admin, Author at Tulalip News

Spring gardening at Hibulb

Tribal member Malaki Hernandez tranplants

By Monica Brown

TULALIP, Wash. Attendees at the Tulalip Hibulb garden work party gathered together on Friday, March 22 to do some needed garden preparations. Gardeners and gardening volunteers worked together to prepare the garden for the growing season.

Pruning encourages fruit production, so Master Gardeners Frank Sargent and Rob and Richelle Taylor pruned fruit trees located in the orchard on the north side of the Hibulb Museum.

Community gardeners worked in the greenhouse, transplanting over 100 seedlings of cabbage and sowing new seeds. Seedlings are being started and kept warm in the heated greenhouse and soon the plant beds around the museum will be made ready for transplanting.

The community is invited to attend the garden work parties and the Gardening Together as Families events. Gardeners will help tend the beds throughout the season and enjoy the rewards at the end of season harvest. Gardeners will learn about the many aspects of gardening through hands-on experience, working side-by-side with master gardeners.

To learn more about the Hibulb Gardening events please contact Veronica Leahy at 360-716-5642 or vleahy@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov

Tribal member Malaki Hernandez transplanting a cabbage sprout.

Mytyl Hernandez and son Malaki with transplanted pansies. Photo by Richelle Taylor

Tribal member Marvin Jones and Master Gardener Veronica Leahy transplanting cabbage sprouts.

North Korea: Rockets ready “to settle accounts with the U.S.”

South Korean army soldiers patrol along a barbed-wire fence near the border village of Panmunjom in Paju, South Korea, Wednesday, March 27, 2013. North Korea said Wednesday that it had cut off a key military hotline with South Korea that allows cross border travel to a jointly run industrial complex in the North, a move that ratchets up already high tension and possibly jeopardizes the last major symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.Ahn Young-joon — AP Photo — South Korean army soldiers patrol along a barbed-wire fence near the border village of Panmunjom in Paju, South Korea, Wednesday, March 27, 2013. North Korea said Wednesday that it had cut off a key military hotline with South Korea that allows cross border travel to a jointly run industrial complex in the North, a move that ratchets up already high tension and possibly jeopardizes the last major symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.
Ahn Young-joon — AP Photo

Published: March 28, 2013

By FOSTER KLUG — Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un warned Friday that his rocket forces were ready “to settle accounts with the U.S.,” unleashing a new round of bellicose rhetoric after U.S. nuclear-capable B-2 bombers dropped dummy munitions in joint military drills with South Korea.

Kim’s warning, and the litany of threats that have preceded it, don’t indicate an imminent war. In fact, they’re most likely meant to coerce South Korea into softening its policies, win direct talks and aid from Washington, and strengthen the young leader’s credentials and image at home.

But the threats from North Korea and rising animosity from the rivals that have followed U.N. sanctions over Pyongyang’s Feb. 12 nuclear test do raise worries of a misjudgment leading to a clash.

Kim “convened an urgent operation meeting” of senior generals just after midnight, signed a rocket preparation plan and ordered his forces on standby to strike the U.S. mainland, South Korea, Guam and Hawaii, state media reported.

Kim said “the time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation,” according to a report by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

Later Friday at the main square in Pyongyang, tens of thousands of North Koreans turned out for a 90-minute mass rally in support of Kim’s call to arms. Men and women, many of them in olive drab uniforms, stood in arrow-straight lines, fists raised as they chanted, “Death to the U.S. imperialists.” Placards in the plaza bore harsh words for South Korea as well, including, “Let’s rip the puppet traitors to death!”

Small North Korean warships, including patrol boats, conducted maritime drills off both coasts of North Korea near the border with South Korea on Thursday, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said in a briefing Friday. He didn’t provide more details.

The spokesman said that South Korea’s military was mindful of the possibility that North Korean drills could lead to an actual provocation. He also said that the South Korean and U.S. militaries are watching closely for any signs of missile launch preparations in North Korea. He didn’t elaborate.

North Korea, which says it considers the U.S.-South Korean military drills preparations for invasion, has pumped out a string of threats in state media. In the most dramatic case, Pyongyang made the highly improbable vow to nuke the United States.

On Friday, state media released a photo of Kim and his senior generals huddled in front of a map showing routes for envisioned strikes against cities on both American coasts. The map bore the title “U.S. Mainland Strike Plan.”

Portions of the photo appeared to be manipulated, though an intriguing detail – a bandage on Kim’s left arm – appeared to be real.

Experts believe the country is years away from developing nuclear-tipped missiles that could strike the United States. Many say they’ve also seen no evidence that Pyongyang has long-range missiles that can hit the U.S. mainland.

Still, there are fears of a localized conflict, such as a naval skirmish in disputed Yellow Sea waters. Such naval clashes have happened three times since 1999. There’s also the danger that such a clash could escalate. Seoul has vowed to hit back hard the next time it is attacked.

North Korea’s threats are also worrisome because of its arsenal of short- and mid-range missiles that can hit targets in South Korea and Japan. Seoul is only a short drive from the heavily armed border separating the Koreas.”

The North can fire 500,000 rounds of artillery on Seoul in the first hour of a conflict,” analysts Victor Cha and David Kang wrote recently for Foreign Policy magazine. They also note that North Korea has a history of testing new South Korean leaders; President Park Geun-hye took office late last month. “Since 1992, the North has welcomed these five new leaders by disturbing the peace,” they wrote.

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters Thursday that the decision to send B-2 bombers to join the military drills was part of normal exercises and not intended to provoke North Korea. Hagel acknowledged, however, that North Korea’s belligerent tones and actions in recent weeks have ratcheted up the danger in the region, “and we have to understand that reality.”

U.S. Forces Korea said the B-2 stealth bombers flew from a U.S. air base in Missouri and dropped dummy munitions on an uninhabited South Korean island range on Thursday before returning home. The Pentagon said this was the first time a B-2 had dropped dummy munitions over South Korea, and later added that it was unclear whether there had ever been any B-2 flights there at all.

The statement follows an earlier U.S. announcement that nuclear-capable B-52 bombers participated in the joint military drills.

Pyongyang uses the U.S. nuclear arsenal as a justification for its own push for nuclear weapons. It claims that U.S. nuclear firepower is a threat to its existence and provocation.

The two Missouri-based stealth bombers used in the South Korean drills probably weren’t nuclear-armed, but experts say they’re the aircraft that would likely be sent if Washington ever decides it does want to drop nuclear bombs on North Korea. The United States doesn’t forward-deploy nuclear weapons in South Korea, Okinawa, Guam or Hawaii.”

The B-2 can reach targets from North Korea to Iran directly from Missouri, which is what the United States did in the early stages of operations against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq,” analyst Jeffrey Lewis wrote in a post on ArmsControlWonk.com earlier this month.

AP writers Jon Chol Jin in Pyongyang, North Korea, Sam Kim in Seoul and Eric Talmadge in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Duwamish Chairwoman Speaks About Fighting for Federal Recognition and Getting Another Chance

Duwamish Chairwoman Cecile Hansen has been fighting for federal recognition for her tribe for 36 years. On March 22, a federal district judge ruled the tribe was wrongfully denied federal recognition under the Bush Administration in 2001 giving them another chance.

ICTMN Vincent Schilling

March 28, 2013

Nearly 36 years ago in 1977, the Duwamish Tribe, the people of Chief Seattle, petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs for federal recognition. Originally told their quest to be recognized would probably take only about five years, the Duwamish tribe fell victim to multiple changes in the BIA’s process ultimately ending in denial in 2001. However, the Duwamish now have a second chance at gaining federal recognition.

On Friday March 22, 2013, Seattle federal district court Judge John Coughenour ruled that the Bush Administration’s Bureau of Indian Affairs wrongly denied the Duwamish Tribe of Seattle’s petition for federal recognition in 2001. Citing the denial was “arbitrary and capricious” Judge Coughenour ordered the Bureau of Indian Affairs to re-evaluate the petition.

According to Chris Stearns, (Navajo) Chairman of the Seattle Human Rights Commission and former Attorney for the Federal House Committee on Natural Resources who has followed the progress of the Duwamish, “After a decade-long battle in the courts to get the Bush Administration’s 2001 decision thrown out, Duwamish Tribal Chairwoman Cecile Hansen has won. She didn’t win federal recognition outright, but she now has a shot at least. The Obama Administration will now get a crack at deciding whether the Duwamish should be a federally recognized tribe in Seattle.”

Throughout the entire 36-year quest to be federally acknowledged, the Duwamish have faced several ups, downs and broken promises in the process.

In 1996, Clinton Administration’s Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Ada Deer, issued a preliminary ruling against the Duwamish. As the Administration was preparing to leave office in January of 2001, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Gover reversed a preliminary finding of Ada Deer against another Washington tribe, the Chinook. His Deputy, Michael Anderson took over for Gover and on January 19, 2001, the last day of the Clinton Administration, Anderson reversed Deer’s preliminary finding against the Duwamish and ordered them recognized.

Anderson personally called Duwamish Chairwoman Cecile Hansen to tell her the tribe was recognized. However, Anderson did not sign his approval statement and returned three days after the Bush Administration had taken over. While waiting in a car outside the Interior Department, Anderson retroactively signed the approval statement which was dated January 19, 2001.

Unfortunately for the Duwamish tribe the new Bush Administration put a hold on all new regulations and determinations that had not yet been published in the Federal Register. The Duwamish approval was held, never made it to the Federal Register, and thus never took effect.

On September 25, 2001, the Bush Administration’s Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Neal McCaleb, reversed the Anderson approval and formally issued a final decision refusing the Duwamish’s bid to be recognized.

Since 2003, Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott has introduced a bill every two years to restore recognition to the Duwamish which has never made it out of the House Committee on Natural Resources.

According to Nedra Darling, Spokeswoman at the Office of the Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs, when asked about their stance on the issue, she stated ‘It is the Department of the Interior’s policy not to discuss matters that are currently under litigation.”

In an interview with Indian Country Today Media Network, Chairwoman Cecile Hansen shared her thoughts of a nearly 36-year battle in seeking recognition for her tribe.

How did the petition for recognition begin?

We were fighting for fishing rights and we naïvely believed that we were going to get recognized and get our fishing rights given back. That was the whole point of us getting into this process.

Conference addresses violence against Native women

By AL KNAUBER Independent Record

HELENA — A woman’s shawl, laid across a chair, told a story almost too painful for words.

Patty McGeshick, the chairperson of the Montana Native Women’s Coalition and a member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, laid the empty shawl over the back of the chair and began a ceremony during Wednesday’s two-day conclave held at the Red Lion Colonial Hotel. The event concludes late this afternoon.

The event is a listening session that focuses on domestic abuse and sexual assault on Native American reservations.

“What this represents is all the women out there who are,” she began and then stopped as though memories would not let her continue. The silence lengthened before she could continue speaking. Her voice was shaky as she said, “living in violence and who need help.

“The ceremony that we’ve done here is to honor them,” she said.

McGeshick asked that those attending the morning session pray for these women. She said she hoped that someday people would live in a violence-free community and in the safety of their own homes.

“We are still living in a time when women and men are still being hurt, still being battered, and it’s really a shameful thing,” she said.

She called upon Native American men to answer the call for help from women in their communities, to answer it on behalf of their mothers, their grandmothers and great-grandmothers.

According to an online account of an October 2011 hearing by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 1 in 3 Native American women will be raped at least once in their lives and 3 out of 5 will be victims of an assault.

McGeshick cited the statistic on the prevalence of rape before beginning the ceremony and said, “We want people to be accountable if they commit these acts” against Native women.

Gov. Steve Bullock, who delivered opening remarks before Richard Opper, the new director of the state Department of Public Health and Human Services, said, “Whether you are a survivor, an advocate or a policymaker, the work you do every single day does not go unnoticed. Your effort, whether individual or collective, is valued — it is needed, and I hope that you will never stop fighting for what is right.

The rate at which violence occurs in Indian Country is much higher than elsewhere in the state, Bullock said.

“I stand with you and do our part to help the victims who survive, to heal, to support them, to share our strength with them and to let them know that they are not alone. Today, victims no longer have to remain silent and or feel any shame.

“The next generation, and all the generations that follow, must learn that the behaviors that lead to violating others are not something to be proud of. Our prevention efforts must be diligent,” the governor said.

Cathy Cichosz, a member of the Gros Ventre tribe who lives in Hays, which is on the Fort Belknap Reservation, is an Army veteran from some 40 years ago. She was asked to attend the conclave to carry the American flag during the opening ceremony. Native singers with drums provided the backdrop.

Waiting for the conclave to begin, she said that since those days in uniform she worked for seven years to put herself through nursing school in San Francisco then eventually returned home to take care of her ailing mother who would live to be 111.

The conclave, she said, “will make people more aware of what’s going on and hopefully how to prevent it.”

Discussing domestic and sexual violence helps bring it out in the open, she said, instead of having its victims “push it under the rug.”

“It used to be such a shame; they were ashamed to talk about it, go to anybody,” Cichosz said. “It will be more preventable this way.”

The goal of the event is explain what is happening to Native American women and children, said Elaine Topsky, an at-large member of the coalition and a member of the Chippewa Cree tribe who lives on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation.

Topsky is the program director for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in her community, which is a federal block grant program that seeks to help move recipients into work and turn welfare into temporary assistance.

Her program works with about 150 families and affects about 1,000 people, she added.

The isolation of living in small communities on reservations means that violence may go unreported, Topsky said.

A Native woman will endure domestic violence at a higher rate before she is willing to leave the home, said Donny Ferguson, a child advocate with the Rocky Boy’s Children Exposed to Violence Project.

“It’s the way we believe, the way we’ve been conditioned,” Ferguson said. “It’s a normal way of life sometimes.”

Topsky’s efforts on behalf of her agency are to try and keep the family together until the environment becomes abusive.

“As Indian women, our families are who we are,” Topsky said.

“They’re the backbone of the family. It’s their responsibility to keep the family intact.”

Her program offers a variety of services aimed at helping families that are experiencing difficulties to make steps toward improvement. Parenting classes can be one of those steps. Making sure the family’s children are attending school each day can be another one.

Advocates appointed by tribal councils, who are called peacemakers, help to intervene using tribal values to assist families reconcile their troubles.

“That’s one of the best things we’ve ever done,” Topsky added.

McGeshick said the coalition wants to improve local, state and federal relationships so there is better communication on issues of Native women and violence.

She said that she doesn’t see Native women as being more vulnerable to violence as there are other dynamics involved in reservation life where communities are smaller. Others said that help for those involved in violence can take a while to arrive and locating other housing to get a woman out of a home where an abusive situation exists can be difficult as there is a housing shortage in some reservation communities.

All women should be treated with respect, McGeshick said, and those living in these communities should have access to the same services such as domestic abuse shelters that are available to women in more urban communities.

“I want to have all the rights for the Native women as all other women in Montana,” McGeshick said. “We want to have the same rights.”

“I don’t want to draw a line between Native and non-Native women. We’re all women,” she said.

Life on a reservation is rich in culture, rich in beliefs. People are truly tied to the land where generations of their families have lived before them, McGeshick said.

“We have to focus more on our successes rather than out problems,” she said.

Northwest Tribes Maximize Steelhead Populations

8:12 amThu March 28, 2013

By Aaron Kunz

Steelhead in the Columbia River Basin are threatened. Current populations have dwindled to a fraction of the historic numbers a century ago. That has led two Northwest Indian Tribes to try something new to help this struggling fish survive. Both tribes are learning from each other along the way.

The snow is almost gone in north Idaho. But it’s still cold, almost freezing on this early morning at the Dworshak National Fish Hatchery near Orofino.

That’s Andrew Pierce with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission or “CRITFC.” He and several dozen Nez Perce tribal members pull large fish from tanks of water. The fish are weighed and measured. Then the eggs and what’s called milt – or semen – are removed. This is all part of an artificial spawning program. The eggs and milt will be combined later in plastic tubes. It’s a process that has a higher success than if the fish were to spawn naturally in the river.

Salmon and Steelhead die in the traditional artificial spawning process which involves killing the fish then surgically removing the eggs and milt.

While salmon die naturally after spawning, Steelhead don’t. They return to the ocean and back to Northwest rivers year after year. Scott Everett is a Nez Perce project manager who says his tribe decided that to maximize the natural process, they needed a method of artificial spawning that didn’t kill the fish. That’s what they are doing here.

“Instead of killing the fish, you’re filling the body cavity with air and that essentially forces the eggs out,” Everett says.

The steelhead are then placed in large tanks for a few weeks to recover. Females that spawn repeatedly are known as kelts. That’s how this program got it’s name – Kelt Reconditioning Program. Everett says the goal is to rebuild the once abundant populations of steelhead that northwest tribes have traditionally relied on along with salmon. Overfishing, water quality and hundreds of dams that make passage difficult for the fish have impacted steelhead numbers over the years.

“We’re hopefully getting enough fish alive that we can actually put them in our reconditioning project here and keep them alive for three to six month or longer and get them back out in the river,” Everett says.

Thats where the Yakama Nation tribe comes in. The central Washington tribe has been using the Kelt Reconditioning Program for 14-years.

Read full article here

Two Tribes Move Closer To Securing FM Radio Stations

American Indian tribes hold less than one percent of the roughly 15,200 radio station licenses issued by the Federal Communications Commission.”

March 24, 2013 as published in Diverse Education

By Felicia Fonseca, Associated Press

FLAGSTAFF Ariz. — Two Southwest tribes are moving closer to securing radio stations that others in Indian Country have turned to for emergency alerts, health tips, the latest rodeo news, traditional stories and language lessons.

American Indian tribes hold less than one percent of the roughly 15,200 radio station licenses issued by the Federal Communications Commission, a figure the commission has been trying to boost through a rule it approved in 2010 to give federally recognized tribes priority in the application process, and help preserve language and culture.

“Telling one’s own story, broadcasting in one’s own voice, in an exercise of self-determination and self-reliance, is so important a goal of so many broadcasters in tribal communities that its value cannot be overstated,” the FCC said in its 2012 annual report.

Earlier this month, the FCC set aside the first two FM allotments under its Tribal Radio Priority for the Hualapai Tribe in northwestern Arizona and Navajo Technical College in northwestern New Mexico. The tribe and the college owned by the Navajo Nation are now waiting for the FCC to open a filing window so they can secure construction permits and build their stations.

“Radio will give them tremendous community outlook,” said Fred Hannel, a consultant for the Hualapai Tribe. “They can rally the whole community around a radio station, give them a sense of identity.”

Other tribal entities will have an opportunity to apply for the same allotments for the commercial stations after the FCC’s order takes effect April 15. The Hualapai Tribe says it isn’t expecting to lose out because no other tribe is located in the area it wants to broadcast.

Applicants who want to be considered under the tribal priority must be a federally recognized tribe or an entity, like the college, that is majority-owned by a tribe and propose to cover at least 50 percent tribal land. Successful applications are processed without going through an auction.

Navajo Technical College had faced competition in applying for a construction permit for a non-commercial educational station under a points-base system. But the college did not build the station before the permit expired in August 2008, and the FCC denied a request for an extension and to downgrade the service area. The college said it erroneously believed that grant funding it secured to set up the radio station and the construction permit would expire at the same time, and it also couldn’t get electricity to its original transmitter site, according to FCC documents.

At the time, the college said it was “virtually guaranteed” to prevail under the Tribal Radio Priority for a commercial FM station. The FCC said it wouldn’t prejudge a future proceeding nor apply the tribal priority retroactively. The station would reach out to 13,500 people in remote, isolated areas around Crownpoint, N.M., and be broadcast in Navajo, the college wrote in FCC documents.

The Hualapai Tribe already has been using the Internet to broadcast morning blessings, results of tribal elections, a radio drama aimed at improving health, traditional Hualapai music and community service announcements. The FM radio station would allow anyone within a 30-mile radius of the station to tune in, particularly those who can’t access the Internet.

“Once we get our FM frequency on, it’s really going to build a lot of interest,” said tribal member Candida Hunter.

The spread of information on the reservation otherwise comes through fliers posted at government offices, a tribal newsletter or word of mouth. Terri Hutchens, project coordinator, said tribal members could have benefited last year from an announcement over the radio about water contamination, which led to a temporary school closure. She said some people received fliers but others didn’t find out until days later when the problem was fixed.

“That’s something certainly that could be addressed through the emergency alert system,” she said.

The radio station won’t reach the entire 1-million-acre reservation along the southern edge of the Grand Canyon on the western corridor. Hutchens said the tribe has plans to expand the range within five years. The funding is in place for terrestrial radio equipment, and the tribe will use existing towers for the transmitter.

For now, community members are encouraging each other to listen to the Internet broadcast and volunteers are pitching in to provide content in the Hualapai language.

“We’ve actually been having fun. We’ve been bringing them in to train them on how to be a DJ,” Hutchens said.

A Monumental Day

“Samuel Gomez, the war chief for Taos Pueblo, was in Washington, D.C., on Monday as President Barack Obama proclaimed a new national monument near the tribe’s reservation in northern New Mexico.”

Originally posted ABQ Journal

By Jackie Jadrnak / Journal North Reporter

on Tue, Mar 26, 2013

Not a single dissenting voice was heard when community meetings were called to discuss making Rio Grande del Norte into a national monument, according to Taos Mayor Darren Córdova.

It should be no surprise, then, that the Taos County Commission Chamber was full to bursting with some 150 residents applauding Monday’s signing of the presidential proclamation declaring the 242,555 acres in Taos and Rio Arriba counties a national monument.

Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., hosted that local gathering, while the official signing ceremony itself took place in Washington, D.C. Area residents who joined President Barack Obama in the Oval Office included former U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, who was credited with spearheading the preservation of this land; Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M.; Questa Mayor Esther Garcia; and Taos Pueblo War Chief Samuel Gomez.

“This is a great day for New Mexico,” Bingaman said in a news release. “I’m glad that President Obama found northern New Mexico’s landscape so compelling that he was willing to make the Río Grande del Norte his largest monument designation to date.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the community, which has strongly supported this effort, will benefit from the conservation and cultural protections that come with this designation,” he said.

Vice President Joe Biden, center, reacts after President Barack Obama signs legislation under the Antiquities Act designating five new national monuments on Monday in the Oval Office. From left are Samuel Gomez, war chief for Taos Pueblo, Biden, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. (susan walsh/the associated press)

That local consensus was key in moving the project forward, Heinrich said in a telephone interview last week. Without it, action on the federal level often is stalled, he said.

“It’s one of those really special places,” Heinrich said, adding that in the mid- to late 1990s, as director and an outfit guide with the Cottonwood Gulch Foundation, he took kids all over the Southwest, including to raft and explore the Rio Grande Gorge.

That gorge is only a piece of the new national monument, which stretches to the Colorado border. Obama’s proclamation lists the riches found in the area, including canyons, volcanic cones, natural springs and native grasslands.

“The river provides habitat for fish such as the Río Grande cutthroat trout, as well as the recently reintroduced North American river otter,” the proclamation reads. “The Río Grande del Norte is part of the Central Migratory Flyway, a vital migration corridor for birds such as Canada geese, herons, sandhill cranes, hummingbirds and American avocets. Several species of bats make their home in the gorge, which also provides important nesting habitat for golden eagles and numerous other raptor species, as well as habitat for the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher.”

Besides bald eagles and other birds, the area includes Rocky Mountain elk, mule deer, pronghorn and Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, and rare Gunnison’s prairie dogs, as well as the ringtail, black bear, coyote, red fox, cougar and bobcat, according to the proclamation.

Petroglyphs, some dating as far back as 7,500 B.C., are found concentrated near hot springs in the gorge, along with a number of artifacts tracing ancient habitation. The Rio San Antonio gorge also contains such historic reminders, while San Antonio Mountain is thought to be the source of dacite used to make stone tools, states the proclamation.

Ute Mountain, at 10,000 feet, is the tallest of the extinct volcanic cones that dot the area. Remnants of homes and people who settled the area right after World War I can be found on the slopes of Cerro Montoso, while other artifacts throughout the area mark the passage of Spanish explorers and settlers.

“The Río Grande del Norte has long supported our cultural traditions in northern New Mexico, such as hunting, irrigation and grazing,” said Udall. “As a permanently protected national monument, it will drive even more economic progress and job growth through tourism in communities that desperately need it.”

The Rio Grande Gorge, looking north from the Taos Gorge Bridge is now part of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument near Taos, NM, photographed on Monday March 25, 2013. (Dean Hanson/Journal)

For tribes, prosecuting non-native abusers still a challenge

“The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon could be the first in Indian Country to assert jurisdiction over non-Indians who commit domestic violence offenses.”

Originally published in PBS Frontline

March 25, 2013, 4:17 pm ET

By Sarah Childress

Follow @sarah_childress

When President Barack Obama signed the Violence Against Women Act earlier this month, he spoke of cracking down on domestic abuse in Indian Country, where the violent crime rate is more than 2.5 times the national rate and impunity is deeply entrenched.

“One of the reasons is that when Native American women are abused on tribal lands by an attacker who is not Native American, the attacker is immune from prosecution by tribal courts,” Obama said.

“Well, as soon as I sign this bill, that ends,” he said. “That ends.”

But for most tribes, closing that loophole against abusers will take time. For some, it may not happen at all.

The law has two provisions that already apply nationwide. Tribal governments can now enforce protection orders filed in state or federal court. The law also imposes stiffer penalties on anyone who inflicts substantial bodily injury on a partner, such as strangling or suffocation.

It’s the law’s controversial provision of trying non-Natives in Native court systems — one that initially held up its passage — that poses the challenge.

Tribal justice systems vary in their capabilities. On some reservations, attorneys and judges aren’t required to have a law degree. Defense attorneys may not be provided. Tribal law enforcement officers often don’t have the proper training to handle major crimes cases.

At the moment, no tribe has a system currently capable of enforcing the new law as it’s written. The law requires that tribes provide non-Native defendants with the same rights they would have in U.S. courts, including a right to an attorney, trained judges, and trial by their peers, meaning the court must at least attempt to include non-Indians in its jury pool.

“It’s Going to Start Small”

Only about 100 of the 566 federally recognized are likely to be able or interested in implementing the new protections over the next five years, according to John Dossett, the general counsel for the National Congress of American Indians, a D.C.-based group that represents the interests of Native Americans.

Of those, only 10 to 20 are likely to come into compliance in the next two years.

Many tribes are just too small to have their own justice systems and leave law enforcement to the state and federal authorities entirely. Others have remote reservations with few non-Native residents, so that prosecutorial power isn’t as much of a priority.

As always, there’s also the question of money. The law provides $5 million a year for five years — a total of $25 million — to help tribes strengthen their justice systems. That’s assuming Congress allocates the funding, which could be jeopardized by the sequester.

“The tribal criminal jurisdiction is more of a long-term project, and I think everyone understands that — I hope they do,” said Sam Hirsch, the deputy associate attorney general at the Justice Department’s Office of Tribal Justice.

Hirsch said the office will consult with the tribes before drawing up a written policy outlining the next steps, and work with those who want to take advantage of the new provision. The office will also help the tribes find the funding they need, he said.

“It’s going to start small, and it’s going to spread and build,” he said.

A Symbolic Victory

Even if only a few tribes enforce it, the law is important as a symbolic victory, said Sarah Deer, a professor at the William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota and a tribal justice expert.

“It provides more options to tribes, and that’s what I think sovereignty is about, being able to make decisions that are best for your community,” she said. “The less federal intrusion we have in sovereignty, the better off Indian people are going to be.”

Tribal advocates pushed for this new legislation in part because without it, domestic violence crimes were left to the federal government to prosecute — which often didn’t happen.

The federal government declined to prosecute 50 percent of the cases in Indian country referred to U.S. attorneys from 2005 to 2009, according to a 2010 Government Accountability Report (pdf). That rate was higher for violent crimes, at about 52 percent. For sexual abuse, the rate was 67 percent.

Federal officials have said the high declination rates occur in part because evidence is difficult to come by, especially in assault cases, and witnesses are often reluctant or unwilling to testify.

According to a 2010 law, the Justice Department is required to report its declination rates for cases on Native American reservations to Congress, but has yet to report rates for recent years. A Justice Department spokesman said it would be filing a report to Congress with that information in April.

One federal prosecutor told FRONTLINE that the declination number for major crimes has since gone down, in part because cooperation between tribes and federal officials has improved, making it easier to gather the evidence needed to try and win cases. But he declined to provide specific figures.

One Tribe on the Fast-Track

For the most part, justice on the reservation for the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla in northeastern Oregon looks a lot like justice elsewhere in America.

Tribal law enforcement officers receive the same training as state police, and the judge has a law degree. Defense attorneys are provided for those who ask for them, and the tribe is able to prosecute major felonies. Those who are convicted serve their time in the county jail.

But when it comes to domestic violence, it’s almost as if the system doesn’t exist.

About half of the 3,000 people living on or near the Umatilla reservation are non-Native, many of them married to women from one of three tribes: the Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla. Tribal officials have no jurisdiction over non-Native men on the reservation.

Women there often don’t even bother to report abuse, said Brent Leonhard, an attorney for the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla’s Office of Legal Counsel.

“There’s real reluctance because of the belief — which was correct — was that it wouldn’t be prosecuted, which just makes it more dangerous for the victim,” he said.

Leonhard said the lack of domestic violence prosecutions had led some to buy into the false belief that abuse doesn’t even exist on the reservation, further isolating victims and emboldening their abusers.

The law could change that.

At Umatilla, it’s a practical matter of updating the tribal code to allow the tribes’ courts to prosecute non-Indians. Under the Tribal Law and Order Act, passed in 2010, tribes were allowed to prosecute some felonies, and even to impose jail sentences of up to three years. Most tribes didn’t use the new power because their systems weren’t strong enough, and they lacked the funds to upgrade them.

But for the communities that did, like the Umatilla, their legal codes are current enough that they won’t need to make as many adjustments, Leonhard said.

Leonhard hopes to have the provisions in place by the end of the year. Then, he’ll petition the attorney general to expedite the process to begin prosecutions of non-Native abusers.

“I think, and I hope, it will make a very large difference,” he said.

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Italian court orders new trial for Amanda Knox

Italy’s highest criminal court ordered a whole new trial for Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend on Tuesday, overturning their acquittals in the gruesome slaying of her British roommate.

By FRANCES D’EMILIO

Originally published Tuesday, March 26, 2013 at 3:46 AM

Associated Press

ROME —

Italy’s highest criminal court ordered a whole new trial for Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend on Tuesday, overturning their acquittals in the gruesome slaying of her British roommate.

The move extended a prolonged legal battle that has become a cause celebre in the United States and raised a host of questions about how the next phase of Italian justice would play out.

Knox, now a 25-year-old University of Washington student in her hometown of Seattle, called the decision by the Rome-based Court of Cassation “painful” but said she was confident that she would be exonerated.

The American left Italy a free woman after the 2011 acquittal and after serving nearly four years of a 26-year prison sentence from a lower court that convicted her of murdering Meredith Kercher. The 21-year-old British exchange student’s body was found in November 2007 in a pool of blood in the bedroom of a rented house that the two shared in the Italian university town of Perugia. Her throat had been slit.

Raffaele Sollecito, Knox’s Italian boyfriend at the time, was also convicted and acquitted.

It could be months before a date is set for a fresh appeals court trial in Florence, which was chosen because Perugia has only one appellate court. Italian law cannot compel Knox to return for the new trial and one of her lawyers, Carlo Dalla Vedova, said she had no plans to do so.

`’She thought that the nightmare was over,” Dalla Vedova told reporters on the steps of the courthouse. “(But) she’s ready to fight.”

He spoke minutes after relaying the top court’s decision to Knox by phone from the courthouse shortly after 2 a.m. local time in Seattle.

Another Knox defender, Luciano Ghirga, was gearing up psychologically for his client’s third trial. Ghirga said he told Knox: “You always been our strength. We rose up again after the first-level convictions. We’ll have the same resoluteness, the same energy” in the new trial.

Still, it was a tough blow for Knox, and she issued a statement through a family spokesman.

“It was painful to receive the news that the Italian Supreme Court decided to send my case back for revision when the prosecution’s theory of my involvement in Meredith’s murder has been repeatedly revealed to be completely unfounded and unfair,” she said.

Knox said the matter must now be examined by “an objective investigation and a capable prosecution.”

“No matter what happens, my family and I will face this continuing legal battle as we always have, confident in the truth and with our heads held high in the face of wrongful accusations and unreasonable adversity,” Knox said.

The young woman had planned to sit down with a U.S. TV network to tell her story in a prime-time special to be broadcast April 30. The exclusive ABC News interview was timed to the publication of her new book `’Waiting to Be Heard.”

It wasn’t immediately clear if there were any plans to delay the book, given the court setback.

Dalla Vedova said Knox wouldn’t come to Italy “for the moment” but would follow the case from home. He said he didn’t think the new appeals trial would begin before early 2014.

Prosecutors alleged Kercher was the victim of a drug-fueled sex game gone awry. Knox and Sollecito denied wrongdoing and said they weren’t even in the apartment that night, although they acknowledged they had smoked marijuana and their memories were clouded.

An Ivory Coast man, Rudy Guede, was convicted of the slaying in a separate proceeding and is serving a 16-year sentence. Knox and Sollecito were also initially convicted of the murder and given long prison sentences, but were then acquitted on appeal and released in 2011.

Whether Knox ever returns to Italy to serve more prison time depends on a string of ifs and unknowns.

Should she be convicted by the Florence court, she could appeal that verdict to the Cassation Court, since Italy’s judicial system allows for two levels of appeals – by prosecutors and the defense alike. Should that appeal fail, Italy could seek her extradition from the United States.

Whether Italy actually requests extradition will be a political decision made by a new government being formed right now after last month’s inconclusive national election.

In the past, Italian governments on both the left and the right refused Italian prosecutors’ request to seek extradition for the trial of 26 Americans accused in the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Milan as under the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. All 26 were tried in absentia, convicted of having roles in the abduction and received sentences ranging from seven to nine years. It will be up to the new government to decide if they will seek extradition to serve the sentences, all but three of which have been confirmed by the supreme court to date.

Ultimately, it will be up to U.S. authorities to decide to send Knox to Italy to serve any sentence if she was convicted. Dalla Vedova noted that U.S. authorities would likely carefully study all the documentation in the case to decide whether the U.S. citizen had received fair trials.

U.S. and Italian authorities could also come to a deal that would keep Knox in the United States.

The United States in the past extradited to Italy an Italian woman convicted in a domestic U.S. terrorism case after a deal was reached that she would serve out the rest of her sentence in her homeland. Instead, Italian authorities released her from prison not long after she arrived back in Italy, citing medical reasons.

Sollecito, who turned 29 on Tuesday, sounded shaken when a reporter from Sky TG24 TV reached him by phone to ask about the legal setback.

“Now, I can’t say anything,” said the Italian, who has been studying computer science in the northern city of Verona after finishing up an earlier degree while in prison.

One of his lawyers, Luca Maori, said neither Sollecito or Knox ran any danger of being arrested. `

‘It’s not as if the lower-court convictions are revived,” he said, noting that the Cassation Court didn’t pronounce “whether the two were innocent or guilty. ”

The appeals court that acquitted Knox and Sollecito had criticized virtually the entire case mounted by prosecutors, and especially the forensic evidence which helped clinch their 2009 convictions. The appellate court noted that the murder weapon was never found, said that DNA tests were faulty and that prosecutors provided no murder motive.

In arguing for the acquittals to be overturned, the prosecutor described the Perugia appellate court as being too dismissive about whether DNA tests on a knife prosecutors allege could have been the one used to slash Kercher’s throat and DNA traces on a bra belonging to the victim could be reliable findings, as well as tests done on blood stains in the bedroom and bathroom.

Whether that argument swayed the top court at this point was unclear, said Dalla Vedova.

Sollecito’s attorney, Giulia Bongiorno acknowledged that perhaps the appeals court ruling had been “too generous” in ruling that the pair simply did not commit the crime, but was confident that Sollecito’s innocence would be affirmed.

The court on Tuesday also upheld a slander conviction against Knox. During a 14-hour police interrogation, Knox had accused a local Perugia pub owner of carrying out the killing. The man was held for two weeks based on her allegations, but was then released for lack of evidence.

Her defense lawyers have contended that Knox felt pressured by police to name a suspect so her own interrogation could end.

Because of time she served in prison before the appeals-level acquittals, Knox didn’t have to serve the three-year sentence for the slander conviction. The court on Tuesday also ordered Knox to pay 4,000 euros ($5,500) to the man, as well as the cost of the lost appeal.

It was not known why the court concluded the appellate court had erred in acquitting Knox and Sollecito and won’t be until the Cassation judges issue their written ruling.

But Prosecutor General Luigi Riello, who successfully argued before the Cassation panel of judges for the acquittals to be overturned, said he thought it could be significant that the slander conviction was upheld. He noted that the appellate court – in explaining the acquittals – apparently didn’t attribute to Knox’s falsely accusing the pub owner a possible motive of covering up any of her own involvement.

The new trial in Florence will be `’guided by the principles” laid down in the written Cassation’s explanation, Riello said. Should the Cassation judges think `’there is a link” between Knox’s reason for fingering the pub owner and the murder, it could bolster prosecutors, he said.

The Kercher’s attorney, Francesco Maresca, said after Tuesday’s ruling: “Yes, this is what we wanted.”

In her statement, Knox took the Perugia prosecutors to task, saying they “must be made to answer” for the discrepancies in the case. She said “my heart goes out to” Kercher’s family.

—

AP writer Colleen Barry in Milan contributed to this report.

Judge orders BIA to reconsider Duwamish Tribe recognition

Posted on Indianz.com

Monday, March 25, 2013

For the first time, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has been ordered to explain why it denied federal recognition to a tribal petitioner.

The BIA has been successful in beating back lawsuits from groups that were refused recognition. But a federal judge said the agency didn’t do a proper job of explaining why the Duwamish Tribe of Washington, whose leaders filed a petition in 1977, didn’t make the cut.

“As previously discussed, the [Interior] Department‘s decision not to acknowledge the Duwamish is an extremely weighty one for the Duwamish people,” Judge John C. Coughenour wrote in the 19-page decision that was issued on Friday. “Moreover, concerns about the basis for the Department‘s acknowledgment decisions have plagued the process and undermined confidence in that process.”

Under former assistant secretary Ada Deer, the BIA proposed to deny recognition to the tribe in 1996. But in the final days of the Clinton administration, acting former assistant secretary Michael Anderson said the tribe deserved federal status.

The new Bush administration, however, put a hold on the decision and former assistant secretary Neal McCaleb denied the tribe in September 2001. Coughenour said the move was “arbitrary and capricious” because McCaleb evaluated the petition under a different set of rules than Anderson.

“Plaintiffs should not be left to wonder why one administration thought their petition should be considered under both sets of rules, but a second did not,” Coughenour wrote.

Coughenour ordered the BIA to re-evaluate the petition under the rules that led Anderson to grant recognition or to explain why it won’t do so.

Turtle Talk has posted documents from the case, Hansen v. Salazar.

Source Indianz.com