Officials are responding to a spill of oily bilge water in Washington’s Puget Sound. The spill occurred at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor and has spread 10 miles north to Hood Canal.
State agencies estimate that up to 2,000 gallons spilled Monday when a ship was pumping out oily discharge at the naval facility. The pier-side transfer system failed and overflowed.
Initially the Navy estimated that 150 gallons spilled, but by Tuesday other agencies were disputing that amount.
The Washington Department of Ecology has conducted fly-overs and said that the sheen has spread as far as the Hood Canal Bridge, 10 miles north of the base.
The Navy did not immediately respond to requests for an interview.
There were no documented impacts to wildlife as of Tuesday afternoon, but the Department of Health advised against harvesting shellfish from the affected area.
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).
Nisqually elder Billy Frank Jr., a lifelong fisherman who led the battle for Treaty Indian fishing, speaks to an audience of tribal leaders past and present, activists, but most of all friends, remembering the Boldt Decision with stories. Photos of “The Old Swede,” as Billy called Judge Boldt, hung as a backdrop in memory of his momentous decision. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News
When do your rights expire? When do the terms of treaties cease? Never. The Boldt Decision sought to resolve these questions. In 1970, at the height of tensions between Puget Sound tribes and the State of Washington, the United States on behalf of the tribes filed suit against the State of Washington for violating the tribes’ treaties. More than three years later Judge George H. Boldt, who heard U.S. v. Washington and for whom the decision is named, handed down his decision in favor of the tribes, reaffirming the treaties and rights secured to Indians therein. Forty years later, tribal leaders from Puget Sound tribes, activists, and other notable people involved in the battle for Treaty Indian fishing rights gathered February 5th and 6th in Squaxin Island to remember the fight to protect their right, to discuss the importance of the Boldt Decision and all that it accomplished, and to reaffirm the commitment to continue the fight.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the State of Washington began filing injunctions, blocking Indian fisheries in the name of conservation. Indian people throughout the Puget Sound, though, continued to fish, practicing their culture and feeding their families, risking arrest and violence from state law enforcement.
Billy Frank Jr., Nisqually elder and prominent figure throughout the Boldt Decision, said, “We came down to the river, and they [the cops] had confiscated everything. ‘Where are our nets? Our boats?’ I thought. ‘How are we supposed to feed our families?’”
“We had to fish at night, which was dangerous. But we had to fish at night because it was illegal. What could we do? It was our way of life, we couldn’t stop,” recalled Hank Adams, a Native American activist from the Assiniboine Sioux tribe. Adams fished with Billy Frank and his family on the Nisqually River.
Frank championed the fight for treaty rights, with many leaders at that time rallied behind him and his family. Their traditional fishing grounds, Frank’s Landing, became ground zero in the battle for Treaty Indian fishing. Frank’s Landing played host to many fish-ins in protest of the injunctions, which gained national attention. Tribal leaders were joined at fish-ins by members of AIM (The American Indian Movement) and celebrities, such as renowned stage and screen actor, Marlon Brando. Most fish-ins ended in mass arrests. One famous photograph shows Brando packing two salmon up the bank at Frank’s Landing, only to be arrested with other participants.
Puyallup Elder and fisherwoman, Ramona Bennet, recalls being arrested on several occasions.
“They heard we were fishing, and the pigs [cops] come down to arrest us. Women, children, men, they didn’t care, they arrested all of us, whole families. One of the pigs went over to my mom, knee deep in fish in the back of a pickup. She told them, ‘You want my fish? HERE!’ and she picked up a fish and slapped that pig upside the head.”
Because of the tensions at Frank’s Landing, not every fish-in ended in arrest. Hank Adams remembers how nervous Thurston County Sheriffs were, not wanting to escalate the dispute.
“One day we were fishing, and Billy went up the [Nisqually] river to check the net. The Sheriffs launched two air boats at the rail bridge upriver and were comin’ for Billy. I was at his sister’s place. He come tearin’ down the river shouting, ‘Get the gun!’ So I grabbed the rifle and headed out the door. I ran down the bank and came to a clearing and ran into some other law enforcement. There was an old burnt out car, so I ran and jumped down behind it. I used my army training and used the butt of the rifle to break my fall, and when I did that the rifle went off. At the same time my hand slipped off the butt of the gun and hit what Billy tells as a broken beer bottle, but it was a Pepsi bottle. So I cut my hand on the neck of that Pepsi bottle and was bleeding everywhere. But when that gun went off, the guys in those airboats hit the deck and flew right on past Billy, and he hit the bank and was unloading his fish. Next thing we know, there’s about 30 Thurston County Sheriffs cars and some state troopers pulled up, guns drawn, and the chief jumps out in front and says, ‘Hold your fire, put your guns down, everyone just calm down.’ He come over and looked at me and my hand, ‘Come on over here I got a first aid kit in the truck,’ he said. He got me all bandaged up, the bandages were all bloody, it really just looked terrible. The newspapers the next day said, ‘Mystery surrounds evening events at Frank’s Landing. No arrests were made, though Native Activist Hank Adams sustained some sort of injury.’”
These encounters happened on a daily basis, as the state held their injunctions to be valid, and acted accordingly. Tribal families experienced hardships as heads of household were jailed repeatedly. The tribes stood firm on the treaty, fighting to protect their fishing rights, and ultimately their sovereignty.
Frank said, “Who do I go to? Do I go to the governor? Do I go to the congress? Nobody listens…oh you’re all just Indians.”
In 1970, with the state continuously challenged by the tribes, the United States as the trustee of the tribes filed suit against Washington in Federal District court, Judge George H. Boldt was assigned to the case.
Members of Judge Boldt’s family attended the celebration and were honored for his memory. His daughter, Virginia Riedinger, had this to say.
“My father grew up in Chicago with nothing but the American dream. His father moved them to Montana where he finished high school. He put himself through college, and graduated with a law degree from the University of Montana in 1926. After practicing law for more than 15 years, he enlisted to serve this country in WWII at an age that was unheard of, especially as a volunteer. When he returned he became a trial lawyer in Tacoma Washington, and was later appointed by President Eisenhower as the Federal District Court Judge in 1953, where he spent more than 25 years on the bench.
As a judge, my father held true to the laws of this country. He believed in the law, and was known for his hard decisions and expedited court processes. He often was recruited to assist in other courts across the nation that were backlogged with cases. One thing was constant, my father always did what he knew was right and I never knew him to look back with regret or doubt.”
Members of Judge Boldt’s family that attended the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the Boldt Decision. His daughter, Virginia Riedinger (center) spoke about her father and the toll the Boldt decision took on him and his family. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
As the case continued, and later was decided, Judge Boldt and his family were subjected to vicious public attacks on his reputation. A photo displayed throughout the celebration captured a burning effigy of the Judge, strung up in a tree outside the District Courthouse, all wrapped up, presumably, in an Indian fishing net. Even so, Boldt remained undeterred in his will to uphold the law.
For more than three years the case went on, hearing from both sides. The case was rather unique in some aspects, as the question of fishing rights had not been previously understood from a legal perspective. There was limited legal precedent that reaffirmed the treaties and preempted state laws. For this case, the information had to be more in depth. Charles Wilkinson, a law professor at the University of Colorado and well-known legal scholar, gave a powerful speech about the Boldt Decision.
“Judge Boldt, ruling on the basis of justice in its most luminous dimensions rather than on the strenuous hearsay and other technical objections of the state’s attorneys, accepted the elders’ testimony into evidence and listened raptly.
Ask people who saw all or most of that trial, and they will tell you that the elders’ testimony brought the whole story together. Judge Boldt had worked hard and open-mindedly on this case and, by the time the elders took the stand, he had acquired an expansive knowledge of Indian law, and all the testimony already heard may have caused him to have his final ruling in mind. But the straightforward, utterly authentic words and bearing of the traditional Native people made his decision of February 12, 1974 inevitable.”
Charles Wilkinson delivered a powerful speech on Judge Boldt, his decision on U.S. v. Washington, and what it means for Federal Indian Law today. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
Relying on testimony of the elders, along with the vast ethnographic work of scholars, such as Dr. Barbara Lane, who were called as expert witnesses, Judge Boldt looked critically at the language of the treaty. He handed down his decision in 1974 in favor of the tribes, holding the United States accountable to the promises of the Stevens Treaties of the Washington Territory, including the Treaty of Point Elliot, the Treaty of Point No Point, and the Treaty of Medicine Creek.
What did the decision mean? Was it truly a victory? At the time, not all tribal people saw it as such.
“I cried when I heard the decision. ‘We lost half our fish!’ I yelled,” said Bennet.
Others saw it as a great victory, for Washington tribes, for fishing, and treaty rights, and for tribes across the nation. The decision reaffirmed the treaties and recognized the sovereignty of tribes.
Wilkinson said, “Make no mistake about it: the transcendent contribution of the Boldt Decision was to uphold the treaty rights of the Northwest tribes. But it was also a national case about national commitments and values.”
Because the state refused to act on the decision, continuing attempts to block Indian fisheries, Judge Boldt exercised continuing jurisdiction, rarely used, which maintains the court’s control over decisions, to ensure the decision was implemented. Judge Boldt was committed to upholding the law and his decision, and his continuing jurisdiction is still in effect today.
The fight continues, though today the questions have shifted. What does it mean to have a treaty right to fish? Boldt’s decision recognized tribes as sovereign, and having a shared right to the salmon resource naming them as co-managers and regulators of the resource, but what does that mean? The fight for Treaty Indian fishing was about bringing the past forward, the fight today is about protecting the future of the resource.
Frank said, “We have to protect the salmon. Look at California. The tribes there have the first water right, but there is no water. We have a right to the salmon, but if there are none, what kind of right we got?”
Billy Frank Jr. adresses the current issues tribes face. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
Recently, what’s known as the Culvert Case held the state accountable for making streams in developed areas passable to salmon. The State Fish Consumption Rate, which affects water quality and pollution, says that, on average, citizens consume eight ounces of salmon a month, about the size of one U.S. quarter a day. For Puget Sound tribes, salmon is a staple both in diet and culture. Today, it remains central to tribal economies as it has historically, even pre-contact. If the consumption rate stands, more pollutants would be allowed to go into the water, meaning more salmon die off.
Frank said, “They’re poisoning the water. It’s poisoned. The salmon that come out of the Nisqually River, half of them are dead before they reach the Narrows [in Tacoma].”
The tribes have won the Culvert Case, and continue to work on others.
In recognition of all the ancestors, the empty chair sat at the front of the room to remind people they are still here. The basket was filled with names of people who have passed on, who fought through the Boldt Decision. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
Throughout the celebration, an empty chair sat near the front. It was a symbol of all the ancestors of the tribes that fished the Puget Sound, as well as those warriors of the Boldt Decision that have passed on; Guy McMinds, Bernie Gobin, Vernon Lane, and Chet Cayou Sr., to name a few. The importance of this chair is immense. It represents the passing of the torch to the younger generation. The celebration of the Boldt Decision was to remind the younger generation about the importance of the treaty, how hard their elders fought to protect it, and how hard they need to continue to fight for the treaty, for their sovereignty, and for their culture.
Youth from all the different tribes that attended the Boldt 40 celebration were honored and thinker, as well as reminded of their responsibility to pick up where the elders are leaving off. Andrew Gobin/Tulalip News
Andrew Gobin is a reporter with the See-Yaht-Sub, a publication of the Tulalip Tribes Communications Department. Email: agobin@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov Phone: (360) 716.4188
More than 30 tribal leaders, juvenile court judges, child advocates, juvenile justice system experts and community members from the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community testified today in the second public hearing of the Advisory Committee of the Attorney General’s Task Force on American Indian and Alaska Native Children Exposed to Violence. The hearing focused on how juvenile courts and other programs within tribal juvenile justice systems address the impact of children’s exposure to violence.
“Too many native children encounter violence in their homes and communities that can disrupt a path to living healthy adult lives, and we must do all that we can to protect these young people,” said Associate Attorney General Tony West. “By intervening early, we can help these children avoid a fate involving courts and the corrections system.”
During the hearing, experts explained how children entering tribal, state or federal justice systems are screened and treated for trauma from previous exposure to violence. They also discussed a variety of issues facing Native children in juvenile justice systems, including the availability of legal representation, tribal court transfer of juvenile cases to adult courts, culturally sensitive programs and services that divert youth from entering the juvenile justice system.
“The long-term impact of a child’s exposure to violence depends heavily on how law enforcement officials, prosecutors, defenders, judges, and corrections professionals handle that child’s case,” said Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Justice Programs Karol V. Mason. “Through the work of the task force, we hope to find ways to make the justice system a force for positive change in a young person’s life.”
The Attorney General’s Task Force on American Indian and Alaska Native Children exposed to violence is comprised of a federal working group that includes U.S. Attorneys and officials from the Departments of the Interior and Justice and an advisory committee of experts on American Indian studies, child health and trauma, victim services and child welfare and law.
The 13-member advisory committee is co-chaired by former U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan and Iroquois composer and singer Joanne Shenandoah. The advisory committee will draw upon research and information gathered through public hearings to draft a final report of policy recommendations that it will present to Attorney General Eric Holder by late 2014.
Attorney General Holder created the task force in April 2013 as part of his Defending Childhood initiative to prevent and reduce children’s exposure to violence as victims and witnesses. The task force is also a component of the Justice Department’s ongoing collaboration with leaders in American Indian and Alaska Native communities to improve public safety.
The advisory committee held its first public hearing Dec. 9, 2013, in Bismarck, N.D. and will hold additional public hearings, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. and Anchorage, Alaska.
The Office of Justice Programs (OJP), headed by Assistant Attorney General Karol V. Mason, provides federal leadership in developing the nation’s capacity to prevent and control crime, administer justice and assist victims. OJP has six components: the Bureau of Justice Assistance; the Bureau of Justice Statistics; the National Institute of Justice; the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; the Office for Victims of Crime and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking. More information about OJP can be found at www.ojp.gov.
In WHITE EARTH NATION, Minn. — Lisa Brunner remembers the first time she saw her stepfather beat her mother. She was 4 years old, cowering under the table here on the Ojibwe reservation, when her stepfather grabbed his shotgun from the rack. She heard her mother scream, “No, David! No!”
“He starts beating my mother over the head and I could hear the sickening thud of the butt of the shotgun over her head,” Brunner said. “Then he put the gun back on the rack and called her a bitch. He slammed the bedroom door and sat down on the squeaky bed. And then I heard the thud-thud of his cowboy boots as he laid down, squeaking again, and he went to sleep.”
There were many more beatings over the years, Brunner said. Twenty years later, she said, she was brutally assaulted by her own husband on this same Indian reservation, an enormous swath of Minnesota prairie that has seen its share of sorrow for generations.
An estimated one in three Native American women are assaulted or raped in their lifetimes, and three out of five experience domestic violence. But in the cases of Brunner and her mother, the assailants were white, not Native American, and that would turn out to make all the difference.
President Obama, joined by Vice President Biden, members of women’s organizations, law enforcement officials, tribal leaders, survivors, advocates and members of Congress, signs the Violence Against Women Act in March. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press)
For decades, when a Native American woman has been assaulted or raped by a man who is non-Indian, she has had little or no recourse. Under long-standing law in Indian country, reservations are sovereign nations with their own police departments and courts in charge of prosecuting crimes on tribal land. But Indian police have lacked the legal authority to arrest non-Indian men who commit acts of domestic violence against native women on reservations, and tribal courts have lacked the authority to prosecute the men.
Last year, Congress approved a law — promoted by the Obama administration — that for the first time will allow Indian tribes to prosecute certain crimes of domestic violence committed by non-Indians in Indian country. The Justice Department on Thursday announced it had chosen three tribes for a pilot project to assert the new authority.
While the law has been praised by tribal leaders, native women and the administration as a significant first step, it still falls short of protecting all Indian women from the epidemic of violence they face on tribal lands.
The new authority, which will not go into effect for most of the country’s 566 federally recognized Indian tribes until March 2015, covers domestic violence committed by non-Indian husbands and boyfriends, but it does not cover sexual assault or rape committed by non-Indians who are “strangers” to their victims. It also does not extend to native women in Alaska.
Proponents of the law acknowledge that it was drawn narrowly to win support in Congress, particularly from Republican lawmakers who argued that non-native suspects would not receive a fair trial in the tribal justice system.
For their part, native women say they have long been ill-served by state and federal law. U.S. attorneys, who already have large caseloads, are often hundreds of miles away from rural reservations. It can take hours or days for them to respond to allegations, if they respond at all, tribal leaders say. Native women also have to navigate a complex maze of legal jurisdictions.
“There are tribal communities where state police have no jurisdiction and federal law enforcement has jurisdiction but is distant and often unable to respond,” said Thomas J. Perrelli, a former associate attorney general who was one of the administration’s chief proponents of the amendment. “There are tribal communities where the federal government has no jurisdiction but state law enforcement, which has jurisdiction, does not intervene. And there are still other tribal lands where there is a dispute about who, if anyone, has jurisdiction. All of this has led to an inadequate response to the plight of many Native American women.”
More than 75 percent of residents on Indian reservations in the United States are non-Indians. In at least 86 percent of the reported cases of rape or sexual assault of American Indian and Alaska native women, both on and off reservations, the victims say their attackers were non-native men, according to the Justice Department.
Main Street in Mahnomen, Minn. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
Heavy snow slides off grain and seed storage units on the White Earth Nation reservation. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
‘Not enrolled’
The loophole in the American Indian justice system that effectively provides immunity to non-
Indians is the story of a patchwork of laws, treaties and Supreme Court decisions over generations.
At the root of the confusion about Indian jurisdiction is the historical tension over Indian land. As American settlers pushed Native Americans off their tribal lands and then renegotiated treaties to guarantee tribes a homeland, large areas of the reservations were opened for white families to homestead.
That migration led to the modern-day reservation, where Indians and non-
Indians often live side by side, one farm or ranch home belonging to a white family, the next one belonging to an Indian family. It is a recipe for conflict over who is in charge and who has legal jurisdiction over certain crimes.
“The public safety issues in Indian country are so complicated,” said Deputy Associate Attorney General Sam Hirsch, one of the Justice Department officials who focus on tribal justice issues. “No one would have ever designed a system from scratch to look like the system that has come down to us through the generations.”
Over the past 200 years, there have been dramatic swings in Indian-country jurisdiction and the extent of tribal powers.
In 1978, in a case widely known in Indian country as “Oliphant,” the Supreme Court held that Indian tribes had no legal jurisdiction to prosecute non-
Indians who committed crimes on reservations. Even a violent crime committed by a non-Indian husband against his Indian wife in their home on the reservation — as Brunner said happened to her on the White Earth Nation reservation — could not be prosecuted by the tribe.
The court said it was up to Congress to decide who had that authority.
“We are not unaware of the prevalence of non-Indian crime on today’s reservations, which the tribes forcefully argue requires the ability to try non-Indians,” the court said. “But these are considerations for Congress to weigh in deciding whether Indian tribes should finally be authorized to try non-Indians.”
Congress took no action for 35 years.
As a result, native women who were assaulted were often told there was nothing tribal police could do for them. If the perpetrator was white and — in the lingo of the tribes — “not enrolled” in the tribal nation, there would be no recourse.
“Over the years, what happened is that white men, non-native men, would go onto a Native American reservation and go hunting — rape, abuse and even murder a native woman, and there’s absolutely nothing anyone could do to them,” said Kimberly Norris Guerrero, an actress, tribal advocate and native Oklahoman who is Cherokee and Colville Indian. “They got off scot-free.”
In 2009, shortly after taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was briefed by two FBI agents on the issue of violence on Indian reservations.
They told him about the soaring rates of assault and rape and the fact that on some reservations, the murder rate for native women is 10 times the national average.
“The way they phrased it was, if you are a young girl born on an Indian reservation, there’s a 1-in-3 chance or higher that you’re going to be abused during the course of your life,” Holder said in an interview. “I actually did not think the statistics were accurate. I remember asking, ‘check on those numbers.’ ”
Officials came back to Holder and told him the statistics were right: Native women experience the highest rates of assault of any group in the United States.
“The numbers are just staggering,” Holder said. “It’s deplorable. And it was at that point I said, this is an issue that we have to deal with. I am simply not going to accept the fact it is acceptable for women to be abused at the rates they are being abused on native lands.”
Measuring tape
Diane Millich, left, joins Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Deborah Parker, vice chairwoman of the Tulalip Tribes of Washington state, at the bill-signing ceremony in March. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Diane Millich grew up on the Southern Ute Indian reservation, nestled in the mountain meadows of southwestern Colorado. When she was 26, she fell in love and married a non-Indian man who lived in a town just beyond the reservation.
Not long after they were married, Millich’s husband moved in with her and began to push and slap her, she said. The violence escalated, and the abuse, she said, became routine. She called the tribal police and La Plata County authorities many times but was told they had no jurisdiction in the case.
One time after her husband beat her, Millich said, he picked up the phone and called the sheriff to report the incident himself to show that he couldn’t be arrested, she said. He knew, she said, there was nothing the sheriff could do.
“After a year of abuse and more than 100 incidents of being slapped, kicked, punched and living in terror, I left for good,” Millich said.
The brutality, she said, increased after she filed for a divorce.
“Typically, when you look backwards at crimes of domestic violence, if less serious violence is not dealt with by the law enforcement system, it leads to more serious violence, which eventually can lead to homicide,” said Hirsch, the deputy associate attorney general.
One day when Millich was at work, she saw her ex-husband pull up in a red truck. He was carrying a 9mm gun.
“My ex-husband walked inside our office and told me, ‘You promised until death do us part, so death it shall be,’ ” Millich recalled. A co-worker saved Millich’s life by pushing her out of the way and taking a bullet in his shoulder.
It took hours to decide who had jurisdiction over the shooting.
Investigators at the scene had to use a measuring tape to determine where the gun was fired and where Millich’s colleague had been struck, and a map to figure out whether the state, federal government or tribe had jurisdiction.
The case ended up going to the closest district attorney. Because Millich’s husband had never been arrested or charged for domestic abuse on tribal land, he was treated as a first-time offender, Millich said, and after trying to flee across state lines was offered a plea of aggravated driving under revocation.
“It was like his attempt to shoot me and the shooting of my co-worker did not happen,” Millich said. “The tribe wanted to help me, but couldn’t because of the law. In the end, he was right. The law couldn’t touch him.”
Section 904
Last year, Millich and other American Indian women came to Washington to tell their stories to congressional leaders. They joined tribal leaders in lobbying for the passage of the 288-page reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which included language proposed by the Justice Department that for the first time would allow tribal courts to prosecute non-
Indians who assaulted native women on tribal lands. It would also allow the courts to issue and enforce protective orders, whether the perpetrator is Indian or non-Indian.
Opponents of the provision, known as Section 904, argued that non-native defendants would not be afforded a fair trial by American Indian tribes. In the case of Alaska, the Senate excluded Native Alaskan women because of especially complicated issues involving jurisdiction.
At a town hall meeting, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said that “under the laws of our land, you’ve got to have a jury that is a reflection of society as a whole.”
“On an Indian reservation, it’s going to be made up of Indians, right?” Grassley said. “So the non-Indian doesn’t get a fair trial.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), another opponent, said the Violence Against Women Act was “being held hostage by a single provision that would take away fundamental constitutional rights for certain American citizens.”
The bill passed the Senate last February but was held up by House Republicans over Section 904. They argued that tribal courts were not equipped to take on the new responsibilities and non-Indian constituents would be deprived of their constitutional rights without being able to appeal to federal courts.
“When we talk about the constitutional rights, don’t women on tribal lands deserve their constitutional right of equal protection and not to be raped and battered and beaten and dragged back onto native lands because they know they can be raped with impunity?” Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) argued on the floor.
Underlying the opposition, some congressmen said, was a fear of retribution by the tribes for the long history of mistreatment by white Americans.
With the support of Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the Chickasaw Nation, the House accepted the bill containing Section 904 on a vote of 229 to 196. On March 7, President Obama signed the bill with Millich, Holder and Native American advocates at his side.
The Justice Department has chosen three Indian tribes — the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona, the Tulalip Tribes of Washington state and the Umatilla tribes of Oregon — to be the first in the nation to exercise their new criminal jurisdiction over certain crimes of domestic and dating violence.
“What we have done, I think, has been game-changing,” Holder said. “But there are still attitudes that have to be changed. There are still resources that have to be directed at the problem. There’s training that still needs to go on. We’re really only at the beginning stages of reversing what is a horrible situation.”
Lisa Brunner and her daughter, Faith Roy, fold clothes at home on the White Earth Indian reservation in Minnesota. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
‘Sliver of a Full Moon’
Last summer, several Native American survivors of domestic violence from around the country put on a play, “Sliver of a Full Moon,” in Albuquerque. The play documented the story of the abuse and rape of Native American women by non-Indians and the prolonged campaign to bring them justice.
Using the technique of traditional Indian storytelling, Mary Kathryn Nagle, a lawyer and member of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, wove together their emotional tales of abuse with the story of their fight to get Washington to pay attention.
Millich and Brunner played themselves, and actors played the roles of members of Congress, federal employees and tribal police officers who kept answering desperate phone calls from abused native women by saying over and over again, “We can’t do nothin’, ” “We don’t have jurisdiction,” and “He’s white and he ain’t enrolled.”
Lisa Brunner, seated, with her daughters Samantha, left, and Faith Roy. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
Brunner portrayed herself in a play that told the story of the abuse and rape of Native American women by non-Indians and the campaign to bring them justice. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
By that time, Brunner’s intergenerational story of violence and abuse had taken a painful turn. Her youngest daughter, 17, had been abducted by four white men who drove onto the reservation one summer night. One of them raped her, Brunner said.
It was the real-life version of author Louise Erdrich’s acclaimed fictional account of the rape of an Ojibwe woman by a non-Indian in her 2012 book, “The Round House.” In both the real and the unrelated fictional case, the new congressional authority would not give the tribe jurisdiction to arrest and prosecute the suspects, because they were not previously known to the victim.
Last week, inside her home on the frigid White Earth Nation, which was dotted by vast snowy cornfields and hundreds of frozen lakes, Brunner brought out a colorful watercolor she had painted of three native women standing in the woods under a glowing full moon. The painting was the inspiration for the title of Nagle’s play, she said, but it’s also a metaphor for the new law.
“We have always known that non-
Indians can come onto our lands and they can beat, rape and murder us and there is nothing we can do about it,” Brunner said. “Now, our tribal officers have jurisdiction for the first time to do something about certain crimes.”
“But,” she added, “it is just the first sliver of the full moon that we need to protect us.”
Written by LCDR Amy Eden, Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Department of Health
The Affordable Health Care Act Health Care Coverage for the American Indian and Alaska Native
OKMULGEE, Okla. – Health Insurance coverage has not always been a familiar term within Indian Health Country. The unfamiliarity could be linked back to treaties made in 1787 between federally recognized Tribes and the United States Government. The treaties obligated the United States Government to provide health care services to Tribal members at no cost to the patient, in exchange for land that belonged to the Tribes. Due to this obligation, there was no apparent reason for an American Indian or Alaska Native to purchase any additional health insurance coverage.
Over the years, Indian Health has significantly grown along with the rest of the health care industry; and unfortunately the U.S government has not always been able to provide the appropriate amount of funding that is needed. In 1998, the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, P.1.94-437, authorized the Indian Health Service, Tribal Health and Urban Indian Health, (I/T/U) the ability to bill and collect third party reimbursement for the services provided to the patient. This reimbursement from insurance companies has created a dependable, sustainable revenue stream, which is directly placed back into the Muscogee (Creek) Nation health care system; which helps pay for additional equipment and services for the patient population.
Since ITU’s have had the ability to bill, they highly encourage their patient load to apply for health care Insurance coverage. Although, before now, due to either the high financial expense or a pre-existing condition, the percentage of patients that carry health insurance coverage has been minimal in comparison to the patient population.
The Affordable Health Care Act also known as Obama Care, is a law that is intended to reform the health care industry as we know it. It provides the American population affordable options when purchasing a health care coverage plan. It also provides the American Indian/Alaska Native population the option of using a health care coverage plan rather than using the Contract Health Service; which could potentially run low on funding and not be available to cover health care service charges, which would mean that the charges would then become the patients’ responsibility.
There are special provisions for the American Indian and the Alaska Native population when they enroll in health insurance coverage through the marketplace, such as;
No out of pocket costs like deductibles, copayments and coinsurance if the income is around $70,650 for a family of 4 ($88,320 in Alaska).
Can enroll in Marketplace health insurance any month, not just during the yearly open enrollment period.
Can begin and continue to receive health care services at any Indian Health Service including Tribal Health or Urban Indian Health Facilities.
Can get services from any providers listed on the Marketplace Insurance Plan
The Affordable Health Care coverage plans can be found on a web based portal called the Marketplace. There are four ways to apply for a Marketplace health care coverage;
On-line at www.healthcare.gov
Telephone at 1-800-318-2596; available 24 hours a day 7 days a week
Can download and print the application at www.healthcare.gov and mail to
Health Insurance Marketplace
Dept. of Health and Human Services
465 Industrial Blvd.
London, KY 40750-0001
Although the Affordable Health Care Act provides affordable health care coverage, there are still some that prefer not to enroll into a health care coverage. For the American Indian/Alaska Native population there is an exemption from having to obtain health care coverage, it is based upon Tribal citizenship. There are two ways that a Federally Recognized American Indian can file for exemption.
Claim the exemptions when you fill out your 2014 federal tax return, which is due by April 15, 2015 (make sure you have your CDIB or your Tribal Citizenship Card available, they need the information from one or the other)
Fill out an exemption application in the Health Insurance Marketplace (if you would like to fill this application out, you can download it from www.healthcare.gov, or you can call Amy Eden at (918)756-4333 ext. 315 and request an application be mailed to you)
The State Recognized American Indian population is required to file for this exemption only by filling out the application; they do not have the option of waiting until they file their 2014 Income Taxes.
If there is anyone that would like assistance with filling out the exemption application or just have any questions in general, you can contact any of the Patient Benefit Coordinators at any of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation health facilities. You can also contact LCDR Amy Eden at (918)756-4333 ext. 315.
PINE RIDGE, S.D. (AP) – An Oglala Sioux tribal committee has started a process that could allow a public vote on whether to legalize marijuana use on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
The tribal council’s business development committee approved the measure last week, and the full tribal council soon could approve a public vote, councilman Kevin Yellow Bird Steele told the Rapid City Journal.
Council members say they are considering marijuana’s medical uses, and some argued that it could ease the dependency of tribal members on powerful prescription painkillers.
“It’s not something the council wants to make a decision on by themselves,” Yellow Bird Steele said. “It will be up to the people across the reservation.”
Just last August, reservation members narrowly voted to end prohibition and sell alcohol on the tribal land.
The alcohol ban had been in place for most of the reservation’s 124-year history, with supporters arguing that legalization would only exacerbate the impoverished tribe’s problems with domestic abuse, suicide, infant mortality, unemployment and violent crime. But opponents noted that liquor stores in Whiteclay, Neb., a speck of a town along the reservation’s border, were selling millions of cans a beer a year.
Under the law, the tribe will own and operate stores on the reservation, and profits will be used for education and detoxification and treatment centers, for which there is currently little to no funding.
If the marijuana vote passes, the Pine Ridge reservation would join a number of states that have begun to turn the tide on pot use.
Tribal Councilman James Cross recalled the tribe’s reaction when South Dakota voters in 2010 rejected a proposal to legalize medicinal marijuana. The statewide vote failed by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. But a majority of Shannon County voters, where part of the Pine Ridge reservation is located, supported it.
Cross, who said he smoked in 1990 to help ease pain in his lower back when prescription painkillers left him unable to function, emphasized the medicinal needs over recreational use.
“It was really looking at the medical part of it first,” Cross said. “We really didn’t discuss revenue.”
Robin Tapio, a tribal councilwoman representing the Pine Ridge district, said she hasn’t decided whether she supports the proposal.
Tapio used marijuana to recover from cancer treatments in the mid-1980s, but she also regularly smoked pot until she was 45 and now worries that it may be addictive or cause health problems.
State law requires owners of abandoned or derelict vessels to pay to remove or dispose of them, but since the state began a program to rid state waters of potentially dangerous vessels in 2003, vessel owners have repaid only about $28,000 of the total $8.3 million owed.
By Phuong Le, Associated Press
State law requires owners of abandoned or derelict vessels to pay the full costs of removing or disposing of the problem boats, but owners rarely do.
Since the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) began a program to rid state waters of potentially dangerous vessels in 2003, vessel owners have repaid only about $28,000 — or less than 1 percent — of the total $8.3 million owed in the past decade, according to agency records.
“The state does get stuck with the bill,” said Melissa Ferris, program manager of DNR’s derelict-vessels program. “It is frustrating,” she added. “We try and track them down. We do a fair amount of work.”
A few boat owners are now on payment plans for roughly $161,000. The state agency is actively billing nearly $2 million in recovery costs from others. They’ve also sent nearly $3.4 million through the collections process.
In some cases, the boat has changed hands so many times that it’s hard to prove who owns it, she said.
But even when the state has identified an owner, seeking repayment is difficult. In many cases, the agency hasn’t been able to collect money — and likely won’t — because owners didn’t have any assets to go after.
“If we find an owner with assets, we will get judgments against the owners, but the vast majority (of them) don’t have resources,” Ferris said.
After a rusty 140-foot former fishing boat burned and then sank in Penn Cove off Whidbey Island two years ago, DNR had it removed and scrapped and later billed the boat’s owner, Rory Westmoreland, for nearly $1.3 million in costs.
To date, Westmoreland hasn’t reimbursed the state for any of those costs, Ferris said.
Island County prosecutors last year charged Westmoreland with a misdemeanor for abandoning a derelict vessel. He failed to show up for an October hearing and a warrant was issued for his arrest, a spokeswoman with the prosecutor’s office said Thursday.
A listed number for Westmoreland could not be found.
The owner of the 180-foot New Star still owes the agency about $500,000, after DNR seized it early last year to prevent it from becoming a problem. The vessel had been docked at Port Ludlow, but the owner, George Marincin, was unable to carry out an initial plan to scrap it in Mexico.
Messages left at possible numbers for the owner were not immediately returned.
Junk vessels can pose public-safety and environmental risks because they can break up, sink or potentially leak oil, gas or other materials.
Last month, Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced criminal charges were filed against owners of two boats — 167-foot Helena Star and 57-foot historic tugboat Chickamauga — that sank in Puget Sound, spilling hundreds of gallons of oil and other pollutants.
Ferguson said the state wants to send a clear message that boat owners will be held accountable for environmental damage.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers are trying to prevent derelict vessels from becoming a problem in the first place.
A bill introduced this year would create new penalties for failing to register a vessel and prohibit the sale of certain vessels that aren’t seaworthy unless they’re repaired or sold for scrap. House Bill 2457, which cleared a House committee last Tuesday, also imposes a fee on commercial vessels to fund the derelict vessels program.
“It speeds up the process of getting the boats out of our waters so they don’t sit around,” the prime sponsor, Rep. Drew Hansen, D-Bainbridge Island, told lawmakers at a hearing last month.
Some who spoke testified against parts of the bill they said would put too much responsibility on private moorage facilities. “If a vessel comes in and ties up at your dock, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it,” said Warren Aakervik of Ballard Oil.
The bill is meant to build on legislation passed last year to address junk boats.
Under the law set to take July 1, owners of larger vessels more than 40 years old would be required to get a boat pre-inspection before transferring ownership. They also have to report that information to DNR.
The agency is also working on a pilot program to take back junk boats that owners no longer want.
The state has removed more than 500 boats since the program began in 2003. But there are now about 150 on the state’s watch list.
Federal oil-spill money often covers the costs of raising the ship and getting rid of any oil or other potential pollutants. But the expense of removing the vessel and scrapping it typically falls to local governments and the state.
The crew of the research vessel Chasina gets ready to drop an acoustic telemetry receiver 300 feet down into Puget Sound. The device will record tagged steelhead as they swim out of their spawning rivers. | credit: Ashley Ahearn
TACOMA, Wash. — You might call Barry Berejikian a steelhead stalker.
The government scientist’s pursuit of these anodramous trout has brought him to the deck of the Chasina, a research vessel that’s motoring through choppy gray waters of southern Puget Sound near the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
He’s here to lay the groundwork for an experiment that could explain why so few steelhead are completing their journey through Puget Sound and on to the Pacific Ocean.
Since 2007, Puget Sound steelhead have been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Millions of dollars have been spent improving their habitat but the fish are not recovering.
And scientists can’t pinpoint why.
Berejikian aboard the research vessel Chasina. Credit: Ashley Ahearn
Berejikian is surrounded by keg-sized yellow buoys as he stands on the ship’s deck. These buoys are equipped with acoustic telemetry receivers and roped up to 500-pound concrete weights. The crew uses a crane to lift the devices over the side of the boat and drop eight of them 300 feet beneath the waves in a staggered line across Puget Sound.
Once they’re in place, the receiver buoys will float 20-30 feet above the bottom “listening” for fish. Later this spring, Berejikian plans to tag 300 juvenile steelhead in the Nisqually and Green rivers.
The floating receivers will record the tags when the fish pass by, enabling scientists to track individual fish as they make their way north through Puget Sound en route to the Pacific.
These arrays will be set up at four other points in Puget Sound, to chart how far the fish make it once they leave their spawning rivers.
“We want to detect every fish that comes through,” said Berejikian, who works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “It’s kind of an aggressive approach but if you’re going to go to the trouble of doing the study you might as well go for it, so we’re going for it.”
The rivers in this part of the Puget Sound region are producing tens of thousands of juvenile steelhead every year. But scientists believe that only 20 percent of those fish complete their migratory route to the ocean. That has scientists curious about the locations of steelhead death “hot spots” as Berejikian calls them.
“We need to figure out why they’re dying and where they’re dying in order for us to work on management approaches to improving the situation,” Berejikian said.
If you’re a steelhead on your way out of Puget Sound this might be what comes to mind when Berejikian says “death hot spot”:
Harbor seal populations have boomed since the 1970s, prompting scientists to explore whether seal predation is contributing to steelhead mortality. Credit: Ashley Ahearn.
“They eat all salmon species, which would include chinook, coho, steelhead, chum and pink salmon,” said Steve Jeffries, who has studied harbor seals with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife since the 1970s. Jeffries added that there could be other animals preying on the steelhead, like sea lions, cormorants or harbor porpoise, whose populations are also on the rise in Puget Sound.
And of course there are other factors at play: Human population has increased in Puget Sound since the 1970s, as has development along rivers and coastlines.
But seals are still on the list of suspects and one thing’s for certain: there are more seals than there used to be.
Since the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, harbor seal populations in Puget Sound have risen from roughly 2,000 in the early 1970s, to 13,000 today.
In conjunction with Berejikian’s steelhead tagging, Jeffries plans to tag 12 harbor seals this year. The tags on the seals will track their movements. They’ll also act as receivers, like the floating buoys on the bottom of Puget Sound, recording if there are any tagged steelhead that come within range.
“If we find out that the seals are feeding over here and the steelhead smolts are swimming through the same area then you’ve got this special overlap and it’s more likely that there is a predation going on,” Jeffries explained.
And if the seals are eating the out-migrating juvenile steelhead?
“I don’t know the answer to that question,” Jeffries said. “Harbor seals, all marine mammals, are protected so any action that would come out of this would have to be vetted in a resource management arena.”
Jeffries said right now it’s too early to say if seals are a major contributor to steelhead mortality in Puget Sound. “It’s a long time in the future ‘til we would actually do anything proactive to reduce predation.”
STEVE LEWIS/Durango Herald Nancy Maryboy, who is Navajo and Cherokee, says Navajo Sky allows Native Americans to “examine their own astronomy from inside their culture.”
Traveling planetarium brings folklore, science into focus
Studying the world – and skies – around us isn’t just the purview of Western science.
On Thursday, a traveling planetarium exhibit called “Navajo Eyes” made a stop at Durango Discovery Museum. In it, two Navajo scientists, Nancy Maryboy and David Begay, shared the results of more than 25 years of research into how their ancestors studied and learned from the stars.
It was the first step in what the museum hopes will be an ongoing look at science as practiced by the first people in the Southwest, from astronomy to irrigation and agricultural techniques.
“We want to expose people to the kind of science and experimentation that was happening here,” said Nathan Schmidt, marketing and communications manager at the museum. “At the same time the Greeks were looking at the stars, Native Americans were, too.”
Maryboy and Begay, under the auspices of the Indigenous Education Institute and in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, have spent four years under a grant from NASA creating several modules about the Navajo, or Diné, understanding of the cosmos.
They collected numerous oral histories and used friends and family members to help with the voice recording.
“We had an advantage over most archaeoastronomers,” Maryboy said, “because David’s so fluent in Navajo and it’s all so embedded in the language. Navajo is a quantum language, and we had to go through layers to fully understand.”
A relative of Maryboy’s, Kenneth Maryboy, read the voice of Coyote, whose mischief disturbed the harmony of the cosmos. In his day job, he’s a county commissioner in San Juan County, Utah.
Begay and Maryboy have been invited to set up their planetarium at the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian in addition to smaller museums across the country.
The similarities and commonalities between the different cultures was striking. The Greeks called the Pleiades the “Seven Sisters,” the Navajo call them the “Seven Little Boys.” When the constellation lies on its side so that the “rabbit tracks” show, it’s all right to begin hunting because the fawns are old enough to survive if they lose their parents. The seven stars also refer to the dots on the hind quarters of a fawn, reinforcing the hunting schedule.
“It’s easy for people to hear about this and think about it as folklore,” Schmidt said. “But the way it was explained to me, and it makes sense, is by looking at Chimney Rock. It required incredibly precise measurements and knowledge of the stars to so perfectly align with the summer and winter solstice. It may have been used for religious purposes, but it’s pure science.”
