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Indigenous Brazilian leaders visit Oklahoma law firm for cross-cultural exchange

Crowe & DunlevyIndigenous Brazil leaders — Crowe & Dunlevy
Indigenous Brazil leaders

15 May 2013

TULSA, Okla. – On May 6, 2013, a delegation of Brazilian indigenous leaders visited Crowe & Dunlevy law firm’s Tulsa office to discuss Native American law, policy and legal history, as well as indigenous issues in Brazil.

“The parallels of indigenous peoples and Amazon forests with our native peoples in Oklahoma is remarkable,” said Mike McBride, chair of the Indian Law and Gaming Practice Group at Crowe & Dunlevy. “The significant difference, however, is that the Brazilian indigenous peoples lack the common law protections, a treaty histories and federal laws to protect their indigenous rights.”

McBride and Gerald Jackson, director at Crowe & Dunlevy, hosted the visitors. U.S. State Department Portuguese interpreters provided real-time translation.

“The lack of significant legal protections and recognition by the Brazilian government creates a challenging environment in which the indigenous people of Brazil can access basic economic development tools in order to better their lives and protect their unique cultures,” Jackson said.

Agostinho Eibahiwu, curator of the Indigenous Community Museum and Bororo Cultural Center of Meruri, explained the delegation’s interest in Native American affairs. He said that he was the first person in his tribe to obtain a Master’s degree. In addition to his museum curatorial activities, Eibahiwu develops projects for local indigenous schools, coordinates a cultural schedule at the community center and works as a consultant on indigenous issues.

Marcelo De Jesus, a leader of the Kiriri Indigenous Tribe, discussed how indigenous peoples, as minorities in Brazil, lack a political voice in the legislature and that few civil law provide adequate protection in the rain forests and how projects continued to threaten their way of life. For example, the plan to build a hydroelectric project and dam threatens their traditional modes of transportation of traveling by boat on the river, their hunting and gathering of plants and animals.

The delegation also discussed the difficulties in economic development and how a number of prior projects have failed because the indigenous nations could not afford to pay the interest on bank loans.

“The challenges that Brazilian indigenous people face today are the same that many of our Indian nations in the United States faced in the 1800s, although the indigenous people of Brazil lack the foundations and protections of tribal sovereignty,” McBride said. The delegation also discussed the United Nations declaration of rights for indigenous peoples and its potential impact and use for indigenous rights in Brazil.

For more information, contact Mike McBride at (918) 592-9824 or mike.mcbride@crowedunlevy.com or Bob Lieser, vice president of programming for Tulsa Global Alliance, (918) 591-4750 or blieser@TulsaGlobalAliance.org.

About Crowe & Dunlevy
For more than 110 years, Crowe & Dunlevy has provided innovative and effective legal services to clients in numerous industries. The firm and its attorneys are annually ranked among the top professionals in the nation by nationally recognized peer-review organizations.

UMD graduates first cohort of tribal management program

The 22 members of the first graduating class from the Master of Tribal Administration and Governance program at University of Minnesota - Duluth include three tribal executive directors from Minnesota. (Photo courtesy of University of Minnesota - Duluth) — The 22 members of the first graduating class from the Master of Tribal Administration and Governance program at University of Minnesota – Duluth include three tribal executive directors from Minnesota. (Photo courtesy of University of Minnesota – Duluth)

“This was a unique opportunity for me to get a kind of a crash course in what are the nuts and bolts that go behind running a tribe on a daily basis.”

– Joe Nayquonabe

by Dan Kraker, Minnesota Public Radio

May 16, 2013

DULUTH, Minn. — Tiger Brown Bull has traveled great lengths to earn his masters degree.

In two years he has put 40,000 miles on his car to make 20 weekend trips from Kyle, S.D. to the University of Minnesota Duluth for meetings that compliment online classes.

Brown Bull, who lives on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, works for his tribe’s education agency. He’s one of 22 graduates in UMD’s Master of Tribal Administration and Governance program, the first of its kind in the nation.

“It’s a 12-hour drive for me. We had class Friday night at 6. I’d leave Kyle at 5 a.m., get there,” he said. “We had class Saturday morning and afternoon until 3. Then I’d turn right back around and head back.”

The new graduates, who are their 20s through their 60s, come from reservations around the Midwest to study at UMD, which developed the program at the behest of area tribes, to prepare leaders for the unique management challenges tribes confront. Most already work for tribal governments, including three executive directors of Indian tribes.

“It’s a uniquely American Indian program, geared towards people that work on reservations,” said Tadd Johnson, who directs the program and UMD’s American Indian Studies Department.

Johnson, a member of the Bois Forte band of Chippewa, brings a long history working in Washington on policy related to Indians. He has also directed the U.S. House subcommittee on Native American Affairs, and headed the National Indian Gaming Commission in the Clinton administration.

The master’s program is combines elements of a public administration and a business management degree, Johnson said. It grew out of two years of consultation with tribes around the region.

“They didn’t really want to take an academic approach,” he said. “They wanted to know, ‘what are the best practices for us to run a reservation?’

“They wanted courses in federal Indian law and policy and tribal sovereignty and leadership and ethics. They wanted to know … the best practices with regard to tribal accounting, finance, budgets.”

Reservations can be incredibly complex places to govern and do business. They’re sovereign nations with a complex relationship with the federal government, and, Johnson said, a host of unique laws that apply only on tribal land.

“It takes a long time,” he said, to understand them. “There’s a big learning curve on the reservation.”

Johnson knows that first-hand. After receiving his law degree from the University of Minnesota in the 1980s, he worked for the Mille Lacs Band, eventually becoming the band’s solicitor general.

“There’s usually two or three people, I found, that had been around 20 or 30 years who you could go ask how things worked,” he said. “So everybody would learn from those one or two or three people, and then there would be a tribal election, and people might get wiped out, and you’d have to start over again, sometimes those people would not be kept on, and then you’d be in big trouble.”

With the master’s program, Johnson hopes to train a group of people who can go to any reservation around the country and bring some expertise with them.

Lea Perkins, executive director of the Red Lake Nation in northwest Minnesota since 2004, said she began to apply what she learned in class right away at her job.

“One of the main things was the law class, federal law,” Perkins said. “I started seeing that immediately, in tribal council meetings. They would talk about a law and I was already starting to learn about that.”

A long-term goal of the UMD program is to nurture future tribal leaders. At 31, Joe Nayquonabe is already commissioner of corporate affairs for the Mille Lacs band, and helped broker a recent deal to purchase two large St. Paul hotels. But he enrolled in the program, immediately after receiving an MBA, because he would like to run for tribal office some day.

“This was a unique opportunity for me to get a kind of a crash course in what are the nuts and bolts that go behind running a tribe on a daily basis,” he said.

Brown Bull hopes to become the chairman one day of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. He worries that his current leaders aren’t as prepared as they could be.

“We just had elections in November, and twelve of our council people are brand new, never been in tribal government,” he said. “And sad to say, of the 19 council people, six are the only ones who have a college education.”

Brown Bull said that if the tribes want younger generations to pursue higher education, it’s important that tribal leaders also earn degrees.

He’ll be awarded his masters degree from UMD at 7 p.m. today.

At Peace With Many Tribes

Jeffrey Gibson in his studio in Hudson, N.Y., with his dog, Stein-Olaf.Peter Mauney — Jeffrey Gibson in his studio in Hudson, N.Y., with his dog, Stein-Olaf.
Peter Mauney

By CAROL KINO The New York Times

Published: May 15, 2013

HUDSON, N.Y. — One sunny afternoon early this month Jeffrey Gibson paced around his studio, trying to keep track of which of his artworks was going where.

Luminous geometric abstractions, meticulously painted on deer hide, that hung in one room were about to be picked up for an art fair. In another sat Mr. Gibson’s outsize rendition of a parfleche trunk, a traditional American Indian rawhide carrying case, covered with Malevich-like shapes, which would be shipped to New York for a solo exhibition at the National Academy Museum. Two Delaunay-esque abstractions made with acrylic on unstretched elk hides had already been sent to a museum in Ottawa, but the air was still suffused with the incense-like fragrance of the smoke used to color the skins.

“If you’d told me five years ago that this was where my work was going to lead,” said Mr. Gibson, gesturing to other pieces, including two beaded punching bags and a cluster of painted drums, “I never would have believed it.” Now 41, he is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and half-Cherokee. But for years, he said, he resisted the impulse to quote traditional Indian art, just as he had rejected the pressure he’d felt in art school to make work that reflected his so-called identity.

“The way we describe identity here is so reductive,” Mr. Gibson said. “It never bleeds into seeing you as a more multifaceted person.” But now “I’m finally at the point where I can feel comfortable being your introduction” to American Indian culture, he added. “It’s just a huge acceptance of self.”

Judging from Mr. Gibson’s growing number of exhibitions, self-acceptance has done his work a lot of good. In addition to the National Academy exhibition, “Said the Pigeon to the Squirrel,” which opens Thursday and runs through Sept. 8, his pieces can be seen in four other places.

“Love Song,” Mr. Gibson’s first solo museum show, opened this month at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, with 20 silk-screened paintings, a video and two sculptures, one of which strings together seven painted drums. The smoked elk hide paintings are now on view in “Sakahàn,” a huge group exhibition of international indigenous art that opened last Friday at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. And an installation of shield-shaped wall hangings, made from painted hides and tepee poles, is at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla.

Mr. Gibson also has work in a group exhibition at the Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba, a longtime East Village multicultural showcase through June 2. Called “The Old Becomes the New,” it explores the relationship between New York’s contemporary American Indian artists and postwar abstractionists like Robert Rauschenberg and Leon Polk Smith who were influenced by traditional Indian art. Mr. Gibson’s contribution is two cinder blocks wrapped in rawhide and painted with superimposed rectangles of color, creating a surprisingly harmonious mash-up of Josef Albers and Donald Judd with the ceremonial bundle.

The work’s hybrid nature has given curators different aspects to appreciate. Kathleen Ash-Milby, an associate curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Lower Manhattan, said she loved Mr. Gibson’s use of color and his adventurousness with materials, and that he has “been able to be successful in the mainstream and continue his association with Native art and artists.” (Ms. Ash-Milby gave Mr. Gibson his first New York solo show, in 2005 at the American Indian Community House.)

Marshall N. Price, curator of the National Academy show, said he was drawn by Mr. Gibson’s drive to explore “both the problematic legacies of his own heritage and the problematic legacy of modernism” through the lens of geometric abstraction. (Which, he noted, “has a long tradition in Native American art history as well.”)

And for Jenelle Porter, the Institute of Contemporary Art curator who organized the Boston show, it’s Mr. Gibson’s ability to “foreground his background,” as she put it, in a striking and accessible way. Ms. Porter discovered his work early last year, in a solo two-gallery exhibition organized by the downtown nonprofit space Participant Inc.

“People were raving about the show,” she said. “So I went over there and I was absolutely floored.”

The work was “visually compelling, and not didactic,” she added. And because “he’s painting on hide, painting on drums, you have to talk about where it comes from.”

Mr. Gibson only recently figured out how to start that conversation. Because his father worked for the Defense Department, he was raised in South Korea, Germany and different cities in the United States, so “acclimating was normal to me,” he said. And one of the most persistent messages he heard growing up was “never to identify as a minority,” he added.

At the same time, because much of his extended family lives near reservations in Oklahoma and Mississippi, Mr. Gibson also grew up going to powwows and Indian festivals. He even briefly considered studying traditional Indian art, but instead opted to major in studio art at a community college near his parents’ house outside Washington. In 1992, he landed at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.

There, Mr. Gibson, who had just come out as gay, often felt pressured to examine just one aspect of his life — his Indian heritage, with its implicit cultural sense of victimhood — when what he really yearned to do was to paint like Matisse or Warhol. At the same time, he was learning about that heritage in a new way as a research assistant at the Field Museum aiding its compliance with the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

As he watched the Indian tribal elders who frequently visited to examine the drums, parfleche containers, headdresses and the like in the Field’s collection, Mr. Gibson was struck by their radically different responses. Some groups “would break down in tears,” he said. “Or there would be huge arguments.”

read and see more photos here.

Lamprey returned to Yakima River basin

Lamprey release on Tuesday, May 14, 2013. (SARA GETTYS / Yakima Herald-Republic)

Posted on May 15, 2013

By Phil Ferolito

Yakima Herald-Republic

WHITE SWAN, Wash. — After being largely absent for nearly a half-century, an old friend of the Yakamas — the Pacific lamprey — is being reintroduced to its home waters in the Yakima River basin.

On Tuesday, a handful of Yakama Nation biologists released 44 of the prehistoric, eel-like creatures into Toppenish and Simcoe creeks, where they have not been seen since the 1970s. The move is part of a larger project to restore the once vibrant Pacific lamprey not only in the Yakima River basin, but throughout the Northwest.

“This reintroduction is definitely a sacred time for our tribe,” project manager Patrick Luke said just before the release of adult lamprey into Simcoe Creek. “It’s just one step in a larger restoration project.”

After decades of considering lamprey a parasite that merely fed on other fish, federal and state authorities are now heeding what Northwestern tribes have long said — lamprey play an important role in the ecosystem and subsequently improve the survival rate of other species, such as salmon. Roughly 50 years ago, dams began blocking lamprey — which spend roughly two years in the ocean — from much of the Columbia River and its tributaries. With the ancient creature facing extinction, five states, along with federal agencies and several tribes, have embarked on a massive restoration project.

As part of a historic 10-year, $900 million fish-restoration accord the Army Corps of Engineers reached in 2008 with four Columbia River tribes — Yakama, Umatilla and Warm Springs — $5 million a year is being spent on lamprey restoration.

Although another species of lamprey is present in the Yakima River basin — Western brook lamprey that do not migrate — Tuesday’s release was the first significant step taken by the tribe to revive this anadromous creature to its ancestral waters, where they will spawn and hopefully return.

Although the cultural significance of the salmon to the Yakamas is generally understood, that of the lamprey has long been overlooked. They too were a staple in the diet.

Lamprey bring nutrients from the ocean to rivers and streams when they return to spawn. But lamprey also help protect salmon: Because they have a richer oil, birds and other predators usually feed on them first, biologists said.

“It’s a wonderful day for the lamprey and it’s also exciting for all the other species in the ecosystem,” said biologist Ralph Lampman.

Lamprey begin life as larvae and grow to about 2 feet long. Adults return to areas where they smell the baby larvae, Luke said. And the larvae offer nutrients as well, he said.

“What worms do in the ground is what lamprey do in the water as larvae,” he said.

Called asúm by the Yakamas, lamprey have existed for 450 million years and predate dinosaurs, according to fish biologists.

They once were prevalent throughout the Northwest, said Luke, who fished for them as a child.

“There would be so many, they’d turn the water black,” he said of the creature with a disk-shaped mouth lined with tiny, pointy teeth. “They used to call it the maiden hair.”

The lamprey released Tuesday were plucked from The Dalles and John Day dams, which they rarely make it past, and kept at the tribe’s hatchery in Prosser, project leader Luke said.

Hatchery supplementation will be used to restore lamprey, but the goal is to rebuild a natural run, he said.

Like a sucker fish, lamprey latch onto rocks to move through swift currents and to navigate falls. But when fish ladders were installed at dams, the lamprey wasn’t considered, Luke said.

Lamprey cannot make their way past the sharp corners of the weirs in fish tunnels and ladders. They need rounded edges they can move around, he said.

At the request of Columbia River tribes, the Corps of Engineers began looking at lamprey before the historic accord was signed, and installed two lamprey ramps at Bonneville Dam in 2002. Similar structures, which aren’t cheap, would need to be installed elsewhere throughout the Columbia and Yakima river basins to improve lamprey survival, Lampman said.

“That’s a really hard fix,” he said. “That’s not going to happen overnight.”

Meanwhile, efforts to use hatchery-raised lamprey and to relocate wild lamprey pulled from the lower Columbia River will continue, Luke said.

Today, Yakama biologists will release another group of lamprey into Satus Creek southeast of Toppenish. And next week, another release will occur at Ahtanum Creek near Union Gap.

“That’s why it’s so important,” he said. “We’re not going to win this war with giant steps — it’s going to be a lot of little steps.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct that the Nez Perce are not part of the accord with the Army Corps of Engineers.

• Phil Ferolito can be reached at 509-577-7749 or pferolito@yakimaherald.com.

Trauma therapist guides patients in a path of healing

By Monica Brown, Tulalip News Writer

TULALIP, Wash. – Jeremy Franklin, the new mental health therapist at Tulalip Family Services specializes in helping those who suffer from trauma and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). He is from Eugene Oregon and brings with him an understanding in various cultures, spiritualities and psychology.

“I became interested in psychology during high school, but it was a journey to decide that I wanted to become a counselor,” said Jeremy. “In this field, you go through some difficulties and going through the journey of wellness was part of the process for me in my decision to become a counselor.”

Jeremy gained a portion of his experience from volunteering as a mentor at Rite of Passage Journeys in Bothell. A rite of passage is a significant moment in a person’s life when they transition from one stage of their life to another.

“Most cultures, at some point in their history, had a rite of passage which helped young people transition into becoming adults,” said Jeremy. A mentoring volunteer since 2003 at Rite of Passage Journeys, Jeremy enjoys going on the retreats and mentoring adults by guiding them through their struggles while backpacking through the Olympic Mountains. Rite of Passage Journeys is a program which trains mentors to honor life transitions through intentional rite of passage so that they may help people of different ages to make life–changing decisions by offering counseling in a dramatic change of scenery and emotional space so that the person can gain clarity and confidence.

“Sickness, of any kind, is the result of something being out of balance in a person’s life. As a counselor and client, together we can explore and discover what those imbalances are and seek out the way that they can be addressed. When we bring all the parts of our being into balance, we are moving towards wellness and wholeness,” said Jeremy.

For Jeremy, each of his Tulalip clients is different and unique and he is there to help the client on their journey and decide with them the best way they can begin to heal. He offers them a place where they can express themselves and feel confident that they will be treated with positive regard, respect, safety and non-judgment. He is knowledgeable in prayer, cultural and spiritual explorations if the client is interested in using those tools. One of the main tools Jeremy teaches is gratitude work.

“That is one of the things that helped me the most,” said Jeremy about gratitude work. To explain gratitude work, Jeremy told the story of the two fighting wolves that reside within everyone.

“The grandfather tells his grandson that there are two wolves that live inside of me, the white wolf and the dark wolf and they’re fighting. The white wolf is everything good and positive; its love, hope, faith and the dark wolf is all the things that are hard and hurtful; it’s anger, hate, greed and jealousy. These wolves are in my heart and always fighting. The grandson asks his grandfather, which one will win. And the Grandfather replies, “Whichever one I feed.” Gratitude work is the act of feeding the white wolf and listing the things that you are grateful for in life and looking at each day as a gift.

Jeremy is of Lakota and Irish descent. He earned his Master of Arts in Psychology at Antioch University of Seattle and began his internship in 2012 at Tulalip Family Services. In December he received his degree and in January became a regular employee. His work focuses on those who have suffered trauma and/or have PTSD and the ways they can heal. His hours are Monday through Friday 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. For more information on scheduling an appointment, please contact Tulalip Family Services Behavioral Health at 360-716-4400

NTSB: Get tougher on drunken driving

Ann Heisenfelt/AP - NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman at a news conference in Washington in February. Federal officials were weighing a recommendation that states reduce their threshold for drunken driving from the current .08 blood alcohol level to .05 — Ann Heisenfelt/AP – NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman at a news conference in Washington in February. Federal officials were weighing a recommendation that states reduce their threshold for drunken driving from the current .08 blood alcohol level to .05

By Ashley Halsey III,

The Washington Post

Published: May 14

States may consider lowering the standard for drunken driving to the level of a single dry martini after a recommendation Tuesday from the National Transportation Safety Board.

The NTSB (National Transportation and Safety Board) wants state legislatures to drop the measure from the current blood-alcohol level of .08 to .05, about that caused by a dry martini or two beers in a 160-pound person. The .08 standard could allow the same person to drive legally after two beers or a couple of margaritas, according to a University of Oklahoma calculator.

“The research clearly shows that drivers with a BAC above 0.05 are impaired and at a significantly greater risk of being involved in a crash where someone is killed or injured,” said NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman. “Our goal is to get to zero deaths, because each alcohol-impaired death is preventable. They are crimes. They can and should be prevented. The tools exist. What is needed is the will.”

The NTSB has no authority to impose its recommendations, but it provides an influential voice in the setting of safety standards. The board’s proposal got an immediate positive response from an organization of state highway safety officials.

“NTSB’s action raises the visibility of drunk driving and we will consider their recommendations,” said Jonathan Adkins of the Governors Highway Safety Association, while underscoring that the group continues to support the .08 level.

Advocates for the beer and liquor industry reacted negatively to the recommendation.

“While obviously the NTSB doesn’t make policy, states take their recommendations very seriously,” said Sarah Longwell of the American Beverage Institute, which lobbies for the industry on the state and national levels.

She denounced the recommendation as “terrible.”

“Between .05 and .08 is not where fatalities are occurring. This is like, people are driving through an intersection at 90 miles an hour and so you drop the speed limit from 35 to 25; it doesn’t make any sense,” Longwell said. “This is something that is going to have a tremendously negative impact on the hospitality industry while not having a positive impact on road safety.”

Longwell said the average blood-alcohol level in alcohol-related traffic fatalities is 0.16.

Almost 10,000 people are killed — and 173,000 injured — each year in drunken driving crashes, the NTSB said. Although improvements in auto and highway safety, as well as effective crackdowns on drunken driving, have produced a decline in roadway fatalities in recent years, about 30 percent of all traffic deaths continue to be alcohol-related.

“Most Americans think that we’ve solved the problem of impaired driving, but in fact, it’s still a national epidemic,” Hersman said. “On average, every hour one person is killed and 20 more are injured.”

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a insurance industry research group, confirmed Tuesday that the risk of impairment to driving can occur well before a drinker reaches the .08 level.

“We would expect some effect if states lowered the threshold to .05, but since no state has passed such a law, it hasn’t been evaluated here,” said Anne T. McCartt, the institute’s senior vice president for research. “One difficulty in the U.S. is enforcement. Impairment begins well before the classic signs of impairment may become evident to a police officer, like a driver weaving. Since testing for impairment follows arrest, not the other way around, enforcing such a law would be a hurdle.”

The NTSB said almost 440,000 people have died in accidents tied to drinking in the past three decades.

In findings released with its recommendations Tuesday, the NTSB said that alcohol levels as low as .01 have been found to impair driving skills, and that a level of .05 has been “associated with significantly increased risk of fatal crashes.”

The board said a .05 limit would significantly reduce crashes and deaths.

In a recommendation made last year, the NTSB asked states to require ignition interlocks for all drivers convicted of drunken driving.

Longwell said the recommendation of a .05 limit for all drivers had implications for another emerging technology. A prototype vehicle expected to undergo testing later this year will be equipped with passive devices that eventually could be standard features in all vehicles, to test how much a would-be driver has had to drink.

“Where are they going to set this technology?” Longwell said. “They’ve been saying it’s .08. Well, the question is, if you lower the legal limit, where do you set the technology in all cars?”

Indian students lose fight for honor song

Chamberlain board denies graduation ceremony request

By: Anna Jauhola, The Daily Republic

Published May 13, 2013, 09:32 PM

CHAMBERLAIN, S.D. — American Indian students will not be recognized with an honor song during this year’s Chamberlain High School graduation ceremony.

The Chamberlain Board of Education voted 6-1 Monday evening at the Chamberlain High School library against a request to allow the song this year.

About 40 people attended the meeting, most of whom raised their hands in favor of starting the tradition of incorporating an honor song into the high school graduation ceremony Sunday.

Board President Rebecca Reimer said a feathering ceremony already was added for a ceremony prior to graduation, and an honor song doesn’t seem necessary.

“Most schools with our demographics have either a feathering ceremony or an honor song,” Reimer said. “Not both.”

She said the seniors and eighth-graders will go through a feathering ceremony at St. Joseph’s Indian School the Friday prior to the high school graduation ceremony. Students who live at St. Joseph’s attend school there until high school, when they go to Chamberlain High. The feathering ceremony is the first of its kind for Chamberlain.

According to the South Dakota Department of Education, 35 percent of Chamberlain School District students are American Indian, or nearly 300 of the school’s approximately 900 students during the 2012-13 academic year.

Students presented a petition to the school board in April to allow an American Indian honor song at the graduation ceremony.

Board members have declined the same request in the past, stating they feel graduation should remain the same as it has for years.

Chris Rodriguez, a senior at Chamberlain High School, was one of the students who started circulating the petition. He said he was upset the school board voted against incorporating the honor song, but respected the decision.

“I will come back to the school board because my sister is coming to school here, too,” he said after the meeting. “I wasn’t just fighting for this year’s seniors. I was fighting for generations after that.”

School board members said they want to make sure graduation is about recognizing educational achievements rather than favoring one culture over another.

Others said the ceremony could become too lengthy or require other cultures to be integrated as well.

“I’d just like to thank the people who got involved with this (petition),” said Casey Hutmacher, board member. “And for you guys to stand up and talk in front of us, I appreciate it. … But I will not be voting in favor tonight.”

Hutmacher said several senior class students he spoke to didn’t seem ready to include an Indian honor song at graduation.

“I can’t see how it honors everybody when it’s not in our language, and when I say our language, I mean English,” he said. “I look at the Pledge of Allegiance and it covers everything.”

The one board member in favor of granting the request to include an honor song said it is the board’s duty to vote for change.

“We vote for change all the time,” said Steve Fox, board member. “And that’s supposed to be our goal to change in good ways.”

He said other cultural activities have taken place at graduation in the past, including his son receiving a star quilt from the Sazue family.

“I could think of so many reasons to do this for our kids,” he said. “Why not give three or five minutes to teach our kids to honor another culture?”

Ferndale to consider deal that would end land dispute with Lummi Nation

Published: May 13, 2013

By Ralph Schwartz — THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

FERNDALE – City officials and Lummi Nation are pursuing an agreement to protect the city’s tax revenue and the tribe’s interest in properties it owns at the south city limits.

The City Council will decide whether to accept the agreement at a special meeting, 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 15, at 5694 Second Ave.

A draft of the agreement, posted Monday, May 13, on the city website, said the tribe would sell the western lots on land it owns along Slater Road west of Interstate 5. The tribe would receive 25 percent of the city’s share of sales tax revenue from those lots, which are on the southwest corner of Slater and Rural Avenue.

The city also would support the tribe’s application for trust status on the remaining properties. No property tax is paid on trust lands, and development on such land is not bound by state or local environmental rules.

In return, the tribe would agree to not purchase or apply for trust status on other land within the city limits, in order to protect the city’s property-tax base.

Salish Sea Native American Culture Celebration

OLYMPIA – May 13, 2013 – The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission invites the public to attend the Eighth Annual Salish Sea Native American Culture Celebration with the Samish and Swinomish tribes.

The celebration runs from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 8, at the Bowman Bay picnic area on the Fidalgo Island side of Deception Pass State Park, 41020 State Route 20, Oak Harbor. The event celebrates the maritime heritage of the two participating Coast Salish tribes. This year’s event also commemorates the 100th birthday of the Washington state park system, which was created by the Legislature in 1913.

The June 8 event will feature canoe rides and native singers, drummers and storytellers. Artists from the two tribes will demonstrate traditional weaving, cedar work and woodcarving. A salmon and frybread lunch also will be available for purchase. The Discover Pass is not required to attend the event. In recognition of National Get Outdoors Day, Saturday, June 8 is a State Parks “free day,” when visitors to state parks are not required to display a Discover Pass.

Cultural event activities are presented by the Samish Indian Nation, the Samish Canoe Family, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and the Swinomish Canoe Family. Proceeds from food sales at the Salish Sea Native American Culture Celebration support the Samish and Swinomish canoe families’ participation in the annual intertribal canoe journey; each year, tribes and nations from the Pacific Northwest travel by canoe to different host communities along the Salish Sea. This year, the Quinault Tribe plays host to the intertribal canoe journey, which lands in Taholah on August 1. For more information about this year’s canoe journey, visit www.paddletoquinault.org.

The event is accessible to persons with disabilities. If special accommodations are required in order to attend the event, please call (360) 902-8626 or (360) 675-3767 or the Washington Telecommunications Relay Service at (800) 833-6388. Requests must be made in advance.

The Salish Sea Native American Culture Celebration is part of a broader series of events celebrating Washington’s diverse cultures and presented by the Folk and Traditional Arts in the Parks Program. The program is a partnership between the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission, the Washington State Arts Commission and Northwest Heritage Resources with funding provided by National Endowment for the Arts and the Washington State Parks Foundation.

Deception Pass State Park is a 4,134-acre marine and camping park with 77,000 feet of saltwater of shoreline, and 33,900 feet of freshwater shoreline on three lakes. The park is best known for views of Deception Pass and Bowman Bay, old-growth forests, abundant wildlife and the historic Deception Pass Bridge.

Stay connected to your state parks by following Washington State Parks at www.facebook.com/WashingtonStateParks, www.twitter.com/WaStatePks_NEWS and www.youtube.com/WashingtonStateParks. Share your favorite state park adventure on the new State Parks’ blog site at www.AdventureAwaits.com.

Student Loans, Big Decisions, and Staying Hungry: Advice for Graduates

Gyasi Ross

May 09, 2013 in ICTMN.COM

We are firmly in graduation season. All of my graduations happened at least a decade ago, so I barely remember them. I do vaguely remember my law school graduation—I was at a crossroads in my life, facing HUGE student loans and not wanting to simply toil my life away at a large law firm making some ridiculously rich people even richer. That whole time in my life was stressful and I made some big decisions; those decisions turned out right, but could’ve easily blown up in my face.

One decision I made was that money was not going to determine my career; my career was going to be serving Native people. Therefore, I went to work for a bus pass and about seventeen bucks a week at the National Congress of American Indians (I jokes…it was actually $25).

Despite not eating the entire time I was at NCAI, I formed many meaningful relationships that I still treasure to this day. I’m thankful for that, and I’m thankful for the Native folks at NCAI (and really anyplace) that remember why they are far away from home and are zealously advocating for Natives. I’m also thankful that the time in DC allowed me—a young, irrelevant, rez-boy punk lawyer—to work directly with many of the folks making policy in DC. Anybody who knows me knows that I don’t like the DC political scene. I love DC, but hate when folks—Native and otherwise—lose track of why they’re out there and instead start to think they’re out there simply to be out there. Wearing suits and stuff. I watched many well-meaning people stop focusing on the Native people they are supposed to represent, and instead just focus the prestige of a DC gig. Many Natives lose their connection to their homelands, if indeed they ever had a connection. And some view being Native as simply a gimmick to attract business.

But I digress.

During that same time, I also was fortunate enough to meet some people who were truly out there to make a difference. I met folks who couldn’t wait to get back to their homelands, but they dutifully continued to serve far away from home. I consider these folks to be my “big brothers and sisters,” folks who are amazing at what they do, look out for me (and others) and have their heart solidly with Native people. They showed a lot of love to a broke Native kid and they didn’t have to. Some of those folks include Wilson Pipestem, Todd Araujo, Big Ernie Stevens (after he stopped wanting to beat me up, which I deserved, but that’s a story for another day), Holly Cook Macarro, Jackie Johnson, Jamie Gomez, Steve Hill, and Walter Lamar, amongst others.

All those experiences and relationships came as a result of taking the road less traveled and not letting money dictate my decisions. My family was (and still is) a struggling rez family, so simply taking the money was tempting. Yet, I lost entirely too many loved ones early in life and that taught me that life can be short, and powerful memories and doing something positive in that short time is probably more important than money.

Which brings me to graduations.

I planned to go to Haskell’s graduation ceremony. I love Haskell, and my big brother Ernie was kind enough to ask me to come. I can’t go. I will, however, be speaking at a few other graduation ceremonies, and I’m thankful for that. I’d love to have the chance to talk to all of the Native graduates to hug you and support you. Still, since I cannot speak to every Native student graduating from all levels of education, here’s 10 12 things I would tell all of you if I could:

1) Congratulations little sisters and little brothers. You worked hard. Breathe for a minute.

2) You earned this. Good job—they don’t give those diplomas and degrees out easily (most Americans do not have a degree).

3) Money is necessary but overrated. Don’t be a prostitute—do something you really want to do. It may be hard to believe but your precious time is the commodity, not money.

4) Be careful. There will be people that try to convince you that you are special because you are an “educated Native person.” They will ask you how you “made it out,” as if our homelands are horrible places that we must have escaped from. This is a divide-and-conquer technique intended to alienate you from your people.

5) Native people do not resent white man’s education—that is a myth. Our people resent assholes who think they are smarter than everyone.

6) You are not the first smart Skin—your education does not make you smarter than anyone else within our communities. Our ancestors have survived for thousands of years, in much harsher conditions than we can imagine, without formal educations. You and I would die in those conditions. They didn’t. They didn’t need degrees to prove their intelligence—our survival proved their intelligence.

7) You did not get that diploma/degree by yourself—don’t kid yourself. Yes, you worked…but our ancestors, by faith, provided the infrastructure where you would be assured educational opportunities. They laid the groundwork. We stand on their shoulders.

8) Simply “getting an education” does not help Native people. Native people getting an education only helps if we involve ourselves in our communities and work for the most vulnerable amongst us.

9) Indigenous education is focused on the survival of the collective, white man’s education is focused on the success of the individual. If we don’t center our educations around our communities, we become just like every other non-Native with an education. The world does not need a bunch of brown white people.

10) As a result of numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, all of us fortunate enough to get white man-educated have an obligation to continue this legacy of helping our people get stronger collectively.

11) Enjoy the summer. Chop some wood for some elders. Take a language class. Go take some young Native kids hiking. Get out of the city for a second. Community education is just as important to the Indigenous soul as any classroom.

12) Don’t have unprotected sex. Just don’t, generally. But really don’t now…child support will cost you more now than it did when you were a broke student.

Good job—you are the best. You’ve overcome great odds and are modern day warriors. You have centuries of our people cheering for you. If I can help, please let me know.

Gyasi Ross
Blackfeet Nation Enrolled/Suquamish Nation Immersed
Activist/Attorney/Author
Twitter: @BigIndianGyasi
www.cutbankcreekpress.com