Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon confirmed today that he has sent two of his deputies and a State Law Enforcement Division agent to Oklahoma in connection with the contentious custody case concerning 3-year-old Veronica.
Cannon confirmed the information in response to questions from The Post and Courier. He said the team, which left this morning, was dispatched as a precautionary measure in the event their assistance was needed in connection with upcoming court proceedings in the case.
The sheriff stressed that he has not been informed of any major development or action in the case. Rather, his office has been in ongoing contact with a variety of law enforcement agencies in Oklahoma and felt a responsibility to have some presence on hand to provide assistance, he said.
Cannon would not say when hearings in the case have been scheduled or what specific proceedings deputies planned to attend.
On Aug. 16, an Oklahoma judge barred attorneys and their clients from discussing the dispute pitting Veronica’s adoptive parents Matt and Melanie Capobianco of James Island, against her biological father, Dusten Brown of Nowata, Okla. A mediation agreement was reached during a three-hour hearing that day, but the details have remained under seal.
The Capobiancos flew to Oklahoma earlier this month and have remained there ever since. It appears they have been allowed to visit with the girl who lived with them for 27 months, but it’s unclear when or how often that has occurred, The Tulsa World reported this week.
The newspaper also reported that an attorney appointed to represent Veronica’s interests has asked a Cherokee County court to suspend those visits until further hearings can be held.
Adding to the confusion, Holli Wells, the judge who brought the two sides together for the April 16 hearing and imposed the gag order, recently filed an “order of recusal,” removing herself from the case, The Tulsa World reported.
Brown, a member of the Cherokee tribe, used the heritage he shares with Veronica to get custody in late 2011 through the Indian Child Welfare Act. The 1978 law was meant to keep Indian children connected to their native cultures.
But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this summer that the ICWA didn’t apply to him because he hadn’t been in Veronica’s life. He has argued that the child’s mother had refused his attempts to get involved when she brushed off his marriage wishes.
Courts in South Carolina later finalized the Capobiancos’ adoption of Veronica, but Brown has refused to give up the girl. His attorneys said he should be allowed to challenge the decree’s enforcement in Oklahoma, where Veronica has lived for the past 19 months.
Brown is wanted on a Charleston County custodial interference warrant for failing to turn over Veronica to the Capobiancos. His attorney has said he plans to challenge the legality of that warrant.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin has said she would speed along Brown’s extradition to Charleston if he didn’t let the Capobiancos see the girl.
Reach Glenn Smith at 937-5556 or Twitter.com/glennsmith5.
When voters in Colorado and Washington approved the legalization of marijuana possession for adults, it was a policy breakthrough, but there was a problem: the newly approved state laws conflicted with federal law.
Under the Controlled Substances Act, federal law bans marijuana use, so Colorado and Washington were left wondering whether the Justice Department would intervene and block the measures approved by state voters.
Today, as Ryan J. Reilly and Ryan Grim reported, Colorado and Washington got their answer.
The United States government took an historic step back from its long-running drug war on Thursday, when Attorney General Eric Holder informed the governors of Washington and Colorado that the Department of Justice would allow the states to create a regime that would regulate and implement the ballot initiatives that legalized the use of marijuana for adults.
A Justice Department official said that Holder told the governors in a joint phone call early Thursday afternoon that the department would take a “trust but verify approach” to the state laws.
That last part is important. The DOJ is effectively letting the states know that they can proceed on their current course, but if federal law enforcement has reason to believe in the future that Colorado and Washington are failing to be responsible, the feds can revisit the new policy.
In the meantime, though, that means these states — and any others that choose to follow their lead — can move forward on legalization.
After watching the “war on drugs” move in only one direction for the majority of my life, this strikes me as a pretty amazing development. Up until fairly recently, it would have been unimaginable.
The Huffington Post added that Deputy Attorney General James Cole also issued a three-and-a-half page memo to U.S. attorneys outlining eight priorities for federal prosecutors enforcing marijuana laws. These are the areas where prosecutions will continue:
* the distribution of marijuana to minors;
* revenue from the sale of marijuana from going to criminal enterprises, gangs and cartels;
* the diversion of marijuana from states where it is legal under state law in some form to other states;
* state-authorized marijuana activity from being used as a cover or pretext for the trafficking of other illegal drugs or other illegal activity;
* violence and the use of firearms in the cultivation and distribution of marijuana
* drugged driving and the exacerbation of other adverse public health consequences associated with marijuana use;
* growing of marijuana on public lands and the attendant public safety and environmental dangers posed by marijuana production on public lands;
* preventing marijuana possession or use on federal property.
But note that this leaves a whole lot of recreational pot use that federal prosecutors will no longer feel the need to pursue.
SEATTLE — Seattle police say they will deploy undercover police officers at Seahawks games this year after multiple reports of unruly fans last season.
The department says patrols will begin with Thursday’s pre-season game against the Oakland Raiders. Officials say police received complaints about fan-on-fan violence and harassment in and out of the stadium, some of which was witnessed by off-duty officers attending the games, last year.
One of those episodes involved two off-duty Bellevue police officers who used profanity at a uniformed Seattle police officer and stadium workers and were later escorted out.
Police officials say officers will be looking for people taking team rivalries too far.
FRESNO, CALIFORNIA – On August 22, the Yurok Tribe received some excellent news. A federal court judge acknowledged the biological importance of supplemental water flows for Klamath River salmon. This was a far-reaching legal case between the Bureau of Reclamation, the Yurok tribe, as well as other tribes in the region against central California industrial agriculture.
Yurok tribal members Pete Thompson and Bob Ray cast a drift net into the Klamath River on the Yurok Reservation.
The Yurok Tribe of Klamath, California is the largest federally recognized tribe in California and is the single largest harvester of Klamath River salmon.
The Yurok reservation spans one mile on both sides of the Klamath River for 44 miles. The tribe requested 2,800 cubic feet per second of water flow to be released. This is the same rate of water flow per second that the Yurok fisheries experts defended in their scientific case in a Fresno, California courtroom. Originally the Bureau of Reclamation (at the Yurok tribe’s request) made additional water available in order to avert another fish kill. In 2002 a large fish kill occurred on the Yurok reservation in river conditions eerily similar to this year’s.
Above, Salmon is cooked in a traditional Yurok way. At least 272,000 Fall-run salmon are expected to return to the river.
“In 2002 more than 33,000 Chinook and Coho salmon died before reaching spawning grounds. It was heartbreaking to see the fish floating upside down on the river by the thousands. We learned from that tragedy. This year, when the water temperature was so high, and we knew we were expecting the 2nd or 3rd highest volume of returning salmon predicted in decades, we asked the Department of the Interior to increase water flow. But then the injunction was filed by agribusiness to stop it,”
said Yurok tribal Chairman Thomas O’Rourke, Sr.
In early August, Westlands Water District and San Luis and Delta Mendota Water Authority, which represent a large portion of California’s multibillion dollar agricultural industry, filed suit to stop the water flow from being released.
The Yurok tribe presented key science testimony to the court by two witnesses, Senior Fisheries Biologist Michael Belchik and Dr. Joshua Strange.
“Yurok science of the Klamath River basin is renowned not only in this nation, but abroad. This a western science that allows us to substantiate our claims,”
said Chairman O’Rourke, Sr.
At least 272,000 Fall-run salmon are expected to return to the river this year, almost 1.7 times the number that returned in 2002.
There is also a contingency plan in place. At the first sign that the salmon look diseased or distressed, the tribe will seek to have flows doubled for up to seven days. They will not allow the combination of low, warm river water and inadequate water flows to jeopardize the salmon.
“There is knowledge passed down from our ancestors to take care of our resources so that they will take care of us. We must ensure its continuance for future generations to come. The river is our lifeline,”
TRAVERSE CITY, MICHIGAN – Some 400 American Indian tribal leaders and health care professionals are meeting at the Grand Traverse Resort and Spa, owned by the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, at the National Indian Health Board’s 30th Annual Conference.
“We are delighted to have nearly 400 tribal leaders, elders and health care colleagues engaged in the current health care reform issues that impact every single person in our families and communities. From the American Indian and Alaska Native benefits through the Affordable Care Act to the renewal of the Special Diabetes Program for Indians. It is important to be involved and informed on the policies that are improving health care services and accessibility to our tribal members,”
said NIHB Chairperson Cathy Abramson.
“We are pleased to have a number of federal agency representatives here today to provide this information, to answer our questions and to listen to our comments and concerns.”
On Tuesday, conference attendees heard from federal agencies that seek to improve health conditions in Indian country.
Indian Health Service
Dr. Yvette Roubideaux, acting director of the Indian Health Service, who provided an overview of the Affordable Care Act, leading up to the to the October 1st enrollment of the Insurance Marketplace of the Act.
“Meeting with tribes and tribal organizations, such as the NIHB, is a very important part of our agency consultation efforts and IHS’s priority to renew and strengthen our partnership with Tribes. We value our partnership with NIHB as we work together to change and improve the IHS and to eliminate health disparities in Indian country,”
Dr. Roubideaux said.
Department of Veterans Affairs
The Department of Veterans Affairs partnered with NIHB to host the second Native veterans’ health workshop track at this year’s conference.
“We are committed to nurturing an environment that fosters trust and provides culturally competent care for Native American veterans, including creating culturally sensitive outreach materials, incorporating traditional practices and rituals into treatment and ensuring the best possible experience when Native American veterans receive care from the VA,”
said John Garcia, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs at the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
“We at the VA are further committed to working with and for tribal leaders on a nation-to-nation basis to address the many issues being experienced by veterans and their families across Indian country.”
Health Resources and Services Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services
Mary Wakefield, Administrator for the Health Resources and Services Administration said that under the leadership of the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, one of the top goals is to improve health equity with Indian tribes.
“We want to eliminate health disparities among American Indians and Alaska Natives. And, we believe we can do that by working toward two other goals – to strengthen the health workforce by expanding the supply of culturally competent primary health care providers in Indian country and Alaska and to improve access to quality health care and services by increasing the number of health care access points,”
Wakefield said.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, US Health and Human Services
Mirtha Beadle, Deputy Administrator for Operations with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in HHS focused her speech on behavioral health issues stating that American Indian and Alaska Natives have the highest level of substance abuse and dependence and unmet need.
“The emphasis is growing on screening and early intervention services. Evidence based practices are an important shift for behavioral health. There is an increased need to focus on bilingual populations in the US. American Indians and Alaska Natives stand to benefit substantially from the implementation of the Affordable Care Act,”
Beadle added.
Office of Personnel Management
Susan McNally, Senior Advisor in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) provided n brief overview of the health plans that OPM directs under the Affordable Care Act. OPM will work with private insurance to offer two state health plans – the Multi-State Plan and the Federal Employee Health Benefits program, which OPM has managed for nearly 40 years.
The 30th Annual Consumer Conference continues today with a keynote address from Gold Olympic Medalist Billy Mills, updates from the Tribal Leaders Diabetes Committees and the Tribal Technical Advisory Committee to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and a panel discussion on the definition of Indian in the Affordable Care Act.
Indian Country Today Media Network continues to highlight the issues of jobs and economic development in Indian country in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom which was yesterday, August 28. In 2007, the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs released the 2005 American Indian Population and Labor Force Report. Based on this report, ICTMN has compiled a list of tribes that struggle with the highest rates of unemployment for tribal members that are available to work.
Though this report is federally mandated to be released no less than biennially, no newer numbers have been reported although a report in 2013 is currently in the works.
In order to provide an accurate overview and as not to skew percentages too broadly we listed tribes that list their tribal enrollments above 1,000 and have at least 500 unemployed. Additionally, since a large amount of Alaskan tribes have smaller numbers and thus percentages can change at a lower ratio and could be vastly different as of 2013, we focused on tribes in the lower 48 states.
Sokaogon Chippewa Community
93 percent unemployment
Tribal enrollment 1,274
Available for work 961
Unemployed 894
The Sokaogon Chippewa Community of Mole Lake, Wisconsin has the highest percentage of unemployed tribal members at 93 percent with 894 unemployed. Out of those that are employed, 79 percent are still living below national poverty standards. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) lists Wisconsin as having an unemployment rate of 6.8 percent.
Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians
91 percent unemployment
Tribal enrollment 1,342
Available for work 595
Unemployed 544
The Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians reservation territory lies in Temecula, California. Of those that are employed, none live below poverty standards. With the opening of the Pechanga Resort and Casino in 2002, the tribe looks to continue its development of the tribal economy. The BLS lists California as having an 8.7 percent unemployment rate.
Oglala Sioux Tribe of Pine Ridge
89 percent unemployment
Tribal enrollment 43,146
Available for work 29,539
Unemployed 26,408
Perhaps most infamous for its levels of unemployment and poor living conditions for the majority of its tribal residents the Oglala Sioux of Pine Ridge also has the highest number of unemployed. Unlike South Dakota which has 3.9 percent unemployment, Pine Ridge has an approximate 85 percent higher rating than the state.
Though well over 1,000 residents on the reservation are employed, 34 percent of those are still living below poverty standards.
The Lakota Nation is comprised of more than 3 million acres of land in central South Dakota with approximately 70 percent living on the reservation. Approximately 1,300 residents are employed that live on the reservation, 100 percent are still living below poverty standards.
The Apache Tribe of Oklahoma
87 percent unemployment
Tribal enrollment 1,860
Available for work 1,702
Unemployed 1,485
The Apache Tribe of Oklahoma, also known as the Plains Apache is a federally recognized tribe located in Anadarko, Oklahoma. With 87 percent unemployment and about 1,700 tribal members available to work, only slightly over 200 are employed. Of that 200+, 100 are living below the standards of poverty. Oklahoma State’s unemployment sits at 5.3 percent.
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
86 percent unemployment
Tribal enrollment 6,461
Available for work 3,565
Unemployed 3,074
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe that straddles the border of North and South Dakota is the sixth largest reservation in land area in the United Sates as well as holding sixth place on our list. With tribal enrollment of 6,461 and more than 3,565 available to work, only 491 are employed. The 3,074 out of work equates to 86 percent unemployment. Of those employed more than 200 or 43 percent are living below poverty standards.
Little Traverse Bay Band
86 percent unemployment
Tribal enrollment 4,073
Available for work 1,657
Unemployed 1,427
The Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, which traditional homelands lay on the northwestern shores of Michigan States Lower Peninsula, are number seven on the list with 86 percent unemployment. Though 18 percent of those employed are living below the standards of poverty, it still overcomes a comparison to Michigan’s relatively “high” unemployment rate of 8.8 percent.
Round Valley Indian Tribes
86 percent unemployment
Tribal enrollment 3,785
Available for work 1,450
Unemployed 1,241
The Round Valley Indian Reservation which lies primarily in Mendocino County, California is number eight with 86 percent unemployment for its 1,450 members available for work. Only 209 are employed and more than half of that number or 54 percent are living in poverty. California’s unemployment currently sits at 8.7 percent.
Shoshone Tribe of the Wind River Reservation
86 percent unemployment
Tribal enrollment 3,724
Available for work 2,686
Unemployed 2,248
The Shoshone Tribe of the Wind River Reservation which shares reservation territory with the Northern Arapaho and whose reservation covers 2.2 million acres in Central Wyoming, hold the number nine spot with 84 percent unemployment for its more than 3,700 tribal members. Of the 2,686 available for work, 2,248 are unemployed. Of the 438 employed, 187 are living in poverty conditions. Wyoming’s unemployment rate is 4.6 percent.
Rosebud Sioux Tribe
83 percent unemployment
Tribal enrollment 26,237
Available for work 14,428
Unemployed 11,909
With 26,237 enrolled members and over 14,428 available for work, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota with 11,909 members without work and unemployment at 83 percent holds the number 2 spot in terms of number of tribal members without a job. It holds the number 10 spot in terms of unemployment percent. Of the 2,519 that are employed, 1,920 or 76 percent are still living in poverty.
Walker River Paiute Tribe
83 percent unemployment
Tribal enrollment 2,979
Available for work 850
Unemployed 705
The Walker River Paiute Reservation, located in Midwestern Nevada about 100 miles southeast of Reno, Nevada has an 83 percent unemployment rate for its nearly 3,000 members, with 850 available for work and only 145 employed. Nevada’s unemployment currently sits at a “high” of 9.5 percent.
Winnebago Tribe
82 percent unemployment
Tribal enrollment 4,321
Available for work 1,055
Unemployed 870
The Winnebago Indian Reservation, which lies in northeastern Nebraska and has the largest community in the Village of Winnebago has an unemployment rating of 82 percent since only 185 of the 1,055 available have work. Of those working, 172 or 93 percent are living in poverty. Nebraska’s unemployment rate in comparison is currently 4.2 percent.
Puyallup Tribe
82 percent unemployment
Tribal enrollment 3,547
Available for work 12,437* (includes non-enrolled workers)
Unemployed 10,250
As a Coast Salish Tribe from western Washington State in today’s Tacoma, the Puyallup Tribe has an 82 percent unemployment rate for its 12,437 available to work, translating to 10,250 unemployed. Of the 2,187 working, 1,412 are living below poverty standards. Washington State has unemployment of 6.9 percent.
Bad River Band
81 percent unemployment
Tribal enrollment 6,875
Available for work 1,800
Unemployed 1,465
The Bad River Band of the Ojibwe / Chippewa is located on the south shore of Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin. At 81 percent unemployment, Bad River holds the number 14 spot with 335 employed out of the 1,800 available. Of those employed 273 or 81 percent are living below poverty standards. By comparison, Wisconsin State has unemployment of 6.8 percent.
Shoshone-Bannock Tribes-Fort Hall
81 percent unemployment
Tribal enrollment 4,796
Available for work 9,593* (includes non-enrolled workers)
Unemployed 7,757
The Fort Hall Indian Reservation of the Shoshone-Bannock is located in southeastern Idaho on the Snake River Plain. With more than 7,500 unemployed, the tribe holds the number 15 spot with 81 percent unemployment. Of those employed, 747 or 41 percent live below poverty. Idaho in comparison has an unemployment rate of 6.6 percent.
In this Aug. 26, 2013 photo, fisherman Fumio Suzuki watches the sunrise aboard his boat Ebisu Maru before the star of fishing in the waters off Iwaki, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, Japan. Suzuki’s trawler is one of 14 at his port helping to conduct once-a-week fishing expeditions in rotation to measure radiation levels of fish they catch in the waters off Fukushima. Fishermen in the area hope to resume test catches following favorable sampling results more than two years after the disaster, though for now fishing is suspended due to leaks of radiation-contaminated water from storage tanks at the nuclear power plant. Photo: Koji Ueda
YOTSUKURA, Japan (AP) — Third-generation fisherman Fumio Suzuki sets out into the Pacific Ocean every seven weeks. Not to catch fish to sell, but to catch fish that can be tested for radiation.
For the last 2 ½ years, fishermen from the port of Yotsukura near the stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant have been mostly stuck on land with little to do. There is no commercial fishing along most of the Fukushima coast. In a nation highly sensitive to food safety, there is no market for the fish caught near the stricken plant because the meltdowns it suffered contaminated the ocean water and marine life with radiation.
A sliver of hope emerged after recent sampling results showed a decline in radioactivity in some fish species. But a new crisis spawned by fresh leaks of radioactive water from the Fukushima plant last week may have dashed those prospects.
Fishermen like 47-year-old Suzuki now wonder whether they ever will be able to resume fishing, a mainstay for many small rural communities like Yotsukura, 45 kilometers (30 miles) south of the Fukushima plant. His son has already moved on, looking for work in construction.
“The operators (of the plant) are reacting too late every time in whatever they do,” said Suzuki, who works with his 79-year-old father Choji after inheriting the family business from him.
“We say, ‘Don’t spill contaminated water,’ and they spilled contaminated water. They are always a step behind so that is why we can’t trust them,” Suzuki said, as his trawler, the Ebisu Maru, traveled before dawn to a point about 45 kilometers (30 miles) offshore from the Fukushima plant to bring back a test catch.
With his father at the wheel, Suzuki dropped the heavy nets out the back of the boat, as the black of night faded to a sapphire sky, tinged orange at the horizon.
As the sun rose over a glassy sea, father and son hauled in the heavily laden nets and then set to the hard work of sorting the fish: sardines, starfish, sole, sea bream, sand sharks, tossing them into yellow and blue plastic baskets as sea gulls screamed and swooped overhead.
Five hours later, the Ebisu Maru docked at Yotsukura where waiting fishermen dumped the samples into coolers and rushed them to a nearby laboratory to be gutted and tested.
Suzuki says his fisheries co-operative will decide sometime soon whether to persist in gathering samples.
For now they will have to survive on compensation from the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant’s operator.
The cooperative also had plans to start larger-scale test catches next month that would potentially also be for consumption if radiation levels were deemed safe.
But those plans were put on hold after more bad news last week: authorities discovered that a massive amount of partially treated, radioactive water was leaking from tanks at Fukushima, the fifth and so far the worst, breach.
The water, stored in 1,000 tanks, is pumped into three damaged reactors to keep their melted fuel cool. Much of the water leaked into the ground but some may have escaped into the sea through a rain-water gutter.
It remains unclear what the environmental impact from the latest contamination will be on sea life. Scientists have said contamination tends to be carried by a southward current and largely diluted as it spreads.
The government’s safety limit is 100 becquerels per kilogram, but local officials have set a stricter bar of 50 becquerels, said Hatta, who still expects test fishing to resume in September.
It all depends on the type of fish, their habitat and what they eat. Out of 170 types of fish tested, 42 fish species are off limits due to concern they are too radioactive, another 15 species show little or no signs of contamination. Few, if any, show any detectable levels of cesium.
Tests take over a month and are complicated. The time lag makes it difficult to say at any given point if sea life caught off the Fukushima coast is really safe to eat.
Also, local labs lack the ability to test fish for other toxic elements such as strontium and tritium. Scientists say strontium should be particularly watched for, as it accumulates in bones. TEPCO’s monitoring results of sea water show spikes in strontium levels in recent weeks.
Suzuki has little faith in the future of his business.
“People in the fishing business have no choice but to give up,” he said. “Many have mostly given up already.”
___
Associated Press writers Elaine Kurtenbach and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. —The Cherokee National Youth Choir will trade their traditional Thanksgiving turkey and dressing meal to travel to New York City and sing in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
It’s the second time the Cherokee National Youth Choir has been invited to the parade. The choir participated in 2007.
“We are thrilled to be invited back to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade,” said Cherokee National Youth Choir Director Mary Kay Henderson. “It is very humbling, and our students take the opportunity very seriously. They know they are representing the Cherokee Nation on the parade route.”
Henderson said the 2 ½-mile parade, with more than 4 million people in attendance and viewers watching nationally, is mind boggling and something the 28 choir members will never forget.
The group is practicing weekly and held numerous fundraisers. The tribe will underwrite the majority of the trip.
The Cherokee National Youth Choir was founded in 2000 to keep youth interested in the culture and involved with speaking the Cherokee language. The choir has produced 11 albums, with the most recent being “Cherokee America” in 2012. The song choice for the Macy’s Day Parade won’t be revealed until on the parade route.
The public can hear the Cherokee National Youth Choir during several concerts at the Cherokee National Holiday. The choir will perform during the art show at the Tahlequah Armory Municipal Center at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 30. They also perform at Principal Chief Bill John Baker’s State of the Nation address about 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 31, at the Court House Square, and 2 p.m. at the Tahlequah Armory Municipal Center. Admission is free.
For more information on the Cherokee National Youth Choir, contact Mary Kay Henderson at 918-772-4172 or marykay-henderson@cherokee.org.
EVERETT — In poetry and song, proclamations, speeches and shared memories, the essence of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech was celebrated Wednesday night in Snohomish County.
An overflow crowd packed the Jackson Center at Everett Community College to hear leaders, young people and those who remember the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement reflect on King’s words, spoken in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 1963.
County Executive John Lovick, noting that King’s birthplace of Atlanta has adopted the slogan “a city too busy to hate,” suggested a positive variation: “Snohomish County — a county that is not too busy to love.”
Two presenters were given standing ovations, one representing a new generation, the other an Everett elder, former City Councilman Carl Gipson Sr.
Gipson, first elected to the City Council in 1970, recalled harsh realities of his youth in Arkansas, when he wasn’t allowed into restrooms or restaurants. In Everett, he knocked on doors for a job, finally talking his way into one at a car dealership.
Gipson’s expressed gratitude to Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson for his efforts in naming the city’s senior center in his honor.
Many expressed a common theme, that King’s dream is not yet fully realized.
As they did for Gipson, the audience stood to applaud at the end of a poem recited by Rahwa Beyan, a 17-year-old leader of the youth chapter of Snohomish County’s NAACP organization. Her powerful recitation centered on the shooting death of black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.
Lynnwood Mayor Don Gough spoke about a new “Let Freedom Ring” event earlier Wednesday in his city. Bells rang, and members of the public were given a minute each to say what King’s speech meant to them. Gough said social justice and civil rights “must meld with labor and worker rights.”
Shirley Sutton, of Lynnwood, read proclamations from her city, from Everett and Snohomish County officially recognizing the 50th anniversary of the march on Washington.
Tulalip Tribal Chairman Mel Sheldon offered a brief history lesson about his people.
It was 1924, he said, before American Indians were granted the right to vote. Sheldon praised current leaders of local government for forging strong relationships with the Tulalip Tribes.
There were speakers representing “Yesterday’s Wisdom,” “Today’s Focus” and “Tomorrow’s Dreams.”
Angelina Karke, a student at Discovery Elementary School in the Mukilteo district, shared an ambitious dream of her own:
“My dream is to be accepted into Harvard Law School. I will get my law degree and become president of the United States,” the girl said
With football season on the horizon, the usual headlines commence: injuries, trades, and…style guides? Slate, The New Republic, and Mother Jones have all said they will no longer use the term “Redskins” in their publications, citing its long history of offensiveness to Native American readers.
Well-recycled AP poll numbers suggest that four out of five Americans think the Redskins should keep their name as it is. It’s an issue, many Native activists agree – but certainly not the only one. Here’s what activists point out the public also needs to know:
Adrienne Keene, a member of the Cherokee nation and the PhD student behind the high-traffic blog Native Appropriations, says these team mascot stories are usually all the same.
“Because [it] affects non-native folks, mostly,” Keene told Bustle. “So that tends to make the news. And most of the coverage of Native peoples in it has been portraying us as whiners or as people who need to get over it.”
But as Keene has argued many times, the story misses the larger point: For Native Americans, this isn’t a new conversation, and it has never been just a question of one sports team name’s racist etymology. It’s a question of understanding the larger context that allowed the team to be called the Redskins in the first place. Among the many nuances of dynamic, diverse, and contemporary Indian culture, there is the bigger point: Cultural appropriations are way more widespread than mascots.
Just walk into Urban Outfitters.
As a student at Harvard, the California-raised Keene often found herself frustrated by her classmates’ ignorance about Native issues. One day, walking by a Cambridge Urban Outfitters, she realized why.
“They had all of these dream catchers, and totem poles, and moccasins, and I kind of put things together, and realized the reason that most of the folks I encountered out here didn’t ever think about contemporary native people as a living, breathing part of their society was because the only images they ever encountered were these things,” Keene said. “They didn’t ever see pictures of real native people, so because of that our real challenges and issues didn’t exist in their minds.”
She decided to start cataloguing images of Native cultures that had little connection to what she knew as “Nativeness”: generic approximations of beaded-and-feathered Plains Indians from a past era; fictionalized characters that had little to do with tribes past or present; hyper-sexualized Pocahontases that spared no thought for the 1 in 3 Native women who have been raped or sexually assaulted. As she expected, she didn’t have to look far. From the runways of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, to the hipsters at Coachella, to the ice-cream freezer at Safeway, she found caricatures of tribal cultures passively condoned.
In response, Native American activism is alive and well.
In the U.S. alone, there are 566 tribes with a wide array of issues and histories specific to each community. However, as younger members of these tribes connect through a new, social-media based conversation, there does seem to be at least one common concern: The continuing, passive ignorance of wider American culture, which has not yet noticed — let alone registered — this new moment in Native American activism.
And most of it’s online in in plain view. According to Native leaders, bloggers, and advocates of all ages, never before has there been such a wide swath of Indian country paying attention to representations of their cultures. Keene and her cohort are not Native American protestors frozen in the late nineteenth-century, building fortresses against invading armies of outsiders. Nor are these the militant, disenfranchised American Indian Movement protestors of the 1970s, burning down buildings and pointing guns at FBI agents. AIM does still exist, but in growing numbers, another group of Native Americans are operating alongside their traditional counterparts: they are lawyers, comedians, designers,professors, journalists, flash mob organizers, and even federal U.S. government staffers. They are Internet-savvy 20-somethings engaged in a thoroughly modern, hashtag-heavy conversation with other indigenous peoples around the world.
Through now-infamous live-in “acculturation” schools, coerced adoption and foster-care, many young Natives were cut off from their tribal communities by practices that supposedly ended with the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978. Less well-known, however, are the consequences of the U.S. government’s 1956 Indian Relocation Act, designed to encourage assimilation. With a combination of funding cuts to Reservations and incentives for those who chose to leave, tribal members left for cities from Denver to Minneapolis. As the New York Timesreported in April, the trend has continued: 70 percent of registered Native Americans live in cities, as opposed to 45 percent in 1970.
“The relocation effort and campaign by the U.S. government — it’s falling apart right now because of social media,” journalist Simon Moya-Smith told Bustle. “You know, that’s how we’re reconnecting. Through social media, through things like Twitter and Facebook, we find each other, we socialize, we converse, and that divide and conquer begins to dissolve. It’s a wonderful thing to watch as it happens.”
Still, mainstream media doesn’t do a great job covering other Native issues.
Twitter can only do so much.
More than a generation of Native Americans grew up away from the centers of their communities, often attending public schools with standard American history curriculums that rarely mention tribes after the turn of the twentieth century. Indian reservations are also some of the most under-connected spaces in the country, limiting the conversation’s reach.
“What media misses in general is that we are extremely diverse. We don’t all have the same opinion on issues. It’s just like American politics, and the more access we have to social media, the clearer that becomes,” Managing Editor at Native Sun News in South Dakota Brandon Ecoffey said.
And then there’s the big issue: Poverty. According to Kevin Blackbird-Steele, the youngest member of his tribal council at Pine Ridge, the sequester in Washington has had a disproportionate effect on Native American reservations, and it’s worrisome. Statistics from Pine Ridge put unemployment at 85 percent.
But figuring out why poverty continues to plague wide swaths of Native America demands nuance. Without it, poverty and alcoholism becomes the flip-side of the idealized “Pocahontases” sold all over; creating what blogger Rob Schmidt calls a “poverty vs. pageantry” dichotomy. That said, poverty remains a major issue for Native country — and it’s exacerbated by less-than-consistent coverage by mainstream news organizations.
Andrew Vondall, a member of the Crow nation and a Georgetown student who interns on Capitol Hill, says it’s sometimes difficult even to convince legislators that their Native American constituents exist, let alone pay adequate attention to their issues. In his words:
You’ve got all these newspapers planting big stories from New York and California about how much money they have. You see the big huge casinos in Connecticut or just outside of L.A. And then there are stories in the news about how oh ‘Every single tribal member gets this much money’ or ‘Every single tribal member gets free college,’ and lo and behold, they come to find out later on that those tribes consist of maybe only 300 people, where a tribe like mine, the Crow tribe in Montana, or the Sioux tribe in South Dakota, consist of thousands of members who get no money. So it just makes it, if people see that, when they see a bill about Indian spending, they call their Congressman and say, ‘Those Indians get money already, why are we giving them more?’
Editor’s Note: Everyone quoted in this piece either explicitly gave the author permission or put their words in the public domain. However, our author has asked us to pull a section featuring an open letter and Tweet from a Native activist uncomfortable being highlighted on our site. Ethically, there is nothing wrong with including statements made in public. But sometimes misrepresentation is in the eye of the beholder, but at the request of the speaker, we’ve now removed her quote.
