Staff enjoyed a morning treat of warm whole wheat frybread. Photo by Brandi N. Monteuil
By Monica Brown, Tulalip News Writer
TULALIP, Wash.-There’s something about frybread, maybe it’s that you can smell it a mile away and that scent brings back so many memories. This recipe was received as a request to test and it was surprisingly good. Since it contains mostly whole wheat flour it offers more filling fiber, which also helps to lower the net carbs of this tasty snack. The recipe indicates that it will make eight small frybread but I was able to make just over ten.
Since it is important to having slightly fluffy frybread, be sure that your baking powder is fresh. Test it by placing a tsp. into a small cup of warm or hot water, if it bubbles up immediately then it is still fresh. If not you will either need to buy more or make your own by combining, 1 tsp baking soda, 2 tsps cream of tartar and 1 tsp of corn starch (optional). Baking soda can be tested for freshness in the same manner but by placing a tsp in a small amount of vinegar.
This recipe can be found at www.diabetes.ihs.gov in the printed materials section. If you have a recipe that you would like to share please send it in to mbrown@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov. Recipe adapted from What’s cooking, Healthy in Warm Springs, Sara Lee Thomas, MS, RD and Edison Yazzie
Whole wheat Frybread
Ingredients:
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
3 tablespoons powdered milk
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt (optional)
1 ½ cups warm water
Canola oil
Preparation:
Mix dry ingredients in a bowl and gradually add water to make dough. Knead the dough until it forms a ball and comes clean from the edge of bowl. Cover with a cloth and let sit for 30 minutes.
Pour about ¾ inch of canola oil into a deep frying pan and heat on medium. Test the temperature of the oil by putting a small pinch of dough into it. If the oil is ready, the will rise immediately to the top.
Divide the dough and knead into 8 round balls. Pat and stretch or roll dough out into flat circles until the dough is ¼ to ½ inch thick. With a fork, poke a few holes in the flattened circles of dough.
Carefully slide a flattened dough round into the hot oil to avoid splashes. Slightly lift frybread to check the bottom, when it is begins to brown turn it over. When both sides are done remove from oil, drain excess oil and place on baking sheet lined with paper towels.
Nutrition Information Makes 8 frybread
240 calories, 10g Total fat, 1g Saturated fat, 220-510mg Sodium, 35g Carbohydrate, 4g fiber, 6g Protein
whole wheat frybread with homemade jam. Photo by Brandi N. Montreuil
By: Ross P. Lanzafame, American Lung Association National Board Chair
Harold Wimmer, American Lung Association National President and CEO
E-cigarette use among middle school children has doubled in just one year. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that e-cigarette use also doubled among high school students in one year, and that 1 in 10 high school students have used an e-cigarette. Altogether, 1.78 million middle and high school students nationwide use e-cigarettes. Yet, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still is not regulating e-cigarettes. The absence of regulatory oversight means the tobacco industry is free to promote Atomic Fireball or cotton candy-flavored e-cigarettes to our children. Clearly, the aggressive marketing and promotion of e-cigarettes is reaching our children with alarming success.
It is well known that nicotine is a highly addictive substance, whether delivered in a conventional cigarette or an e-cigarette. The use of sweet flavors is an old tobacco industry trick to entice and addict young children to tobacco products, and the entrance of the nation’s largest tobacco companies into this market clearly is having an impact. Why does Big Tobacco care about e-cigarettes? Tobacco use kills more than 400,000 people each year and thousands more successfully quit. To maintain its consumer ranks and enormous profits, the tobacco industry needs to attract and addict thousands of children each day, as well as keep adults dependent. Big Tobacco is happy to hook children with a gummy bear-flavored e-cigarette, a grape flavored cigar or a Marlboro, so long as they become addicted. We share the CDC’s concern that children who begin by using e-cigarettes may be condemned to a lifelong addiction to nicotine and cigarettes.
In addition, the American Lung Association is very concerned about the potential safety and health consequences of electronic cigarettes, as well as claims that they can be used to help smokers quit. With no government oversight of these products, there is no way for the public health and medical community or consumers to know what chemicals are contained in an e-cigarette or what the short and long term health implications might be. That’s why the American Lung Association is calling on the FDA to propose meaningful regulation of these products to protect to the public health.
The FDA has not approved e-cigarettes as a safe or effective method to help smokers quit. When smokers are ready to quit, they should call 1-800-QUIT NOW or talk with their doctors about using one of the seven FDA-approved medications proven to be safe and effective in helping smokers quit.
According to recent estimates, there are 250 different e-cigarette brands for sale in the U.S. today. With that many brands, there is likely to be wide variation in the chemicals that each contain. In initial lab tests conducted by the FDA in 2009, detectable levels of toxic cancer-causing chemicals were found — including an ingredient used in anti-freeze — in two leading brands of e-cigarettes and 18 various e-cigarette cartridges. That is why it is so urgent for FDA to begin its regulatory oversight of e-cigarettes, which must include ingredient disclosure by e-cigarette manufacturers to the FDA.
Also unknown is what the potential harm may be to people exposed to secondhand emissions from e-cigarettes. Two initial studies have found formaldehyde, benzene and tobacco-specific nitrosamines (a well-known carcinogen) coming from those secondhand emissions. While there is a great deal more to learn about these products, it is clear that there is much to be concerned about, especially in the absence of FDA oversight.
People hold signs during one of many worldwide “March Against Monsanto” protests against Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and agro-chemicals, in Los Angeles, California Saturday. Photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
By Renee Lewis, 12 October, 2013. Source: Al Jazeera
Activists from around the globe participated in a global ‘March Against Monsanto’ Saturday, calling for the permanent boycott of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This was the second global, anti-Monsanto protest — the first took place on May 25 with over 2 million participants, organizers said.
Photos appear to show hundreds of marchers taking to the streets in cities around the world including Vienna, London, Chennai and Sydney. Rallies have kicked off in U.S. cities as well including Los Angeles and Denver.
Critics of Monsanto, a multi-national biotech corporation, say its seeds destroy the soil and are designed to make constant repurchase necessary because the seeds last only one generation. The seeds must also be used with a variety of the company’s other products like fertilizers, fungicides and pesticides, which have been linked to mass bee deaths.
Monsanto, which touts itself as a “sustainable agriculture company” and is worth over $55 billion, says it produces high-yield conventional and biotech seeds that enable more nutritious and durable crops and “safe and effective crop protection solutions.” The U.S. government also says Monsanto’s products are safe.
March Against Monsanto (MAM), however, says GMOs are not properly monitored to ensure public safety and that no long-term, independent studies were carried out on GMOs before they were introduced for human consumption.
“In the U.S., the revolving door between Monsanto employees, government positions and regulatory authorities has led to key Monsanto figures occupying positions of power at the FDA and EPA. Monsanto has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to obstruct all labeling attempts; they also suppress any research containing results not in their favor,” MAM said in a press release.
GMOs have been banned to varying degrees in Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Madeira, New Zealand, Peru, Russia, France, Switzerland and Costa Rica.
GMOs are labeled in 62 countries, but not the U.S. despite several attempts. Last fall, Californian voters narrowly rejected an initiative to label GMOs, and a similar initiative is on the Nov. 5 Washington state ballot.
Prominent environmentalist Vandana Shiva has been outspoken against Monsanto, particularly in light of the corporation’s link to hundreds of thousands of Indian farmer suicides.
More than 250,000 farmers have committed suicide in India after Monsanto’s Bt cotton seeds largely failed. Many farmers left in desperate poverty decided to drink Monsanto pesticide, ending their lives.
“The creation of seed monopolies, the destruction of alternatives, the collection of superprofits in the form of royalties and the increasing vulnerability of monocultures has created a context for debt, suicides and agrarian distress,” Shiva wrote.
Josh Castro, organizer for the Quito, Ecuador march said in a press release that he hopes to stop the “destructive practices of multinational corporations like Monsanto.”
“Biotechnology is not the solution to world hunger … Monsanto’s harmful practices are causing soil infertility, mono-cropping, loss of biodiversity, habitat destruction and contributing to beehive collapse.
Climate change is ruining beer, maple syrup, chocolate — even your favorite Cosby sweater. Now we can add fish to the list. SWELL.
Basically, warming waters make killifish hungrier, according to new research. Then these bitty fish at the bottom of the food chain eat more mercury-tainted food than usual, storing lots of metal in their tissue as a present for everyone up the food chain, from tuna to humans. Mercury: the gift that keeps on giving! (Did we mention it’s increasingly in bird eggs too?)
Quoth the Washington Post:
[K]illifish at the bottom of the food chain will probably absorb higher levels of methylmercury in an era of global warming and pass it on to larger predator fish, such as the tuna stacked in shiny little cans in the cupboards of Americans and other people the world over.
“The implication is this could play out in larger fish…because their metabolic rate is also increasing,” said Celia Chen, a professor at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and one of six authors of the study. “Methylmercury isn’t easily excreted, so it stays. It suggests that there will be higher methylmercury concentrations in the fish humans eat as well.”
Lest you think the Minamata Convention on Mercury last week was just scientists in lab coats breaking open thermometers and cackling wildly, that’s where this research was discussed. Oh yeah, they also signed a massively important treaty:
Delegates from 130 nations at the three-day convention that ended Friday met to sign a treaty that seeks to greatly limit emissions from coal-fired power plants from industrial nations, mining operations in Africa and other sources that pollute oceans.
Good thing no Americans were there because of the government shutdown! (Le sigh.) Who wants a tuna sandwich?
Holly Richmond (hollyrichmond.com) writes and edits things for fun and money. She worked for Grist in the 1890s. Please follow her on Twitter because that is the entire basis of her self-esteem.
From left, Sean Overcash, Alwyn Galang, Vicki Steffen, Elaine Ferri and China Zugish represented the Marysville Kiwanis and Key clubs at the Marysville Albertsons during last year’s All-City Food Drive. — image credit: File Photo
Source: Marysville Globe
MARYSVILLE — With the holidays just around the corner, volunteers from several organizations will kick off the Marysville All-City Food Drive on Saturday, Nov. 2, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., to help neighbors in need this season by collecting donations of money, food and unused toys.
Volunteers from the Kiwanis, the Lakewood High School Leadership Class, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, city of Marysville staff, Soroptimist International, HomeStreet Bank, the Lions Club, the local Junior ROTC, the Marysville Fire District and local youth groups will be collecting donations at various participating local grocers and retail stores.
“You can make a real difference in lives of children and families, knowing that your donations and gifts will go directly to families in the community,” Marysville Community Food Bank Director Dell Deierling said.
Year-to-date food and financial donations are down, while the number of families coming to the Food Bank is up 6 percent, making the need all the more real.
Volunteers will be collecting donations at the Marysville Fred Meyer, Grocery Outlet, Haggen, Albertsons, Walmart in Quil Ceda Village and east Marysville, and the Safeway stores in Marysville and Smokey Point.
Red barrels will be located throughout the Marysville community starting Nov. 2, and will continue to collect food and toys throughout the holiday season.
Donations can also be dropped off at the Marysville Community Food Bank, located at 4150 88th St. NE, behind St. Mary’s Catholic Church.
For more information about the All-City Food Drive, contact Tara Mizell by phone at 360-363-8404, or via email at tmizell@marysvillewa.gov.
Have you ever wondered about the origin of Soda Pop or Soft Drink?
Here are some interesting facts about soda pop that Americans drink regularly and if they knew exactly what they were putting in their bodies, “would they think twice?”
Origin: Soda pop actually originated in pharmacies. It was used as a drug or pharmaceutical substance. Several inventers of certain brands of soda pop, such as John Pemberton, the inventor of Coca-Cola, were pharmacists who patented soda pop as medicine. Adding to its appeal, Coca-Cola was known to relieve indigestion and dyspepsia.
Because soda pop was supposed to be a great reliever of dyspepsia, a brand was finally produced whose name was hidden in the word “dyspepsia”. We can find Pepsi within the word dys(pepsi)a.
Fact: Soda pop contains some of the most harmful synthetic sweeteners in existence. Many brands of soda pop contain aspartame and saccharin, both of which are artificial sweeteners and are proven to cause cancer.
Fact: Soda pop contains high amounts of a drug called caffeine.
Twenty to thirty percent of American adults consume more than 500 milligrams of caffeine per day. This is twice the amount that doctors consider to be a large “drug dose.”
Digesting caffeine places severe stress on your heart. It also drives your nervous system into a state of sympathetic alert, the state you attain when a wild animal is chasing you and you are running for your life.
Most well-known and liked soda brands are loaded with caffeine.
Consider the following:
Mountain Dew – 54.0 milligrams
TAB – 46.8 milligrams
Coca-Cola – 45.6 milligrams
Diet Coke – 45.6 milligrams
Shasta Cola – 44.4 milligrams
Dr. Pepper – 39.6 milligrams
Pepsi-Cola – 38.4 milligrams
RC Cola – 36.0 milligrams
Fact: Carbon dioxide is also another ingredient that makes soda effervescent. Carbon dioxide is a natural waste product that the body produces. Carbon dioxide is released with every exhalation. So when you drink soda, you are putting carbon dioxide back into the body even though the body naturally expels it with every exhalation. Essentially, nature takes out the carbon dioxide and then people put it back into their body. Soda pop is predominantly carbon dioxide and colored sugar water.
Fact: Petroleum-based chemical color dyes or lake dyes are dangerous to human health. Yellow Lake, Blue Lake, Red Lake, and Green Lake are all carcinogenic, e.g. toxic, and/or cancer causing.
Suggestion: Cider is far better for your health than any brand of soda pop. So, while you may still be ingesting carbon with cider and/or sparkling fruit juice, you are not digesting the harmful chemical sugars, caffeine, phosphoric acid, caramel, phenylalanine, and preservatives that are commonly found in soda pop.
This is an informational message to provide Health knowledge to our employees. This is not intended to criticize or depreciate any certain brand of soda pop.
Let’s take control of our health and fill our bodies with good nutrition-DRINK WATER!
SEATTLE — A fight over how much fish people eat in Washington — and thus, how much toxic pollution they consume — is now in federal court.
Conservation and commercial fishing groups sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday, saying the agency has for too long let state officials underestimate fish consumption, resulting in weaker anti-pollution standards than are needed to protect the public.
The groups, including Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, Columbia Riverkeeper and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, reason that if the estimates were more realistic, the state would have to more strictly regulate emmissions of mercury, lead, copper and other toxins — a prospect that concerns industry groups and that emerged as a sticking point in budget talks in Olympia last spring.
Businesses must obtain permits before they can discharge pollutants into the state’s waters under the federal Clean Water Act, and increasing the estimate of how much fish people eat could result in those permits becoming more restrictive.
The state Ecology Department has worked for years on updating the fish consumption estimates, but Janette Brimmer, an attorney with the environmental law firm Earthjustice, which filed the lawsuit, said it has amounted only to so much dithering. EPA’s failure to make the state update its consumption estimates violates the Clean Water Act, she said.
“Washington has known for years their estimates are inappropriate and inaccurate,” she said. “They keep having task forces and roundtables, and nothing is happening. My clients finally said enough is enough.
The EPA could not be reached for comment because of the federal government shutdown.
Washington’s estimate is that average fish consumption amounts to just 8 ounces — roughly one fillet — per person, per month. That figure originally came from federal guidelines published in 1990, but the EPA began backing away from that more than a decade ago and urging states to adopt more realistic estimates.
Surveys show that actual fish consumption rates in Washington are vastly higher, especially among certain populations such as American Indian tribes, sport and commercial fishermen, Asians, and Pacific Islanders — some of which average as much as the equivalent of a moderate-sized fillet per day, rather than per month.
Ecology recognizes the estimate is too low and continues working on developing new standards, said spokeswoman Sandy Howard. The department is pushing toward issuing a draft rule early next year.
“This is very difficult work. The business community has been very vocal; they believe it’s impossible work,” Howard said. “We think we can have a balance where we can have environmental protection and a thriving economy.”
During the special session of the Legislature last spring, Ecology’s efforts to update the fish consumption estimate surfaced as a late point of contention holding up a budget deal. Following concerns voiced by Boeing Co., one of the state’s largest employers, the Senate proposed doing a larger study on the issue. The study would have derailed Ecology’s efforts, but ultimately was not funded.
Jocelyn McCabe, a spokeswoman for the Association of Washington Businesses, said the members of her organization remain concerned about how the consumption estimates could ultimately affect them.
“Health and human safety is of course the first priority,” McCabe said. “But there are competitveness issues going forward. It’s natural for us to look at new regulations that will affect industries’ capability to keep their doors open and people employed.”
Last month, Washington and Oregon officials announced that people should limit how much non-migratory fish, such as bass, bluegill and perch, they eat from a 150-mile stretch of the Columbia River, based on new data about contamination from mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. That prompted an angry response from some tribes, who said the states should focus on cleaning up the river rather than telling people to limit what they eat.
MARYSVILLE — Mayor Jon Nehring has proclaimed October to be Domestic Violence Awareness Month in Marysville. Police and other city officials are donning purple ribbons on their uniforms and on their vehicles in support of raising awareness about domestic violence.
Behind all of the ribbons and proclamations are two women who work specifically to help domestic violence victims in Marysville and other communities. Legal Advocacy Director Lisa Nicholson and Victim Advocate/Prevention Educator Alyssa Morgan have been on the front lines, combating the issue, through Domestic Violence Services of Snohomish County in Everett.
The city of Marysville began contracting for their services last February. Nicholson and Morgan share an office in the Marysville Municipal Court building where they provide social service support to victims.
In the past fiscal year, the agency has served 128 residents in Marysville. Services range from legal assistance in criminal and civil courts, to support groups, shelter and transitional housing for victims. Domestic Violence Services of Snohomish County also runs the New & Again Thrift Shoppe, through which all proceeds go toward helping victims, and residents of the shelter and transitional housing can receive items at no cost to them.
The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence states that domestic violence is one of the most chronically underreported crimes. Annually, domestic violence affects more than 4 million Americans, one in three people have witnessed a domestic violence incident, and children who grow up in violent homes are believed to be abused and neglected at a rate higher than the national average, according to statistics.
Nicholson and Morgan hope their broad range of services will reverse the trend.
“Victims should know that, if they call 911, they will be supported,” said Nicholson, who added that victims can also call their free and confidential 24-hour hotline at 425-252-2873. “Know you’re not alone. We’re here.”
Domestic Violence Awareness Month provides an opportunity for citizens to learn more about preventing domestic violence, and to show support for the numerous organizations and individuals who provide critical advocacy, services and assistance to victims. Both women see it as a collective effort between their office, Marysville Police and other city officials. They praise the city for making the domestic violence issue a priority, and believe that Marysville sees the benefit of having legal advocates in the community.
“Marysville is an example to other jurisdictions,” Nicholson said. “We’re a blend of systems-based advocacy, and community-based advocacy, and that offers a more comprehensive set of services.”
Nicholson and Morgan hope that Domestic Violence Awareness Month will not only bring awareness to the issue, but better understanding.
“Victims need support through the process, because it’s not as simple as saying, ‘Just leave,’” Morgan said.
“There are other dynamics,” Nicholson said. “Fear of being hurt, fear of your children being hurt, income, no resources — it’s not easy to pick up and leave.”
They also hope awareness brings more funding for prevention programs, including education as early as elementary school, to help children learn the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships, and an emphasis on not glamorizing teen violence.
“If more people are aware, more victims are willing to call,” Morgan said.
In this Oct. 8, 2013 photo provided by the North Dakota Health Department, a vacuum trucks cleans up oil in near Tioga, N.D. The North Dakota Health Department says more than 20,000 barrels of crude oil have spewed out of a Tesoro Corp. oil pipeline in a wheat field in northwestern North Dakota. Officials say the 20,600-barrel spill, among the largest recorded in the state, was discovered on Sept. 29 by a farmer harvesting wheat about nine miles south of Tioga. NORTH DAKOTA HEALTH DEPARTMENT — AP Photo
October 10, 2013
By JAMES MacPHERSON — Associated Press
BISMARCK, N.D. — A North Dakota farmer who discovered an oil spill the size of seven football fields while out harvesting wheat says that when he found it, crude was bubbling up out of the ground.
Farmer Steve Jensen says he smelled the crude for days before the tires on his combines were coated in it. At the apparent break in the Tesoro Corp.’s underground pipeline, the oil was “spewing and bubbling 6 inches high,” he said in a telephone interview Thursday.
What Jensen had found on Sept. 29 turned out it was one of the largest spills recorded in the state. At 20,600 barrels it was four times the size of a pipeline rupture in late March that forced the evacuation of more than 20 homes in Arkansas.
But it was 12 days after Jensen reported the spill before state officials told the public what had happened, raising questions about how North Dakota, which is in the midst of an oil boom, reports such incidents.
The spill happened in a remote area in the northwest corner of the state. The nearest home is a half-mile away, and Tesoro says no water sources were contaminated, no wildlife was hurt and no one was injured.
The release of oil has been stopped, state environment geologist Kris Roberts said Thursday. And the spill — spread out over 7.3 acres, or about the size of seven football fields, — has been contained.
Jacob Wiedmer, who was helping Jensen harvest his wheat crop, likened the Sept. 29 discovery to the theme song from “The Beverly Hillbillies” television show.
“It was just like Jed Clampett shooting at some food …” he said of the oil coming from the ground. “Except we weren’t hunting, we were harvesting.”
Gov. Jack Dalrymple, who says he wasn’t even told about what happened until Wednesday night, said the state is now investigating its procedures for reporting spills.
“There are many questions to be answered on how it occurred and how it was detected and if there was anything that could have been done that could have made a difference,” Dalrymple said Thursday, when questioned at a news conference on a separate topic.
“Initially, it was felt that the spill was not overly large,” Dalrymple said. “When they realized it was a fairly sizable spill, they began to contact more people about it.”
Jensen said he had harvested most of his wheat before the spill, but the land is no longer usable for planting.
“We expect not to be able to farm that ground for several years,” he said.
Tesoro Logistics, a subsidiary of the San Antonio, Texas-based company that owns and operates parts of Tesoro’s oil infrastructure, said in a statement that the affected portion of the pipeline has been shut down.
“Protection and care of the environment are fundamental to our core values, and we deeply regret any impact to the landowner,” Tesoro CEO Greg Goff said in a statement. “We will continue to work tirelessly to fully remediate the release area.”
Wayde Schafer, a North Dakota spokesman for the Sierra Club, said the spill is an example of the lack of oversight in a state that has exploded with oil development in recent years.
“We need more inspectors and more transparency,” Schafer said. “Not only is the public not informed, but agencies don’t appear to be aware of what’s going on and that’s not good.”
Eric Haugstad, Tesoro’s director of contingency planning and emergency response, said the hole in the 20-year-old pipeline was a quarter-inch in diameter. Tesoro officials were investigating what caused the hole in the 6-inch-diameter steel pipeline that runs underground about 35 miles from Tioga to a rail facility outside of Columbus, near the Canadian border.
Roberts said state and federal regulators are monitoring the cleanup, and Tesoro estimated it would cost $4 million.
A natural layer of clay more than 40 feet thick underlies the spill site and has “held the oil up” so that it does not spread to underground water sources, Roberts said.
“It is completely contained and under control,” Roberts said Thursday. “They got very lucky.”
Follow James MacPherson on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/macphersonja
Citing the 1987 Proxmire Act, which enables the United States to prosecute acts of genocide, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has asked the federal government to file suit against the state of South Dakota for crimes against tribal children. The tribe’s homeland is in the prairies and badlands of North and South Dakota; one of its most revered leaders was Sitting Bull, who is said to have prayed Native forces to victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Standing Rock’s tribal council urged the United States to take action in a September 17 resolution claiming that South Dakota has been taking its children into care and adopting them out of the tribe illegally, in violation of the Indian Child Welfare Act. The resolution was passed the day after a child-welfare advocate informed the council that a young tribal member whom the state’s Department of Social Services (DSS) had placed with a white adoptive couple was homeless on the streets of Aberdeen, South Dakota.
The advocate, Shirley Schwab, recalled tracking down the 18-year-old. “When she came into the Burger King where we’d agreed to meet, I saw that her life had been reduced to what she could fit into a small blue duffel bag. No driver’s license, no money, no cell phone, little more than the clothes on her back.”
“When she turned 18, she exercised her right to live on her own,” said the teen’s adoptive mother, Wendy Larson Mette. “As far as I knew, she was living with friends, going to school.”
Schwab said a fellow Aberdeen resident had contacted her about the teen’s plight because of Schwab’s prior knowledge of the girl. Public court records show that in 2010, the teen and her siblings reported that their adoptive father, Richard Mette, had sexually and physically abused them for more than a decade. A deputy state’s attorney initiated a law-enforcement investigation. Police visited Richard and Wendy Larson Mette’s house and found sex toys and stacks of pornographic magazines and videotapes in bedrooms and common areas. The children were moved to another home. Schwab became their court-appointed special advocate.
DSS appears to have been long aware that this was a problem household. As early as 2001, Richard and Wendy signed an agreement, now a court document, with DSS. In the agreement, the couple, who are divorced, promised DSS officials to lock up their pornography and stop “swatting, spanking, kicking and tickling” the foster children placed with them. DSS later allowed the couple to adopt most of the children.
When asked if she believed her children had been sexually abused, Larson Mette said, “I fully believe and support my children in this accusation.” She said she found her ex-husband’s treatment of the children “horrifying,” but said that over the years, she had never noticed any indications of the sexual abuse, including related injuries or behavioral changes: “What are perceived to be the obvious signs were not there. They had great attendance in school.”
Larson Mette called the 2010 police report accurate in terms of “room location or quantity” of pornography, but claimed that over the years she had personally seen only some of the material.
Court records and local media reports show that South Dakota cut a deal with the father, who is now serving the relatively light sentence of 15 years for child rape. The state dropped cruelty charges against Larson Mette, and despite allegations that she had tolerated the sexual abuse, returned the children to her.
The state then undertook to discredit publicly the children and their advocates. This included a retaliatory prosecution of Schwab and the deputy state’s attorney, who were fully acquitted at trial. Court documents and sworn testimony show state criminal investigators took the teen and her younger siblings to a basement interrogation room in order to get them to recant the abuse claims. The children were interrogated individually, without an adult present on their behalf. They wept and said they were frightened, but none recanted.
“When I met the 18-year-old and saw what her life had become after such trauma, I was devastated,” said Schwab. “I could hardly breathe.”
Within a few days of Schwab contacting Standing Rock, the tribe had flown the teen to safety with tribal kin out of state. “Our chairman said, ‘She’s our relative, get the plane ticket now,’” recalled tribal councilwoman Phyllis Young, who added that adoptive and foster parents have been known to turn children away after they turn 18 and government subsidies end.
Young said that three Standing Rock children remain in the Larson Mette home, and the tribe is very concerned about their safety; as a result, it will sue for custody. The councilwoman noted that in recent years Standing Rock children have been victims in notorious and widely reported South Dakota cases involving sexual abuse by white adoptive fathers, all of whom are serving time.
“If they file, I will do whatever is necessary,” said Larson Mette. “My children are happy. I love them, they love me. We are trying desperately to put our lives back together and move forward.” She called that a “fair” representation of their situation.
In addition to moving to protect young tribal members, Standing Rock has requested that the South and North Dakota Congressional delegations hold hearings on Indian child welfare. The tribe has also contacted the United Nations about submitting material for the United States’ upcoming human-rights review.
Importantly, the tribe is working with the federal government to develop its own child-welfare infrastructure. This will help solve a problem that tribes and Indian-child-welfare advocates have long decried—South Dakota’s habit of taking Native children into custody and placing them in white households and white-run group homes, thereby undermining tribal culture and sovereignty. The Oglala and Rosebud Sioux tribes and the American Civil Liberties Union recently sued the state in a related matter.
“This all epitomizes the state of South Dakota’s total disregard for Native children,” said Schwab.
Neither South Dakota’s attorney general nor DSS director replied to requests for comments on any of these matters.
“The language of the Standing Rock tribal council resolution is both specific and global,” said Young. “We act on behalf of this teen and her siblings, and for all Native children who have been taken from their tribal communities.” The Proxmire Act includes reparations, she said, and the tribe wants the children’s reparations to include lifelong therapy for the abuse they have suffered.
“What is happening to our children is like war crimes,” Young continued. “We heard terrible things at hearings we just held at Standing Rock. Over the years, many Indian women have asked me to help get their children back. Some of our children the state has in its custody right now are Sitting Bull descendents. This has historic dimensions. We at Standing Rock are taking this to the limit.”
