_ __ _____ __ _ __ ___ ____ _ __ ___ ' ) / / ') / / ) ' ) ) / ) / ' ) ) / ) / / / / / / /--/ / / / ___ / / / / ___ (_(_/ (__/ ( / (_ / (_ (___/ '__/_ / (_ (___/ ' ____ _ , ___ _ , ___ / ' ) / / ) ' ) / / ' VOLUME 16, ISSUE 032 / /-< / /--/ /-- __/_ / ) (___/ / ( (___, 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 August 4, 2008 Hopi paamuya/joyful moon Yuchi tseneaga/dog days moon Eastern Cherokee nvda udatanvagisdi ulisdv/end of the fruit moon Blackfeet pakkii'pistsi otsiai'tssp/moon when choke berries ripen +-------------------------------------------------------+ | 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; Mailing Lists: Frostys AmerIndian, UNA-News, Mohawk Nation News, Native American 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: + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- + "This is important not only on a spiritual, cultural and religious level." Arocha said. "They're asking us to suspend the Constitution. The [American Indian Religious Freedom Act] wasn't passed until 1978. I was 3 years old when we were finally allowed to believe openly the way we do and practice how we see fit. Here we are, 30 years later, and they're asking me to give that back, and I cannot do that." __ Kenny Arocha, Lipan Apache discussing fight with Texas School District over the length of his son's hair +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ | 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 Pierre Macherey described ideology as "subjectivity without subject". The citizens of the United States have witnessed the unrelenting path such a political state can take. Daniel Schorr, Senior news analyst for NPR, in his July 31, 2008 "All Things Considered" commentary stated, "NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency have suppressed research findings, and the Justice Department used ideology to hire candidates for nonpolitical positions. The Bush administration is putting ideology ahead of policy - and the facts." Mr. and Mrs. Amerikka, welcome to reality 101 in Indian Country. All the "good intentions" and "prescribed by treaty law" in the world cannot make a government which has been unable for 500 plus years to address the "Indian Question" abide by the treaties their predecessors forced on Indians. To this day, the government which typically promised to provide health and education to the subjugated Indians "as long as the grass shall grow" has done it's damnedest to eliminate the Indian population through efforts as macabre as involuntary sterility. They have consistently stolen from the Indian who was "too uneducated (read dumb)" to manage his own affairs. As the protracted Cobell Trust Case grinds toward it's miserable end, Indians do not expect the long knives to do anything honorable. To date, those pragmatic expectations have been justified with one stall, one illegal dumping of records, one security breach... after another, as the beast struggles in the trap it built. Last week the Government Accounting Office caught the Indian Health System with their hand in the cookie jar. More precisely, the IHS came up missing $15.8 Million in equipment, including computers, tractors and all-terrain vehicles. To no ones' surprise IHS Officials are denying culpability, like a child protesting innocence while the stolen cookie crumbs dribble from the corners of its mouth. This year, the presumed presidential candidates for the Republican (McCain) and Democratic (Obama) Parties looked around and discovered an elephant in the closet they can't ignore. It is entirely possible the eventual winner (if inheriting the largest debt in history and a protracted multi-faced war can be called winning) will be determined by the Indian vote. They should not be granted that vote without some serious promises - promises to which they will be held accountable. , , Gary Smith (*,*) wotanging@bellsouth.net P. O. Box 672168 (`-') gars@nanews.org Marietta, GA 30007, U.S.A. ===w=w=== http://www.nanews.org ----------- News of the people featured in this issue ----------- Editorial Section: - NORTHRUP: Fond du Lac Follies: . Changing Guard Go Redskins!! - Judge weighs next step - YELLOW BIRD: in Tribal Trust Lawsuits There's no place like Home - Beyond comic relief - WHITE: in the Cobell Trial Toward indigenous independence - Quoddy Bay LNG - HODGSON-MCCAULEY: suspends payments to Tribe Three parties in Norman Wells - Lipan Apache Family - NAVALIK TOLOGANAK: Summer in Cam Bay fights Hair Length Policy - MOUNTAIN: The best Slavey of all - Protecting Mato Paha - End the War - Border Walls...Texas Shame against the Zapatista Communities - EPA approves - B.C. Native Treaty Process Desert Rock air permit - Champlain's Lost Children - Dooda Desert Rock: - Fantino uses 'mob tactics' Fighting the good fight on Mohawk Shawn Brant - Decision on Tribe's recognition - Police Commission rejects could come by Jan appeal of fired Officers - Rep. Baird backs - Band files Suit Tribal Status for Chinook over Decade-Old landslide mess - Like Family: - Russell Means: Tribal Colleges nurture Lakotah Grand Jury will not indict - Grant makes a difference - Jury rules for State Trooper in Students' Lives in Smoke Shop Suit - Lenape Indians, - 2 more plead guilty The Original Philadelphians in Case of unrecognized Tribe - EDITORIAL OPINION: - Native Justice Virginia Tribal Recognition -- Soboba Chairman vows - ICT EDITORIAL: to stop County Deputies Where the Power lies -- Freedmen can sue - JODI RAVE: Cherokee Tribal Officers From Burritos to Buffalo Robes -- Appeals Court - NEWCOMB: Storytelling tosses Freedmen Suit Tradition of Supreme Court - Rustywire: - GOLDBERG & WASHBURN: Dancing at the Heard Museum Lies, Damn List, Crime Stats - Lee Goins Poem: Cherokee Seven - GIAGO: Moving back - REVIEW: 'Techqua Ikachi: to the land of the Lakota Aboriginal Warning' --------- "RE: Judge weighs next step in Tribal Trust Lawsuits" --------- Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 10:20:27 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="COBELL TRUST SUIT" http://indianz.com/News//2008/010010.asp Judge weighs next step in tribal trust lawsuits July 25, 2008 As the landmark Cobell Indian trust fund suit heads into its final chapter, a federal judge on Thursday contemplated opening a new one for hundreds of tribes. Judge James Robertson plans to wrap up the 12-year-old Cobell case next month by putting a dollar figure on money owed to hundreds of thousands of individual Indians. He's now being asked to consider similar claims on behalf of more than 200 tribes in the lower 48 states and in Alaska. Thirty-seven tribes have lawsuits before Robertson that seek an historical accounting of their trust funds and assets. The cases represent some of the largest trust accounts at the Interior Department. Additionally, the Native American Rights Fund has filed a lawsuit that seeks to represent the tribes that have not filed an accounting lawsuit. Though the exact number of plaintiffs hasn't been tallied, the case could end up representing more than 200 tribes. The sheer magnitude of the claims has the Bush administration worried about liability. In testimony to Congress, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who resigned under a cloud of scandal, estimated the cases could cost more than $200 billion. The tribal cases "dwarf the claims in Cobell," John Martin, a Department of Justice attorney, told Robertson at lengthy hearing yesterday morning. But Keith Harper, a former NARF attorney who works on the Cobell case and also represents some of the tribes with accounting lawsuits, insisted the issue isn't about money. He said tribes are only seeking to enforce the duties they are owed as trust beneficiaries. "At this point, we are not looking for money at all," said Harper, who now works for the Kilpatrick Stockton firm. Melody McCoy, a NARF attorney, also shifted the discussion away from dollar figures. She asked Robertson to certify a class action - similar to Cobell - to represent hundreds of tribes that have not received an accounting of their funds and assets. "There is plenty of evidence in the record that shows defendants have not fulfilled their most basic fiduciary obligation," said McCoy. During the hearing, Robertson heard arguments on the government's motion to dismiss eight of the tribal cases and on NARF's motion for class certification. He made no decisions but he was clearly concerned about the direction the lawsuits might take. "I see the management problems .. being Cobell revisited," Robertson said. "And nobody wants that." But Robertson appeared willing to give tribes their day in court because he said the government has failed to answer a simple question. "Has there been an accounting or not?" he asked. Martin didn't directly respond to the question at first but later said the Arthur Andersen "reconciliation" reports that were provided to more than 300 tribes in the mid-1990s represented a type of accounting. He argued that Congress, through the American Indian Trust Fund Management Reform Act of 1994, modified the government's trust duties to tribes. "The terms of the accounting have been set by the settlor - Congress," Martin told the court. He implied that the act allowed individual Indians to seek a broader type of accounting. Steven Gordon, an attorney for two of the 37 tribes, disputed the government's characterization. "The answer is there has not been accounting," he said. "We haven't had an accounting and we are entitled to one." Settlement discussions are ongoing with some of the tribes and the government has not asked to dismiss all of the cases. "But I'm not holding my breath," said Gordon, who represents the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians and the Colorado River Indian Tribes. Some of the tribes with accounting lawsuits have money damage cases pending in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Others have cases pending in federal courts across the nation. One of the largest breach of trust cases could be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, if the Bush administration has its way. The Navajo Nation is seeking billions of dollars for a coal lease approved during the 1980s. Copyright c. 2008 indianz.com. --------- "RE: Beyond comic relief in the Cobell Trial" --------- Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2008 16:19:54 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="JUDGE ROBERTSON" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096417857 Beyond comic relief in the Cobell Trial by: Jerry Reynolds / Indian Country Today August 1, 2008 Analysis WASHINGTON - U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson encouraged comic relief in his courtroom during the long, detail-laden hours of testimony in the trial on federal accounts of the Individual Indian Money trust. Whether he deployed humor for deeper ends at the close of the case is anyone's guess. As Cherokee attorney Keith Harper, representing the plaintiffs throughout the lawsuit, explained during an elevator ride between court sessions, rule number one from law school still applies: Do not try to guess what a judge is thinking. The class-action case, known as Cobell v. Kempthorne after Blackfeet lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell and current Interior Department Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, has entered its 12th year; and the government's failure to account for revenues due to IIM accountholders, through royalties from leasing and the sale or use of natural resources, stretches back more than a century. The issue before Robertson's court is money: What is the sum due IIM trust beneficiaries from the government's failure to account for their money? Robertson has stated his strong hope of delivering a final judgment within the month of August. Billions of dollars could be at stake, depending on Robertson's view of the proofs offered by plaintiffs and the defense mounted by the government. In any case, no one gathered to Robertson's courtroom considered it a laughing matter. But comic relief could not have been more welcome as the case drew on. Reams of contradictory detail, competing economic models, fine-grained legal considerations and hair-splitting definitions of already obscure terms threatened to fatigue even the bravest attention. Robertson livened the proceedings with alert-making lighter moments, turning a sharp wit to ironic, caustic or congenial use on occasions past counting. Determined to keep the many-layered case within bounds of the money question, he also raked attorneys from both teams with criticism and instruction, raising questions about the evidence presented and delivering lessons in trial practice with a kind of relish that came to provide an amusement factor of its own - for anyone but the attorneys, no doubt. But at least one attorney held his own on the humor front. For the plaintiffs, Bill Dorris cross-examined defense witness and statistician extraordinaire Fritz Scheuren. Scheuren began with a barrage of apologies for this and that, but soon tended toward more peppery responses as Dorris rephrased his answers, adding single words that Scheuren resisted as misrepresenting his overall meaning. After full and lengthy exchanges that had the makings of a classic courtroom duel (for the initiated at least), Scheuren acknowledged that Dorris was staying with him on the punishingly complex substance of econometrics modeling for missing data. "You're doing a good job, by the way. Thank you." Dorris brought the house down with a Southern-drawled, "There's one thing we can agree on." A trial (officially an evidentiary hearing) that relied for proof on missing data (much of it lost by the government) was bound to feature surreal moments. But at the midway point of the proceedings, Scheuren had provided the most surreal moment by far. After testifying, at length and in virtuosic detail, to numerical figures and data models that would have made any non-expert's head explode, he got crossways with Dorris on an undisputed monetary figure. After some brief back-and-forthing, Scheuren corrected himself and reverted to the apologetic mode. "I'm not good with numbers." True to their running duel, Dorris almost matched him for surrealism. Referring to the statistician's concept of "missingness" that Scheuren had defined in its several variations, Dorris summed up his view of Scheuren's testimony concerning lost documentary data as "too much missingness on the page." But Robertson trumped everything for comic relief on the trial's last day, serenading the court's information technology wizards with a musical clip from the number "Dueling Banjos." He had planted the idea much earlier in the trial, as attorneys ordered up one data page after another on enlarging screens. "The story of this trial, you know, is going to be dueling laptops," Robertson remarked. "These guys are good." On the last day, as the famed strains of "Dueling Banjos" began to be recognized around the courtroom to general laughter, Robertson said, "If you don't know bluegrass, then this will go completely over your head." The reference was to the so-called "high lonesome" musical style associated with the Appalachian Mountains. It has a zealous following in Washington and the surrounding states. But was that the only reference? And was it the one that was going to surpass understanding? One would leave it at that if Robertson had, but he brought up bluegrass music again, most ambiguously. Interrupting the government's closing argument - that it could have offered proofs reducing its liability if time had allowed - Robertson quoted four lines of poetry: "But at my back I always hear/ Time's winged chariot hurrying near;/ And yonder all before us lie/ Deserts of vast eternity." Cobell, plaintiff attorneys, IIM beneficiaries, congressional members and Indian-issue advocates must have said it a hundred times in a hundred ways - the government doesn't deserve more time to get its act together after 121 years, not when IIM beneficiaries (as Robertson has referenced in court) continue to "die out of the case." That meaning was clear enough, though it was not necessarily obvious. The ambiguity lay in Robertson's mention of bluegrass. "If you know bluegrass," Robertson told Department of Justice solicitor Robert Kirschman, "you'll know where that poem comes from." The album "Appalachian Stomp: Bluegrass Classics" affords no clue. But in any case, the poem Robertson mentioned comes from one source only - "To His Coy Mistress," by 17th century Englishman Andrew Marvell, beginning: "Had we but world enough, and time" and ending with a restatement of the Latin carpe diem, or "seize the day," theme that still resonates after 327 years: "though we cannot make our sun / Stand still, yet we will make him run." So the folksy bluegrass reference has a much larger context. And so does "Dueling Banjos" - the film "Deliverance" in which it first appeared. The film's story can't be summarized properly in a family newspaper, but suffice to say that one character gets an undoubted shafting, another meets with merited death, and two others die under doubtful circumstances. In the end, a local sheriff (American judiciary practice has its roots in the shire reeve of old England) sees through the likely story cooked up by the protagonists, but decides to deliver rough justice for the sake of peace in his neighborhood. Bluegrass indeed. Robertson's neighborhood is a nation. Interior flaws in the spotlight again as Cobell decision looms Almost two years after testifying before Congress that "simply stated, short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior," Interior's independent Office of the Inspector General is again excoriating a departmental culture that permitted the alleged preferential steering of a contract for Indian trust funds accounting. The charges in a recent OIG report do not relate directly to Interior mismanagement of the Individual Indian Money trust, subject of a pending judicial decision on possible restitution in the case known as Cobell, after Blackfeet lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell. But the report is another sign of problems with Interior trust accounts management, Inspector General Earl Devaney reported. As such, it joins a volume of more or less similar indications coming out of the Cobell trial. U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson castigated both plaintiff attorneys and the Interior defense team after Ray Ziler's testimony, raising questions about its relevance under the exacting evidentiary standards of a formal court setting. But plaintiff attorneys defended it, and Robertson seemed to accept their explanation. Ziler is a certified public accountant who attempted to audit BIA internal controls in the IIM management "system" some 20 years ago. (Robertson posed the question of whether such a "system" actually exists separate of the government's defense case.) He testified time and again, in detail, that the trust fund accounting and financial "systems" were inadequate, unreliable, plagued by fraud and theft, "worse than we had originally realized." For instance, Ziler testified, "I believe every [BIA] area office and agency had some ability to write checks on-site using [T]reasury [Department] check stock, and they kept stacks of them sitting around. In some cases they were unprotected, and we apparently noticed instances when we went to one agency office ... where they opened the vault, left it opened. All the employees had the combination, but they left the safe open all day long unguarded and unprotected so that check stock, you can just pick up a stack of it and take it." Checks could be written against IIM accounts, or the money backing them could come from the Treasury General Account that received IIM royalty deposits, Ziler said, "and with a hundred different locations issuing checks, keeping track of the check stock and the used checks in sequence was a virtual impossibility. ... We knew that there was money being taken out to certain parties, but we could not get, at the time we performed the work we didn't have subpoenas or the IG didn't have subpoenas for their bank account records so we couldn't look at the other side of it, but it was, I mean, there were hundreds of thousands of dollars that were problems at that one location." Robertson has committed himself to delivering a judgment in Cobell in August. Copyright c. 1998 - 2008 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Quoddy Bay LNG suspends payments to Tribe" --------- Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 07:07:33 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="PAYMENTS TO PASSAMAQUODDY SUSPENDED PENDING STATE REVIEW" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://bangornews.com/news/t/news.aspx?articleid=167684&zoneid=500 Quoddy Bay LNG suspends payments to tribe Bangor Daily News July 28, 2008 PLEASANT POINT, Maine - Quoddy Bay LNG, the company that hopes to build a liquefied natural gas terminal on Passamaquoddy tribal land off Route 190, has announced it will suspend temporarily the quarterly payments it has been making to the tribe. In a press release issued Friday, Quoddy Bay indicated it so far has paid the tribe nearly $800,000, which has been split between the two tribal governments at Pleasant Point and Indian Township. The company said that it will suspend its quarterly payments of $46,875 while the federal and state permit reviews of its development application are on hold. "Our position on payments to the reservation simply reflects the ebb and flow of the pace of development of a large facility such as this," Donald Smith, president of Quoddy Bay LNG, said in a prepared statement. Smith said in a separate interview Friday that the payments the company has made to the tribe have been voluntary because, according to the company's lease contract with the tribe, Quoddy Bay is not obliged to make payments to the tribe until the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs has given its final approval to the project. So far, the bureau has indicated only that the tribe can allow Quoddy Bay to seek federal and state permits to build a terminal on tribal land, he said. Attempts last week and over the weekend to contact Passamaquoddy tribal governors, Rick Doyle at Pleasant Point and William Nichols at Indian Township, were unsuccessful. Hilda Lewis, a tribal councilor at Pleasant Point, directed inquiries last week to Doyle while Fred Moore, a Passamaquoddy tribal member and tribal liaison for Quoddy Bay, directed questions to Smith. The issue of BIA approval has landed the parties in federal court. Nulankeyutmonen Nkihtahkomikumon, a Passamaquoddy group opposed to development of LNG terminals on Passamaquoddy Bay, filed suit against the bureau in November 2005, accusing the agency of not following federal rules when it gave its initial approval to the proposal. Attorneys on each side of the lawsuit, which is still pending, have indicated in court documents that they are willing to negotiate for a possible settlement in the case, which could lead to the bureau revisiting the lease agreement between Quoddy Bay and the tribe. Smith said Friday he had thought the initial green light from the bureau to pursue the project was more substantial than it has turned out to be. But he said he knew that at some point the bureau would have to revisit the project. "We originally thought BIA made a decision that was automatic [pending approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission]," Smith said. "I still knew it wasn't final." Earlier this month, Quoddy Bay announced it was delaying its state permitting review process while it works out further details of the proposed terminal and of the route its send-out pipeline will take in connecting with the Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline in interior Washington County. This spring, FERC cited insufficient information from the company when it suspended its federal review of Quoddy Bay's proposal. According to Quoddy Bay's press release, the company hopes to resume the federal and state permitting review processes "in a few months." Smith said Friday that the suspension of payments to the tribe is not a sign that Quoddy Bay is having trouble financially. The company would like to find a major financial backer to help build the terminal once it is fully permitted, he said, but it has the operating funds necessary to get through the permitting process. Smith also denied claims by LNG terminal opponents that Quoddy Bay has closed its office on Route 190. He said he laid off a local employee, whom he had hired while the firm was involved in community meetings and outreach, because the company is in a different phase of the developing the project now and doesn't have enough business in the community to warrant keeping the position. "We haven't closed the office," he said. "Our company is going forward and spending money on the project every day." Vera Francis, a Passamaquoddy tribal member and organizer for Nulankeyutmonen Nkihtahkomikumon, which translates into English as "we take care of our land," wrote in an e-mail last week that that Quoddy Bay's perspective of the project does not reflect the reality of the situation, which she summarized as "no gas, no money, no ground lease, no terminal." Francis indicated that Quoddy Bay's misunderstanding of the issue of the bureau's approval shows that the company is not up to the task of developing the terminal, which could cost about $500 million to build. "They clearly didn't do their homework, and they clearly underestimated the vision of those who stand by their cultural responsibility to protect and preserve Passamaquoddy Bay," Francis wrote in the e-mail. Copyright c. 2008 Bangor News. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Lipan Apache Family fights Hair Length Policy" --------- Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:31:14 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="TEXAS SCHOOL DISTRICT VIOLATES RELIGIOUS RIGHTS" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096417812 Lipan Apache family fights Texas school district's hair length policy by: Brian Daffron / Today correspondent July 28, 2008 ANADARKO, Okla. - Five-year-old Adriel Arocha, currently of Stafford, Texas, has gained a lot of worldwide attention recently. When asked by a reporter about why he wears his hair long, the young boy in braids said, "It tells me how long I've been here." Originally aired by KRPC-TV, the news segment has since made it to MSNBC's Web site of most frequently viewed videos. However, the segment isn't just about a young Indian boy's hair. Instead, it is about his parents' challenge to the Needville, Texas, school district's hair length policy, a district that Adriel will most likely find himself in at the beginning of the school year, and whose hair length policy he would be violating as soon as he entered the door. "We did this as trying to smooth the waters and offer the olive branch," said Adriel's father, Kenney Arocha, 33, in a phone interview with Indian Country Today. "We notified them long before the beginning of the school year that we were coming and get an understanding of what we needed to do to have my son go to school there." Arocha, whose new home recently completed construction in Needville at press time, owns his own business and is of Lipan Apache descent. Although the Lipan Apache have strong historical ties to the southern Plains, the incorporated Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas, based out of Corpus Christi, is not federally recognized. Located outside of Houston, the Needville Independent School District has strict dress and hair codes regarding its students. In order to clear the way for his son, Arocha said that he went through the proper channels of the school district, which include first making a grievance with the principal, then the superintendent and, finally, a meeting with the school board. On July 16, Arocha met with the school board and presented his case. According to both Arocha and a spokesperson for the school district, the school board ultimately made the decision to not make a decision because the Arocha family has not yet moved into the district to enroll Adriel as a student. "They dodged the bullet on a technicality," Arocha said. "According to them, we still do not technically live in the city. Since we do not live in the city, my son is not able to register legally in their school district. Since he's not registered in the school district, he is not a student. Since he is not a student, they have not denied anyone their rights. They say it's a non-issue." In the case that Adriel is enrolled as a student in the Needville District, Arocha said that he would then be required to go through the same three stages of grievances and then be required to show proof of the family's sincerely held religious beliefs. "The district has a dress code and a hair code for students," said Rhonda Crass, attorney for the school district. "In the event a student asks for an exception, under state or federal law, then at that point the school would evaluate it. At current, the student is welcome to move into the community. The student is welcome to enroll in the community. If the student moves into the community, the student will be required to follow the dress code unless they request an exception and are granted one." Crass said that part of this process of giving evidence of deeply held religious convictions would be to express these beliefs in writing in their presentation to the school board. However, Arocha said that's been a part of some of the problems he's received from the superintendent, Curtis Rhodes, and from the school board meeting - having to prove beliefs that aren't codified. In the same MSNBC.com news clip that featured Adriel, Rhodes is quoted on camera as saying that the Arocha family would have to "prove that there's a recognized religion." "I think that's really kind of demeaning, honestly, to ask somebody how they recognize their religion," Arocha said. "I don't even understand how to approach that statement. I've told him on several occasions in a closed session and last night at the board meeting with several members of the community there watching. We don't have a lot of written tradition. We do that for a reason. All of our history is passed down orally. There is no way that I could open a book and show him and cite chapter and verse as to how we live our lives." When asked about the statement made by Rhodes, Crass said that it "could possibly be a misquote." She then immediately emphasized federal and state laws regarding exemptions for religious beliefs. "If a student can demonstrate a sincerely held religious belief according to state or federal law," she said, "then they'll certainly be granted an exception if they follow the guidelines set out by the state and federal law and the courts in establishing a sincerely held religious belief." Soon, Arocha will be enrolling his son in Needville's Elementary School, with the possibility of having to go through the three-part grievance process again almost a certainty. For Arocha, the fight to keep his son's hair long and get an education is a multifaceted issue that extends not only on a religious basis but a constitutional one as well. "This is important not only on a spiritual, cultural and religious level," Arocha said. "They're asking us to suspend the Constitution. The [American Indian Religious Freedom Act] wasn't passed until 1978. I was 3 years old when we were finally allowed to believe openly the way we do and practice how we see fit. Here we are, 30 years later, and they're asking me to give that back, and I cannot do that." Copyright c. 1998 - 2008 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Protecting Mato Paha" --------- Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:31:14 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="BEAR BUTTE UNDER CORPORATE MERCI+ENARY ATTACK" http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2008/07/ protecting-mato-paha-corporation-linked.html Protecting Mato Paha: Corporation linked to mercenaries Protecting Mato Paha, Bear Butte: Strong arm corporation linked to mercenaries By A. Gay Kingman Executive Director Great Plains Tribal Chairmans Association July 27, 2008 The GPTCA passed this attached resolution to Protect Mato Paha (Bear Butte) on July 10, 2008. Help is needed to protect our Sacred Sites and Mato Paha! Mato Paha is a State Park not Federal and the development and encroachment to the Sacred Site is increasing. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe and Northern Cheyenne have land at the base of Mato Paha, but there is still land not owned by American Indian Tribes and the price of the land has increased tremendously so our Tribes cannot afford to purchase what should be our Land in the first place according to our Treaties. The Sturgis Rally is starting up in Aug. for two weeks. While many Bikers are respectful, the bars create problems. Drunkenness, lewdness and other disrespectful actions will be happening in the bars which are developing closer and closer to Mato Paha. The County has granted alcohol license to the Bars in spite of the Protests of American Indian People and other supporters. Recently, a corporation has purchased majority ownership in the closest Bar to Mato Paha and they are going to have helicopter rides over the Butte. We are informed this Corporation is affiliated or are former Blackwater high clearance mercenaries and have already strong armed some American Indians who were on public land taking pictures. The Contact person for supporters of Mato Paha is tamra@protectsacredsites.org or you may contact me regarding the Resolution and the Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association. In Spirit, A. Gay Kingman, Executive Director Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association 1926 Stirling St.Rapid City, SD 57702 Cell: 605-484-3036 Fax: 605-343-3074 E-mail: KingmanWapato@Rushmore.com Resolution No. 52-07-10-08 RESOLUTION OF THE GREAT PLAINS TRIBAL CHAIRMAN'S ASSOCIATION (GPTCA) This Resolution is set forth to ensure the ongoing protection of our Sacred Mato Paha (Bear Butte), from the deleterious impacts of commercial development and the increased presence of bars, concert venues and recent attempts to provide helicopter rides in and around Mato Paha and other Sacred Sites within the 1851 and 1868 Treaty Area. WHEREAS, the Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association (hereafter "GPTCA") is composed of the elected Chairs and Presidents of the federally recognized sovereign Indian Tribes and Nations within the Great Plains Region of the Bureau of Indian Affairs; WHEREAS, the GPTCA was established to promote the common interests of the sovereign Indian Tribes and Nations who are members of the GPTCA; and WHEREAS, the United States has obligated itself both through Treaties entered into with the sovereign Tribes and Nations of the Great Plains Region and through its own federal statutes, the Snyder Act of 1921 as amended, the Indian Self-Determination Act of 1976 as amended, and the Indian Health Care Improvement Act of 1976 as amended; and WHEREAS, the GPTCA seeks to protect all places of ancestral worship within the 1851 and 1868 Treaty areas, including Mato Paha. Fort Laramie 1851 Treaty, 11 Stat. 749. signed September 17, 1851; Fort Laramie 1868 Treaty, 15 Stat. 635, signed April 29, 1868, ratified Feb. 16, 1869, proclaimed, Feb. 24, 1869; and WHEREAS, because the GPTCA recognizes its responsibility to act to preserve and protect sacred sites within the 1851 and 1868 Treaty Areas, the GPTCA seeks through this Resolution to protect Mato Paha and other sacred sites by condemning in the strongest possible terms the ongoing encroachment of bars and other commercial venues in and around Mato Paha and our other sacred sites; now, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the GPTCA respectfully requests that the Meade County Commission, the South Dakota Game, Fish and Wildlife Department and South Dakota Governor Rounds work cooperatively with the GPTCA as it fulfills its responsibility to preserve and protect sacred sites within the 1851 and 1868 Treaty areas, especially Mato Paha; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, The GPTCA opposes the issuance of liquor and other commercial licenses near and/or adjacent to the said sacred sites; and BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, the GPTCA requests that the citizens of South Dakota and the citizens of other areas near and/or adjacent to the said sacred sites respect the indigenous spiritual use of those areas the way that members of the GPTCA respect churches and cemeteries used by the said citizens. RESOLUTION: 52-07-10-08 RESOLUTION OF THE GREAT PLAINS TRIBAL CHAIRMAN'S ASSOCIATION (GPTCA) CERTIFICATION This resolution was enacted at a duly called meeting of the Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association held at Rapid City, SD on July 10, 2008 at which a quorum was present, with 11 members voting in favor, 0 members opposed, 0 members not abstaining, and 5 members not present. Dated this 10th day of July, 2008. Ron His Horse Is Thunder, Chairman, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association Photo: www.protectsacredsites.org/ --- Target Logistics Corporation and Blackwater's David Shoe By Tamra The second issue was the new liquor license application filed by David Shoe, General Manager for the new investors Target Logistics, Broken Spoke Campground LLC. Target Logistics has paid off all of Jay Allen's outstanding debts for Broken Spoke Campground, LLC with the exception of one that is currently in litigation. They have dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, into this place already. Jim Seward attorney for Target Logistics also stated that Jay Allen still owns 30% of the stock, which contradicts everything that they have testified to previously, which was that Jay Allen is no longer involved. These people change their story at every hearing. Target Logistics Corporation showed up at the hearing with 12-15 suits, including the CEO, various attorneys and military personnel. They spent a hour of the hearing testifying about military issues, and praising David Shoe, since he was previously involved in Blackwater, had been in Afganstitan and Iraq and apparently has secret service clearance, even today. They actually brought previous military personnel here to testify on behalf of David Shoe's character, for a liquor license at a bar located at Bear Butte. They used the war, they used the military service to gain sympathy and support from the Meade County Commissioners, to acquire the license. Does anyone see the irony here? Can someone please explain what the military has to do with a bar, at a sacred site and what they are doing here? The supporters for the Bear Butte issue were sitting listening to this testimony, wondering what any of this had to do, with Meade County and a bar at Bear Butte? Several people stood up and questioned these statements and motives. Jack Doyle, a local Meade County resident continually testifies against our side, and always includes disgusting and racist comments, stated "Indians do not own Bear Butte mountain, they are their as guests, if its not suitable for them they can go somewhere else." In peace & solidarity, Tamra http://www.ndnnews.com/ http://www.protectsacredsites.org/ http://www.protectbearbutte.com/ Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com Censored and under-reported news: brendanorrell@gmail.com --------- "RE: Border Walls...Texas Shame" --------- Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:35:07 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="BORDER WALL PROTEST" http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2008/07/ inside-checkpoints-border-walls-texas.html Inside the Checkpoints: Border Walls, Texas Shame Inside the Checkpoints Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr. July 30, 2008 Photos at: http://picasaweb.google.com/Border.Ambassadors/ BorderWallTXFirstWallFirstProtest Border Walls...Texas Shame A congressionally backed dictator has begun to violate Texas soil. Shame on the dictator! Shame on the Congress! Shame on Texas! Shame on all of us! How is it possible that a hurricane can come into the Rio Grande Valley.. .providing a "Wake Up Call" to the region, the State of Texas and the Federal Government...and all the above do nothing to wake the hell up? After nearly two years of public protest and outcry, border wall construction on the levies in Granjeno, south of Mission, Texas, quietly got under way a couple of weeks ago. And, during hurricane season at that. An alarmingly quiet local media. There was no outrage on the part of any of our elected officials. With the exception of the Texas Border Coalition, there are still no organized attempts on the part of elected officials, from county Commissioners to Congressmen, to halt the heinous invasive construction of the border wall during this hurricane season. As a result, Border Ambassadors announced on July 18 that a group of grassroots citizens would hold an all-faiths prayer vigil in Granjeno on July 27. The thinking, conviction and discussion of this diversified group of American citizens was simple. It was spawned by Dinah Bear, a leading environmental attorney from the Washington Beltway, who has dedicated her time, energy and resources to stop the border wall construction. If there is no political force on the planet to stop the congressionally backed dictatorial powers of DHS and Chertoff from building the border wall, maybe "a miracle", a "wake up call", like an "Act of God"...like a hurricane coming up the Rio Grande Valley...would catch the attention of Commissioners to Congressmen to stop the insanity of building a border wall on levies during hurricane season. Within the five days of the Prayer Vigil announcement, and four days before the planned prayer vigil itself, an unexpected tropical storm hit the news, came unexpectedly across the Yucatan and the rest is undeniable history. Hurricane Dolly slammed the Rio Grande Valley. "The Monitor" headlined the impact of Dolly as "A Wake Up Call". Yeah, well...who the hell did it wake up? It didn't even wake up the Monitor! Despite the devastation, about 50 border residents from Brownsville to Del Rio met in Granjeno Sunday afternoon on July 27th. Driving into Granjeno, to the shock of all present, cranes and heavy equipment were building the border wall on the Granjeno levy! Did anyone in position of authority learn from the "wake up call"? Evidently, a couple of days before Dolly's landfall, IBWC Commissioner, Carlos Marin ordered a halt to the border wall construction of the levy in Granjeno. Yet, only two days after Dolly slammed into the Rio Grande Valley, construction on the border wall levy in Granjeno was again under way. Does that sound like the IBWC paid attention to the "wake up call"? How about the Army Corps of Engineers? After the prayer vigil by a buffet of religious diversity, those present felt that something urgent needed to be done. "Faith without works is dead". So a caravan of several dozen automobiles drove a quarter mile east to the border wall construction site. There, the citizens that participated in the prayer vigil, walked up to the levy, observed the beginnings of the border wall and then respectfully listened to a special prayer presented by Father Roy Snipes of Mission, TX. It was a small peaceful protest, and it was the consensus that it was not the right time to commit any acts of civil disobedience. That trump card will be played at the right time...on another day. (You can see pictures that were taken on Sunday, July 27, 2008 here: http://picasaweb.google.com/Border. Ambassadors/BorderWallTXFirstWallFirstProtest ) Imagine! While there was no federal funding to shore up the levies before hurricane season, there seems to be surplus money to build a border wall on the very same levies. While there was not enough help to drain areas flooded by Dolly, construction commenced on the levy in Granjeno. It is shocking that even an "Act of God" is not enough of a "wake up call" to teach County Commissioners, Congressmen, IBWC, the Army Corps of Engineers, DHS, Chertoff, Governor Perry or even the President of the United States, that you should not be cutting into levies in the Rio Grande Valley during hurricane season. America does not need a dictator. Yet Congress abnegated its power and ceded it to the Secretary of Homeland Security. Shame on Chertoff, an arrogant and callous liar, for accepting that dictatorial power and for his complicity of violating the Constitution. Shame on Congress for abnegating and ceding its Constitutional powers to a dictator...and for not having the courage to take it back. Shame on the Supreme Court for not hearing the Defenders of Wildlife and Sierra Club lawsuit challenging the unconstitutionality of the waiver power given to Chertoff. Certain dedicated Americans are going to continue to push forward to the Supreme Court over such a violation of the Constitution. Shame on the Texas Legislature and the Governor for not defending and protecting our borders. They would rather protect their right to execute foreign prisoners than to defend millions of hardworking Texans who live on the border. In the mean time...shame on our dishonest Senators...Cornyn and Bailey- Hutchison...who said they wouldn't vote for the border wall...and then did. Shame on our Texas Congressmen for not putting up a solid fight to protect our border community in Congress and for letting the racist supremacists hold serve. Shame on us...too! We have not done even 1% of what "We the People of the United States" should be doing to stop the totalitarian tyranny and protect our beloved borderlands. A grotesque border wall was built in California. A grotesque border wall was built in Arizona. A grotesque border wall has been built in New Mexico. Yet, those three states only represent 35% of the entire US-Mexico border. Texas constitutes 65% of the border. We are a community of solidaridad y amistad. We have had every chance to stop this border wall. Yet, a grotesque border wall is now being constructed in Granjeno. As folks went to the prayer vigil in Granjeno, Highway 83 Expressway, it was noticed that the shopping centers and restaurants were quite busy. Shame on us! Shame on us, if we who are adults allow this border wall to be built on Texas soil. Shame on us if we leave our children and grandchildren with the $100,000,000,000 of borrowed money that it is taking to build this symbol of cruelty and inhumanity. Shame on us if we leave a border wall "from Sea to Shining Sea"...from the Pacific coast to the Gulf coast...to have to be torn down by some future generation...perhaps that of our grandchildren. What will they think of us...knowing we could have stopped this travesty in the first place...if we but had the moral fiber...and the courage to stand up against oppressive tyranny? Will our children and grandchildren be like the German people of today as they look back at the cowardice shown in the face of a dictatorship and the culture of fear and cruelty towards fellow humans of the fascist era? While this is an American shame...this is especially a Texas Shame. Texas could have stopped this from happening. Ahhh! But we still can!!! Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com Censored and under-reported news: brendanorrell@gmail.com --------- "RE: EPA approves Desert Rock air permit" --------- Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 07:25:55 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="DESERT ROCK GETS EPA APPROVAL" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.daily-times.com/news/ci_10063012 EPA approves Desert Rock air permit By Cornelia de Bruin The Daily Times August 1, 2008 FARMINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued an air permit for Desert Rock Power Plant on Thursday, the final day it was mandated to act on the long-delayed permit. EPA agreed to act by Thursday after it was sued by the Dine' Power Authority and Sithe Global Power earlier this year. U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., informed The Daily Times of the decision after he received the news from EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson on Thursday morning. Opponents of the proposed 1,500-megawatt, coal-fired plant, which would be built near Burnham on the Navajo Nation, criticized the decision. "This is a serious blow to the Navajo tribal members who provided comments to EPA. The U.S. EPA has failed us and undermined us," said Dailan Long, Dine' Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment, one of the groups that opposed construction of Desert Rock. "Nothing is being done about the health issues we raised. The tribal elders are outraged that their comments were ignored." Also outraged is Elouise Brown of Dooda Desert Rock. "I hope and pray the people who made this decision never sleep again," she said. "How can people make this kind of decision that puts people at risk?" Brown characterized the power plant as a "kind of torture to our people, Mother Earth and the environment. "If they're part of EPA they have to realize the pollution goes worldwide, it's just not affecting my family ... somebody's paying off somebody," she said. "If your relative is sick (from pollution and its health effects) money will not buy their health back." Brown vowed to continue fighting the Desert Rock plant. Dine' CARE hopes a larger environmental group will partner with it in its fight against Desert Rock. Dine' CARE is working with Earthjustice, the Clean Air Task Force and Sierra Club regarding its legal options. Supporters of the plant say it will add hundreds of permanent jobs that the Navajo Nation desperately needs. They also say it would be among the cleanest coal-fired plants ever built. San Juan County is already home to two coal-powered plants - Four Corners Power Plant and San Juan Generating Station. Gov. Bill Richardson and Attorney General Gary King said they will will "immediately" file an appeal of the decision. "EPA is bending to the will of corporate, financial and misguided political interests that will pollute New Mexico's skies," Richardson said. The decision ignores the agency's obligations to protect residents' health and the state's environment, he added. Dine' CARE published a study in January that viewed the plant in the context of the Navajo traditional world view. Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. used the same language in reacting to news the air permit was issued. He said the tribe's officials are "doing the best we can to do our part to take care of the environment, but "at the same time, we know that the deities want us to take care of ourselves, to stand on our own two feet, as individuals, as families, as a community, as a nation. And that's certainly what Desert Rock is about." For its part, EPA focused on the plant's stringent pollution emission limits and its high-tech equipment in announcing its action. "The Desert Rock Power Plant will be one of the cleanest pulverized coal-burning power plants in the country," EPA Regional Administrator Wayne Nastri said. EPA made several improvements to the permit in response to the more-than 1,000 public comment letters submitted, its release stated. "Emission limits required by the permit for the Desert Rock Power Plant ... are some of the most stringent in the country and will set a new level of performance for coal-fired plants in the United States," EPA's release stated. From the beginning the tribe's leaders have supported the project, touting the plant's 2,000 to 3,000 construction jobs and first-year operating revenue of $54 million. In addition to the air permit, Desert Rock still must obtain a federal Environmental Impact Statement before it can begin construction. Cornelia de Bruin: cdebruin@daily-times.com Copyright c. 2008 Farmington Daily Times, a MediaNews Group Newspaper. --------- "RE: Dooda Desert Rock: Fighting the good fight" --------- Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 07:25:55 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="DOODA DESERT ROCK, EPA APPROVAL OF POWER PLANT" http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2008/07/ dooda-desert-rock-fighting-good-fight.html Dooda Desert Rock: Fighting the good fight July 31, 2008 Contact: Elouise Brown, Dooda' Desert Rock Committee President505-947-6159 thebrownmachine@hotmail.com July 31, 2008 THE FEDERAL PERMIT IS ONLY ONE PHASE OF THE DEBATE Yesterday's AP article and a recent Daily Times piece assume that today is the deadline for an EPA decision. That is not what the June 11, 2008 notice in the Federal Register says. The paragraph that starts at the bottom of the left column on the second page makes it clear that the Agency will not make a decision on whether or not to withdraw consent to the consent decree until notice is published, comments are received from the public, and the EPA or the Justice Department made a decision on whether the public comments show that "consent is inappropriate, improper, inadequate, or inconsistent with the requirements of the [Clean Air] Act." We hear that the EPA did issue the permit, so if that decision is "final" the debate will likely shift to federal judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act, with one more issue on whether the decision to ignore public comment and our points was an "abuse of discretion." It is interesting that the Dine Power Authority justified its request for $1 million in a "supplemental" appropriation for ongoing operations near the end of the fiscal year because of threatened litigation by environmental groups. When Dooda made its opposition to the request public, the head of the Authority specifically mentioned its threatened litigation. Frank Maisano did the same (mentioning "environmentalists") in the AP piece. What point are they trying to make? How much money are the developers throwing at the Maisano law firm for propaganda? This is our observation: We met with Merv Tano of the International Institute for Indigenous Management in workshops at an Indian environmental conference in Billings, Montana at the end of June. We discussed our views of how EPA environmental justice policies apply to the debate. While Merv (who is a Native Hawaiian attorney) said he does not support or oppose the plant, he pointed out that quibbling about scientific issues - such as air quality - does not help indigenous peoples. The environmental justice discussion should be about their values, traditions and their decisions about how they are going to handle their own resources. The federal environmental justice policy makes it clear that the "they" is the people on the ground and not a central bureaucracy. That kind of discussion is something that the Desert Rock debate has avoided thus far. What do the people think about coal development and power plants? What do the people think about wind power? What do the chapters think abo ut being excluded when Window Rock starts some new "economic development" project? Is "economic development" for the benefit of the bureaucracy or for the people? The only thing we've heard about "shoes for the kiddies" is that it's about a trickle-down from Window Rock. We should have the opportunity to talk about real environmental justice. The developers still have to go to the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency for an air permit. We are studying the scope of authority of the Navajo Nation EPA at this stage, and other provisions of Navajo Nation environmental law to see what options we have and what kinds of permits the Nation's EPA handles. Navajo Nation statutes and regulations require public notice and a hearing for permits, and Navajo Nation law allows extensive public participation. The Navajo Nation EPA recognizes that The Fundamental Laws of the Dine apply to its operations and the Natural Law provisions apply here. We are not talking about litigation - yet. We are talking about an opportunity for a genuine public debate. The environmental impact statement talks were dog-and-pony shows that were controlled by the developers. We want to see adequate notice to the Navajo Nation public, debates that are not controlled by developers or an industry-friendly federal agency, and meaningful discussion of Navajo values. A lot of them will be and should be in Navajo. We intend to talk about Navajo Natural Law and Navajo environmental justice. We look for an opportunity for meaningful discussion - following the Navajo tradition of talking things out. Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com Censored and under-reported news: brendanorrell@gmail.com --------- "RE: Decision on Tribe's recognition could come by Jan" --------- Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:35:07 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="LITTLE SHELL CHIPPEWA RECOGNITION" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.helenair.com/articles/2008/07/31/ap-state-mt/d928luv80.txt Decision on tribe's recognition could come by Jan. July 31, 2008 GREAT FALLS, Mont. - A decision on whether the Little Shell Chippewa Tribe should be federally recognized could be made by January. R. Lee Fleming, director of the U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Federal Acknowledgment, said in a letter to Little Shell chairman John Sinclair that his office has received a 180-day deadline extension to decide. The landless, state-recognized tribe has about 4,300 members, mostly in the Great Falls area. They argue that recognition would provide access to federal health care, affordable housing and education grants. Sinclair said Wednesday he believes the decision was delayed because of political pressure to hold off until President Bush leaves office. "It is frustrating because we know we should be recognized," Sinclair said. "But this just pushes everything back." The forefathers of the Little Shell were a band of the Chippewa that migrated to the Northern Plains in the 1700s. After ending up in North Dakota in the late 1800s, the tribe was approached by federal agents seeking to buy land for white homesteaders for 10 cents an acre. Chief Little Shell refused to sign what he considered an unfair deal. His people were taken off the Chippewa tribal roll and became a "landless tribe." Federal authorities relocated about 600 to the Canadian border. Most walked south into Montana and ended up on other reservations and on frontier outposts, where they intermarried with French-Canadian trappers. The tribe has been trying to gain federal recognition for more than a century. Information from: Great Falls Tribune, http://www.greatfallstribune.com Copyright c. 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. Copyright c. 2008 Helena Independent Record; a division of Lee Enterprises. --------- "RE: Rep. Baird backs Tribal Status for Chinook" --------- Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2008 07:25:55 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="CHINOOK RECOGNITION" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://www.columbian.com/news/localNews/2008/07/ 08012008_Rep-Baird-backs-tribal-status-for-Chinook.cfm Rep. Baird backs tribal status for Chinook By JEFFREY MIZE, Columbian staff writer August 1, 2008 Congressman Brian Baird, saying it's time to fix a historic injustice, has introduced legislation for the Chinook Nation to become a federally recognized tribe. The Chinook are credited with helping the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805-06, when the Corps of Discovery spent a wet winter at Fort Clatsop near the mouth of the Columbia River. The tribe has been close to winning federal recognition before. In January 2001, during the final days of the Clinton administration, federal officials approved the Chinook's petition, but the Bush administration reversed the decision. Baird, D-Vancouver, announced his legislation Thursday. In a news release, he said the Chinook have been seeking recognition since 1851. "While we can't change the past, we can change the future," Baird said. "This bill will ensure the Chinook are finally treated fairly. This is about fixing an injustice. It is simply the right thing to do." Under the terms of Baird's legislation, the tribe would agree to give up fishing and hunting rights, except for ceremonial ones. Tribal members would be able to fish and hunt the same as anyone else, but they would have no special privileges. The tribe has also agreed to renounce any claims to land that is currently privately owned, although tribal members are free to purchase land from willing sellers. Chinook leaders met in mid-July and accepted the conditions outlined in Baird's legislation. "My grandmother spoke of a day like today as one of her dreams," Ray Gardner, chairman of the Chinook Tribal Council, said in a statement. "Someday soon, I will get to tell my nieces and nephews about this day as a part of our history." Baird's legislation is silent on the issue of Indian gambling. The Cowlitz Indian Tribe, which won federal recognition in early 2002, has been embroiled in a multiyear battle to build a large casino complex west of La Center. Citizens Against Reservation Shopping, which was created three years ago to oppose the Cowlitz casino, argues the Chinook have more historic connections to this area than the Cowlitz. Tom Hunt, the group's spokesman, said he believes the Chinook would have little trouble documenting sufficient historical, geographic and cultural connections to win federal approval for a casino in Clark County. The Chinook's tribal offices are in Chinook near the Washington coast, but the tribe has members living in Clark County. Phil Harju, the Cowlitz Indian Tribe's vice chairman and spokesman, said his tribe supports federal recognition for the Chinook. There has been considerable intermarriage between members of the two tribes, he said. "Their recognition will not affect the Cowlitz project because the Cowlitz project is clearly in historic Cowlitz area, Clark County," Harju said. Copyright c. 2008 Columbian.com. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: Like Family: Tribal Colleges nurture" --------- Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:31:14 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="INDIAN STUDENTS MADE MORE WELCOME AT TRIBAL COLLEGES" http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2008/07/27/news/topnews/161055.txt Like family: Tribal colleges nurture American Indian students By SARA KINCAID Bismarck Tribune July 27, 2008 When Jan Janecek-Hartman says she wants her students in class she's not kidding. She will find them. Once, she went to a student's dorm room and caught him watching cartoons when he should have been in class. She is one of many faculty members at United Tribes Technical College who will do the same thing. Partly, it's a strict attendance policy, but it's something more that has instructors checking on their students. They want their students to succeed. "I honest to God don't believe it's not for trying, but access and opportunity," Janecek-Hartman said. American Indian students represent about 1 percent of students enrolled in higher education, according to a National Center for Education Statistics report on fall 2006 enrollment. White students, by comparison, represent 59 percent of students in higher education. Other ethnicities make up the remainder of students. Some students, however, are choosing tribally-owned colleges and universities over other institutions because of the services they provide and the smaller atmosphere. "The college environment makes me feel welcome, like family," said Keshia Kills Small, a student at Sitting Bull College on the Standing Rock reservation. Small lives in family housing with her husband and young son. She came to Sitting Bull College from the Navajo reservation. Her mother is a member of the Standing Rock Tribe. She's studying nursing because she wants to help people. When she's done she'd like to get a job in the Southwest, preferably on the Navajo reservation. She wanted to go to a smaller college so that she'd have more personal attention. About 300 students attend the tribal college in Fort Yates each semester. Sitting Bull College hopes to draw 200 more students per semester after it completes a student center, which will include a library and cafeteria, and provide more stops to campus with the bus service. Eventually, they'd like to have 1,000 students enrolled, and think student residence halls could help them attain that, said Koreen Ressler, vice president of academics at Sitting Bull College. "It's because you're not a number, you're a person," Ressler said. "They (instructors) know everybody and do a lot of tutoring themselves." Tribal colleges and universities educate almost 17,000 students, 80 percent of whom are American Indian, according to a 2005 report by the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, the latest report available. This represents about 7 percent of American Indian students in two- and four-year colleges and universities. The appeal of the tribal college is the close-knit community. Janecek- Hartman, who is a tribal environmental science professor at United Tribes, treats her students like family. This includes welcoming their relatives into her office. It's common for her students to be parents, as well as for them to be older than the typical college student. Items in her office at United Tribes Technical College are out of the reach of little hands. Outside her door on the second floor of the tribal environmental science building are some toys and a TV that she can play movies on. It helps keep the little ones busy while her students study or get help. "There's a lot of nurturing," Janecek-Hartman said. "You find across campus that our students become part of our family." She also is the director of Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics education programs and outreach programs at UTTC. Most colleges, tribal or not, have programs, student services and clubs in place to help students adjust to life on campus. Some programs are targeted at retaining American Indian students and helping them graduate. At United Tribes, students participate in student government, service clubs and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium student conference. At the conference, students show what they've learned in their course of study against other tribal college students. But tribal colleges take it a step further to include family services. Sitting Bull College offers a day care for students to drop off their children while in class. United Tribes has a day care, and an on-campus elementary school. "Day care and transportation are big needs for our students," Ressler said. Sitting Bull College works with the tribal bus service to offer half- price rides, and routes that drop students off in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon at the college. The bus service uses Fort Yates as a hub and has buses that come in from reservation communities, as well as Bismarck and Mobridge. The transportation system is necessary for Sitting Bull College because it does not have student housing outside of 17 family housing units. It hopes to change this in the future with the addition of residence halls. In the meantime, the frequency of bus stops at the college will be increased, Ressler said. United Tribes offers its own bus service for students into Bismarck. When American Indian students choose places like the University of North Dakota, there are student groups and services to help them. The American Indian Student Service Center gives students an opportunity to connect with other American Indian students and it sponsors cultural activities. "It's hard to imagine how wearing it is being a minority member," said Greg Gagnon, indian studies professor at the University of North Dakota. He likens it to an analogy his wife uses about there being few women in engineering. At the student center, they can tell jokes that other people understand, and there is a cultural understanding. It's best when they have other people from the same tribe to converse with because they can be related. As an alternative to increasing American Indian programs at universities like UND, Ressler would like to see these organizations form partnerships with the reservation-based colleges. The tribal colleges already make partnerships with other tribal colleges to expand opportunities for their students, while helping students stay in their communities. The partnership with Sinte Gleska University in Mission, S.D. to offer advanced degrees in special education is one example. For institutions like UND, about two-fifths of American Indian students nationally graduate with a bachelor's degree, while three-fifths of white students earn bachelor's degrees, according to a National Center for Education Statistics report of 2000 graduation rates. Students from other races graduate between two-fifths and about two-thirds of their students. About two-thirds of Asian and Pacific islander students graduate with a bachelor's degree. About equal numbers of American Indian students enter four-year and two- year institutions. More students earn a diploma from four-year institutions than two-year institutions. It's Janecek-Hartman's goal to educate the students at UnitedTribes so that, when the time comes for someone to take her place, it will be an American Indian, she said. Janecek-Hartman has hope in people like Marla Striped Face-Collins, who received a full-ride scholarship to the University of New Hampshire to study geographical information systems. "I've prepared a cadre of students to do what I'm doing,"Janecek-Hartman said. Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@bismarcktribune.com Copyright c. 2008 Bismark Tribune. --------- "RE: Grant makes a difference in Students' Lives" --------- Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:09:54 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="CARGILL MAKES $100,000 INDIAN STUGENT GRANT" http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20080730/pl_usnw/cargill100_000_ grant_makes_a_difference_in_american_indian_students____lives Cargill $100,000 Grant Makes Difference in American Indian Students' Lives July 29, 2008 To: NATIONAL EDITORS Contact: Dina Horwedel, Public Education Director of American Indian College Fund +1-303-430-5350, dhorwedel@collegefund.org DENVER, July 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Cargill announced that it has granted $100,000 to the American Indian College Fund. The gift will benefit 25 student scholarships and a professional development initiative called Backpacks to Briefcase, which ensures the successful transition of students to their professional lives. Scholarship recipients are chosen based on their financial need, education enrollment status, and community involvement. Students will be notified of their selection status in August 2008 for the 2008-09 academic year. The American Indian College Fund supports qualified American Indian scholars by providing financial support to encourage them to remain in college and complete a college degree. The Fund believes that an education enables American Indian students to make a better life for themselves and their families, while providing valuable contributions to their communities and nation. As a company, Cargill is committed to a culture of diversity and inclusion, and were dedicated to supporting education in our communities, said Margaret Studer, Vice President of Global Diversity and Inclusion at Cargill. We are pleased to contribute to the American Indian College Fund in order to help these students succeed in the classroom, and beyond. Richard B. Williams, president and CEO of the Fund, said, Cargill, through its generosity, is making a profound difference in American Indian students lives. For most of our students, winning a scholarship is the only hope of realizing the dream of education. Cargills grant will ensure that American Indian students can pursue their dreams, changing their lives, their families lives, and their communities, Williams said. --- About Cargill Cargill is an international provider of food, agricultural and risk management products and services. With 158,000 employees in 66 countries, the company is committed to using its knowledge and experience to collaborate with customers to help them succeed. Cargill contributes more than $40 million a year globally to civic and charitable organizations that help nourish the people and possibilities in communities where its employees live and work. For more information, visit www.cargill.com. About the American Indian College Fund With its credo Educating the Mind and Spirit, the Denver-based American Indian College Fund is the nations largest provider of private scholarships for American Indian students, providing more than 6,000 scholarships annually for students seeking to better their lives and communities through education at the nations more than 30 accredited tribal colleges and universities. For more information about the American Indian College Fund or to make a donation, visit www.collegefund.org. SOURCE American Indian College Fund Copyright c. 2008 Yahoo All rights reserved. --------- "RE: Lenape Indians, The Original Philadelphians" --------- Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:31:14 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="LENAPE HISTORIAN TRACES TRIBAL PAST" http://indianz.com/News/ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92914200 Lenape Indians, The Original Philadelphians Weekend Edition July 27, 2008 The Lenni-Lenape Indians were the first known settlers of the area that is Philadelphia. Chet Brooks of Oklahoma is a member of the tribe, and he has devoted the past 36 years to studying and preserving Lenape history and tradition. Brooks told NPR's Robert Smith that the Lenape Indians occupied the Philadelphia area almost 10,000 years before Europeans came to the region. Those settlers renamed the tribe, calling them the Delaware Indians, because they had trouble pronouncing Lenape (Leh-NAH-pay). Before the "Delawares" were forced off the land, they inhabited the region that is now New Jersey, as well as the area along the Delaware River in Pennsylvania and the Hudson Valley and New York Harbor, in New York. The Lenape signed their first treaty with William Penn in 1683, a document that Brooks says is often referred to as "the treaty that was never ratified, but never broken." Although Penn treated the tribe fairly, his son, Thomas, took a different approach. He tricked the Lenape into giving away their land, and the tribe moved West in what became known as the Delaware Westward Trek. Most tribe members now live in Oklahoma. Brooks says only about 985 Lenape survived the trip to Indian Territory - a number far reduced from the estimated 15,000-20,000 Lenape who lived on the East Coast before white settlers arrived. In order to keep the tribe's culture alive and thriving today, the Lenape in Oklahoma hold weekly classes to study language, make traditional clothes and practice dance. One dance, the "Go Get 'Em Dance," involves men dancing around a fire while women stand in a line. The men tap the woman they want to dance with on the shoulder, sometimes choosing several women, depending on the number in line. Brooks says that someday he would like to return to his homelands on the East Coast, set up a business and continue his work to keep the Lenape traditions alive. Copyright c. 2008 NPR. --------- "RE: EDITORIAL OPINION: Virginia Tribal Recognition" --------- Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:31:14 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="EDITORIAL: RECOGNIZE VIRGINIA TRIBES" http://www.pechanga.net/ http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2008/072008/07282008/397727 Tribal recognition The Free Lance-Star Today's Editorial With gambling off the table, Virginia's Indian tribes should gain federal recognition. July 28, 2008 GOV. TIM KAINE has put his weight behind a move in the U.S. Senate to grant federal recognition to six Virginia Indian tribes. It's a honor that's well overdue. For years, the argument against recognition centered around one major bugaboo: gaming. In other parts of the United States, federal status has opened the door to casinos on reservations, which bring with them many unintended consequences, like attracting organized crime, encouraging gambling addiction, failure to alleviate poverty on the reservation, and other social woes. Many Indian leaders share these concerns, including officials of the Navajo Nation, which remains casino-free. The Virginia tribes have made it clear they will not establish gaming facilities on their reservations. Chief Stephen Adkins of the Chickahominy tribe told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "I'm a deacon in my church, and I probably would be kicked out of my church if we brought gambling to the community We have said we would never game as long as the commonwealth says 'No.'" The six tribes - the Upper Mattaponi, Monacan, Chickahominy, Chickahominy-Eastern Division, Nansemond, and Rappahannock - would benefit by gaining access to scholarships and educational grants. Then, too, there is the question of honor and equity: Most Indian tribes achieved federal recognition when they signed peace treaties with the U.S. government. Virginia's Indians signed their treaties with the British crown. They predated the emergence of the United States as a nation. In other words, they were a nation before we were. Now that gambling is off the table, the argument against federal recognition is moot. Virginia's tribes should be given full status - and better late than never. Copyright c. 2008, The Free Lance-Star Publishing Co., Fredericksburg, VA. --------- "RE: ICT EDITORIAL: Where the Power lies" --------- Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 10:20:27 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096417792 Where the power lies by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today July 25, 2008 The expression that American Indians are organized into tribes is common everyday and legal language. The expression, in part, comes from the Commerce Clause within the U.S. Constitution in which Congress is granted the right to regulate trade with Indian tribes. All federally recognized Indian communities are now considered tribes for legal and political purposes. Indian people and leaders have taken up the expression and use of "tribe" as the legal and political form of their communities, regardless of their history and culture. The American government wants to work with Indian tribes, with central leadership and collective rights and obligations. During the colonial period, colonial governments did not like working with many decentralized political leaders, and began recognizing centralized leaders among Indian communities when none existed. There were men such as Teedyuscung, who was recognized by the English colonial governments as "King of the Delaware," and others among the Cherokee who were recognized as the "Cherokee Emperor" during much of the 1700s. Often the tribal communities did not pay much attention to the colonially recognized leaders, since they were created for political and trade interests by the colonists, and did not conform to the political and social traditions of the Indian communities. The colonists preferred that Indian governments reflect their own forms of political and social organization, which in those days tended toward centralized leadership by patrilineal males, such as kings. In the present American period, the U.S. government wants Indian tribes to reflect American social and political forms; hence the current emphasis on constitutional government. Nevertheless, how is the term "tribe" defined? How well does a uniform application of tribe as social and political form accurately reflect the diversity of social and political forms of present-day and historical communities? These questions are not well-addressed in Indian policy, if they are not completely ignored altogether. During the 1950s, the famous anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber was hired by the California Indians to supply support for an Indian Claims Commission case. Eighteen treaties were negotiated in the early 1850s, but were not ratified by Congress. While several reservations were subsequently created by executive order, many, if not most, California Indians were left landless. As part of the claims argument, Kroeber and other anthropologist colleagues, such as R.F. Heiser, provided background support for the California Indians and in the end they were successful in gaining a settlement that was paid out in 1972. Kroeber is often in disfavor these days by California Indian tribes, but he was instrumental in helping achieve the claims settlement. Kroeber is also often castigated for developing a linguistic conception of California Indian political and tribal organization, but the writings he provided to the Indian claims court defy that interpretation. He argued "that more often than not in Native North America, the land-owning and sovereign political society was not what we usually call 'the tribe,' but smaller units." Kroeber is not trying to destroy the Indian sovereignty argument; rather, he wants to point out that colonial and now U.S. government officials are not using the expression "tribe" in a way that actually reflects the political power and organization of Indian peoples. He suggests that tribes should not be confused with nationalities. Nationalities are groups that share similar customs, ceremonies, languages, and shared social and cultural rules. Nevertheless, nationalities, and many Indian tribes, do not share a common collective or centralized political organization. The political units of Indian peoples are often located in local bands, villages or lineages. The governing units were local groups that managed and identified local territory, rather than an overall government that held large amounts of collective territory. Many Indian communities, like the Tlingit or Hopi, did not have centralized principal chiefs, and government and economy was mobilized through villages and clans. Kroeber says, "Ordinarily, the nationality, miscalled tribe, was only an aggregate of miniature sovereign states normally friendly to one another." Kroeber does not deny the sovereignty of Indian government, but suggests that the expression "tribe" in many cases - not all - is a creation of colonial and American officials who want and need more convenient political entities to negotiate treaties, trade and policy. Kroeber and Hieser analyze the Indian signatories to the 18 California treaties and they say that out of 139 groups, only 67 were "tribes" and 45 were representatives of villages. Of the 67 tribes, Kroeber suggests that most of them were local sovereign entities that did not have power or authority to surrender the large territories that American treaty officials sought. "The commissioners evidently pressured the chiefs or representatives they met with, into signing 'treaties' on which they had no possible jurisdiction, and which they probably did not understand." The treaty signatories were not representative of the whole of California Indians, and the representatives who attended the treaty meetings were asked to surrender land they neither occupied nor claimed. Tribes and tribal sovereignty now are central concepts in the discussion and negotiation of indigenous rights and political process in the United States. Of course, larger more powerful groups are much more effective in the political relations of contemporary national and international politics. Nevertheless, political power in many contemporary Indian communities continues to lie in lineages and local groups. Much of what media and anthropologists call factionalism in Indian communities is largely a misreading of where social organization and power lie: not in national or tribal entities, but in local families, groups or villages. Nation building in many Indian communities will succeed only if there is recognition of local political power and organization that is respected and consensually included in the processes of reclaiming, building and sustaining political, cultural and territorial sovereignty. Copyright c. 1998 - 2008 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: JODI RAVE: From Burritos to Buffalo Robes" --------- Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 10:20:27 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="JODI RAVE: THE TANNERY" http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/07/27/jodirave/rave43.txt Native News The Tannery: With serendipity and prayer as his guides, Bitterroot man switched careers from burritos to buffalo robes By JODI RAVE of the Missoulian July 27, 2008 STEVENSVILLE - Jason Erickson was serving up beef burritos when he decided he would rather be delivering buffalo - and not as a meal. "I didn't know it, but I absolutely love tanning, love it to death," said Erickson, owner of The Tannery, a hair-on-hide tanning company in the Bitterroot Valley. Now he processes animal hides for businesses and individuals across the United States and Canada. He's quickly earning a reputation as a premier buffalo robe tanner. "The quality is second to none," said Nella McCaskill, a catalog retailer for CNF Marketing in Winnipeg, Manitoba, who described the robes as "absolutely beautiful." Erickson never expected to tan hides for a living. He has paid his bills as an antique dealer and more recently as a caterer. But all was not going well in the food business. "My catering business was falling apart, not by any means of my own," said Erickson. "It was just one thing after the other. The Lord was shutting that down." One day while delivering burritos to a tannery in Stevensville, the then-owner told Erickson his business was for sale. He suggested the caterer buy it. "I said, `You teach me how to tan and I will do it,' " said Erickson. "I worked for one week and fell in love with it. I said, `I want to do this.'" The Tannery, located in the Creamery Building in Stevensville, has been growing ever since. The production floor space has nearly tripled in the last four years. Erickson sells hides wholesale and retail, charging customers who come into the business $650 for a buffalo hide. The typical retail price is closer to $850, or higher. Erickson doesn't do any significant advertising. He doesn't even have a sign outside the business. Most of his orders come by word of mouth. And customers keep spreading the word about Erickson's skill with hides, including deer, elk and exotic animals. His specialty is buffalo, which can be difficult to tan because of the thick fur, weight and size of the hide. It's not easy finding a good buffalo tanner, said Dan Fournier, owner of Wild West Trading Company in Fraser, Colo., who has purchased robes from up to six different tanneries. He said some businesses have sold him hides "stiff as plywood." Fournier buys many robes from Erickson for hide paintings. "I'm not there to pick them out, so I have to trust the guy who is doing the tanning," he said. "I have to trust they are going to send me a nice hide. He tries hard. Some of these guys do their thing and they go home. If there is something not quite right, he'll figure it out. "He probably has the best prices, too," said Fournier. "That's not what drives me to buy through him. I don't care what the price is. If I can't sell it, it doesn't do me any good. I've bought hides for one-quarter of what he's selling and couldn't get rid of them. I ended up throwing them all away." The Tannery avoids selling hides that have bare spots. Erickson hires someone to hand-select each animal. "Rough spots are pretty common among buffalo because the bulls fight a lot and they are constantly scratching up against posts and trees," said Fournier. "That scratches off some of the hide." Erickson started out tanning about 10 buffalo a year. Now he ships more than 400 robes annually to customers. His foray into buffalo began when he shipped a robe to the wrong person. "I ended up making a contact who pretty much supplies me with an unlimited source of buffalo," Erickson said. "And they are all good. They are all winter kill." McCaskill, the Canadian catalog retailer, purchases about 50 hides a year from The Tannery, selling the robes to homeowners and interior designers. She has worked with several buffalo robe suppliers and appreciates Erickson's extra steps - like tumbling, drying and triple- brushing - to soften a robe. "It's an added plus," she said. And the service is fast. "I can place an order today and I know tomorrow it's gone," she said. "We'll definitely continue our relationship." Erickson considers his job a blessing. "If I had tried, I couldn't have made this come together like it has," he said. He relied on prayer to find his niche. "I got down on my knees. I said, `I don't know what I can do, but you know all my talents. You know all my abilities. Please show me what I can do.' " God answered his prayers, he said. "He put me right here," said Erickson. "It's been a kick ever since." Meanwhile, he's committed to the 14-day process of soaking, shaving, tumbling, oiling, drying and brushing the buffalo robes, a grueling job by most standards. "Buffalo hides are hard," said Bill O'Connell, a robe customer. "It gives you a whole new respect for Native American women," who used a traditional brain-tanning process on the hides. O'Connell sends Erickson cured hides from Ted Turner's Flying D buffalo ranch in Bozeman. He said finished furs-on-hide are "exceptional." While Native people historically used every part of the buffalo in their daily lives, from food to clothing, most people today use the robes in home d?cor or as bed covers - an average-size hide is 6-by-6 feet and easily fits on a king-size bed. Lee Standing Bear, secretary of the Manataka American Indian Council in Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas, said he doesn't encourage people to use robes as rugs. The council sells many of Erickson's robes online to Native customers who use them for ceremonies or for warmth on a cool night. "It really does keep them nice and toasty," said Standing Bear. "And they are soft, very soft." The council has been purchasing robes from The Tannery for the last two years. "If he doesn't have something, he will try to find it," Standing Bear said. "Our people have specific requests for things for ceremony." The center sends its customers surveys: How do you like it? How did it arrive? Was it in good shape? Standing Bear recently reviewed some customer responses on Erickson's robes. "Wow," he said. "We must like him." He read some of the survey comments. "Excellent." "Wonderful." "Beautiful." And there were many thank-you notes. "He's always been fair and honest," said Standing Bear. "What more can you ask?" --- Reach reporter Jodi Rave at 1-800-396-7186 or jodi.rave@lee.net. Copyright c. 2007 Missoulian, a division of Lee Enterprises. --------- "RE: NEWCOMB: Storytelling Tradition of Supreme Court" --------- Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 10:20:27 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="NEWCOMB: INDIANS AND THE SUPREME COURT" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096417795 Newcomb: The storytelling tradition of the Supreme Court by: Steven Newcomb / Indigenous Law Institute July 25, 2008 Every Supreme Court ruling contains a story or narrative concerning a particular legal dispute and its resolution. In the area of federal Indian law, every Supreme Court ruling contains a story about the relationship between American Indians and the United States of America. Because a story told and decision made by the Supreme Court is referred to as "the law," or "the supreme law," people are left with the impression that the status of a Supreme Court narrative makes it something more than a story. Every story - even one woven into a Supreme Court ruling - is understood as a cohesive whole, with a cast of characters who move through a series of encounters and events to the eventual conclusion of the storyline. Indeed, the end of the story in a court ruling is the actual decision itself. The "line" of reasoning that the court "takes" is the metaphorical path or course of argumentation that "leads to" the court's conclusion (the "destination" of the mental "path" taken by the court). As one genre of story, the classic fairytale begins with a cliche: "Once upon a time." Most Supreme Court rulings in federal Indian law begin with a cliched notion of what happened to the original "Indian independence" or "Indian sovereignty," which is what we might term the "once upon a time" dimension of federal Indian law. "Once upon a time, Indian nations were completely free in North America, but then along came the European discovery of America, and the United States, and, as a result, the Indian nations no longer possessed their original free and independent existence, and the white man lived happily ever after." (Or, from a Native perspective, "... and the white man always felt the need to justify what he had wrongfully obtained.") The justices of the Supreme Court have used their storytelling abilities to explain how the original free existence of American Indian nations went away (with the underlying assumption that it will never return), and how the United States supposedly obtained a legitimate authority over Indian nations. The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case Plains Commerce Bank v. Long Family Land and Cattle Company is no exception to this tradition of storytelling. In its decision, written for the 5 - 4 majority by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court devoted several paragraphs to a discussion of American Indian political existence in relation to the United States. The question before the court was whether the tribal court of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe "had jurisdiction to adjudicate a discrimination claim concerning the non-Indian bank's sale of fee land it [the bank] owed." Although the land at issue was within the exterior boundaries of an Indian reservation, because the land was non-Indian owned (as a result of the 1887 General Allotment Act), the court decided that the Cheyenne River Sioux court did not have such jurisdiction. In its discussion of American Indian political existence, the Supreme Court used bits and pieces of several older rulings. Roberts began this section of the Long decision with the phrase: "For nearly two centuries, we [the Supreme Court] have recognized Indian tribes as 'distinct, independent political communities."' Importantly, Roberts used only these four words ("distinct, independent political communities") from the rather lengthy 1832 Worcester ruling, which involved a dispute between the Cherokee Nation and the state of Georgia. If Roberts and his associates had been true to the entire context of the story told in Worcester, the court could have reached a different conclusion in the Long case. In Worcester, Chief Justice John Marshall said that the United States had treated the Indians "as nations," "respect[ed] their rights," and "afford[ed]" those nations "that protection which treaties stipulate." According to Worcester, the United States treated Indian nations "as distinct political communities, having territorial boundaries, within which their [the Indian nations'] authority is exclusive." Marshall also said in Worcester that the Indian nations were recognized by the United States as "having a right to all the lands within those [Indian territorial] boundaries." The exclusive authority of Indian nations and their territorial boundaries were "both acknowledged and guaranteed by the United States," he said. On such a line of reasoning, it would necessarily follow that "the tribal court" of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe would have "jurisdiction to adjudicate a discrimination claim concerning the non-Indian bank's sale of fee land it [the bank] owned" since the issue involved land within the "territorial boundaries" of an Indian nation, "within which" its "authority is exclusive." This would follow because an Indian nation having such exclusive authority would necessarily have a right to regulate activities on "all the lands within those [Indian territorial] boundaries" and adjudicate issues pertaining to those lands. Instead of working from the Indian nationhood paradigm of Worcester, however, the majority in the Long case looked at the effects of the General Allotment Act. As a result of that act, the land at issue in the Long case was non-Indian owned, within an Indian reservation. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt characterized the General Allotment Act as "a mighty pulverizing engine [designed] to break up the tribal mass." In a shocking display of insensitivity, Roberts expressed gratitude for the fact that some two-thirds of all Indian lands were taken from Indian nations as a result of the Allotment Act. Roberts wrote: "Thanks to the Indian General Allotment Act of 1887 ... there are millions of acres of non-Indian fee land located within the contiguous borders of Indian tribes." (emphasis added). Thus, the Roberts court framed allotment as a story of success in the United States' efforts to wrest Indian lands away from Indian nations, a policy that enabled today's court to simultaneously invoke and cast aside Worcester. --- Steven Newcomb, Shawnee/Lenape, is the indigenous research coordinator for the education department of the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, co- founder and co-director of the Indigenous Law Institute, a columnist for Indian Country Today, 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: GOLDBERG & WASHBURN: Lies, Damn List, Crime Stats" --------- Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 10:20:27 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="GOLDBERG & WASHBURN: INDIAN CRIME STATISTICS" http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096417794 Goldberg and Washburn: Lies, damn lies, and crime statistics By Carole Goldberg and Kevin Washburn July 25, 2008 Are American Indians more often victims of crime than members of other ethnic and racial groups? Are most of the offenses committed against them committed by non-Indians, as opposed to members of their own group? Ever since the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics began issuing reports on this subject in 2000, the clear answer to both of those questions has seemed to be "yes." Now the South Dakota attorney general and researchers at the University of South Dakota have challenged that conclusion, issuing a report that focuses on only one state but questions the Indian data nationally. Their challenge to the federal data is much too quick to dismiss the BJS findings. Over the past eight years, the BJS, which is a component of the U.S. Department of Justice, has released some startling figures. Although American Indians are .9 percent of the total population, they represent 1. 4 percent of all crime victims, a very significant overrepresentation. At least two-thirds of all crimes against Indians, and 80 percent of all sexual assaults, are committed by non-Indians. Indian women, according to BJS data, are 2.5 times more likely than non- Indian women to be raped or sexually assaulted during their lifetimes. These statistics have been difficult to ignore. Tribes and Native women's groups have raised them before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in order to secure greater support for Indian country criminal justice initiatives. Amnesty International included some of those statistics in a much broader analysis of sexual assault of Indian women in the United States, and used case studies from Indian country to make their point. The BJS statistics do have some limitations. They are based primarily on nationwide victimization surveys, administered through interviews of individuals at a nationally representative number of households. These data fail to distinguish between Indian reservations and other rural and urban settings. The BJS victimization data encompasses the more than 60 percent of all Indians who live outside reservations, including large urban Indian populations in places such as Los Angeles and Minneapolis. Indians represent a tiny percentage of the population in such areas, so high percentages of victimization by non-Indians would be expected. Furthermore, 2000 Census data indicates that nearly 55 percent of all Native women marry non-Indians, a greater rate of out-marriage than other racial groups. Under such circumstances, domestic violence would predictably be an interracial event. But the South Dakota study goes much further in contesting the BJS figures. Using data from crime reports, arrests and prosecutions in the federal and state systems in South Dakota, it claims that Indian country crime is mainly an Indian-against-Indian phenomenon. The report confirms the BJS point that Indians are disproportionately victimized by crime compared with other groups. For example, Indians were 64 percent of the intentional homicide victims according to the South Dakota study, yet only 8.3 percent of the state population. But the South Dakota researchers also argue that Indians are the main crime perpetrators, making crime against Indians in that state intra-racial rather than interracial. The big difference between the BJS crime figures and the South Dakota numbers is the sources of crime data. The BJS relied on direct interviews with individual crime victims, on the assumption that some crimes will go unreported. The South Dakota report asserts that victimization surveys are unreliable, and therefore the researchers there rely only on crime reports to official agencies. Remarkably, the South Dakota researchers claim that reports by victims are not "actual crime data" and their research refuses to supplement the police data with data from victims of crime. In considering reports by victims of crime, BJS has the more reliable approach. For Indian country generally, and for South Dakota especially, exclusive reliance on official crime reports is a serious problem. Rape, which is one of the crimes the South Dakota report highlights, is a notoriously underreported crime everywhere and for all groups. We would expect even greater underreporting of rape and sexual assault against Indian women in South Dakota, particularly where the perpetrator is non- Indian. Due to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, Indian nations have lost control over arrests and prosecutions of non-Indian assailants. Other decisions by the Supreme Court have disestablished considerable reservation territory in South Dakota, eliminating Indian country status. As a result, Native victims in South Dakota must depend on the state and federal systems to bring non- Indian perpetrators to justice. Yet Indian women may wonder whether they should bother to report the crimes committed against them. Reservation residents in that state regularly complain that the BIA, FBI and federal prosecutors decline to prosecute crimes committed in Indian country. Even if tribal police are specially commissioned to carry out federal law enforcement responsibilities, there are too few of them, spread too thin around vast reservations. AI has shown how deficient the physical examinations and evidence collection have been for rape victims who must rely on the IHS. Outside Indian country, Native women victimized by non-Indians confront a state system they perceive to be biased against them. And these women can point to considerable support for their view. Indians in South Dakota have recently prevailed in lawsuits brought under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, proving discrimination against them in the design of county voting districts. In 2000, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission issued a report documenting charges of discrimination against Indians in that state. The bottom line is this: If Indian women do not believe that their reports will be investigated, they are much less likely to report them. The SCIA has recently released a draft bill designed to enhance the administration of criminal justice in Indian country. One of the sections of that bill focuses on improved crime data collection, a real need. Until we have better data, it would be a mistake to accept the conclusions of the South Dakota study which ignores data from crime victims. --- Carole Goldberg is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California - Los Angeles. Kevin Washburn, Chickasaw Nation, is a Rosenstiel Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Arizona. They are co-principal investigators on a $1.45 million grant to examine the administration of criminal justice in Indian country, and both serve as co-editors, co-authors of Felix Cohen's "Handbook of Federal Indian Law." Copyright c. 1998 - 2008 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved. --------- "RE: GIAGO: Moving back to the land of the Lakota" --------- Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:31:14 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="GIAGO: GOING BACK TO RAPID CITY" http://indianz.com/News/2008/010013.asp Tim Giago: Moving back to the land of the Lakota July 28, 2008 There are several reasons I am moving back to Rapid City, SD from Albuquerque, NM. One is that I added a new word to my vocabulary a couple of weeks ago. The word is "mad-dogging." According to all of the news reports two young men met outside of a downtown bar and tried to stare each other down. In Albuquerque this is called "mad-dogging." The end result of this "mad-dogging" is that one of the young men pulled a pistol and shot the other man in the chest killing him on the spot. Getting killed because you stared at someone? Now that is just too much. Second is the news report last week that said, "There have been six homicides since Tuesday." I check the calendar and it was only Saturday. Six homicides in four days? But that seems to be an average week down here. There are probably six murders in the entire year in the state of South Dakota. And three, Albuquerque has a population of about 700,000 which is the equivalent of the entire state of South Dakota. And speaking of vocabularies, I suspect that the conversation I overheard in an Albuquerque ice cream parlor is probably typical of today's teenagers, but I hope not. Anyhow, a teenage girl and boy were sitting next to me as I enjoyed an Oregon Blackberry ice cream cone. The girl was speaking and her conversation went something like this. "I was LIKE looking for a job so I LIKE went into this store and LIKE asked for the manager and he LIKE gave me an application and I LIKE filled it out and LIKE gave it back and LIKE...." Did we talk LIKE that when we were teenagers? But I suspect it is more than the sum of all these things. I see people retiring and moving to a place like Florida or Arizona because they do not have blizzards and freezing weather. They end up in a community where everyone is an elder wearing shorts and golf shirts. Sure they may make new friends, but they leave the friends of a lifetime back in the state where they were born and raised. They become elderly strangers in the land of the elderly. And worse yet, they take all of the wisdom they used to help build a community far away from that community. But more than anything, I am Lakota and I dearly missed the land of the Lakota. I missed the smell of the pine trees in the Sacred He' Sapa (Black Hills) and the smiles on the faces of my former classmates and friends at the annual pow wows. And I just missed walking down the street in Rapid City and running into old friends from all walks of life that I have met and worked with over the many years I lived in South Dakota. I missed driving down to the reservation and visiting the gravesites of my grandparents and stopping at all of my old haunts at Kyle and Martin. I missed being in a community where my weekly newspaper helped bring about so many changes for the good and not being able to enjoy the changes I helped bring about. There is no other state in the Union that celebrates Native American Day as a state holiday except South Dakota and my Indian Country Today newspaper was the driving force behind that success. The Lakota count their years on this Mother Earth in the winters they have survived. They say, "I have lived 74 winters." And it seems that when one looks at the death records of the Indian reservations in this state one would find that most of the elders passed away in the winter time. I want to end my winters in the land that I love. I am on the road in Rapid City as I write this column. My wife and I found a house we loved and we bought it. We will be moving back to Rapid City in mid-August and I am really excited about coming home. I had to chuckle to myself yesterday because as I was driving down St. Joseph Street in downtown Rapid City I almost ran into my longtime friend, Oglala Lakota attorney Mario Gonzalez and it made me realize that Rapid City is a small community where most of us know each other and that is a good thing. Moving is never easy, but the friends who know me best will laugh when I say that this is my last move. In fact, some of them gave me the nickname of "Suitcase Giago." --- Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, was born, raised and educated on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He was the founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association and the founder and publisher of Indian Country Today, the Lakota Times, and the Dakota/Lakota Journal. He can be reached at najournalist@msn.com. Copyright c. 2008 indianz.com. --------- "RE: NORTHRUP: Fond du Lac Follies: Go Redskins!!" --------- Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:09:54 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="NORTHRUP: FOND DU LAC FOLLIES" http://indiancountrynews.net/index.php? option=com_content&task=view&id=4115&Itemid=1 Fond du Lac Follies: Go Redskins!! NFIC Columnist - Jim Northrup: Fond Du Lac Follies News From Indian Country July 2008 The election is over and the winners were Karen Diver as the Chair and Wally Dupuis in the Cloquet District. In the Brookston Primary there will be an August runoff between Anna Waite and Mary Northrup. ***** Fond du Lac Follies jetted to Orlando. Before we get too far into this story let me say right now that I am not a Mickey Mouse fan. It just happens that the National Council on Racism and Ethnicity convention was being held there. I was invited to be one of the featured speakers to talk about racism. I took off my moccasins at the Duluth airport, put them back on and caught the flight to Minneapolis. I changed planes and continued on to Orlando; The Disney employees at the Disney Welcome Center welcomed us to Orlando. We were shuttled to the Disney Magical Express bus which would take us to the Coronado Spa. Along the way we watched a video featuring a man named Walt Disney. He looked good considering he died in 1966. We arrived at the Spa and I was immediately struck by how nice everything looked. The people who worked there were friendly. I think there were 2,000 people expected to attend the workshops and presentations. I was issued a badge that identified me and it further said I was a presenter. I began meeting people, met old friends and made some new ones. When it was my time to speak I noticed the audience had about 400 who gathered to hear my stories. They had two of those huge TV screens on each side of me. Dr. Richard Allen of the Cherokee Nation introduced me to the crowd. He was a combat vet from the Vietnam War who served with the United States Marine Corps. First I introduced myself in Ojibwe to the people. I knew there were a couple of Shinnobs from Duluth who understand what I was saying. I told stories for about 50 minutes. At the end of my presentation I told the people I hadn';t mentioned the sports mascot issue yet. I told them I had one thought about it. In a loud voice I said GO REDSKINS then pointed my finger at the exit door. I added and take those Indians, Braves, and Chiefs with you. There was much laughter and applause as I left the stage. I went to another part of the Convention Center where I signed copies of my books for about a half hour. The next morning the bus from Disney';s Magical Express carried me back to the Orlando airport. I took off my moccasins then put them back on again. The airplane ride to Minnesota was boring and uneventful, so was the ride on the smaller airplane to Duluth. ***** Fond du Lac Follies motored to Morton, Motown, as I call it. The event was their annual pow wow. Since my wife is a member of the Lower Sioux Indian Community attendance was compulsory. Aaron Ezigaa drove that old silver Corvette to the doings. I know he likes driving that beautiful car. The price of gasoline was $3.99.9, at least we didn';t have to pay four bucks for gas. My son is learning how to drive that powerful car quite well. Pat is working on her Rez and was spending her salary keeping gasoline in that gas-guzzling silver Silverado. She bought a gas sipping car; we have personalized plates that say Bwaan (Dakota). The pow wow was well attended; a lot of my wife';s relatives were working there to make it a success. There was a ceremony honoring the Dow family. The highlight for me was getting to know my great-grand- daughter, we just call her Baby. She is ten months old and has been walking for a month now. I never thought I would be old enough to have a great-grand child. ***** The birch is peeling so we are once again making baskets. I see that Jeff Savage and others are building a birch bark canoe again. Jeff tells me they are going to the National Museum of the American Indian to work on a wiigwaasi-jiimaan. What an honor for those Fonjalackers. My godson Zac came by with some birch bark, said he found it in a state park. So, we are making baskets. Rick Gresczyk brought a student named Colleen who wanted to learn how to work with the materials so she could make a fanning basket. We all went to the woods to gather basswood bark that we use for sewing the baskets together. Rick and the Buck knife came too close together and he stopped bleeding after about a half hour. Every year I wonder where the baskets we make will end up. ***** Mii iw. Copyright c. 2008 News From Indian Country. All right reserved. --------- "RE: YELLOW BIRD: There's no place like Home" --------- Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:35:07 -0700 From: Gary Smith Subj: NA News Item - - - - - - -- - - - - - - filename="YELLOW BIRD: HOME" http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=83066 There's no place like home Dorreen Yellow Bird Grand Forks Herald July 30, 2008 We may have complaints about North Dakota's weather, but there are few complaints about the people who live here. I say this because I traveled outside our area and found people's interests and manners are different from those in North Dakota. I returned Monday from Chicago where the UNITY conference of journalists was held. The UNITY conference is a meeting or coming together of people from different ethnic backgrounds - Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian- Americans and Native Americans. The conference itself is a rather unique combination of minorities in the field of journalism. One of the purposes for bringing together these groups of people is for them to become a force, to empower the groups to do great things because, in the past, many times they were left out of the mainstream media. That is one of the good things about UNITY. But just like a family where siblings sometimes have conflicts over jobs, recognition and power, we sometimes can run amuck with our own self- interests. That was true of this convention. We tended to look at our group to see if we were being treated as equally as the other groups. We competed to see who had the best workshops and even the most entertaining parties and receptions. Unfortunately, the Native American group is the smallest and, therefore, we had less of everything, but many of the sessions were generic, and there was much to learn no matter what ethnic group you belonged to. There were lessons to be learned from people at the conference, too. Many of them were from the metropolitan area. One woman told a group of us this: A pregnant woman in a mall, with two children in a stroller and arms full of packages could expect little help from bystanders. I looked toward another Dakotan and bravely said that wouldn't be true in North Dakota. Someone would help her, and we began to talk about the rude behavior we'd experienced in Chicago. I thought about that as I returned home on Amtrak. Three teenage boys who sat in front of me changed my mind about stereotypes on my 16-hour train ride. I thought there goes my opportunity to nap. I assumed they would be loud and noisy. Yes, they talked and laughed, but I noticed they would move across the isle to another teen. I thought they must be brothers because they looked alike. I noticed as the train clattered on, one of the young men couldn't talk and just made sounds. He bumped his head on the train's overhead and seemed clumsy. I realized he was handicapped. The two other teens were gentle, taking turns sitting with him when he seemed uncomfortable. They teased him to make him laugh. Strangely, they didn't treat him differently like an overanxious parent would but like one of their own. I couldn't help but watch this touching scene, and this from teenagers who have a reputation of being self-involved and full of the wrong kind of teasing. When they got off the train in Wisconsin, I watched them from my window, jogging along with the younger one in tow, heading toward a hatchback. Then, they were gone. You learn all kinds of things on a train. If you've never rode on a train, it's a good experience. But if you intend to travel overnight, get a sleeper. Maybe I'm too old to sleep in such tangled positions, but I slept little going to or returning from Chicago. Incidentally, for dinner, if you decide to eat in the dining car, it's random seating. Since I was alone, I was seated next to a couple traveling to Portland, Ore., and a young woman going to Dickinson, N.D. The couple, Christian Scientists, told us some about their work and church. I'm always interested in other belief systems, and theirs was interesting. We were following the Mississippi, as trains many times do, and the sun began to move low in the sky. The bright orange of the sun seemed to hang over the big river. Like a great serpent, the river seemed to slow to form a mirror with its body for the last rays of the sun. We were awestruck. After dinner, I sat and watched dusk move into the area. As the train rolled along, I could see farmhouses lighting up one at a time as it got darker. Then, when it was almost dark, whole towns were lit up and looked like candles on a cake just above the Mississippi River. When I left the train early that Monday morning, it felt good to step into this community, and I felt lucky to live in a nice community. --- Dorreen Yellow Bird is a reporter and columnist. Her columns appear Wednesdays and Saturdays on the opinion pages of the Herald. Reach her