legislation. "I just got a call the other night that said the Navajo Nation's president opposed both these bills," Dmitrich said. "I want to make sure they keep their money." Alleged mismanagement and misuse of the funds by the state has been the focus of lawsuits that have been working their way through the courts for years. cmckitrick@sltrib.com Copyright c. 2008 The Salt Lake Tribune. --------- "RE: Longest Walk parade with Shoshone Elders" --------- Date: Mon 3, Mar 2008 07:37:41 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="LONGEST WALK IN ELY, NV" http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2008/03/ longest-walk-parade-with-shoshone.html Longest Walk parade with Shoshone elders' float in Ely, Nevada By Brenda Norrell http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/ March 1, 2008 ELY, Nevada - Western Shoshone elders from the Ely Indian Colony joined the Longest Walk 2 Northern Route for a parade with a float through downtown Ely on Friday, Feb. 29. The parade was welcomed to the Ely Indian Colony, with a drum song and a huge feast of chicken, meatloaf and large pots of stews and cornbread. Julie Brown, Lakota from Pine Ridge, came all the way from her home in Ethete, Wyoming, in a memorial tribute to her father, Henry Red Bear Brown, Lakota from Pine Ridge, who was an original Long Walker in the 1978 walk. Brown joined her sister Bernice Thompson, who lives in Ely, to host the memorial honor. Brown and Thompson presented star quilts to Jimbo Simmons, coordinator of the Longest Walk northern route, and Tomas Reyes, keeper of the Staffs and Eagle feathers. During the evening, Shoshone community members spoke out against a proposed coal-fired power plant here and water extraction for the insatiable thirst of Las Vegas. Shoshone also said the BLM and Forest Service are profiteering from the Shoshones' traditional lands and demanding that Shoshones pay fees for willows gathered for basketmaking. Shoshone women were told they would have to pay 10 cent per willow. "The BLM and Forest Service are armed," said one Shoshone elder, pointing out that a permit is also required for traditional gathering of pine nuts. Further, because of the US government's actions of eradicating many of the jackrabbits and coyotes, the ecosystem here is out of balance. "Men can not play god and that is what they are doing," said one Shoshone elder. "Now we don't see the birds, coyotes and rattlers. There is no ecological balance." The Western Shoshone elder said that the recent earthquake here should have sent a signal to halt plans to pump water out for Las Vegas and stop the destruction and poisoning of Mother Earth. Western Shoshone spiritual person Johnnie Bobb, Yomba Shoshone, led a sunrise ceremony on Saturday, March 1, for walkers and community members. After a breakfast feast at Ely Indian Colony, the Longest Walk 2 walkers and runners continued their prayer journey for Mother Earth, on Hwy 50, to Baker, where the Longest Walk will stay two nights. Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com Censored and under-reported news: brendanorrell@gmail.com --------- "RE: Longest Walk: Apology to Indians is diversion" --------- Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2008 07:22:42 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="APOLOGY HAS NO MEANING" http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2008/03/ longest-walk-apology-to-indians-is.html Longest Walk: Apology to Indians is diversion By Brenda Norrell Human right editor U.N. OBSERVER & International Report March 3, 2008 BAKER, Nevada - The apology to American Indians which passed the U.S. Senate is a diversion, said Jimbo Simmons, coordinator of the Longest Walk 2 Northern Route, which crosses the Nevada border into Utah today. "It is meant to diffuse our efforts," Simmons said. Simmons said if the United States is sincere about issuing an apology to American Indians, it should begin with the descendants of the original treaty signers and include the peoples of the world whose relatives have been murdered and massacred by the United States. Simmons said this is a critical time and not just for humanity. "They should also have an apology for the earth itself. This is connected to all us." "The apology should be to all the people of the world. Millions have died around the world," he said, pointing out the U.S. legacy of murder and massacre. The Senate passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act that included an apology to American Indians for the violation of Indian treaties, massacres and other atrocities. Simmons said the apology as it now stands is directed at the IRA Indian tribal governments or "puppet governments," organized under the Indian Reorganization Act, which have caused so much suffering for Indian people. Simmons said the apology should go to the original treaty signers. His comments were made on the Longest Walk Northern Route's live broadcast on http://www.earthcycles.net/ on Monday morning, March 3. Simmons pointed out that when the original Longest Walk was making its way across the United States in 1978, a similar diversion was created to diffuse the impact of the walk at that time. Indian representatives came out and told the Long Walkers that their walk was not necessary because the anti-Indian legislation underway would be defeated without their march into Washington. Now, 30 years later, another effort is underway to diffuse the impact of this Longest Walk. "The United `Snakes' of America thinks this would be enough for us," Simmons said. "There are still problems across Indian country. We're talking much more than just treaty rights. "It goes beyond human rights and civil rights, we are talking about our natural rights since the beginning of time. "Our traditional and spiritual leaders have been silenced for so long. The apology should be directed to them." Simmons said the IRA Indian tribal governments created by the United States are "puppet governments" which are "victimizing our people." "They continue to perpetuate the bureaucracy in Indian country." The U.S. apology to American Indians was inserted in the health care bill by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas. Kansas is on the route of the Longest Walk Northern Route, as American Indians walk from Utah through Colorado to Kansas and Pennsylvania before reaching D.C. The U.S. apology approved by the US Senate includes the violation of treaties with Indian tribes; forced removal of Indians from their traditional homelands; armed confrontations and massacres, such as those at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee; condemnation of Indian traditions, beliefs and customs; and unlawful acquisition of tribal land and theft of tribal resources and assets. Urging the masses to march into Washington with the Longest Walk, Simmons said, "This is the time for us to be in Washington DC." Simmons said the original Longest Walk in 1978 started with about 17 people from Alcatraz and by the time the walk reached Washington, the walk was 40,000 people strong. "All of those people who are sincere in their apology, let us see them in Washington. Passing a bill won't make it all alright," he said. Simmons said when the southern and northern routes of the Longest Walk 2 arrive in Washington on July 11, there will be a cultural survival gathering there. He pointed out that there are 400 million Indigenous peoples who maintain their traditional cultures around the world. "Indigenous Peoples will teach the world how to be human again." In 1978, when the Longest Walk reached Washington, 50 spiritual leaders were selected to meet with President Carter. However, President Carter refused to meet with the Longest Walk spiritual leaders. Now, Simmons said if today's U.S. leaders refuse to meet with the Longest Walkers, there will be others waiting there to greet them. World leaders are ready to meet and listen to American Indians on the Longest Walk 2. "Much progress has been made with countries around the world. The world will be meeting us," Simmons said. The Longest Walk 2 will also send a declaration to the United Nations. Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com at 11:08 AM Censored and under-reported news: brendanorrell@gmail.com --------- "RE: English proficiency not just a Black, White Issue" --------- Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2008 07:22:42 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="LANGUAGE DISCRIMINATION" http://www.gallupindependent.com/2008/March/030308kf_lngdscrmntn.html Language discrimination English proficiency not a black & white issue in Indian Country By Karen Francis Dine' Bureau March 3, 2008 GANADO - An Arizona state mandate going into effect next school year will require all public schools to teach four hours of English a day to students who are not proficient in English - a requirement that could have far-reaching effects for schools on Navajo. In the Ganado Unified School District alone, 886 out of approximately 1,800 pupils are deemed to be English-language learners. GUSD Superintendent Deborah Jackson-Dennison said that if the mandate goes into effect, it may take students deemed to be ELL five to six years to get their high school diploma, instead of the normal four, because they will be spending the majority of their time in English class. The Legislature voted for the mandate in 2005, with support from Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, as a response to a 1992 lawsuit dealing with funding for English instruction. There are approximately 135,000 students classified as English-language learners in the state. Jackson-Dennison said that students will become frustrated if the mandate is implemented at the district. "Our drop-out rate is going to increase. Our attendance is going to decrease. Our overall graduation rate is going to decrease. We'll never meet AYP (adequate yearly progress)," she said. "English only should not be applied to Navajo children," Jackson- Dennison said. "The model they are saying we have to use will hurt us more than help us." She added, "It's more deep-rooted than just putting this mandate in place and either complying or not complying. It's the very essence of discrimination and lack of understanding, ignorance toward Native American people." Jackson-Dennison is responding to the mandates in three ways. First, the district will begin a "Response to Intervention" program where the district will hold individualized meetings with parents of students designated as ELL and work to exit them out of the ELL label. Second, she will be proposing to the school board that the district begin a Navajo immersion program in kindergarten so that "when kindergarten children get to the high school level, they'll no longer be ELL. They'll know Navajo and English." She asserts that based on her experience students that have gone through Navajo immersion schools or programs outscore their peers on English tests when they get to secondary schools. However, the state and Horne don't recognize that model, she said. "They want us to follow their model of English-only, which has never worked ever since formal education has been introduced to Indian people across the country," Jackson-Dennison said. The final and perhaps most important step that Jackson-Dennison is taking is advocating for the U.S. Congress to strengthen the Native American Languages Act so that states cannot apply English-only to Native American tribes. She will be going before local chapters, the school board, the Navajo Nation's Education Committee, and the National Indian Education Association seeking supporting documents for the effort to strengthen NALA. Other superintendents with the state's Impact Aid Association will also bring resolutions before their school boards. "What it would do is no other state in the country will be able to apply English-only to Native American children," she said. Jackson-Dennison, who is Navajo, noted that Arizona has one of the largest Native American populations in the country, "yet we're saying English-only." Even while a monument to the Navajo Code Talkers was dedicated on the Arizona State Capitol grounds last week, the schools on Navajo are struggling with how they are going to implement the English language mandates. "They're honoring the Navajo Code Talkers and at the same time saying Navajo language is not as important as English. Yet without the Navajo language, without the Code Talkers, they would not even be here today," she said. Copyright c. 2008 the Gallup Independent. --------- "RE: Distant Native Languages bridge Bering Sea" --------- Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2008 07:29:42 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ATHABASCAN CONNECTION" http://www.adn.com/front/story/334139.html Distant Native languages bridge Bering Sea Siberian culture's words have echo in North America By GEORGE BRYSON gbryson@adn.com | gbryson@adn.com March 4, 2008 A remote population of a few hundred indigenous Siberians who live thousands of miles west of Alaska speak a language that appears to be an ancient relative of more than three dozen Native languages in North America, experts say. A panel of respected linguists who met in Anchorage on Friday are hailing new research that links the Old World language of Ket, still spoken sparingly along the Yenisei River in western Siberia, and the sprawling New World family of Na-Dene languages - a broad grouping that encompasses the many Athabascan tribes in Alaska, along with the Tlingit and Eyak people, as well as Indian populations in western Canada and the American Southwest, including the Navajo and the Apache. Other than Siberian Yupik, a regional Eskimo dialect that straddles the Bering Strait, a connection between North American and Asian language families had never before been demonstrated. The research by University of Western Washington linguist Edward Vajda, who spent 10 years deciphering the Ket language, drew upon parallel work by three Alaskans - Jeff Leer, Michael Krauss and James Kari, professors of linguistics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks - who independently detailed patterns in Na-Dene languages. Establishing that two such far-distant language groups are closely related is both demanding and rare in the exacting field of historical linguistics, according to participants who attended a language symposium at the annual meeting of the Alaska Anthropological Association. That Interior Indian languages spoken in North America are related to languages spoken in Asia has long been assumed, since other fields of science have widely concluded that the Americas weren't populated until ice age hunters migrated across a temporary land bridge from the old world to the new some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. And as early as 1923, other linguists speculated specifically about a genetic link between the Yeniseic family of languages spoken along the Yenisei River (of which Ket is now the only surviving member) and the Na- Dene family, spoken in North America. Ten years ago, American linguist Merritt Ruhlen did so again after producing a list of 36 cognates - comparable words in two languages that sound alike and mean the same thing. But producing lists of similar-sounding words isn't sufficient evidence to establish a real genetic relationship between two languages, declared Bernard Comrie, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, speaking at the conference. That's because cognates can also occur by accident or chance - when selective words are adopted by travelers from unrelated languages, or when words have a universal appeal. What makes the new finding so exciting, Comrie said, is that it's based on complex and verifiable morphologies that show how certain Ket words were systematically altered to create Athabascan words - or vice versa (the research doesn't speculate on which language came first or when). Vajda began studying the Ket language firsthand in the 1990s after the Iron Curtain fell and he began making field trips to the Yenisei River - about 3,600 miles west of Fairbanks. "There is no road and no train," Vajda said in an interview last week in Anchorage, here to address the symposium. "You have to go by steamboat or helicopter to get there." Through his research and interviews, Vajda determined that there are about 1,200 people who say they are Ket, including about 200 people who speak the language. But only about 100 speak Ket fluently, Vajda said, and nearly all of them are now older than 50. "They were the last hunters of north Asia that didn't have any domesticated animals that they used for food," he said. "They moved around, they didn't live in the same place." That came to an end when the Stalin regime in the Soviet Union forced the Ket to live in villages. Now their traditional lifestyle is nearly gone, Vajda said - and their language is disappearing too. While trying to capture it before it vanishes altogether, Vajda gained a new understanding about the peculiarities of Ket verbs, suffixes and tonalities - which are unlike any of the other Siberian languages to the east. Comparing what he learned with research conducted independently in Alaska, Vajda began to find words the two languages had in common. A news release issued this week by the Alaska Native Language Center at UAF concurs, noting language similarities "too numerous and displaying too many idiosyncratic parallels to be explained by anything other than common descent." Among linguistic scholars elsewhere who've reviewed Vajda's paper in its draft form and reacted favorably so far is Dr. Heinrich Werner of Bonn, Germany - a world authority in the Ket language, whose work Vajda cited and incorporated into his own, along with that of the Alaskans. Vajda thinks his research might be a door-opener for scientists in other fields, including those who work in human genetics and archaeology, to proceed with additional comparisons of the two cultures. He says it also points out the necessity and urgency to record dying languages before they disappear. Find George Bryson online at adn.com/contact/gbryson or call 257-4318. Copyright c. 2008 The Anchorage Daily News, a subsidiary of The McClatchy Company. --------- "RE: NEWCOMB: Examining the oral arguments in Dann" --------- Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 09:368:47 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="NEWCOMB: DANN" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416724 Newcomb: Examining the oral arguments in Dann by: Steven Newcomb / Indigenous Law Institute February 29, 2008 The Internet is amazing. I came across the audio (along with a written transcript) of the 1984 oral arguments in the case U.S. v. Dann. By listening to the audio recording, we are able to experience the arguments made 24 years ago before the Rehnquist Supreme Court regarding the issue of Western Shoshone land rights. Robert McConnell, Assistant U.S. Attorney General, argued on behalf of the United States, which was suing Mary and Carrie Dann for allegedly trespassing on "public lands" (Western Shoshone lands) by grazing their livestock without a permit from the Bureau of Land Management. McConnell opened by saying: "Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court, this case comes before this Court on writ of certiorari to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It concerns the finality effect of Section 22(a) of the Indian Claims Commission Act." McConnell continued: "Section 22(a) states that payment of a claim in accordance with the Act shall be [a] full discharge of the United States of all claims and demands touching any of the matters involved in the controversy." McConnell went on to explain that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had "determined that payment had not taken place in accordance with Section 22(a). We [the United States] believe that that decision was in error and should be reversed." Eventually, Justice Blackman asked McConnell, "Are we spinning our wheels here?" McConnell responded by saying, "No, I don't believe so, Mr. Justice Blackman. What we have here is the finality provisions of 22(a), and specifically if, as we believe, 22(a) has been satisfied, payment has taken place, then the respondents [the Dann sisters] are precluded from using a claim of title, Western Shoshone title as a defense in the action stated here, the ejectment action brought by the [U.S.] government." So, let's stop right here and reflect on what McConnell said. Notice, for example, his use of the plural when he refers to "the finality provisions of 22(a)." Although this obviously means more than one provision, McConnell only specifies the provision of payment. What is the other provision of Section 22(a)? It is the reporting provision. The beginning of Section 22(a) states: "When the report of the [Indian Claims] Commission ... has been filed with Congress, such report shall have the effect of a final judgment of the Court of Claims, and there is authorized to be appropriated such sums as are necessary to pay the final determination of the Commission." The word "when" may be interpreted to mean "in the event that." Thus, it may be rewritten as: "In the event that the report of the Commission ... has been filed with Congress, such report shall" be treated the same as if it were a judgment by the Court of Claims. Thus, when McConnell referenced the "provisions" of Section 22(a), he was referencing both the commission's required report to Congress and the payment provision. Yet McConnell very cleverly never mentioned to the court the language of the first provision. The reason why McConnell neglected to specify the first provision of Section 22(a) is really quite simple: The Indian Claims Commission failed to file a report with Congress in the Western Shoshone case before the commission was disbanded by Congress in 1978. The Western Shoshone case was then transferred to the Court of Claims, but U.S. Attorney General McConnell stated to the court that "this transfer" had no "bearing upon the question presented" to the Supreme Court. In light of the failure of the Indian Claims Commission to file a report with Congress in the Western Shoshone case, let's reexamine McConnell's statement to the court: "... if, as we believe, 22(a) has been satisfied, payment has taken place, then the respondents [the Dann sisters] are precluded from using a claim of title, Western Shoshone title as a defense." But in order for Section 22(a) to have "satisfied," both provisions of 22(a) had to have been completed. Only if that happened would the Danns be precluded "from using a claim of title, Western Shoshone title as a defense." Thus, according to the U.S.'s own position, fulfillment of only one of the two provisions of 22(a) would not be sufficient to bar the Danns from asserting title to Western Shoshone lands. Our evidence that the reporting provision of Section 22(a) was never "satisfied" is the Indian Claims Commission's 1979 Final Report of all its work. A graph is found in that report showing all the dockets that the ICC had completed from 1946 - 1978. The graph also lists 19 cases never reported to Congress, and one of these is Docket 326-K, the Western Shoshone case. Thus, the question arises: "Why did U.S. Assistant Attorney General McConnell not reveal to the Supreme Court that the reporting provision of Section 22(a) had never been "satisfied" by the commission? To avoid bringing this pertinent piece of information to the Court's attention, McConnell kept the court's attention exclusively on the payment provision of Section 22(a). But by using the plural term "provisions," McConnell was obviously aware of the fact that both a report to Congress and payment had to occur before finality could be reached by the commission and by the U.S. government. Unfortunately, the attorneys for the Danns also failed to focus the court's attention on the fact that one of the two provisions of Section 22(a) had never been carried out. Thus, the court, without all the facts, ruled against the Danns in keeping with the U.S. government's argument, premised on a partial disclosure of Section 22(a) of the Indian Claims Commission Act. Nonetheless, because of the lack of a final report, to this day the United States has not achieved finality in the Western Shoshone case despite its many and persistent deceptions to the contrary. --- Steven Newcomb, Shawnee/Lenape, is the indigenous law research coordinator at the Education Department of the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, co-founder and co-director of the Indigenous Law Institute, and author of the book "Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery" (Fulcrum, 2008). Copyright c. 1998 - 2008 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: RUSSELL: The borders of the Wanabi Nation" --------- Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 09:368:47 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="RUSSELL: ASSIMILATION" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416723 Russell: Assimilation and the borders of the Wanabi Nation by: Steve Russell February 29, 2008 Cherokees, as my Plains Indian pals never hesitate to remind me, are among the most assimilated peoples indigenous to North America. We've been a constitutional republic since 1827, but our fascination with written law goes back farther. In Oklahoma, they say a Creek who gets too much education becomes a poet and a Cherokee who gets too much education becomes a lawyer. Well, it's hard not to notice that when the United States acted against Cherokee sovereignty in ways that amounted to acts of war, we did not go to war but rather went to court and won. In the end, though, we took as many casualties as those who did go to war and still lost their land, as the aforesaid Plains Indians always point out. We are in fact highly assimilated in two distinct ways. First, there is assimilation into the culture of the Bible Belt yahoos who govern Oklahoma: the culture that sends a fool to the Senate who claims global warming is a hoax; the culture that thinks allowing gay people to marry will raise the divorce rate among heterosexual couples; the culture that regrets the outcome of the War of Northern Aggression and denies the Tulsa race riots like Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust. This is the missionary culture that finds virtue in ostentatious public prayer, Matthew 6:5-6 notwithstanding. Second, there are Cherokees assimilated like me, and I know more of them than I can count without taking my shoes off. We leave the Nation in pursuit of an education or a career. We always say we intend to go back. Then we get a dose of realism and think maybe we will retire there, because it's always "home" in some sense. If we visit home often enough, though, we know that there are a great many Cherokees in both Oklahoma and North Carolina who are not assimilated in either sense. That is, home is home to them and they are not going anywhere, but they retain the open-ended epistemology that makes American Indians such easy marks for missionaries. That is, they respect everybody's idea of truth, and do not consider government an instrument of spiritual conquest. "The spirit world takes care of its own business," an old lady used to tell me, meaning that if you do right, you will know it in your bones. And if you do wrong, the wrong will come back and bite you and you can't change either result by making a law. The way of things does not need a law; and so if marriage is one man and one woman, a law saying that is absurd. Law is not to enforce the way of things; law is to direct traffic. Here I am with three college degrees, two of them in law, and I still believe that primitive stuff. I think there is a sense in which one can be "more Indian" or "less Indian," and it has nothing to do with blood quantum. If it did, I would long ago have had a transfusion to cure my problem with Cherokee verbs. It's a set of customs and values that get weaker with geographical distance. As the Choctaw philosopher Lee Hester says, white people care about orthodoxy while Indians care about "orthopraxy." With distance, we lose the practice of being Indian. Whether that is a function of time as well as distance, I cannot be reliably informed, but I hope not. Since the U.S. Census decided to go with self-identification in multiple categories, the fastest-growing Indian tribe has been the Wanabi Nation. Either urban Indians multiply like bunnies or everybody is honoring the Cherokee princess in their lineage, who of course looked like a Lakota from central casting. This leaves those of us who have chosen to attenuate our connections with Indian communities wondering what separates us from those who have to hire a genealogist to discover an Indian ancestor. One possibility that comes to mind is that enrolled absentees could be a tax base: head tax, income tax or poll tax. The argument goes: Why did you leave? I was chasing a career. Did you find it? Yes. Then you can afford to pay tribal taxes, right? The poll tax has evil implications in mainstream politics because it was used to deny the vote to freed slaves on account of their race until the Supreme Court shut down the practice. However, Indian nations have pretty sensible reasons for making voting harder for outlanders than for homelanders. Those in the homeland, or some of them at least, personify cultural preservation. Without them, we outlanders would be nothing but historical relics, repositories of family memories rather than representatives of living cultures. Without a doubt, many of my fellow outlanders will have kittens when they read this because they think they are Indian by blood rather than by practice. Maybe so, just like British royals. Lots of peoples have taken the position that virtue is inherited rather than accomplished, so the idea cannot be dismissed out of hand. Therefore, it would be a good idea to put some numbers to this theory and see if the Cherokee Nation could come up with enough of a tax base to replace the money some in Congress want to take away to punish our treaty violation. So I e-mailed my tribal registration office and asked how many outlanders there are in relation to citizens in the homeland. I got an e- mail back asking why I had asked for an "as of" date and I immediately replied, citing the time between writing and publishing an academic paper. There was no reply. Over the Christmas holidays, I called my tribal registration office and got told that the only person with that information would be back in January. Deadline? So sorry. She got back and still refused to answer. When I threatened to make this public, she punted to her supervisor. At this point, there have been three levels of bureaucracy refusing to answer a straightforward and simple question. Yes, I know most of the tribal council, not to mention the chief, but there are two possibilities about this contretemps. Either this is my punishment for having supported the loser in the last tribal election, or I am being treated exactly the way every tribal citizen is treated when they ask their government for information. No matter which is the case, my enthusiasm for paying tribal taxes is waning. Not because of personal insult, but because a taxpayer expects competence and professionalism. Perhaps that's an argument in favor of tribal taxes rather than against them? This will work out the way it should. Bad government carries consequences. The worse government is, the more it resembles a social club rather than a government. My Choctaw friends are in the same boat when they can't get a voter list to run a campaign against tribal government incumbents. A government acting that way preserves the privilege of individuals to benefit themselves - not the prerogatives of a sovereign. If we become less Indian with time as well as with distance, then whatever it is that Indians bring to the human table will die out, and I do not want to see that happen. It seems like we have been through too much for that result. But at some point, we have to govern ourselves or accept that the United States will always have to govern us. I am content that the political world, like the spirit world, will take care of its own business. --- Steve Russell, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is a Texas trial court judge by assignment and an associate professor of criminal justice at Indiana University - Bloomington. He is a columnist for Indian Country Today. Copyright c. 1998 - 2008 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: GIAGO: Yupik woman stands up to sexual abuse" --------- Date: Mon 3, Mar 2008 07:37:41 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="GIAGO: ABUSED YUPIK WOMAN STRIKES BACK" http://www.indianz.com/News/2008/007416.asp Tim Giago: Yupik woman stands up to sexual abuse March 3, 2008 There is a lady of the Yupik Tribe in Alaska that is a hero of mine. For many years she was known only as Jane Doe 1 in an effort by her lawyer, Ken Roosa, to protect her true identity. But this courageous lady that was sexually abused by a Jesuit priest named Father Jim Poole from the age of 10 until the age of 16 decided that she needed to step forward and reveal her true identity so that people would see that she was a real person and perhaps it would encourage other Native children to come forward with their own stories of abuse. Elsie Boudreau decided to bring a lawsuit against Poole after her complaints to the church hierarchy fell on deaf ears. She accused Poole of kissing and fondling her many times starting in 1978. The abuse included heavy petting and having her lie on top of him the lawsuit said. Father Poole, now 82, is living in a Jesuit retirement center in Spokane, WA. He arrived in Alaska in 1948 as a seminarian. He was assigned to Holy Cross, Pilot Station, Marshall, Mountain Village, St. Mary's, Barrow and Nome according to the Daily News - Miner in Alaska. Father Poole founded radio station KNOM in Nome, the Fairbanks Catholic Diocese, and the Society of Jesus Oregon Province. A second lawsuit against Poole was filed in June of 2005 by Jane Doe 2 an indigenous female. This complaint alleges that Poole sexually abused her for 8 years beginning when she was 12. The complaint states that Poole impregnated Jane Doe 2 at age 14 and then told her to "get rid of the baby" and to blame the pregnancy on her dad. I was always surprised whenever I spoke about the abuse of Indian children by Catholic priests and nuns by how often people that came up to speak to me after my talk were from Alaska or Canada. It seems that the abusers in those two regions were not as adept at covering up their crimes as were the priests and nuns of the lower 48, or maybe it was because the American people in the lower 48 just plain refused to accept the idea the a priest or member of the clergy could sexually, mentally and physically abuse Native American children. Elsie Boudreau reached the point in her life where the abuse was taking on toll on her. Her own child was just about to turn 10 years of age and Elsie could not erase from her mind that Father Poole started to abuse her when she was 10. She knew that many more children had been abused by Father Poole and she often wondered how many other missionaries were out there in the wilds of Alaska abusing other Native children. When she took her stand against Poole it took all of the courage she could muster. She knew that she would be putting her own life out there to be scrutinized and dissected by the media. She could have hidden behind the anonymity of Jane Doe 1 indefinitely, but she knew that in order to bring the full focus of the media on her actions and to encourage other Alaskan Native children to step forward, the needed to know that there was a real person behind the accusations of the lawsuit. Elsie Boudreau won a settlement in the range of $1 million. She said, "Just getting the settlement doesn't mean it is over in terms of healing. There's other work to be done. It's not over." Last year when I spoke in Albuquerque, NM about my book, "Children Left Behind," a book about the abuse of Indian children in South Dakota, Elsie Boudreau was in the audience. She came up to speak to me later and I was very impressed with this quiet, but strong Yupik lady. Elsie wants to build a memorial near St. Mary's on the Andreafsky River in Alaska for the children who lost their innocence to sexual abuse by priests and clerics. She envisions it as a contemplative, quiet setting where the abused can find peace. But she wants to do more than that. She wants to reach out to the Native children of the lower 48 states that have endured the same kind of abuse at the hands of the missionaries. When the sexual abuse of white children by the Catholic priests came out in the open, it was big news in all of the major newspapers in America. Indian children have been victims of this same abuse since the mid-1800s and when it is finally revealed it is covered up by the American press. I applaud Elsie Boudreau. She is an unselfish lady who put her life and reputation on the line in order to seek justice for the Native children that have endured more than 100 years of abuse by the missionaries and teachers that were supposed to help them, but instead hurt them. Elsie is my hero and I would like to work with her to open more doors for the Indian children that have been abused by the church. She can be reached at eboudreau@cookeroosa.com. --- 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. He can be reached at najournalist@msn.com. Copyright c. 2008 Indianz.com. --------- "RE: CONWAY: Sovereignty is more than just a word" --------- Date: Mon 3, Mar 2008 07:37:41 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="CONWAY: SOVEREIGNTY" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416725 Conway: Sovereignty is more than just a word by: Betsy Conway February 29, 2008 I have represented the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation for 15 years, and cannot remember an issue that has generated more controversy than the labor issues facing the tribe today. I have heard completely opposite views as to how the tribe should respond. In each case, the opposing views were offered with equal vigor and conviction, and each claimed the moral high ground. Those not familiar with federal Indian law and policy seem agitated, confused and unable to comprehend the basis of the controversy - tribal sovereignty. In January, the controversy took center stage in a National Labor Relations Board hearing room in Hartford, Conn. The contentious hearing's focus was the tribe's objections to the way the election was conducted, but tribal sovereignty was ever-present throughout. This conflict is unnecessary since the union could have petitioned for representation under the Tribal Labor Relations Law, not its federal counterpart. That would have been the less contentious path. In the Hartford proceedings, the board and the union said they "respect" tribal sovereignty. What their actions said was that while they respect tribal sovereignty in concept, they cannot tolerate the exercise of that sovereignty. I couldn't help but contrast what I heard with the real words of presidential executive orders, congressional legislation and court decisions that support tribal self-determination and a commitment to deal with tribes on a "government-to-government" basis. Those words are being ignored with devastating effects by the blind and blanket imposition of the National Labor Relations Act on Indian tribes and their gaming enterprises. Some in Indian country have counseled against pursuing this challenge. They fear too much could be lost. Yet there is no good choice for tribes. The imposition of the NLRA is unlike that of any other statute that is silent as to Indian tribes, because it inserts a third party into tribal employment without any acknowledgement of the profound impact that it has on tribal laws, institutions and structures. Does it mean that the tribe's labor relations law is void? How about the tribe's right to work law, the tribal employee review code, the tribal civil rights law or the tribal gaming law? As we go through the process governing the representation petition under the NLRA, one thing is clear: there continue to be repeated, substantial intrusions and eviscerations of tribal sovereignty starting with the initial petition hearing, continuing with the conduct of an NLRB election on the tribe's reservation and, most recently, the imposition and enforcement of subpoenas against tribal entities to obtain tribal government documents. The prospect of continued destruction of tribal sovereignty is certain. If the election is certified, the tribe could not sit down and bargain under the NLRA without substantial detrimental impacts on its laws and legal structures. Through this process, what is most concerning is the apparent and complete misunderstanding by federal agencies and some federal courts of tribal sovereignty and how it is exercised on reservations across this country. Each tribe is different and the impact on one may be very different than that felt by other tribes. As to the Pequot tribe, it has developed and invested in a sophisticated, fair and effective court system that has been enforcing tribal laws since its creation 16 years ago. No one who has truly looked at the tribal court and read its opinions or observed it in action could seriously argue that it is not fair and impartial in its dispensing of justice. Even the union has acknowledged this in its filings. The tribe has enacted laws governing all aspects of activity on the reservation including labor and employment, and the tribal court has heard countless cases concerning tribal employment at the gaming enterprise as well as at other entities. Of course, this is exactly what Congress and every president since Nixon has encouraged tribes to do - be self-governing and self-sufficient. In fact, the federal legislation addressing the real issue underlying all of this - tribal gaming - was enacted with the specific purpose of encouraging tribal economic self- sufficiency and building strong tribal governments. The Pequot tribe has taken that route and built a strong tribal government. The federal response has been to ignore the congressional and executive dictates that require a government-to-government relationship and true respect for the exercise, not just the concept, of tribal sovereignty. In his Tuscarora dissent, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black chastised the majority: "Great nations, like great men, should keep their word." History continues to repeat itself when it comes to tribal sovereignty. --- Betsy Conway, in-house counsel for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, was instrumental in the formation of the Indian Law Committee of the Connecticut Bar Association. Copyright c. 1998 - 2008 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: YELLOW BIRD: History comes alive at UND Party" --------- Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2008 07:22:42 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="YELLOW BIRD: REFLECTIONS ON UND'S 125TH YEAR" http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=69139 History comes alive at UND party Dorreen Yellow Bird Grand Forks Herald March 1, 2008 There was a sweet aroma of perfume and an image of polish among the crowd at Thursday's 125th anniversary celebration of UND's Founding Day. The event was held in one of those spacious halls in the Alerus Center. The location easily accommodated the 800 guests. And the celebration had an air of accomplishment, emphasized by spotlighted program booths displaying pictures that heralded UND. Young people - students - in green directed the visitors attending the event. As I stood watching the growing crowd, I remembered who I was standing among: men and women who are the best in their fields - scientists, medical doctors, nurses, microbiologists, engineers, philosophers, historians and writers, many of them teachers. A professor interrupted my thoughts. She knew my daughter, Lisa Lonefight, who attended UND. A little farther down the rows of placards and booths, another professor told me that he knew my brother, Don Yellow Bird, who was in this professor's teacher corps program maybe 40 years ago. My brother now is a retired science teacher. I went with my sister, Liz, who came to honor her longtime friend and co-worker, Deb Wilson, director of the Recruitment/Retention of American Indians into Nursing program. UND President Charles Kupchella, who was the emcee and looked as dapper as a talk show host, came to our table to congratulate Wilson. She has worked at UND for 25 years, she told him, but has been at UND for more than 30 years. She received her bachelor's and masters' degrees at UND, too. I've known Wilson for a long time. She is RAIN. Her dedication to the program has taken many American Indian students through it, and many of them now are scattered throughout Indian country as much-needed nurses. Some of those earlier nurses' children are entering RAIN now, she told us with a smile. Later, I met Jeffrey Sun, who received the UND Foundation/Lydia and Arthur Saiki Prize for Graduate and Professional Teaching Excellence. He was one of my sister's professors. Liz is a former teacher herself and told me that when she started her graduate program, she picked him out as outstanding. She laughed when she told me about her first class, when she realized he was younger than her own children. Yes, Liz, I said, everyone is getting to be younger than we are. But at this place and this celebration, age seemed to equate to wisdom. Among those UND staff members who were retiring, we both recognized our favorite birding teacher and friend, Dave Lambeth. He is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology turned birder. His wife, Cec Volden, the former director of the nursing program, retired a few years ago and is an expert birder, also. There were more people from the Energy and Environmental Research Center who came forward for their 25-year-award than there were from any other program. I guess that's why the program has accomplished so much and is known nationwide for its innovation. The university has developed an excellent historical video that takes you from the founding in 1883 to the present. Each of the award recipients will receive a copy of it. As Kupchella talked about this history -the theme of the program was "From tradition to tomorrow" - he mentioned an event that I'd heard about before: The founding was the same day in 1883 as the first performance of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show. It also took place six years before North Dakota became a state. In all that history, I wondered: Where were the Ojibwe, Mandan, Arikara, Lakota, Nakota and Dakota people? The video also showed footage of a once-popular UND event called the "Flickertail Follies," which looked like something that would be enjoyed today. We saw a picture of the early university on the outskirts of Grand Forks. Buildings were sparse, and there were no trees. What a difference from the campus today. The Founding Day celebration and the 125th birthday reminds us particularly of the excellent professors and staff we have at UND and what a priceless jewel we have in the university. --- 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: YELLOW BIRD: Campaign calls up old Stereotypes" --------- Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2008 07:29:42 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="YELLOW BIRD: DEMOCRAT CONTENDERS" http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=69523 Campaign calls up old stereotypes Dorreen Yellow Bird Grand Forks Herald March 5, 2008 As I write this Tuesday, I realize that the day's primaries and caucuses will be over today, when this column appears. So, my question will not be who won, but how and why the elements of race and gender in the mix may have affected the vote. Did these issues matter in the early races? Yes, I believe they did. I think we are a nation that has put aside race and gender publicly, but as individuals - underneath it all - these issues continue to affect us. I know they influence me, and I'm not sure I even realized it. From my experience, gender is more influential than race. Sen. Barack Obama is black and Sen. Hillary Clinton is a woman, two traits voters have not experienced at this level in presidential elections. These issues may seem incidental in the endless number of analyses from talk shows, news clips or editorial writers. They are, nevertheless, part of the scenario, no matter how much we try to say they don't count. Clinton brings with her a background of an Ivy League education, the logic of a lawyer, a history as the wife of the president, service as a senator from New York and, most recently, experience as a candidate for president herself. As a candidate, Clinton's image changed like a woman in a beauty contest going from evening gown to swim suit - more exposure. And all that with the help of her campaign people, of course. What should she be to attract her constituents? Her ace in the hole was that she's smart and experienced. But some of that experience was on the sidelines as the president's wife. She graduated to more in-depth experience as a senator. As she moved into the fighting mode of the campaign, I saw a harder, more callous woman. Is that something women need to win in a contest as difficult as the race for the White House? We have no experience with a woman in the most powerful position in the nation and world. As Clinton moved forward and tried to catch a fast-moving Obama, she became more and more hard line, talking over moderators of the debates - always pushing, pushing. Also, she looked for weaknesses in her opponent and tossed daggers that mostly missed their target. The crass term "bitchy" comes to my mind - something we say of women, not men. And not a worthy comment about a woman who would be president. Then, in the past few weeks, a sound of desperation leaked into her campaign, "Please vote for me," she seemed to whine to factory workers she met at 5:30 a.m., just a few mornings before Tuesday's vote. Little sleep but a lot of makeup, I would say, probably held her up. It's that "too needy" factor that came off in the last days before Tuesday's vote. Do we see the "too needy" factor as a woman's trait? I wondered about her relationship with Bill Clinton. Has he changed so that he won't embarrass her if she captures the presidency? What a bummer it would be for her to have to deal with his kind of Monica Lewinsky philandering while she is trying to negotiate with a Middle Eastern government or convince Congress that what she wants is important. We don't seem to be as tough on men who philander. For example, we re- elected Bill Clinton. We don't like what he did, but I think we overlook it. There is honor in suffering and forgiving for women, but what about a woman president? Would divorce be an option for her? It's not uncommon for partners to have family problems that end in divorce. In fact, divorce is so common that people who live with the same partner all their lives can seem like the exception to the rule, especially in the world of entertainment. As I think about the race, I realize I am harder on Clinton than I am Obama. This may be because of the things we are taught and raised with as children and young women. Being a woman candidate for president would seem to have more downsides - and if Clinton wins the nomination, she certainly deserves credit for overcoming all those old stereotypes I hardly recognized in myself. --- 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: ABOUREZK: Native Superdelegates mulling Candidates" --------- Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 07:31:02 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="ABOUREZK: NATIVE SUPERDELEGATES" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.reznetnews.org/blogs/red-clout/ native-superdelegates-mulling-candidates Native Superdelegates Mulling Candidates By Kevin Abourezk March 6, 2008 A Democratic nomination like no other. That's how many political pundits are describing the titanic clash this presidential primary season between Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. On Tuesday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) cinched his party's nomination. So these times beg the question: Who does Indian Country support? Depends who you ask. A good place to start: the Democratic Party's only two Native American superdelegates. As two of 794 Democratic superdelegates, Frank LaMere and Kalyn Free are getting a lot of attention right now in a race that many expect superdelegates will play a key role in deciding at the Democratic National Convention in August. The power to help decide their party's presidential nominee is a trust LaMere and Free aren't taking for granted. LaMere is endorsing Obama. Free said this week she remains undecided. Both agree: The remaining presidential candidates' past work and rhetoric on Indian issues portend better times for Native people. "I think this past administration has been abysmal on Indian issues," said Free, a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma who also is president and founder of INDN's List, a nonprofit that recruits and trains Native political candidates. "I think it is a new day in Indian Country, and I think a new administration is going provide a brighter future for Indians in America." McCain served as chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and was the only presidential candidate in 1999 to speak at the National Congress of American Indians national convention. Obama has addressed Native issues mostly through his Web site, though he spoke about Indian issues also while campaigning in Nevada in January. Clinton mostly stands on the work of her husband, who gained Indian favor by adding a key Native liaison position within the White House. Hillary Clinton also spoke via satellite in November to attendees of the NCAI annual convention. So why does LaMere, a Winnebago tribal member and longtime Democratic Party activist, support Obama? "Hillary Clinton, to many Native people, represents the status quo, business as usual," he said. "Eighty percent unemployment at Pine Ridge should not be business as usual. High rates of suicide and diabetes on our reservations should not be the status quo." Indian Country, he said, needs someone willing to think out of the box when it comes to finding solutions to Indian issues. For LaMere, that someone is Obama. "He has generated a lot of excitement, and I believe he will be an agent of change, something that Native people can appreciate," he said. Still, LaMere plans to support whoever the Democratic nominee is and will work to educate that person on Indian issues come August. Those issues, he said, include health care, housing and education for Indian people. "We need a new approach," he said. "We need, literally, a New Deal for Indian people." --- Kevin Abourezk, Oglala Lakota, is a reporter and editor at the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star. He is a reznet assignment editor and teaches reporting at the Freedom Forum's American Indian Journalism Institute. Copyright c. 2008 Reznet. Reznet is a project of The University of Montana School of Journalism. --------- "RE: COULTER: Real Apology means you won't do it again" --------- Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2008 07:49:33 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="COULTER: EMPTY APOLOGY" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416748 Coulter: A real apology means you won't do it again by: Robert Coulter March 7, 2008 Congress is considering an apology to American Indians for the wrongs done by this country - forced relocation, takings of lands, violating treaties, destroying sacred sites, and outlawing Native religions and languages, to name a few. But a real apology means you won't do it again - and there is the problem. The federal government still takes Indian land without paying for it, still fails to account for the Indian money it holds, still violates treaties with Indian nations without making amends, and still maintains a body of law and policy that is so discriminatory and racist that it should have been discarded generations ago. To make a genuine apology, Congress needs to stop doing the things for which it is apologizing. It is astonishing to most Americans that Congress and the administration are still taking Indian land and resources - without due process of law and without fair market compensation - sometimes with no compensation at all. The Constitution says that Congress may not take anyone's property except for a public purpose, with due process of law, and with fair market compensation. But these rules are not applied to most land and resources owned by Indian tribes, and the government takes the land and resources at will. Obviously, this is wrong. A few years ago, Congress confiscated part of the Yurok Nation's reservation in California and turned it over to another tribe. At the time, Congress gloated that it could do this without paying compensation because of "plenary power," a concept that gives Congress complete power over Indian affairs. This power has almost no constitutional limitations that protect basic rights, and Indians are the only people in the United States subjected to it. A good example of ongoing wrongs is how the government is trying to drive Western Shoshone Indians off their homelands in Nevada without due process and for a payment of about 15 cents per acre. This is gold-mining land (much of it turned over for only $2.50 per acre to Canadian-owned companies) but Indians derive no royalties from it, while being left virtually landless with no means for economic development to improve their impoverished conditions. In 2004, Congress passed a law that confiscates more than $145 million belonging to nine Western Shoshone tribal governments and orders the Interior Department to hand out the money to individual tribal members. The bill was passed despite the objections of most Western Shoshone tribes, because it violates their inherent right to self-governance and control over their resources. Another glaring abuse of federal power is how the Interior Department still does not account for billions in Indian funds that it holds. This national shame is reported regularly in the press. The department is defying the law, as it has done for years. The United States still insists that Indian tribes, and in some respects Indian individuals, are in a state of permanent, involuntary trusteeship, with the federal government as trustee. No one else in the United States is subject to such unaccountable "trusteeship." Congress today insists it can put Indian nations and tribes out of existence at any time by terminating their rights. Indian nations and tribes still have no real right to exist in U.S. law. The threat of termination is very real. Some small Native tribes in Alaska have heard this threat from congressional sources in recent years. Congress also insists that it may freely violate treaties made with Indian nations. Sadly, this is not a thing of the past. Congress does this today - regularly. Treaties are contracts, and the government cannot freely violate its contracts with others, but it often does so in the case of Indian treaties. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS, an international legal body that is officially recognized and supported by the United States, in 2002 concluded that U.S. policies regarding Indian lands are discriminatory and constitute a violation of human rights. But the administration is defying the commission and refusing to change the discriminatory laws it applies to Indian tribes. This embarrassing state of affairs, this ongoing pattern of lawless and arbitrary congressional power over Indians, has resulted in a negative, risky, unpredictable business climate on Indian reservations that inhibits needed economic development. Many of the things Congress is considering apologizing for are still being done to Indians, Alaska Natives and to Native Hawaiians as well. Sadly, the United States, especially Congress, has never given up its insistence on treating Indian and Alaska Native nations with injustice and discrimination. This is not only wrong, but very bad public policy and wholly out of keeping with American values. So what should Congress do? In addition to an apology, Congress should conduct hearings on these issues and adopt a resolution never again to take Indian or tribal property without due process of law and fair market compensation. The resolution should promise that Congress will never again terminate any American Indian tribe or its government and never again violate or abrogate a treaty with a Native nation without making full compensation and correcting all resulting harm to that nation. Congress must examine and change all federal laws, regulations and court-made law that deprive Indian nations and tribes of constitutional rights. Congress must pass legislation to assure that the government accounts fully for the Indian money and property it holds. Indian nations have particular rights based on their existence as nations since before the United States was created. But this does not mean that these Native societies and governments should be punished by being deprived of the fundamental constitutional rights that protect everyone in this country from arbitrary government action. Indian nations should have at least the same constitutional rights that all others in this country are accorded. Until Congress corrects the grievous legal framework that applies to Indian nations, tribal governments must work at a terrible disadvantage to battle the deplorable poverty and social problems that afflict most Indian communities. Government program funds and casinos cannot ever overcome the fundamental legal injustice that Congress continues to inflict on Indian and Alaska Native nations. Without such commitments from Congress, an apology will not be in good faith and will have to be made over again. Until the government changes its ways, things cannot be expected to improve much in Indian country. It is time to make the changes. --- Robert Tim Coulter, founder and executive director of the Indian Law Resource Center in Helena, Mont., and Washington, D.C., has practiced Indian and human rights law for more than 30 years. Copyright c. 1998 - 2008 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: YELLOW BIRD: `Powwow Fever' spreads before event" --------- Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2008 08:03:35 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="YELLOW BIRD: ALMOST CANCELED POWWOW" http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=69891 `Powwow fever' spreads before event Dorreen Yellow Bird Grand Forks Herald March 8, 2008 A bare-bones budget almost canceled the 39th annual Time-Out Powwow at UND. After a lot of agonizing and restructuring the budget, American Indians students were able to commit to the 2008 powwow. Its Time-Out panels and programs are scheduled for April 14-17, and the powwow will be April 18-20. It has been 39 years since the university, with the help of then- President Tom Clifford, developed plans to try to bring understanding to the community regarding American Indians through the Time-Out week and powwow. When I heard rumors that the powwow would be canceled, I called B.J. Rainbow, UND Indian Association president. Rainbow and I have been friends for several years. He is one of those dedicated young family men who is a future leader. This year, he told me, the budget just didn't seem to work, but they pushed on. Every year, it seems to become tougher and tougher for the students to put aside their classes to raise money. This year was almost the breaker. The university doesn't always understand why they have a need for a budget, Rainbow told me. The students have been asked why drummers, singers and dancers need to be paid. It's like any other performer, speaker or author that the university brings to the campus, except that these groups of entertainers work for much less money because they love the art, he said. The UND powwow is the beginning of the powwow season, so the drummers, singers and dancers are eager to try new songs they've created or try out their new regalia they've beaded and hung together during the winter. They call powwow excitement at this time of the year "powwow fever." Rainbow is a drummer and singer himself. It's an art; maybe more like a spiritual art, I thought. This year, they have about $10,000 in prize money for the drummers. The number and reputation of the drum groups bring in the dancers. The dancers like to dance to professional drum songs. What the winnings covers is mostly room, meals and mileage; some come from as far away as Arizona and Alaska. Five singers in one group might split $1,000 a day, a sum that barely pays their costs. Drumming isn't as simple as it might appear. Some examples of drum songs are word, straight and memorial songs. In the word songs, the Dakota language might be used. It may be a memorial song about a solider who returned from war. This kind of word song is old. It comes from the ancient times, when warriors were honored for their bravery and skills. The drum songs are created by the singers from dreams, maybe sounds of the wind or in prayer. That is the spiritual part of the art. You have to know which song to sing for which person, Rainbow said. These songs tell a story, and the story needs to be about the right war, too. You wouldn't sing a World War II song about a man who just returned from the Iraq war. Some of the songs are prayers, and some just tell a story - like the "sneak-up" songs, which tell of stealing horses and so on. When you decide you want to be a singer and drummer, you approach someone who can mentor you, or you might join a drum group, and they will mentor you. There is protocol: You have to wait to be invited to sing. You just don't "jump on a drum" unless you know the songs, Rainbow said. When you are learning, you have a certain spot on the drum that you hit. You don't drum loud in the center because maybe the song calls for a sudden stop, and you'll still be drumming, he said with a smile. That would be embarrassing. When you're a singer, you need to learn voice control; and when you first begin, you sing softly so that you're not still singing when everyone else has stopped. This happens often in songs such as the "Crow Hop," which has skipped beats. The dancers want a good drum because they can then "show their stuff." They have moves, and they want them to show well to the judges. In the Grass Dance, for example, there's a lot of footwork. Today, many of the young dancers are incorporating contemporary footwork in their moves, Rainbow said. Outfits are getting shinier because the dancer wants the judges to notice them, Rainbow said. "I don't know if I agree with that," he added. It would be unfortunate if the work of these young people went by the wayside simply because of a lack of understanding of American Indian culture. --- 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: WHITE: We won't let Interior off hook so easily" --------- Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 07:52:09 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="WHITE: NEW LAND INTO TRUST GUIDANCE FLAWED" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416749 White: We won't let Interior off the hook so easily by: Lorraine White March 7, 2008 Last week, in Washington, D.C., I testified before the House Natural Resources Committee at the oversight hearings held on the Interior Department's recently released "guidance" on taking land into trust for tribes and its broad ramifications. The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe gave testimony because we were tremendously affected by the new "guidance" policy that introduced a "commutable distance factor" in determining land-into-trust applications for off- reservation gaming. The Mohawks received a denial on our trust application that, prior to the new guidance, received approvals and favorable determinations from Interior - including a recent environmental approval or Finding of No Significant Impact last December under Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. Given the series of favorable determinations over a period of nearly 12 years, it is wholly apparent that Interior is not only a vortex of contradictions, but is intent on making up rules as they go along, as it suits them. This new guidance should have all of Indian country concerned for several reasons. Assistant Interior Secretary Carl Artman made on-the-record statements at the hearing that the guidance is not a policy change, but an "internal management tool." Indian country should be worried with wonder, asking both Kempthorne and Artman: Exactly how dumb do you think we Indians are? Parading the guidance out to Indian country and the U.S. House of Representatives as a management tool that allowed the agency to simply clear their desks of land-into-trust applications in one fell swoop and testifying that this is not policy is altogether laughable. Committee Chairman Nick Rahall pointedly asked Artman, "What tribes and with whom did the department consult with?" To which Artman replied, in a barely audible tone, that he was "not sure." Artman testified that Interior believed in tribal consultation, but reserved it for "special occasions" and explained that there was "some communication" with tribes, but he was unable to name any. Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., pointed out to Artman that Indian tribes are not "social clubs," but are sovereign entities requiring more than casual communication. However, it would appear that officials at Interior have their own definitions of tribal consultation and have devised new, unpublished standards by which those consultations might take place, presumably at their own convenience and willful discretion. Call it what you want, but this policy has not only run roughshod over Indian country as a whole, in failing to abide by the federal Administrative Procedures Act that requires tribal consultation, but it has circumvented federal law and deprived tribes of due process. The Mohawks were one of 11 tribes that received blanket denials based on the new guidance, all 11 having received notification of the new rules only a day after they were issued. Rest assured that beyond the 11 affected tribes, there are tremendous ramifications to all of Indian country for placing land into trust for purposes beyond gaming - for housing or other means of economic development. The Secretary of the Interior has effectively set Indian relations back some 150 years with the prevailing attitude that it is in the Indians' best interests to stay on the reservations. Apparently Kempthorne would rather ignore the stubborn realities of crippled remote Indian economies where few job opportunities exist. He would instead prefer to prevent the future from arriving at isolated reservation lands, impeding struggling tribes' attempts to change their fate. All of Indian country should not let the Interior so easily off the hook. It is our people, our communities, our grandchildren and all of our futures that are at stake. --- Lorraine M. White is a St. Regis Mohawk tribal chief in Akwesasne, N.Y. Copyright c. 1998 - 2008 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Brian 'Old Crapper' Crane has Balls" --------- Date: Sun Mar 2 12:56 From: 'orakwa' Subj: MNN Brian 'Old Crapper' Crane has Balls BRIAN "OLD CRAPPER" CRANE HAS BALLS TO CRUSH INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE & DIG OUT "YELLOWCAKE" AT SHARBOT LAKE [by Iakoha'ko:wa, Kanion'ke:haka/Mohawk of Sharbot Lake] SHARBOT LAKE. Nov. 18, 2007. Why's this guy trying to choke us like there's no tomorrow? The experience of the Navajo might give us a clue. "Ray Manygoats of Tuba City Arizona told Congress how his family cooked their meals on a grill his father brought from the "Rare Metals" processing plant. The grill had been used to sift yellowcake, which is uranium. "We would play in the yellowcake sand at the mill, jumping and rolling around in it. We also found many small metal balls at the mill. They were used to crush and process the uranium" and to eventually kill off the Navajo. Was that the plan? ["Uranium legacy outrages Congress: http://www.gallupindependent.com/2007/october/102407kh_urnmlgcy.html Brian "Old C" Crane is the "Negotiator for Ontario" in the phony "Ontario Algonquins" land claim. Robin Aitkin of Indian Affairs plays the role of Canada's representative. Robert Potts pretends to represent the "Algonquins". What a farce! None of the real people involved have been consulted - the only participants have been the "paper mache Algonquins" and "Symbolic Canadians". The theatrical work looks like a front to camouflage the struggle of the Kanion'ko:haka/Mohawk to stop uranium mining on our unsurrendered Haudenosaunee land at Sharbot Lake, 24 miles north of Kingston Ontario. As Iokerenenh said: "Once Great Britain and the other European countries found out about the New World and its assets, they set out to make their fraudulent claims. Every "license, permit, grant, charter and declaration" that these imperial franchises known as "Canada" and the "United States" were issued and those they themselves now issue are invalid and fraudulent. Ontario government agencies keep giving "glowing" reports about how good radiation is for us. The "Mineral Development Strategy" Winter 2007 issue outlines the Crown's "duty to consult" us "at the strategic planning stage". This is based on the affirmation of "Aboriginal rights" in Canada's constitution and confirmed in Supreme Court of Canada decisions [Taku River Tlingit First Nation v. Tulsequa Chief Mine Project and Haida Nation v. British Columbia.] Unfortunately, for the colonial governments, industrial financial interests come first. Ontario operatives continue to drool over the original nations' resources. [Has anybody got bibs?] We have a right to object to the brutal vandalism of these zombies who seem to be lost in a 19th Century time warp. Colonialism has always been illegal. But It's a hard habit addiction for "imperial junkies" to kick. The cure is easy. Just treat everyone equally and respect everyone's voice. These gangsters still use Fear and Threats and pretend it's the law. They keep hallucinating that we're irrelevant. "Tthe Crown" keeps sucking up to industry. Let's not forget, Ontario and Canada are not Indigenous governments. They are foreign colonial entities, constituted without our participation or approval. Their Mining Act is not legitimate on our territory. It only binds their "subjects". We are not their subjects. We were never defeated and we never swore allegiance to them. The resources they claim have been taken in violation of international law and without the consent of the owners of the land who have lived here since time immemorial. Ontario's idea of "consulting us" is to let Frontenac Ventures Inc. stake uranium claims on our land while "talks" are going on. They have no clean up plan. They intends to leave the contaminated mess they make for the Indigenous peoples and ordinary settlers to live with. The Ardoch and Shabot Obaadjiwan "Algonquins" set up a camp at the old Robertsville mine site at Sharbot Lake on June 28, 2007 and dismantled it in October 2007. They said then, and they still say, "No Deal!" Instead of consulting us, it turned into a "law enforcement" matter. Now it looks like the imperial operatives are hunting for "Aboriginal Partners" who can be bribed to cut a deal and share in the loot. Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources Canada, wants to "streamline the regulatory approval process for energy and mining projects in Canada". He also wants to ignore international law which states that one nation cannot be absorbed by another without the free and informed consent of the majority of its people [Western Sahara]. Lunn and his buddies, US Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Energy Bodman and Deputy Secretary Sell, want to get rid of all the rules that protect the public. In November 2007 Lunn signed onto GNEP "Global Nuclear Energy Partnership" headed by the U.S. to control the nuclear industry by "repatriating" nuclear waste. This "spent fuel" from reactors is used to make "dirty bombs", nuclear missiles and other lethal toys. The Mohawks found the MREL [Mining Resources Engineering Limited of Kingston] bomb-making and testing site near Sharbot Lake in July 2007. The findings appear to be related to testing of electromagnetic radiation EMR in bomb making using "spent nuclear fuel". This is illegal! War is illegal too! No matter what U.S. President George Bush says! The great abundance of EMR, especially radio frequency radiation, can cause bombs to blow up accidentally. The remotely operated electro- explosive devices that control the bombs can be interfered with. Testing is being done to avoid this hazard. Russia created a "neutralizer" that can de-activate nuclear missiles using EMR technologies. It was