The mystery of how Native Americans managed to survive the last Ice Age 25,000 years ago has finally been solved. they got through the extreme cold by battening in one place and feasting on woolly mammoths.
Researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the Universities of Colorado and Utah believe they have worked out where Native Americans spent the 10,000 years before they settled in Alaska and North America.
Published in the journal Science, the scientists analysed fossils showing that ancestors of Native Americans lived in a region between Siberia and Alaska where there were enough woody plants to make fires to keep warm.
Prior to their findings, it was a mystery where Native Americans jumped the Ice Age gap and spent ten millenna before they arrived in the US.
Scott Elias, of Royal Holloway, said: “This work fills in a 10,000-year missing link in the story of the peopling of the New World.”
“Once burning, large leg bones of ice-age mammals would have burned for hours, keeping people alive through Arctic winter nights.”
–Researcher Scott Elias
The study shows how ancestors of Native Americans lived on the Bering Land Bridge, which now lies beneath the waters of the Bering and Chukchi Seas. The central part of Beringia was covered in shrub tundra – the dominant vegetation in modern Arctic Alaska – with dwarf willow, birch shrubs, moss and lichens abundant.
They made their discovery after analysing insect and plant fossils found in sediment cores taken from the ancient land bridge surface, around 60 metres below the water’s surface.
Elias said: “We believe that these ancestors survived on the shrub tundra of the Bering Land Bridge because this was the only region of the Arctic where any woody plants were growing. They needed the wood for fuel to make camp fires in this bitterly cold region of the world.
“They would have used dwarf shrub wood to get a small fire going, then placed large mammal bones on top of the fire, to ignite the fats inside the bones. Once burning, large leg bones of ice-age mammals would have burned for hours, keeping people alive through Arctic winter nights.”
U.S. SENATE –Today the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs held an oversight hearing on the importance of Early Childhood Development and Education in Indian Country – one of the first in a series of hearings examining the critical state of education in Indian Country.
“As a former educator, I know first-hand the impacts that a quality education can have on young folks throughout their lives, and I believe that improving those opportunities can be a starting point for addressing many of the issues that are too prevalent across Indian Country,” said Committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-MT).
“When we invest in early childhood education, we are investing in not only the child, but the family and community around him or her,” Tester added. “And to me, that is good policy. Another important benefit is the ability of our programs to support Native languages, and help preserve and protect these important connections to Native culture and identity – something I strongly support.”
According to Federal data, in the 2011 school year, the percentage of children and youth served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was highest for American Indians/Alaska Natives. In 2010, approximately 28.4 percent of the AI/AN population lived in poverty compared with approximately 15.3 percent of the total population. In 2010, unemployment on Indian reservations was at approximately 50 percent and 49 percent of AI/AN children lived with parents who lacked secure employment compared to approximately 33 percent of the total U.S. population.
Children in AI/AN families are also more likely to experience violence, substance abuse and neglect. A study of Adverse Childhood Experiences in seven tribes found that approximately 86 percent of participants had one or more adverse experiences and approximately 33 percent had four or more. Approximately 28 percent of AI/AN households with children were food insecure, compared with approximately 16 percent of non-AI/AN households.
“Given these facts, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is moving forward through a number of programs to improve the well-being and education of AI/AN children,” said Linda Smith, Deputy Assistant Secretary and Interdepartmental Liaison for Early Childhood Development of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families. “Administration for Children and Families has four important programs that serve children prenatally through school entry. These efforts mirror the President’s Early Learning Initiative, which starts with home visiting as the entry point for early childhood services through the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program and also includes: The Child Care and Development Fund; Early Head Start and Head Start Programs; The Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge Program; and The Tribal Early Learning Initiative.”
Smith added, “As with all of our nation’s early learning programs, there is more that could be done to provide more high quality, stable programs for all of our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.”
“American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children need quality child care settings to improve lifelong outcomes. Increased risk factors such as poverty, low birth weight, and low educational attainment of mothers contribute to the need for investment in quality child care in Indian country,” said Barbara Fabre, a tribal member from the White Earth Nation in Minnesota, and Chairwoman of the National Indian Child Care Association. “There are many challenges faced by American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children. Tribal child care is a vehicle for intervention and support of quality care and cultural strengths. The Federal government must take into account the needs of tribal communities, which must be determined by tribal communities, and served by tribal programs in order to make meaningful changes to practices. Reduced funding and resources will continue to undermine tribal culture and American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children’s development.”
“Currently over 90 percent of Native American students are in public schools,” saidDanny Wells, Executive Officer for the Division of Education, representing the Chickasaw Nation. “There are too many issues in public schools to expect the teachers or administrative staff to be aware of tribal programs, which results in tribal students being disconnected to services that could help them perform better academically and socially. Tribal representatives should have access to student records (attendance, grades, etc.) so that tribes can become partners with the schools to improve the tribal student’s education or prevent at-risk students from failing or dropping out of school.”
Dr. Elizabeth Costello, professor with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine and Associate Director for Research,
Duke University Center for Child and Family Policy reviewed her 20 year research on the impact of children from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina. Her researched showed a substantial impact of a relatively small economic boost to families of the tribe. “Based on these data, we can choose to pay less now or pay more later. Our tax dollars can support poor families while their children are growing and developing. Or we can pay the higher costs of their lack of education, obesity, alcohol abuse, and crime in the health care and criminal justice systems and in loss of economic productivity down the road. Twenty years of research make the choice very clear.”
Makah tribal member Alex Wise works to wrap one of the halibut hooks during a community volunteer session where the hooks were made. He later used them in a test fishing project.
A fish hook has tied history, culture and the Makah community together in unexpected ways.
The čibu·d (pronounced “cha bood”), or halibut hook, became the subject of a student project during an internship with Makah Fisheries Management.
“I had a student, Larry Buzzell, come to me wanting to do a project that related to historical fishing methods,” said Jonathan Scordino, marine mammal biologist for the Makah Tribe.
Historically the hooks were made of both wood and bone. As the tribe gained access to new materials, they also made hooks from metal.
“The goal of the project was to test if the čibu·d was more selective for catching halibut than contemporary circle hooks when fished on a longline,” Scordino said.
Setting up the experiment was challenging because the study required 200 čibu·d to be made by hand.
“We decided to put it out to the community to see if they would come in and help us make them,” Scordino said.
The Makah Cultural and Research Center (MCRC) opened its exhibit preparation space for several weeks to allow community members to come in and help make the hooks.
“The response was terrific,” Scordino said. “Several volunteers put in more than 20 hours making čibu·d.”
Through trial and error, the group learned it was better to bend the metal hooks cold rather than heat the metal. The design of the hook more closely mimics Polynesian fishing gear than historical North American fishing gear.
Elder Jesse Ides (Hushta) watched as young people learned to make the hook he used in his youth.
“It’s terrific seeing them show the determination to make it and use it,” Ides said.
He recalled his father hauling canoes out to the halibut grounds to fish. “You’d catch just halibut with that gear, nothing else,” he said.
Makah tribal member Alex Wise discusses his halibut hook project with Jacqueline Laverdure, education specialist for the Olympic Coast Marine Sanctuary prior to receiving a Student Scientist award from the Feiro Marine Life Center.
Alex Wise is finishing the project by writing up how the catch of halibut and bycatch compared between čibu·d and circle hooks during the study. “It was an interesting project. I have always been interested in fisheries and it just seemed like the right choice for me,” said Wise, who won a Art Feiro Science Student of the Year award recently from the Feiro Marine Life Center in Port Angeles for his work on the hooks.
“The čibu·d was known to not only fish selectively for halibut, but not catch too small or too big a halibut,” Scordino said. “From a management perspective, that’s exactly the size you want to catch so the older spawners remain and the young grow to be a harvestable size.”
Tribal member Polly McCarty, who helps prepare exhibits at the MCRC, was thrilled to see the community participation.
“This museum and its contents belong to the village,” McCarty said. “It was wonderful to have them come in and interact with the history.”
A parallel project is to film the creation of wooden čibu·ds. Additionally an exhibit was created in the Makah Fisheries Management building with the kelp line and hooks, and descriptions of the history. A Preserve America and a cooperative National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant helped pay for the projects.
U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, center, dances around a drum circle with students at the Head Start early education center in Crow Agency, Mont., on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2014. Tester is the new chairman of the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee and says he’ll use his new role as chairman to target wasteful spending, improve educational opportunities and promote job development on reservations. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)
By Matthew Brown, Associated Press, 2/19/2014
CROW AGENCY, Mont. (AP) — The new chairman of the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee said Wednesday he plans to use the post to target wasteful spending, improve educational opportunities for Native Americans and promote job development on reservations.
Montana Sen. Jon Tester outlined his agenda for the committee that oversees relations with the nation’s 566 recognized tribes during a visit to the Crow Indian Reservation with fellow Democrat Sen. John Walsh.
After a breakfast meeting with tribal leaders, the pair toured a Head Start education center and later danced with preschoolers around a drum circle.
Crow leaders showed the lawmakers cracks in the ceiling at the preschool and took them to the furnace room where a boiler dating to the 1960s was held together with vise grips to keep it running.
Tester said he was determined to address decades of dysfunction in how the government deals with tribes. He said excessive administrative costs incurred by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Indian Health Service and other agencies have drained money from crucial programs including health care and education.
“This is about making sure those dollars that are allocated go to the intended purpose. If there’s waste, eliminate it. And if it means eliminating jobs, then eliminate the jobs,” he said.
Brian Cladoosby, president of the National Congress of American Indians, said problems with the government’s treatment of tribes stem largely from outdated laws and regulations that make Native Americans subservient to federal agencies.
That started to change in recent years — with rules giving tribes more power over their land and property — but further improvements are needed, Cladoosby said.
Tester said too many bureaucratic roadblocks hinder tribes’ attempts to become self-reliant, such as the Crow tribe’s efforts to expand coal mining on the southeastern Montana reservation.
However, Tester added that he would tread carefully to avoid infringing on the sovereignty of West Coast tribes opposed to coal export terminals in Washington and Oregon.
The proposed terminals are key to the coal industry’s aspirations to ship more of the fuel overseas from the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, in part to make up for flagging domestic demand. Tribes on the West Coast have raised concerns about potential environmental impacts of the shipping.
“I cannot go in and tell another tribe that we’re going to respect the Crow’s sovereignty but we’re not going to respect your sovereignty,” Tester said. “That’s a very dangerous position to put yourself in.”
Despite limits on what the senator can deliver for his home state, Crow leaders said they were pleased to have someone familiar with their concerns assume the influential post of committee chairman.
Crow Secretary A.J. Not Afraid said tribes in Montana and elsewhere on the Great Plains have different needs than tribes in other parts of the country that are closer to population centers and able to bring in significant revenue through gambling.
Those opportunities don’t exist for the Crow, Not Afraid said.
Crow Chairman Darrin Old Coyote said Tester understands the differences.
“He gets it,” Old Coyote said. “He understands our plight and what we’re fighting fo
A kindergarten Ojibwe immersion class, where students spend most of their day learning in the language native to the region, could be an option for a Duluth elementary school next year.
A kindergarten Ojibwe immersion class, where students spend most of their day learning in the language native to the region, could be an option for a Duluth elementary school next year.
The Duluth School Board will vote on adding such a program Tuesday.
“It’s a big move,” said Edye Howes, coordinator of the American Indian education program for the Duluth school district. “Historically, the Duluth American Indian community hasn’t had much trust in Duluth public schools. This would be a statement: Look what we’re willing to do to start strengthening and building a relationship.”
Shannon O’Nabigon beats a rhythm on the drum as she and other children sing “Weya Heya,” an Ojibwe counting song, in the Ojibwe Language Nest at the University of Minnesota Duluth in 2009. Teacher Gordon Jourdain is at right. From left are George Petersen, Eleanor Ness and Grace Russell. The Duluth school district will vote Tuesday on whether to add a kindergarten Ojibwe immersion class at one of the district’s elementary schools. (File / News Tribune)
Immersion programs, such as those for Spanish, have grown in popularity nationwide for their ability to develop cognitive skills, especially at a young age. Such programs also help to broaden a student’s worldview and the ability to think from another perspective, Howes said.
For a few years, the Duluth district has partnered with the University of Minnesota Duluth and its Enweyang Ojibwe Language Nest for young children, currently teaching those up to pre-K. Gordon Jourdain teaches that class, which also serves as a lab for students at UMD who plan to teach Ojibwe.
Immersion programs do more in helping with the achievement gap than anything else, Jourdain said.
“They are very successful in the Duluth public school system as a result of being exposed to multiple languages,” he said, noting that he hears from former parents on how past students are doing. “It’s the opportune time for brain development and language acquisition.”
At a recent School Board meeting, Superintendent Bill Gronseth said the program would be a good way to begin improving the American Indian graduation rate.
“Knowing that it’s one of the lowest of the subgroups,” he said, “it would go a long way to improving our future.”
Jourdain, from Ontario, spoke Ojibwe before he spoke English. He also has an Ojibwe-fluent classroom assistant so students can hear regular conversation.
He teaches through a different lens, he said, taking the kids outside to demonstrate words.
“It’s a good way for language development,” he said. “If you’re talking about snow and it’s falling on their nose, they will live what it is; they are living the language. I am not teaching about it.”
While Duluth has not yet proposed a school for the class, plans are for between 15 and 20 students. The district would hire either a licensed teacher who speaks Ojibwe fluently or one who speaks it as a first language. The plan would include an assistant who speaks the language and comes in regularly. The proposed program eventually would consist of one class for each grade, adding one grade per year. For the first year, the cost would be roughly $153,000, with most of the money paying for the cost of the teacher — which already is allocated to the school — and the assistant. The rest would come out of state integration funds.
Aside from time with specialists such as a physical education teacher, the class would be taught entirely in Ojibwe.
Because the Ojibwe language doesn’t include numerals, numbers would be spelled out with words for the subject of math, for example.
Lydia Shinkle sends her daughter to the UMD language nest. She said she’d drive her wherever they place a class if it’s approved, and she knows of other parents who would.
“She is part Native American, and it is important to me that she has that link to her culture,” Shinkle said of her daughter, Natalia. “It’s something you can’t find anywhere else … We’re losing the language every day, and it’s important to preserve it for the next generation so she can teach others around her.”
Finding one teacher won’t be difficult, said William Howes, coordinator of the Duluth school district’s Office of Education Equity. Between UMD and the College of St. Scholastica, and beyond the Twin Ports, many programs are committed to producing licensed Ojibwe teachers, he said. Finding six might not be as easy, but with a staggered approach there would be time, he said.
“Much has been done and has happened to indigenous languages, but they are still alive and viable,” William Howes said.
Places such as federal boarding schools forced generations of American Indians to assimilate to white culture and prevented them from speaking their native languages.
“Everything within Ojibwe culture and tradition is within our language, just like any culture,” William Howes said. “As we begin immersion, we want to begin with the language spoken here first.”
Steve Madison will be at the Hibulb Cultural Center on Saturday, February 22, at 1 p.m. for our Culture Series event. He will demonstrate Pacific Northwest Native Design.
Please save Saturday, March 29, 2014 for a very important event!
Join hundreds of Marysville community members, business leaders, parents, students and school district staff in an educational summit to help design the future for our district and our kids. We need your ideas, your energy, and your voice.
Anyone preparing or serving food on the reservation is required to have a current food worker card. Upon completion of the class and a passing test score, a food worker card will be issued which will be valid for three years from the test date. This card is valid for employment on the reservation only.
Snohomish County Elections has released the preliminary results for the Feb. 11 Special Election.
Marysville School District Proposition 1, the replacement Educational Programs Maintenance and Operations Levy has received 4,253 “Yes” votes (54.33 percent) and 3,575 “No” votes (45.67 percent).
Marysville School District Proposition 2, the new Technology Levy, has received 4,370 “Yes” votes (55.80 percent) and 3,462 “No” votes (44.20 percent).
Lakewood School District Proposition 1, the bond to renovate Lakewood High School, has received 1,208 “Approved” votes (57.28 percent) and 901 “Rejected” votes (42.72 percent).
