Sandra Buffington has spent her life working to carve a home and ranching business out of the sparse grasslands around the South Unit of Badlands National Park.
But she and other Lakota ranchers face the possibility of losing their grazing rights to make way for a huge bison reserve planned by the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
Buffington, who is in her late 60s, runs her cattle year-round on 11,000 acres of leased land. It’s land that her father once leased. She also owns 80 acres where her home sits.
Many of the ranchers in the path of the planned reserve for a herd of 1,000 bison own small sections of land close to or adjacent to the land they lease.
The letter revoking Buffington’s permission to continue grazing also reminded her that the tribe also has the power to condemn her own land, land that has been in her family for many years.
“The land I’m leasing is what my father leased,” Buffington said.
Without the leased land, she would have to sell her cattle. A grandson’s dream of some day operating the ranch would be lost, she said.
Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribal elder Tony Incashola Sr. says that despite experiencing racism from the time he was a child growing up in the 1950s on the Flathead Indian Reservation, he couldn’t help feeling surprised by a Ravalli County official’s portrayal of American Indians during a public meeting last month as drunken lawbreakers.
“I guess I shouldn’t be,” Incashola, 67, says. “I’ve lived with that all of my life … When I was a kid, it was like standing at a department store on the outside looking in. You see the non-Indian children having fun. You felt like an outsider, that you weren’t welcome, because you didn’t dress right and you had a different color.”
Incashola, who serves as director of the Salish-Pend d’Orielle Culture Committee, has dedicated much of his life to fostering an understanding of indigenous ways. Education breeds familiarity, he says. Familiarity helps break down the fear that breeds racism. Efforts such as his are paying off. Incashola says that racism is less apparent than when he was young. That makes the Nov. 20 meeting in Ravalli County all the more troubling.
The meeting involved a discussion between CSKT delegates and the Ravalli County Board of Commissioners about how best to care for a historic Bitterroot Valley property known as Medicine Tree that the Salish have considered sacred for hundreds of years. CSKT wants to transfer the property from tribal ownership into federal trust with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. CSKT representatives stated that the 58-acre parcel is central to Salish creation stories, ones that detail how “Coyote,” a being imbued by the creator with special powers, made the land “safe for humans yet to come,” Incashola says.
When explaining the importance of such a transfer, the CSKT say that the Medicine Tree parcel provides a connection to indigenous history—a link that helps preserve a strong sense of tribal identity. The CSKT add that the transaction will help grow their land base and, therefore, give them a more powerful voice when negotiating their rights and responsibilities with government agencies.
CSKT attorney Teresa Wall-McDonald told the Independent that placing land into trust helps the tribes gain back losses accrued when the federal government opened the Flathead Reservation to non-native homesteaders in 1910. Between 2009 and August 2013 alone, the CSKT placed approximately 81,000 acres into trust.
“Part of the process of restoring our homeland includes restoring the land,” Wall-McDonald says. “It is part of rebuilding our homeland, what I call nation building.”
The Ravalli County Commission, however, has steadily opposed the CSKT’s request. Among the commissioners’ stated concerns is the loss of roughly $800 in property taxes that would result from the transfer. They also worry about the potential impacts of having a pocket of sovereign land set aside within their county, and why the tribes would want to work with the federal government rather than local. At the Nov. 20 meeting, they asked specifically if the tribes intended to erect a casino atop the parcel.
Later during the same meeting, Ravalli County Planning Board Chair Jan Wisniewski warned commissioners of the CSKT’s request, saying that American Indians have a history of using trust lands as a refuge to “get drunk and try and run back into the reservation so they don’t get caught,” according to meeting minutes.
“The county cannot go into that sovereign nation to apprehend the drunken Indians,” he said. “So the jails are full of Indians (sic) which cost us tax dollars. One jail in particular (Havre?) had a count of 58.”
In response to Wisniewski’s testimony and the behavior of the Ravalli County officials, Bitterrooter Pam Small posted an online petition demanding that the commission apologize for the county’s “cultural insensitivity and ignorance” that garnered nearly 500 signatures.
Such criticism helped persuade the commissioners on Nov. 27 to issue an apology to the tribes. Roughly 20 Bitterroot residents attended the meeting, with many of them verbally lashing out at the commissioners, characterizing the county’s overall treatment of the CSKT as “paternalistic” and akin to “an inquisition.”
“The whole tone of this meeting was confrontational,” former Ravalli County attorney George Corn said. “They were grilled by your attorneys … At best it was denigrating. At worst, it implied racism.”
In response to the onslaught, county commissioners say that the Nov. 20 discussion was taken out of context—that they were only attempting to evaluate all possible outcomes that could result from the transfer. “It was in no way condescending or adversarial,” Commissioner Jeff Burrows said last week, before the commission voted to hand-deliver an apology to the tribes.
Wisniewski’s legal advisor, Robert C. Myers, echoes the commissioners when maintaining that his client’s statements were taken out of context. “We don’t know yet fully what was actually said,” he says. “People hear what they think they hear.”
For Incashola, the issue comes back to education and respect. For instance, he says the thought of the tribes placing a casino on Medicine Tree is preposterous and reflects a misunderstanding of the importance the CSKT place on preserving their culture.
“I think the county commissioners don’t understand,” Incashola says.
The whole back and forth leaves him weary.
“I get so tired of trying to defend my identity, to try to defend my values,” he says. “I feel that what happened in Hamilton is just plain ignorant.”
Incashola says his elders, who faced the worst kind of racism, taught him that there are more good people in the world than bad. He takes some comfort in that thought. In light of what transpired in Ravalli County, however, Incashola isn’t confident that racism will ever completely disappear.
It’s been 33 years since voters chose a Republican governor in Washington.
But it’s been even longer since a member of the Grand Old Party got elected from the 38th Legislative District to the House of Representatives.
You have to go back half a century to find the last one — Jack Metcalf, a Whidbey Island Republican who won a House seat when the district’s boundaries encompassed parts of Snohomish and Island counties.
With any luck, Republicans could end their losing streak next year in a district now centered in Everett and includes Tulalip and a sliver of Marysville.
A vacancy in the state House is creating the potential opportunity. Democrat John McCoy of Tulalip moved from the House to the Senate last month and seven people want his old seat.
June Robinson, Jennifer Smolen, Deborah Parker, Ed Triezenberg, Kelly Wright, David Simpson and Ray Miller are hustling up support from Democratic precinct committee officers who will vote out their top three choices Tuesday. Sometime in the following week, the Snohomish County Council will appoint one of them.
All seven are respectable members of the community with solid Democratic credentials and similar philosophical approaches to governing.
None of them are political rock stars and most are not widely known among voters. Whoever is appointed will need to squeeze out every ounce of advantage from their incumbent status to retain the job in next fall’s election.
As a newcomer, they’ll be politically vulnerable. Any vote they take, bill they introduce, utterance they make could find its way into the campaign. As a latecomer, they will be unable to fund raise during the 2014 session, while any Republican challenger can.
Those are small factors in Republicans’ favor. And they may not be the only ones.
Voters in the district may be less enamored with embracing all Democrats for office after seeing two of them, County Executive Aaron Reardon and state Sen. Nick Harper, resign in disgrace this year.
And if Republicans field a candidate with a strong resume and ample campaign billfold — something they’ve not done in recent years — victory isn’t beyond grasp.
Much of it will depend on what happens in Everett, where the largest chunk of the district’s voters resides.
While Everett voters only seem to send Democrats to do their bidding in Olympia, they are not afraid of electing Republicans to the nonpartisan City Council.
Scott Bader proved it last November when he defeated June Robinson for a council seat by roughly 1,800 votes. Though there was no “R” next to Bader’s name or “D” next to Robinson’s; one didn’t have to work very hard to find out what political party each associated with.
It was an impressive performance in a presidential election year. Democrats turned out more voters than Republicans and outspent them to make sure everyone knew the names of all the Democrats on the ballot.
Still, in numerous Everett precincts, Bader received as many votes as McCoy did in his legislative race.
Campaign strategists view such ballot behavior as an opportunity to snare votes from the less partisan members of their opponent’s party.
Republican Party leaders may see this as one more selling point to those they’re recruiting to do battle for the seat in 2014.They’ll need a few as they know history is not on their side.
Political reporter Jerry Cornfield’s blog, The Petri Dish, is at www.heraldnet.com. Contact him at 360-352-8623 or jcornfield@heraldnet.com.
This racially charged country that, on Nelson Mandela’s watch, inspired the world by embracing reconciliation in all-race elections in 1994 is again in the global spotlight after the loss of such a towering historical figure. It is a time not just for grief and gratitude, but also a clear-eyed assessment of national strengths and shortcomings in a future without a man who was a guide and comfort to so many.
“It’s a new beginning,” said Kyle Redford, one of many outside the home of the anti-apartheid leader who became the nation’s first black president. “The loss of a legend is going to force us to come together once again.”
He acknowledged that there is a “sense of what next: Where do we go? What do we do? And how do we do it?”
Mandela’s resolve rubbed off on many of his compatriots, though such conviction is tempered by the reality that his vision of a “rainbow nation” failed, almost inevitably, to meet the heady expectations propelling the country two decades ago. Peaceful elections and relatively harmonious race relations define today’s South Africa; so do crime, corruption and economic inequality.
Mandela remained a powerful symbol in the hopeful, uncharted period after apartheid, even when he left the presidency, retired from public life and shuttled in and out of hospitals as a protracted illness eroded his once-robust frame. He became a moral anchor, so entwined with the national identity that some jittery South Africans wondered whether the country would slide into chaos after his death.
“Does it spell doomsday and disaster for us?” retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu asked rhetorically Friday before declaring that no, the country will not disintegrate.
“The sun will rise tomorrow and the next day and the next,” said Tutu, who like Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize for fighting apartheid and promoting reconciliation. “It may not appear as bright as yesterday, but life will carry on.”
A series of violent events since last year intensified worries over the state of the nation. The August 2012 shooting deaths of 34 striking miners by police at the Marikana platinum mine recalled, for some South Africans, state killings under apartheid. In February, a Mozambican taxi driver was dragged from a South African police vehicle and later died in a jail cell.
At the same time, tourism surged. Despite labor strife and credit-rating downgrades, resource-rich South Africa hosted Brazil, Russia, India and China at the “BRICS” summit in March. It has the biggest economy in Africa and aspires to continental leadership.
Mandela’s death will not destabilize race relations in the country, contrary to some fears, according to the South African Institute of Race Relations.
“For many years now, South Africans have got along with one another largely peacefully without Mr. Mandela having been active in the political sphere,” Lerato Moloi, the institute’s head of research, said. “In fact, Mr. Mandela’s passing may be cause for many to reflect on the remarkably peaceful and swift racial integration of many parts of society, including schools, suburbs, universities, and workplaces.”
Moloi said in a statement: “Although some of this had started to occur before 1994, as a symbol of racial reconciliation and forgiveness Mr. Mandela will be viewed by many as having played a pivotal role in creating such a society.”
Mandela’s life epitomized the fight for freedom and equality, said Human Rights Watch. It pointed out that South Africa’s education and health sectors are inadequate and the country remains divided by racial separation and deep economic inequality.
“Almost two decades into its democracy, South Africa is not the country that Mandela had said he hoped it would become,” the group said.
President Jacob Zuma evoked the idea of the 95-year-old Mandela as a beacon for the ages when he announced his death on Thursday night.
South Africans, Zuma said, must be determined “to live as Madiba has lived, to strive as Madiba has strived and to not rest until we have realized his vision of a truly united South Africa, a peaceful and prosperous Africa, and a better world.”
Mandela, also known by his clan name Madiba, admitted to weakness and failings, yet rose to greatness in a way that no contemporary or successor could match.
Zuma, for example, has credentials as an anti-apartheid activist who was imprisoned with Mandela. But he and the ruling African National Congress, once led by Mandela, have been dogged by corruption allegations that have eroded support for the government. In the days before Mandela’s death, South African media were filled with reports on the alleged lavish use of state funds for construction at Zuma’s family compound.
The scene outside Mandela’s house embodied the mixed picture in South Africa, where political sparring between the ruling party and the opposition has sharpened ahead of national elections next year, the 20th anniversary of the pivotal vote in which Mandela became president.
Mourners outside the home mingled in an inclusive, celebratory atmosphere that prompted the Rev. Inigo Alvarez, a Catholic priest, to declare: “Now we experience what is South Africa, all kinds of people, all kinds of regions.”
Yet ANC activists in yellow jumpsuits pasted posters on the perimeter walls of the Mandela compound and handed out leaflets presenting the party as the heir to his tradition. In death, Mandela was still drawn into politics.
The Columbian social issues & neighborhoods reporter
T. Lulani Arquette
T. Lulani Arquette believes that the original, nature-based values of Native American peoples still have a lot to teach a Western culture that she said is teetering on the edge of suicide.
She’s wary of “noble savage” stereotypes, she said, but when she looks around at the degradation of our planet, she can’t help but conclude that our drive to conquer and use nature is misguided at best. “There is a more sacred view of the circle of life,” she said. For all their diversity, the original nations of North America did share that essential view.
Arquette is president and CEO of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, a nonprofit agency founded in 2007 as a sort of “Native National Endowment for the Arts,” she said. Originally seeded with Ford Foundation money, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation meant to make its home in Portland, Arquette said, but somebody advised her to check out Vancouver. The Historic Reserve area was so full of relevant history that the foundation seemed a perfect fit there, she said, and set up shop on Officers Row until a combination of rising rent and organizational growth spurred it to move to a bigger, more practical space on Northeast 112th Avenue.
Native Arts and Cultures Foundation “traditional arts” fellow Israel Shotridge and one of his creations.
The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation aims to take on difficult problems — environmental, economic, cultural — through great artworks created by Native Americans. Since 2010, the foundation has supported 85 artists nationwide with $1.6 million in grants. Poetry and painting, film and dance, traditional and edgily post-modern — all sorts of artworks by all sorts of American Indian, Alaskan and Hawaiian artists have been produced thanks to the support of the Vancouver-based foundation.
The foundation just announced its fellowships for 2014: a total of $220,000 for 16 artists, including Israel Shotridge, a totem pole restoration artist and Tlingit Indian based in Vashon, to Brooke Swaney, a Blackfeet/Salish filmmaker from Poison, Mont.
Perhaps because there are so few Native Americans in Clark County (less than 1 percent of the population), the foundation has found precious few local artists to support. It is an ongoing supporter of downtown Vancouver’s Ke Kukui Foundation (kekukuifoundation.org), which presents an annual Hawaiian Festival in Esther Short Park the third weekend of every July. It helped Ke Kukui bring an independent Hawaiian film event to the Kiggins Theatre in November. And it has sponsored summer workshops for young people.
Arquette — a native Hawaiian with degrees in both political science and theater — said she’d love to connect more with Clark County Native American artists and cultural institutions. The foundation’s fellowships aren’t for beginners, however — they’re for developed artists who have produced a “substantial body of work” and are at the top of their game, Arquette said.
Learn more about the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation at nativeartsandcultures.org.
Bits ‘n’ Pieces appears Fridays and Saturdays. If you have a story you’d like to share, email bits@columbian.com.
While it’s certainly cold enough to snow, forecasters say the only real chance may show up in a flurry.
KING-5 Meteorologist Rich Marriott says no significant accumulations are expected. As the system moves south over the Olympic Peninsula and down to Northern California, another surge of cold air will move in from Canada.
Temperatures are expected to dip even lower as the new system moves in, which will bring with it gusty winds for the Northern counties and foothills. Gusts could reach 45 miles per hour Friday morning.
The cold snap isn’t expected to end until Monday when a system from the south rolls in. In the meanwhile, the lowest temps of the week are expected on Saturday morning when forecasters say the mercury may reach the teens and single digits across inland locations. We could even break a record low at Sea-Tac.
As the temperatures warm up and precipitation moves in, forecasters say we may see snow or freezing rain in some locations.
Beyond Tuesday, Marriott says we should be back to normal Western Washington weather with rain in the lowlands and snow in mountains.
Members of a Congressionally-created panel that blasted the state’s justice system for Alaska Native villages arrived in Anchorage on Wednesday, where they took on a top state official and publicly pushed for reform to give Alaska tribes more local authority over criminal matters.
“It’s clear to us Alaska remains on the wrong track,” said Troy Eid, chairman of the Indian Law and Order Commission (ILOC), which issued its scathing report last month. “The problems tribes face in the Lower 48 are magnified in Alaska, which still relies on a colonial model (of justice) that results in more violent crime.”
Alaska Attorney General Michael Geraghty on Tuesday fired off a letter to Eid, taking issue with aspects of the report and acknowledging some of the problems in the state’s justice system. He said Alaska must work with tribes to improve public safety, and highlighted steps taken under Gov. Sean Parnell to make villages safer.
Ultimately, Geraghty opposed the report’s recommendation that Indian Country be created in Alaska as it is in the Lower 48, where tribes own land. That status means Lower 48 tribes enjoy rights not afforded Alaska Native tribes.
” … The state believes the commission was wide of the mark in recommending a return to Indian country as a means for solving the admittedly serious public safety issues facing our Native peoples,” reads the letter.
More than 200 Alaska Native villages suffer some of the nation’s highest rates of domestic violence, sexual assault, suicide and other problems.
Meanwhile, scores of villages lack police and quick access to courts and other basic services. Often, victims must wait for Alaska State Troopers based in other communities to fly in before crimes can be investigated, a process that can take days in stormy weather.
“We are fighting for our lives here. We have the highest rates of almost all deplorable conditions known to mankind,” said Mary Ann Mills, tribal council chairperson for the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, in a question-and-answer session following presentations by Eid and the other ILOC commissioners at the Dena’ina Convention Center in Anchorage Wednesday morning. Mills was just one of several tribal representatives from around the state who came to listen to the commission’s findings, and who overwhelmingly expressed support for tribal sovereignty.
“The current system is broken,” said Eid. “You have 75 communities with no policing at all. And then you have 100 VPSOs (village public safety officers) who don’t carry firearms and can’t provide the full range of services that a state sworn officer can provide.”
The nine-person commission sunsets in January. Commissioners came to Alaska last year to conduct interviews for the report. Eid and two others returned this week to speak at the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ rural providers conference in Anchorage. Eid also planned to meet with Geraghty on Wednesday afternoon.
‘Not just an Alaska problem’
“This is not just an Alaska problem. But I know injustice when I see it,” Eid said at the conference.
“We’re not a bunch of radicals. We are not bomb throwers. We just think that self government should be the rule in Alaska,” he said, noting that he’s a lifelong Republican and was appointed by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. His point? The commissioners come from varied political backgrounds, yet they unanimously came to the same conclusion about the abysmal safety conditions in rural Alaska.
At the conference, commissioners and Alaskans renewed their calls for the creation of Indian Country in Alaska. The courts decided long ago that unlike the Lower 48, virtually no tribal lands existed in Alaska.
The distinction has limited the federal benefits that flow to Alaska tribes. A stark example of that disparity came earlier this year with the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act that granted new criminal jurisdiction to Lower 48 tribes, including the ability to issue civil protective orders to arrest and detain any person. Alaska tribes did not receive such powers.
On Tuesday, Geraghty had his letter delivered to Eid’s room at the Captain Cook Hotel, so Eid could understand the state’s views before the two met. Hotel staff placed the letter on Eid’s pillow for him to read when he arrived, “without the mint,” Eid joked.
Geraghty said the commission’s urgent challenge resonates with him. “The state of Alaska can, and should, be doing more to work collaboratively with local tribes to improve public safety,” he said.
He noted the Department of Law has drafted a plan that would allow tribes to address certain domestic violence, alcohol-related or misdemeanor offenses. The accused could choose civil remedies in tribal court instead of facing state criminal charges.
The state has also adopted a template memorandum of understanding for villages that have banned alcohol. A local council would issue “restorative justice remedies in lieu of citation for alcohol possession,” said Geraghty. He conceded that illegal possession “is an offense which is rarely prosecuted in small rural communities.”
Alaska’s rural police force doubled in size
Geraghty also noted that the state’s rural force of public safety officers has roughly doubled in recent years, to more than 100. Draft regulations to allow public safety officers to carry firearms is in a public-comment period. Arming officers was something another ILOC commissioner, Ted Quasala, said was as basic as it gets.
“There is no other law enforcement agency anywhere, outside of here, where you have unarmed officers who respond to very violent and volatile situations. There is no way you are going to send an unarmed officer to those situations alone, by themselves (in the rest of America),” said Quasala, who has law enforcement experience. He has previously worked as a tribal police chief and as director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Office of Law Enforcement Services.
In his letter, Geraghty also noted that Parnell has started annual marches to raise awareness about domestic violence and sexual assault in 160 communities.
“The fact is we will not solve this problem solely through arrest and prosecution — though that is obviously an important component. Instead we must also raise awareness and educate our kids,” the letter said.
But Geraghty’s letter also took issue with aspects of the report. The report had blasted the state’s support for the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, despite the disparity it upheld for Alaska tribes. The report called the state’s support “unconscionable.”
Geraghty called that language “inappropriate. We have admittedly a long way to go to solve this problem but I think the commission does a disservice to the state when it paints with such a broad brush,” he said.
Eid said he was encouraged to see Geraghty express support for the report’s findings, but he added that establishing Indian Country in Alaska isn’t the only solution.
In fact, the report spells out numerous ways to improve rural justice, he said, including that the president, through executive order, allow the Bureau of Indian Affairs to provide funding for tribal police in Alaska, a benefit enjoyed by Lower 48 tribes, but not those in Alaska.
Tribes don’t actually have to own land to have more authority, Eid noted. One thing the state can do now is define boundaries where tribes can have increased criminal jurisdiction, even though they don’t own the land.
“We all agree the situation in Alaska is a problem, and that Alaska is out of step with the U.S.,” Eid said. “The way to address the problem is more local control and local decision making.”
WASHINGTON – The creation of a national Native American veterans memorial moved closer to reality Wednesday, with the House Natural Resources Committee’s approval of enabling legislation.
The measure, sponsored by Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., now goes to the full House of Representatives for consideration.
“Oklahoma has been blessed with countless Native American veterans, including my grandfather Kenneth Morris,” said Mullin, a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. “It is important that we properly honor these brave soldiers and tell their story for generations to come. This memorial to our Native American veterans will serve as a small measure of thanks for their service and sacrifice to this great nation.”
A Native American veterans memorial was authorized in 1994 as part of the National Museum of the American Indian. Mullin’s bill allows the memorial to be erected outside rather than inside the museum, as specified in the 1994 act. An outdoor memorial is considered more feasible.
The memorial is to be built with private contributions.
courtesy PETA/Status of Bear Welfare in Cherokee North Carolina Report, pg 47 Bears kept in cement pens at the Cherokee Bear Zoo, which is being sued by tribal elders for inhumane conditions, including inadequate shelter and lack appropriate shade.
The grisly scene could have been straight out of a horror movie. Bears kept in deep concrete pits devoid of soil, grass or any other environmental essentials. Distressed bears pacing in circles, their teeth broken from attempts to chew through the metal cages. Months-old baby bears, which otherwise would stay with their mothers for well over a year, instead separated and put into bird cages to entertain the crowds, forced to live on dog kibble and Hawaiian Punch.
This was a bear’s life at the Cherokee Bear Park, and it is the sight that traumatized Eastern Band of Cherokee Tribal Elders Amy Walker and Peggy Hill, they say. The two are suing the Cherokee Bear Zoo on the Cherokee Reservation, citing consistent and repeated violations of the federal Endangered Species Act. The suit was filed on December 3 in U.S. District Court in Bryson City, North Carolina.
The park is one of three on the Cherokee reservation, one of which was shut down earlier this year by the federal government for similar treatment of the animals. Though authorities closed Chief Saunooke Bear Park last January, according to the Huffington Post, Cherokee Bear Park and a third one, Santa’s Land, remain open.
“It’s shameful that the Cherokee Bear Zoo is still displaying intelligent, sensitive bears in tiny concrete pits,” said Walker. “It’s obvious to anyone who sees them that these bears are suffering, and they will continue to suffer every day until they are sent to a sanctuary where they’ll finally receive the care they need.”
In the lawsuit, which names Barry and Collette Coggins of the Cherokee Bear Zoo as plaintiffs, the Davis and Whitlock firm in Asheville, North Carolina cite the Cherokee Bear Zoo as having “barren and archaic concrete pits which significantly disrupt and impair the grizzly bears’ normal and essential behavioral patterns, resulting in inhumane living conditions.”
According to Cheryl Ward, who was called upon as a consultant on the case for Walker and Hill and is a leader of the Coalition for Cherokee Bears, cries to tribal officials have gone unheard for some time regarding the deplorable conditions of these parks.
“More than EIGHT months ago the tribal elders, along with other enrolled tribal members, urged the Tribal Council and Principle Chief Hicks to take action on behalf of these bears,” said Ward in an e-mail to ICTMN.
“Tribal officials have had ample opportunity to take meaningful action to help these suffering animals and they have failed, but the elders are not giving up,” she wrote. “The bears are entitled to the protections they are afforded under federal law and they deserve to be sent to a reputable sanctuary where they can finally be bears.”
Ward also expressed gratitude that Chief Saunooke Bear Park, which had housed 11 bears in conditions similar to those at Cherokee Bear Park, was closed down and that in June the bears were relocated to a 50-acre animal sanctuary in Texas. The USDA had suspended the park owner’s license and fined them $20,000 for inhumane living conditions.
In May 2010, enrolled members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee along with Delcianna Winders, director of captive animal law enforcement for the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), had met with the USDA to file complaints and submit a comprehensive report on the three bear parks, all in Cherokee, South Carolina. The report, Status of Bear Welfare, was authored by four experts on bear habitats and care, including Debi Zimmerman, an animal behaviorist with several decades of experience in animal husbandry.
About two months after the group’s meeting with the USDA, the federal agency traveled to the facility and issued a violation.
“The USDA confirmed that Chief Saunooke deprives the bears in its concrete pits of even their most basic needs, all the way down to proper food and shelter,” Winders said in a statement at the time.
“I just want people to be aware that these bears are being held in conditions that are like the 1950s—people in accredited facilities are not keeping bears like this in any way at all,” Winders told ICTMN on December 3. “The bears are being deprived of everything that is important to them.”
The scene immediately reminded Zimmerman of a horror movie, she told ICTMN. Speaking from her office in Ontario, Canada, Zimmerman said PETA had hired her to survey Chief Saunooke Bear Park and report on the conditions. When she walked into the facility, she said, Silence of the Lambs, in which a victim is held captive in a dark pit by a serial killer, leapt to mind.
“It is hard to shock me because I evaluate the conditions animals live in. But I have to say walking in and seeing this was a surprise,” Zimmerman told ICTMN. “The character in that movie was sensory-deprived, and it was a hideous situation. It is the same for these animals…. I cannot overstate how un-stimulating this was. Bears can’t live in a pit any more than that woman [character] could live healthfully in a pit. It was simply a bear in a pit—there’s nothing else.”
Zimmerman saw behaviors consistent with neglect, including pacing and head-swinging. Bears were also rubbing themselves raw, producing open and oozing sores. Young bear cubs paced frantically.
“Their pace showed the degree to which they were stressed,” Zimmerman said. “They are at a stage when their brains are developing quickly, and when you put a brain that needs complexity into a sensory-deprived environment, there is heightened stress and the need to get out of there.”
In October the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) filed a lawsuit against the USDA , claiming the agency had failed to protect bears that were suffering in the roadside zoos. The previous year, PETA had purchased billboards in the area calling the roadside zoos “prisons,” and PETA spokesperson Bob Barker had also spoken out against the enclosures.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs say the suit is unfounded. Mark Melrose of Melrose, Seago & Lay, who represents the Cherokee Zoo owners, said the owners will move to dismiss the case because the plaintiff’s complaint “lacks factual and legal basis.”
“The Cherokee Bear Zoo is closely regulated and monitored by federal agencies and state and local authorities and is in compliance with all existing regulations and laws and is operating lawfully,” Melrose told the Citizen Times.
Nevertheless, a petition against the Cherokee Bear Park has garnered well over 5,000 signatures from all over the world with its demand that the park be shut down. Over the past several years, many organizations have attempted to close down all three bear parks.
“The elders want ALL the roadside zoos shut down and the animals moved to reputable sanctuaries,” said Ward.
Previously Eastern Band Chief Michell Hicks released a statement saying he wanted to give private zoo owners the opportunity to create a wildlife preserve on the reservation.
The Cherokee Bear Zoo’s owners did not respond to ICTMN’s repeated requests for comment.
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.
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.
Mandela’s resolve rubbed off on many of his compatriots, though such conviction is tempered by the reality that his vision of a “rainbow nation” failed, almost inevitably, to meet the heady expectations propelling the country two decades ago. Peaceful elections and relatively harmonious race relations define today’s South Africa; so do crime, corruption and economic inequality.
