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Tulalip TERO, working together with Tulalip Resort Casino, Quil Ceda Village and the Goodwill Training Center, are offering a one week course in Customer Service and Cash Handling. Successful completion of this training will count as 6 months Cash Handling / Customer Service experience with all TRC and QCV positions.
Please see flyer for all information. Class size is limited so don’t delay. Contact Lynne at 360.716.4746 for more info.
Jonathon GreyEyes has one word of advice for Native students interested in pursuing challenging, satisfying and well paid careers: STEM.
Okay, it’s really four words—science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Those are the areas of study students should focus on in order to move ahead in the 21st century global workplace, GreyEyes says.
GreyEyes, a Navajo Nation citizen, is a small business liaison officer for the massive, multinational Boeing Company, the world’s leading aerospace company and the largest manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft combined. Boeing also designs and manufactures rotorcraft, electronic and defense systems, missiles, satellites, launch vehicles and advanced information and communication systems. In short, the company is involved in everything that flies and/or uses technology, which is to say just about every business and employment opportunity in the global marketplace.
As a small business liaison officer, GreyEyes works to increase small and diverse business participation in support of the Boeing’s company goals and objectives. As a Native American, he tries to engage Indian country as much as possible by seeking out not only small Native-owned businesses for Boeing to partner with, but also Native students who are potential Boeing employees.
“My responsibilities primarily are to maximize opportunities for small businesses of any type to participate [in] Boeing’s activities,” GreyEyes told Indian Country Today Media Network. “Now, being Native American, I’ve tried to seek out Native American companies to participate in the different research, primarily research and development.”
Boeing and other large companies that receive government contracts actively recruit employees in the Native American community, GreyEyes said. “There’s lots of opportunity in just about any field in which somebody would want to work. For most jobs a college degree is going to be required. I think across the board—not just in the Native American community, but in any group that you want to look at. We’re seeing a decline in [students pursuing] the STEM fields…and so I would encourage students (and I’m encouraging my own children) to focus on these areas where they have an aptitude and an interest because there’s a lot of opportunity in [these] fields.”
One of the ways he seeks out both small Native-owned businesses and Native students is through the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, whose mission since 1977 has been to substantially increase American Indian and Alaska Native representation in the STEM fields—as students, professionals, mentors, and leaders, according to its website.
The AISES national conference is one of the big annual events that Boeing supports every year. The company interviews and hires new employees there. “It’s very important to Boeing to give everybody an opportunity to participate with Boeing either as an employee or as a subcontractor—and, fortunately, that’s why people like me have a job maximizing opportunity!” he said. GreyEyes is a lifetime member of AISES as a Sequoyah Fellow. The program was named in memory of Sequoyah, who perfected the Cherokee alphabet and syllabary in 1821, resulting in the Cherokee Nation becoming literate in less than one year, according to the AISES website. “In this spirit, AISES Sequoyah Fellows are recognized for their commitment to AISES’s mission in STEM and to the American Indian community. They bring honor to AISES by engaging in leadership, mentorship, and other acts of service that support the students and professionals in the AISES family,” the site says.
What GreyEyes does at Boeing, essentially, is match jobs to businesses. He looks at the scope of work that the company intends to subcontract and then provides the program manager with as many opportunities and alternatives in terms of small businesses that can provide the services. “In the area of research and development it’s typically very specialized. I don’t get involved until it’s [a job] over $650,000—that’s a government threshold for requiring a subcontracting plan—so that would be a small contract and some of the large contracts would be in hundreds of millions of dollars.”
GreyEyes said he loves his job and the most exciting thing is the variety of projects the company pursues. “I always tell people I’m living in a Star Trek world. Some of the contracts that we’ve won just stagger the imagination. I’m always amazed at the types of things we research. We have thousands of investigative researchers researching anything you can imagine,” he said.
One of Boeing’s recent innovations was the development of the Standoff Patient Triage Tool—an instrument Homeland Security dubbed as technology “to boldly go where no medical responder has gone before.” The wireless gizmo can detect a person’s vital signs—including whether a person is alive or dead—remotely from up to 40 feet away. The original intent was for battlefield use, but like other inventions developed for war the tool has numerous civilian applications including at fires, car crashes, mass casualties and other disasters.
Boeing has a number of programs that benefit its employees, including a program that pays employees to get graduate degrees, GreyEyes said.
There is a Native American affinity group to support the sizeable number of Native employees in the company, GreyEyes said. The group is organized regionally and nationally and is involved in all aspects including recruiting and mentoring Native students. “They might be showing them what life is like at a large corporation, helping them understand why education is so important and how it’s going to benefit them when they come to a large corporation like Boeing.
“In addition, through AISES we talk students through all stages of their education from middle school on through graduate school, and we try to get them tied in to particular people at Boeing who might be good contacts for when they’re ready to look for employment and then at events like the AISES national convention where we have several people doing active hiring and interviewing on site—members of the affinity groups are involved in all those stages, and it’s not part of their job it’s just something they do on top of it because it’s important,” GreyEyes said.
Once people are employed at Boeing, the affinity group brings everyone together to talk about what life is like there and whether any issues the affinity group should raise need to be addressed. “It’s just general support for each other,” GreyEyes said.
To view the range of job opportunities at Boeing, log onto its website at Boeing.com and click Careers on the menu bar.
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/12/26/boeing-has-jobs-stem-students-152764
MARYSVILLE — Marysville School District Superintendent Dr. Becky Berg has invited local legislators and leaders from the Marysville and Tulalip community to a roundtable meeting to discuss current educational issues and topics of mutual interest.
“Issues surrounding the state of education have never been more pressing. This meeting will provide us an opportunity to come together and discuss the current state of education, state funding impacts, educational mandates such as TPEP (new teacher evaluation system) and the Common Core State Standards. Our children are our most valuable assets, we must all work together to provide them with the best education possible. I appreciate this time together to discuss these and other important issues” said Dr. Berg.
Participants will meet in the district’s board room beginning at 11 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 6. Invited guests will hear a brief overview on the district followed by discussion, guest comments, and a time for questions and answers.
Although only invited guest will participate in the discussion, the meeting is open to the public and there will be a designated seating area for those who would like to attend to view and listen to the process.
For more information, email jodi_runyon@msvl.k12.wa.us.
RadKIDS programs comes to a close
Article and photos by Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
Students run from the big man in a bright red suit. No, it isn’t Santa Clause, it’s a stranger. Students of the radKIDS program at Tulalip Quil Ceda Elementary graduated on December 16th, taking turns displaying their defensive skills on Tulalip Police Officer Clayton Horne who wore a bright red padded suit.
The radKIDS program is an eight session program that teaches kids all about stranger danger as well as what to do about bullies. For the first part of the graduation, program instructors Rochelle Lubbers and Razi Liptich had the students circled up in the gymnasium shouting “STOP!” or “NO!” while reviewing their defensive moves like elbowing, toe stomping, kneeing, and kicking.
As the teachers wrapped up the review and explained to parents about the program, the kids suited up in minor padding.
“RadKIDS has gained attention nationally, being noted in several attempted abductions where the child was able to escape,” said Rochelle Lubbers, emergency management coordinator for the Tulalip Tribes.
For the final part of their graduation they were approached by officer Horne in the red suit as he tried to abduct them. The students had to choose their defensive move, then escape to tell an adult.
Grace Davis, now a radKIDS graduate, said, “I liked the program. I learned how to get away and how to tell if someone is a threat.”
Students fingerprinted their certificates as they received them, which also had a recent photo printed on them. The certificates are now important profiles for authorities, making children easily identifiable. If anything were to happen to a child, the parents would be readily prepared with recent information to give to the authorities.
By Christina Rose, ICTMN
The American Indian College Fund will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2014. Cheryl Crazy Bull, Sicangu Lakota the president and chief executive officer of the fund, reveals her hopes and goals for the fund’s future. Crazy Bull began her own career teaching at Sinte Gleska University on the Rosebud Reservation, where she worked her way up in the administration to become department chair. Crazy Bull later served as president of Northwestern Indian College in Washington state.
How has the Fund changed in the past 25 years?
The Fund started from nothing 25 years ago, is now giving $5.5 million to $6 million a year, and we have given more than 85,000 scholarships since then.
People think the funds are raised for broadly based education, but it is specifically for the 34 tribal institutions that have educated 20,000 students. The Fund was developed in 1989 by tribal college presidents to support tribal colleges and universities.
The College Fund has been able to grow in a selective environment, and is funded by individuals who are interested in supporting tribal education, and who appreciate the opportunity it brings to the disadvantaged.
What are some of the challenges the Fund has faced?
The Fund is not as broadly known as it should be to really affect those who are seriously disadvantaged. Within the market we do have name recognition; we are probably the largest Native American controlled fund in the country. We offer funding to thousands of colleges, and we support a whole range of programs. In that regard, we are pretty large, but not large enough to provide support to all who apply.
Can all of the applicants receive money through the Fund?
We can support about 25 percent of the applicants, but we estimate that 75 to 90 percent who apply are eligible for financial aid. We know there is a huge gap between what we need and what we can provide. We also know tribal colleges operate on shoestring budgets, and that they can’t compete with other college salaries. But we were able to give some funding to build a number of newer facilities.
The College Fund is in a good position to provide a place for people to invest their money. Anybody who gives money wants to know it will be well spent.
How many of the students who receive funding graduate?
The goal has been towards providing accessibility to funding and not as much effort has been put into tracking, but we are going to start looking at this. We recently did a study and a large percentage of the recipients said that they achieved their educational goals with the support they received. Students express a high level of satisfaction of their experience, and that information comes from an outside agency.
What are some of the goals?
Right now the Fund is positioning for dramatic growth. We are putting a new strategic fund in place, and we want to have a very successful campaign for the 25th anniversary in 2014. We are also preparing to ambitiously work on new marketing programs with Wiedan and Kennedy, an international marketing firm, to capitalize on public interest. I am looking forward to working on that.
What is the best thing a student can do to receive funding?
Go to class and do the work, and ask for the help. To receive funding, students attending a tribal college must meet the criteria of the donor. There are two kinds of funding sources. One goes through the college, and is standard, given according to need and GPA. Then there are funds given by a donor who maybe wants to fund a health major or a certain tribe, and we administer those funds.
In the scholarship arena, the best thing for a student to do is apply. They may be remarkable and talented, but they need to apply. We want to get them to apply even if they don’t get the funding because it helps us show the funders there is a need for more, and who knows, maybe you’ll get one next time.
The Fund originated during the civil rights movement when tribal leaders decided to take education back from the failed policies of the U.S. government. The first tribal college was founded by the Navajo Nation, achieving the goal of teaching their students on the reservation. Today there are 34 tribal colleges and universities in 14 states, serving tribal members from every area of the country.
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/12/16/american-indian-college-fund-celebrate-25-years-152627
MARYSVILLE — The Marysville-Pilchuck High School Winter Concert will kick off at 7 p.m. on Dec. 17 in the M-PHS auditorium.
This holiday event will feature the school’s award-winning concert choir, symphonic band, wind ensemble and jazz ensembles.
The musical selections are set to include seasonal favorites such as Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride,” and Leontovych and Wilhousky’s “Carol of the Bells,” as well as classical selections from Johann Sebastian Bach and more contemporary pieces from Harry Belafonte.
As always, musical performances at M-PHS are family events and free to the public.
Source: Indian Country Today Media Network
On December 11, Dr. Charles M. “Monty” Roessel was named Director of the Bureau of Indian Education while touring a BIE tribally controlled grant school located on the Pueblo of Laguna in Laguna, New Mexico.
The announcement came from Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn, who accompanied Roessel and Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell on the tour.
The Navajo Nation member had been serving as the acting director since February 2012.
The initial tour included a roundtable with principals from other local tribally controlled grant schools and BIE-operated schools and will be used by Interior for it’s “American Indian Education Study Group, a group that is working to improve educational outcomes for American Indian students attending BIE-funded schools,” according to a Department of the Interior release.
“The BIE plays a major role in the education of thousands of American Indian students across Indian country,” Washburn said. “As acting director, Dr. Charles M. Roessel has proven to be an effective steward of our Indian education programs, bringing to the Bureau extensive experience in school leadership and administration, and an understanding of what’s needed at the local school level. He is a strong and effective member of my senior management team.”
Roessel brings a background of educational wealth into the Washington, D.C. based position. In 2007 he started his service as superintendent of Rough Rock Community School, a BIE-funded, tribally operated K-12 boarding school near Chinle, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation reservation. He had been with the school since 1998 where he started as director of community services. In 2000 he became the schools executive director. In 2011 he was named the BIE’s Associate Deputy Director for Navajo Schools. In the position Roessel oversaw 66 BIE-funded schools throughout Arizona, New Mexico and Utah on the Navajo Nation reservation. From 2010 to 2011 he served as chair of the DOI’s No Child Left Behind Negotiated Rule Making Committee and on the Sovereignty in Navajo Education Reauthorization Task Force with the Navajo Education Department of Diné Education according to the release.
“I want to thank Assistant Secretary Washburn for his confidence in me for this important post,” Roessel said. “I am looking forward to working with Assistant Secretary Washburn and his team to ensure that the Bureau of Indian Education continues to fulfill its two-fold mission of providing our students with a quality education while respecting tribal cultures, languages and traditions.”
Roessel will now be reporting directly to Washburn and will head a staff that includes three associate deputy directors who are responsible for education line offices serving 183 BIE-funded elementary and secondary day and boarding schools, along with peripheral dormitories located on 64 reservations in 23 states. Throughout the BIE-funded schools more than 40,000 American Indian and Alaska Native students from federally recognized tribes receive their education.
In addition, the Bureau “serves post-secondary students through higher education scholarships and support funding to 26 tribal colleges and universities and two tribal technical colleges.” The Bureau also runs Haskell Indian University in Lawrence, Kansas and the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico – two post-secondary institutions.
While Roessel was at Rough Rock Community School, the first American Indian-operated, and the first Navajo-operated school when it opened in 1966, he oversaw a major school replacement and improvement project funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The project was carried out by the Indian Affairs Office of Facilities, Environmental and Cultural Resources with the new facilities opening its doors on August 5, 2011.
Roessel holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Photo-Communication/Industrial Arts from the University of Northern Colorado-Greeley (1984), a Master of Arts degree in Journalism from Prescott (Arizona) College (1995) and a Doctorate of Education degree in Educational Administration and Supervision from Arizona State University in Tempe (2007).
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/12/12/washburn-names-dr-charles-roessel-director-bie-152669
Come see what it takes to get your GED
December 18, 2013, 5-7PM, Tulalip Administration Building, Room 263, 6406 Marine Drive, Tulalip
RSVP: 360.716.4888, Tulalip Higher Education
On most measures of educational success, Native American students trail every other racial and ethnic subgroup of students. To explore the reasons why, Education Week sent a writer, a photographer, and a videographer to American Indian reservations in South Dakota and California earlier this fall. Their work is featured in this special package of articles, photographs, and multimedia. Commentary essays offer additional perspectives.
December 4, 2013 Education Week
Article by Lesli A. Maxwell
Like many Native American students, Legend Tell Tobacco, a 10-year-old on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge reservation, must outrun the odds against his educational success
Ten hours after leaving in the dark for the 15-mile ride to Loneman School, Legend Tell Tobacco bounds down the steps of the yellow school bus and runs back home.
He takes off in a full sprint, black hair flopping, down Tobacco Road, a half-mile-long stretch of dirt named for his family. He slows to a trudge when the rutted road rises steeply to reach his house on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, a place where the promise of youth is often stifled by the probabilities of failure.
A starkly beautiful place, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is home to the Oglala Lakota Nation where education for most remains a yet-to-be fulfilled promise for moving families out of profound poverty.
Legend just turned 10 and is in the 4th grade, and yet, he must constantly confront obstacles that could cause him to stumble into one of the grim statistical categories for which Pine Ridge—like much of the nation’s Indian Country—is well known:
High school dropout.
Unemployed.
Dead before 50.
Legend grins widely when announcing that he reads the same “chapter books” as 7th and 8th graders. He likes math, too, especially multiplication.
“Most of all,” he says, “I love to run.”
After a long day at Isna Wica Owayawa, the Lakota name for Loneman School, the laughing shrieks of his cousins beckon. But his aunt, Mary Tobacco, asks about homework. “I don’t have any,” he says quietly, stubbing his silver sneakers into the dirt. She raises an eyebrow and asks again. “No, really,” he says.
“Be back at six for dinner,” she tells him firmly, as he darts off to play in the horse corral.
Ms. Tobacco, a college graduate, prays this nagging and nurturing will keep her nephew on a course to high school graduation, a college degree, and a decent job. More urgently, she prays she’ll get a call from Red Cloud, the private Jesuit school where she believes Legend would get the best shot at succeeding. He’s on the waiting list.
“The two most important things I want for Legend,” she says, “are for him to get his education and for him not to drink. But I don’t know if I can completely protect him from ending up on a path that so many other youth on this reservation take.”
On the 2.8 million-acre Pine Ridge Indian Reservation—home to nearly 40,000 members of the Oglala Lakota Sioux nation—alcoholism and suicide, especially among young people, occur at alarmingly high rates. Families that have been poor since the U.S. government forced tribes onto reservations more than 120 years ago see few prospects for breaking out of seven or eight generations of profound poverty.
Outrunning those odds for Legend and other American Indian youths living on and off reservations is perpetually challenging. Over the past decade, as the high-stakes school accountability era saw every other racial and ethnic subgroup of students make steady, if small, improvements in education outcomes, Native American youths, on the whole, stalled or lost ground.
“The state of American Indian education is a disaster,” says David Beaulieu, a professor of educational policy and community studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe-White Earth.
Read more here.
By Samantha Fox
sports@uncmirror.com
December 2, 2013
Last week Americans celebrated Thanksgiving. It’s widely taught in elementary school the first Thanksgiving lent a table to newfound peace between the Native Americans and the settlers.
The story we’re told is revealed by white Americans, who have a vested interest in the narrative. As such, our understanding is certainly somewhat skewed, and has indirectly resulted in the use of Native American images as team mascots.
The movement to remove Native American mascots began in the late 1970s, but very few changes have actually been made to date.
Many, including the Washington football team’s owner Dan Snyder, argue against changing the mascots because of the identity it has created for former players and community revolving around the team.
But supporters of a wide-sweeping change opine that Native Americans are marginalized by the nicknames. Many tribes are categorized together simply as “Native American,” based on social structure centered around white culture.
One intramural basketball team set out to flip the tables in 2002 when the Fightin’ Whites formed at UNC after the Coloradans Against Ethnic Stereotyping in Colorado Schools (CAESCS) tried to get Eaton High School to change its mascot.
CAESCS was started at the University of Northern Colorado by former doctoral candidate Dan Ninham and current professor of special education Francie Murry in an attempt to get rid of racially-based mascots, beginning with Eaton’s. The attempt failed but former Native American Student Services director Solomon Little Owl and former students formed the Fightin’ Whites intramural basketball team.
“The message is, let’s do something that will let people see the other side of what it’s like to be a mascot,” said Little Owl of the topic to the Greeley Tribune in 2002. “I am really offended by this mascot issue, and I hope the people that support the Eaton mascot will get offended by this.”
The team quickly became a national story with various news sources across the country taking the story to the viewers, and Lynn Klyde-Silverstein, assistant professor of journalism and mass communications, found the public had three
general reactions to the team after the media coverage was split in three different directions.
The main response was that people found satire in the idea, leading to Fightin’ Whites T-shirt purchases with the proceeds going to a scholarship at UNC. The other two findings were less favorable for the group. Some saw the team name as a waste of time and a third group saw it as an expression of white pride.
“One thing I’ve noticed and in my research I’ve found this too, is that whites don’t understand their privilege, a lot of whites,” Klyde-Silverstein said. “Because what happens is there were a lot of letters to the editor that said, ‘Well, I’m white and I think it’s great that we finally have a mascot.’ They don’t understand that when you’re a minority that it’s different, it feels different.”
A wide-spread counterpoint against changing the Native American mascots is that the Notre Dame Fighting Irish nickname doesn’t spark the same controversy.
Supporters of the Native American monikers ask what the difference is between the types of nicknames. Why don’t Irish-Americans react with vitriol to the Notre Dame leprechaun mascot?
Mark Shuey, an adjunct professor of sociology at UNC, said the power structure of American society dictates an important difference between Native American and Irish mascots and offered regarding the Fightin’ Whites’ inability to gain much traction outside of the area.
“The Fightin’ Whites cannot diminish the white group collectively because (whites) still have the power,” Shuey said. “It’s the same with the Fighting Irish. Initially the Irish were excluded, relegated to the lower realms of society, like Native Americans and Negroes.
Through generations they were absorbed into the dominant group, no one’s going to suggest the Fighting Irish isn’t insensitive because they’re part of the power structure; they’re part of the dominant group.”
There have been two examples in Colorado that show change-based thought on the issue, but no action has occurred since the early 1990s when General William J. Palmer High School in Colorado Springs changed its mascot from a Native American to an Eagle, keeping the mascot name of Terrors because of pressure from the community. Loveland High School said it was willing to change its Indian mascot, but no change has been made in the 11 years since the school first agreed to remove its Native American mascot.
So how do changes actually happen? Various attempts have been made, even at UNC when the 2001-2002 Faculty Senate voted 11-7 with five abstentions to encourage the athletic department to avoid competition against teams using racial mascots.
Still, the Big Sky accepted UNC’s former North Central Conference foe North Dakota in 2012 and last season the football team opened its season against Utah, nicknamed the Utes.
When North Dakota joined the Big Sky Conference last season, The Mirror was instructed by the sports information department not to use the school’s mascot and other publications refuse to use the racially-driven mascots.
“What I teach my students is, if you’re perpetuating a stereotype, then that’s bad,” Klyde-Silverstein said. “If you’re using the word ‘Redskin’, isn’t the perpetuating it?
“People may say that’s advocacy, but isn’t it advocating for stereotypes if you’re using the term ‘Redskin?’ To use the Chief Wahoo (Cleveland Indians logo) picture, isn’t that perpetuating a stereotype? I think by not doing anything you’re still doing something.”
It’s been nearly 30 years since movements began to change the mascots, but the change remains relatively localized. Perhaps the biggest possible change would be a total change of course by Snyder in renaming his football team. The pressure on the NFL and Snyder has increased recently, but he remains resolute.
Klyde-Silverstein said she wants her students to avoid racial monikers as well.
Courtesy of UNC Libraries Archival Service
The “Fightin’ Whites” printed shirts that read “The Fightin’ Whities” after an error in a Mirror article added an “i” to the team’s name.
