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5 More Native American Visionaries in Washington State

Richard Walker, Indian Country Today Media Network

As the holidays kick in and people start looking ahead to the coming year, it is only fitting to acknowledge the leaders who will take Indian country into the future. Last month we brought you five Native leaders who are protecting rights, exercising sovereignty, building intercultural bridges and meeting future energy needs, among other accomplishments.

Now we bring five more who are rocking the world with their forward thinking, their innovation and their sense of social justice. With 29 of the 566 federally recognized indigenous nations located in what is now Washington State, the Evergreen State is a hotbed of visionary ideas.

1. Brian Cladoosby, Swinomish Tribe: Political and Environmental Leader

Brian Cladoosby

The Swinomish Tribe chairman and recently elected president of the National Congress of American Indians has been at the forefront of calls to study and adapt to climate change, especially in Indian Country. During his chairmanship of the Swinomish, Cladoosby developed an initiative to determine how climate change may affect coastal communities, assess the possible impacts and develop an action plan, including coastal protection measures and development code changes.

Cladoosby collaborated with the U.S. Geological Survey to launch the Canoe Journey Water Quality Project. Canoes participating in the journey carry probes that collect information on water temperature, salinity, pH levels, dissolved oxygen and turbidity in the Salish Sea. The data is used to identify and map possible sources of water quality degradation.

Under Cladoosby’s leadership the Swinomish have reclaimed lands, including environmentally sensitive lands and tidelands, lost during the allotment era or by executive order—Kiket Island in 2009, and this year more than 250 acres that had been removed from the reservation by the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant.

The Swinomish Police Department is the first tribal police department in Washington state to earn state accreditation, giving it the same authority as municipal departments to enforce state law.

“A visionary dedicated to serving the needs of his people, Brian brings together a strong focus on environmental stewardship, productive dialogue, and spiritual connectedness,” Ecotrust wrote of Cladoosby in bestowing its 2012 Indigenous Leadership Award.

2. Tracy Rector, Seminole/Choctaw: Taking the Art of Storytelling Digital

Tracy Rector (Photo: Lou Karsen)

Rector’s Longhouse Media is using new media to give voice to a young generation of indigenous storytellers.

Longhouse Media teaches digital filmmaking and media skills to indigenous youth to foment self-expression, cultural preservation and social change. Since 2003, Native youth have created more than 20 short films that have screened on television and in national and international film festivals.

Native youth worked on the award-winning feature-length documentary March Point, which chronicles the journey of two young men as they investigate the impact of oil refineries on their community. Other films explored the significance of the canoe in the Coast Salish way of life, the impacts of domestic violence, the dangers of drug abuse among young people and the importance of leading by example, the negative affects of spreading rumors, the connection between eating healthily and living healthy, and hip-hop music and dance as a way of staying sober and making healthy choices.

“We believe in Native youth telling their own stories about life, culture, and community, and understand the power of this process to change peoples’ lives,” said Rector, who was appointed this year to the City of Seattle Arts Commission, writing on her website.

3. Matika Wilbur, Tulalip/Swinomish: Erasing Stereotypes, Photo by Photo

Courtesy of Matika Wilbur

Wilbur’s Project 562 is changing the way the world sees America’s First Peoples. One year into a three-year project photographing Native America, it is already spawning exhibits. Last June she participated in a prestigious TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Seattle, speaking about “Surviving Disappearance, Re-Imagining & Humanizing Native Peoples.”

Wilbur is traveling across the U.S. by car and RV with her Mamiya film camera and Canon EOS 7D, with the mission to photograph people from every indigenous nation in America—peoples and cultures that are not only alive but also are thriving, a force in American life.

“People understand that we survived, but the stereotypes remain,” Wilbur said in an interview. She said her goal is to “build cultural bridges, abandon stereotypes, and renew and inspire our national legacy” and to reveal the enduring richness and complex variety of Native America.

“Our goal is to unveil the true essence of contemporary Native issues, the beauty of Native culture, the magnitude of tradition, and expose her vitality,” Wilbur states on her website.

The number 562 represents the number of indigenous nations that were federally recognized when she began developing the project; there are now 566. “The number 562 is a ‘jumping-off point,’ if you will,” she said, adding that she intends to include people from non-recognized Nations as well.

The project is funded by donations generated mostly by a Kickstarter campaign. When completed, the work will comprise a book, exhibitions, lecture series, website and a curriculum.

It’s the fourth major project by the social documentarian. Previously Wilbur photographed Coast Salish elders for the exhibit “We Are One People.” She put Native people in contemporary settings for the exhibit “We Emerge,” and photographed young Native people expressing their identities in modern ways in “Save the Indian and Kill The Man.”

Matika Wilbur: Indian Enough Photography Exhibit Opens in Ohio

4. Fawn Sharp, Quinault: Taking Tribes Global

Fawn Sharp

Sharp has turned the Quinault Nation presidency into a bully pulpit on national and international issues. She has called for the seating of representatives of indigenous nations at the U.N.; doing so will foster dialogue to “eliminate violence against indigenous nations caused by rampant development which pollute lands and waters and force Indigenous Peoples out of their territories.”

Sharp also called for establishment of a permanent indigenous body with authority to promote and monitor the rights of indigenous peoples; for an international conference on violence against indigenous women and children; and for U.N. members to formalize government-to-government negotiations between them and indigenous governments as a principal method for conflict resolution.

The federal government’s shutdown also came in her sights.

“Those who are responsible for this mismanagement will be held to account come election time,” she vowed at the time.

Sharp is a lawyer who serves as president of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians and regional vice president of the National Congress of American Indians.

“I spent many hours away from home and from my family carefully cultivating key relationships to build a positive, strong and respectable reputation for the Quinault Indian Nation,” she wrote this year in the Quinault newspaper, The Nugguam. “Developing such political muscle has opened doors for us that otherwise would not be open, giving us the credibility we need to … protect sovereignty, protect the environment, secure funding and open international trade opportunities.”

5. Gil Calac, Paiute: Getting Veterans Their Due

Gil Calac (Photo courtesy Valerie Calac)

A Vietnam War veteran living on the Yakama Reservation, Calac’s tireless campaign is winning official recognition of, and starting the healing process for, his fellow Vietnam veterans.

When U.S. military personnel came home from Vietnam, many with injuries and memories that still haunt them decades later, there was no welcome.

“They were not treated like heroes as those who returned from Korea and World War II,” said Washington State Rep. Norm Johnson, R-Toppenish. “Instead, they were portrayed as baby killers, warmongers and other things.… That had a traumatic effect on these soldiers that is still painful to these days as many of them refuse to talk about their experiences.”

Calac’s efforts this year led to the adoption of State House Bill 1319, which establishes March 30 of every year as “Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day” in Washington state. The bill, introduced by Johnson and co-sponsored by 38 state House members, was unanimously approved by the House and Senate.

Thanks to Calec, all public buildings and schools are required to fly the POW/MIA flag every March 30.

The veteran’s compelling testimony moved legislators to act quickly on the bill. At a hearing before the Senate Committee on Governmental Operations, Calac said that Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day would help veterans “put away our guilt, the shame, the grief and despair,” and heal from the animosity veterans faced when they returned home.

Calac hopes to see Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day established nationwide.

Six vie for state House seat vacated by McCoy

Democratic precinct officers will select three names Dec. 10 to forward to the county council.

By Jerry Cornfield, Herald writer

EVERETT — A small crowd of Democrats is lining up for a chance to fill John McCoy’s seat in the state House, with a decision anticipated next week.

Six people are reportedly seeking the job which opened up following McCoy’s Nov. 27 appointment to the state Senate. He’s taking former state Sen. Nick Harper’s place.

June Robinson, Jennifer Smolen, Ed Triezenberg, Kelly Wright, David Simpson and Ray Miller are working to corral support from Democratic precinct committee officers, who will meet Dec. 10 to vote on their top three choices for the post. That meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Labor Temple in Everett.

Names of those nominees will be sent to the Snohomish County Council which will select the new lawmaker, possibly the next day.

Whoever gets the gig will serve in 2014 as representative for the 38th Legislative District which includes Everett, Tulalip and part of Marysville. To keep the $42,106-a-year job, they will need to run and win a full two-year term in next fall’s election.

Robinson is an Everett resident whose career has centered on managing community health and affordable housing programs. She lost races for Everett City Council in 2011 and 2012.

This fall she had been seeking appointment to a vacant council seat when Harper resigned and set off the process now culminating in the filling of McCoy’s House seat. She ended her pursuit of the council position to try to secure the legislative job.

Smolen, of Marysville, worked as an aide to state Sen. Steve Hobbs, D-Lake Stevens, in the 2011 legislative session and then for Snohomish County Councilwoman Stephanie Wright until early last year.

She also is a veteran, having served eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve, including a combat tour in Iraq in 2004 and 2005.

Wright, of Marysville, is a former aide in the state House and one-time Marysville mayoral candidate. He made a bid for the Senate seat and finished behind McCoy and Rep. Mike Sells in balloting by precinct committee officers.

He has said he’s only interested in serving as a caretaker of the House seat for the 2014 session and would not run for a full term in 2014.

Triezenberg, of Tulalip, is a former lobbyist for the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters and presently works for the Carpenters Union.

He told precinct committee officers in a Nov. 12 email that Republicans will target this seat next year and he possesses the “competence, experience and electability” required to keep it a Democratic seat. He said he would run for the seat in the 2014 election regardless of the outcome of the appointment process.

Simpson, of Everett, served on the Everett City Council from 1998 through 2001 and briefly as an appointed state legislator.

In 2004, he was appointed to fill a vacant House seat but then lost it that fall when Sells won the election.

Miller, of Marysville, a certified veterans services officer, and founder and president of the nonprofit veteran assistance group, Vets Place Northwest-Welcome Home. He also is vice-chairman of the 38th Legislative District Democrats.

Puyallup Tribe, city working toward cemetery solution

By LARRY LARUE larry.larue@thenewstribune.com

December 2, 2013 The News Tribune

Ryan Conway grew up across the street from the Indian Willard Cemetery in Puyallup, visiting ancestral graves and living in what was then called the “Blue House.”

Today, the Blue House is Blue Sky Landscape Services and Conway, for the past six years, has been the caretaker in that cemetery, which dates back more than 200 years.

“I tell people I treat each grave as if it were your mother’s,” Conway said. “That way anyone who comes to visit a family member can see every grave site has been treated the same, with respect.”

Early last month, Conway was working and found, between the cemetery fence and Valley Avenue, a flurry of red-flagged stakes.

“It was the first I knew that there was work scheduled,” Conway said.

It was also the first the Puyallup Tribe had heard of the city’s plan to trench the road for new sewer and water lines for two new businesses across Valley Avenue.

Why did that horrify tribe elders and others?

“We don’t know the boundaries of the cemetery, because it dates back to the early 1800s, maybe earlier,” tribe archaeologist Brandon Reynon said. “We do know it extends well beyond the fenced area.”

Fearing ancestral remains might be disturbed, the tribe notified the city, pointing out laws and agreements that required Puyallup to notify the tribe before beginning any onsite construction. City planners were stunned.

“The city was aware of the tribal cemetery but we were unaware until two weeks ago of contention that the area of the cemetery included a larger area outside the fence,” said Tom Utterback, the city director of development services.

A stop order was issued for all work in front of the cemetery.

“That cemetery is sacred to us, it’s where our families are,” tribal Police Chief Joe Duenas said. “I remember visiting it as a boy. It’s an active cemetery – I buried my mother, Jody Wright, there last year.”

The first concern of the tribe, then the city and construction company, Trammell Crow, was not to disturb human remains.

“The developer has hired a Seattle archaeologist and he’s working out there,” Utterback said. “We heartily go along with this. We want to know the issues out there.”

Reynon, representing the tribe, will also be part of the cultural assessment of the dig.

One question raised by all this is how did the paved road, in the 1100 block of Valley Avenue, come to cross land that was part of the tribal graveyard? No one involved is certain.

Neither the city nor the tribe was sure whether the fence surrounding the 1.27-acre cemetery or the road came first. The road was built by Pierce County – Utterback believes that was in the 1930s or 1940s – and Puyallup annexed the land in the 1990s.

There are gravestones in the cemetery dating back to the mid-1800s, but that wasn’t when burials first occurred there.

“There are sites without stones, where families couldn’t afford one,” Conway said. “There are stones with entire family’s names on them, covering multiple sites. There’s no way to tell how many are buried within the fences.”

And no certainty on how far beyond those fences grave sites might exist.

It’s no surprise that history never recorded such information. Though the tribe simply calls it Willard Cemetery, it has been known on state and county records as the Firwood Cemetery, the Firwood Indian Cemetery and the Firwood (Willard) Cemetery.

The land is owned by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.

When the city was in the permitting process 18 months ago, Utterback said environmental reports were sent to two representatives of the tribe. Tribal attorney Lisa A. Brautigam said that was the critical mistake.

“Two individuals involved with water quality and fisheries did receive the state environmental checklist but they are in individual departments not even located at the Tribal Government Headquarters,” she said. “And they only deal with fisheries and water quality issues.”

Archaeologist Reynon shook his head.

“If we had known about the issue, we would have worked with them on alternatives,” he said. “And we should have known. Now, we’d like to go back to the beginning.”

Utterback does not disagree, but insists there was never an intent to keep the tribe in the dark.

“If we were doing it again, we’d do it differently,” Utterback said. “We didn’t realize we should have sent it to others. We thought it would be shared by those we did send it to.”

For now, work in front of the cemetery has halted, and the city and tribe will have meetings this week to discuss alternatives.

“We’re not obstructionists. This is a matter of respect,” said Tribal Council member Lawrence LaPointe. “These are our ancestors, our families.”

Larry LaRue: 253-597-8638 larry.larue@thenewstribune.com

Second Cobell payment won’t be mailed out before Christmas

Source: Indianz.com

The second payment from the $3.4 billion Cobell trust fund settlement won’t be going out before Christmas as anticipated.

A notice on IndianTrust.Com says the payments are expected in early 2014. The Interior Department is still verifying who is eligible.

“The Settlement Agreement approved by Congress and the Courts requires identification of all Trust Administration Class Members and calculation of their respective pro rata shares by the Department of the Interior before The Garden City Group, the Claims Administrator for the Cobell Settlement, can mail Trust Administration Class payments,” the notice states. “That work is ongoing and is nearly complete.”

“Thus, if the class membership is finally determined in December, the payments can then be made in the first quarter of 2014 barring any unexpected issues,” the notice continues.

The delay will put a damper on holiday spending in Indian Country. The first payment of $1,000 went out just before Christmas in 2012.

A total of 327,957 beneficiaries qualified for the historical accounting portion of the settlement, according to information presented during a conference call in May

The second payment covers the trust administration portion of the settlement. This class is turning out to be a much larger group of people — approximately 470,000 beneficiaries.

The minimum payment for the trust administration class is $800. But many people will receive more, based on the level of activity in their Individual Indian Money (IIM) account.

As sex trade ramps up in untamed oil patch, Dakotas crack down

Dec. 1, 2013

Written by Dave Kolpack

Associated Press

FARGO — U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp has introduced legislation meant to crack down on sex trafficking, which experts fear is on the rise in her home state of North Dakota because of the large influx of men coming to work in the state’s western oil patch.

Heitkamp, a Democrat, introduced the bill this week on the same day that federal prosecutors in North Dakota unsealed charges against 11 Dickinson-area men who were arrested in a child prostitution sting. The men thought they were buying sex with teenage girls, prosecutors allege.

“Just looking at the recent arrests would tell you that North Dakota could be ground zero for this type of behavior,” Heitkamp told The Associated Press on Friday.

It’s a trend that has alarmed federal prosecutors in North and South Dakota. A man on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota recently was sentenced to 45 years in prison for coercing women into prostitution in oilfield communities. Two men in South Dakota have received life sentences for human trafficking cases in Sioux Falls.

“With the increase in population, there’s the risk of organized crime,” said Timothy Purdon, the U.S. attorney from North Dakota. “We’re certainly very aware of the threat potentially posed by human trafficking in the oil patch.”

Heitkamp said the bill, which focuses on all forms of human trafficking, would encourage law enforcement officers and the courts to treat minors who are sold for sex as victims, not as criminals. She said it includes a safe harbor provision to encourage them to come forward.

“These are very difficult issues to expose and research,” Heitkamp said. “It’s very difficult to get the victims to speak. They’ve been conditioned not to speak. They’ve been terrorized.”

Heitkamp said estimates show that more than 100,000 minors in the U.S. are forced into sex trafficking every year. Children are 13 years old, on average, when they are forced to become prostitutes, she said.

Native American girls and women often are targets of human traffickers, Heitkamp and Purdon said.

“You have a vulnerable population in young girls on the reservation,” Purdon said. “My concern is that they could be exploited if organized human trafficking operations gain an inroad here.”

Purdon said the 11 arrests in Dickinson and three arrests in a Williston sting about a month ago “stand for the idea that there is the demand out there as well.” Trying to stop the supply is more difficult, he said.

Going after the johns could help deter other future buyers, Heitkamp said.

“Nobody wants to see their name in the paper relative to sex trafficking,” she said.

Brendan Johnson, the U.S. attorney for South Dakota, recently argued and won a case in front of the 8th U.S. Circuit of Appeals that reinstated convictions against two men who previously were acquitted of commercial sex trafficking. The men had been arrested in a sting operation known as “Operation Crossing Guard.”

South Dakota has a couple of unique sex trafficking stages with the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and a pheasant hunting season that attracts hundreds of outdoors enthusiasts from around the country.

“Anytime you have large groups of men gathering, you’re going to have the potential for sex trafficking problems,” Johnson said. “That’s just the reality.”

400-Pound HS Running Back Talks About Fame, College and the NFL

When the story appeared about Tony Picard, the 400-lb running back and nose tackle for White Swan High School, it was an immediate sensation. Picard appeared in local and national news interviews, including CNN and ABC’s Good Morning America. A YouTube video of a collection of plays his plays gained more than 3 million views. ICTMN caught up with Picard for a Q&A to further introduce him to Indian Country.

Jack McNeel 12/1/13 ICTMN.Com

What has happened to you since the story came out?

I’ve been getting multiple phone calls. I went on national news. It’s been pretty crazy. I’ve still got more to do.

What has your reaction been to all the attention?

At first it was just crazy. All the attention is nice, but after so much, it kind of gets to you. I’m liking it, but I’m not getting all big-headed about it.

Have you heard from other college coaches since the story came out?

Yeah. I’ve heard from quite a few actually. [I’m] heading up to Washington State University for a recruiting trip.

How are your teammates taking it?

They’re just supporting me.

What is your hope for the future, five or ten years down the road?

I’d be finishing my last year of playing college football. I wouldn’t mind playing in the pros, and I think it would be an honor to play in the NFL. Other than that, if I don’t go to the NFL, I’d go to school for forestry or be a wildlife conservation officer.

What do you think about when you shake the other team’s captain’s hands?

Honestly there’s nothing going through my mind. I just shake their hand to show some sportsmanship. I don’t want to beat them up, but just win the game.

Do your teammates have a nickname for you?

Everybody calls me “Big Tone.”

Away from football, do you have hobbies?

Yes I do. I like to go hunting. I like to fish. I like to be out with family and friends.

What animals have you taken?

I’ve shot deer, elk, moose, buffalo, and bear. Also, coyotes and turkeys.

Do you have a girlfriend?

Yes.

Do you feel you’re pretty much a typical high school senior?

Yeah. A lot of people see me as famous right now, but I am just a normal high school student.

Teaching the Lakota language to the Lakota

Only 6,000 people speak the Lakota language, few of them under 65, but people are working to keep it alive

src.adapt.960.high.1385906568002 — In Our Lady of Lourdes Elementary School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, teacher Gloria Two Crow conducts a Lakota language session.Kayla Gahagan

by Kayla Gahagan @kaylagahagan

December 1, 2013 Aljazeera America

PINE RIDGE INDIAN RESERVATION, S.D. — Dodge tumbleweeds and stray dogs. Venture down a deeply rutted dirt road. Walk into the warmth of a home heated by a wood-burning stove. There’ll be a deer roast marinating on the kitchen counter.

It is here, in a snug home that sits on the edge of nearly 3 million acres of South Dakota prairie, that you’ll find the heart of a culture. It’s here, at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where Joe and Randi Boucher make dinner for their two young daughters. The smaller one squirms and is gently admonished: “Ayustan,” she is told — leave it alone.

It’s here where the Lakota language is spoken, taught and absorbed in day-to-day life.

That makes the Boucher home a rare find. According to the UCLA Language Materials Project, only 6,000 fluent speakers of the Lakota language remain in the world, and few of those are under the age of 65. Of the nearly 30,000 people who live on Pine Ridge, between 5 and 10 percent speak Lakota.

For the past four decades, the race to save the language has started and stuttered, taken on by well-meaning individuals and organizations whose efforts were often snuffed out by lack of funding, community support or organizational issues.

Click to hear Lakota words spoken and explained

Some days, saving the language “seems like an insurmountable challenge,” said Bob Brave Heart, executive vice president of Red Cloud Indian School on the reservation.

The reason, some say, is a number of serious socioeconomic issues that overwhelm the Pine Ridge communities and make it difficult to successfully revive the dying language. The reservation has an 80 percent unemployment rate, and half the residents live below the federal poverty line, making it the second poorest county in the United States. Next to Haiti, it has the lowest life expectancy in the Western Hemisphere. Men live an average of 48 years; women, 52.

But those aren’t hurdles to learning the language, Randi Boucher said. Instead, they should stand as the very reason to perpetuate it.

“It is our language and our life way that will make change,” she said. “We have a loss of self-identity. We’re trying to exist without that. The language, that’s where the healing starts.”

‘Time to do it right’

Language signs at Red Cloud Indian School, which plans to publish the first comprehensive Lakota language K-12 curriculum by the end of this year. Kayla Gahagan

Brave Heart agreed.

“If you lose the language, you lose the culture,” he said. “When students are informed and part of their culture and their language, they have a better sense of self-worth.”

From Joe Boucher’s point of view, they face a much more serious hurdle.

“The biggest enemy we’re battling is apathy,” he said. “Our young people don’t care. They’d rather live in the now.”

They aren’t the only generation resisting the past. Cultural assimilation practices in the U.S. in the 19th century — sometimes in the form of verbal and physical punishment — forced many natives to speak English.

Elders here relive stories of having their mouths washed with soap or their tongues snapped with rubber bands by boarding school staff for speaking their native language.

“We were persecuted; it was dehumanizing,” said high school language teacher Philomine Lakota. “I was completely brainwashed into thinking English was the only way.”

And yet, Brave Heart said, now is the time to move forward.

“We’ve been teaching the language for 40 years, and we’ve been very ineffective,” he said. “It’s time to do it right.”

The school, alongside the American Indian Studies Research Institute at Indiana University, is about to publish the first comprehensive K-12 Lakota language curriculum. The private Catholic school embarked on the project six years ago, developing, testing and revising the curriculum, with the goal to publish by the end of this year.

Starting next year, students will be required to take Lakota language classes through elementary, middle and the first three years of high school. The final year is optional.

“This year’s first graders will be the first group to go through the entire curriculum,” said Melissa Strickland, who serves as the Lakota language project assistant at Red Cloud. She works with the six Lakota language teachers and trains staff across campus to use the language when conversing with the 575-member student body.

An immersion school

The Boucher family lives on the edge of the nearly 3 million acres that make up the reservation. Here, a shelter, constructed with a view of the scenic Badlands, that is used by Native American artists during the summer to create and sell their artwork. Kayla Gahagan

And is it working?

Last year, language test scores at Red Cloud jumped by 84 percent, and this year more than 70 percent of students reported using Lakota at home, in school and in their communities.

Teacher Philomine Lakota is encouraged, but is also aware that many students do not have family members speaking the language at home, and that many will leave the reservation and enter a world where it is not used.

“I realize I will not turn them into fluent speakers,” she said, but her desire is that they become proficient and eventually teach others. “There is hope.”

The $2.2 million project has not been without its hiccups, including personnel changes and disagreements among staff over which materials to use.

“Many programs for language revitalization are immersion,” Brave Heart said. “We’re not. We’re trying to do it within the confines of the educational system.”

Others have taken a road less traveled.

Peter Hill taught Lakota at Red Cloud before embarking on what he calls an exhausting journey to create the reservation’s first successful Lakota language immersion program, one that promises to fill two major gaps for families — language learning and quality, affordable child care.

“Child care out here is horrible. There’s no day care,” he said. “People just kind of get by with family members.”

After months of often unfruitful fundraising and research, the Lakota Language Immersion School opened a year ago with five babies and toddlers, including one of Hill’s daughters.

“At some point, you feel like it’s now or never,” Hill said. “There’s never going to be enough money or the ideal situation.”

The word has since spread, he said, and things are looking up. Today the program has 10 kids and three full-time staff members.

“We literally have kids on a wait list a couple years into the future, for kids not even born yet,” Hill said.

‘Love’ in two languages

The program was almost derailed last month when a severe South Dakota blizzard forced it out of its building. It was given another building in Oglala and recently moved in, but Hill knows the clock is ticking.

“The oldest kids are between 2 and 3 and starting to talk,” he said. “Eventually our feet will get held to the fire. If we say we’re an immersion program, we need to produce fluent kids.”

Finding qualified staff and enforcing 100 percent spoken Lakota remains the biggest hurdle.

“Even fluent speakers aren’t used to avoiding English,” he said. “People aren’t used to speaking Lakota to children. If they were, the language would be in much better shape. It’s a steep learning curve.”

If the language is to survive, the greater movement to save it will have to center on two things, Hill said — kids learning it as a first language and people like himself learning and teaching it as a second language.

Randi and Joe Boucher, who both studied the language in college and learned it from relatives, say they are encouraged by the new efforts.

They speak in Lakota half the time, gently pushing their kids to learn more than names of household objects. They want conversation:

Le aŋpetu kiŋ owayawa ekta takuku uŋspenič’ičhiya he? (Has the dog been fed?)

Wana wakȟaŋyeža kiŋ iyuŋgwičhuŋkhiyiŋ kta iyečheča. (We should put the kids to bed.)

And: thečhiȟila (I love you), a sentiment now mastered by both girls.

Randi is pursuing a master’s degree in language revitalization and hopes to someday open a school focused on a holistic approach to culture and language.

She is expecting another child next summer, and said that even with her aspirations to start a school, the heart of language learning should be in the home.

In their home, their daughters’ traditional native cradleboards — built, sewn and beaded by family — are out on display, a visible reminder of the couple’s insistence on raising their children with ties to their native blood.

“The day we have grandchildren and they can speak to us in Lakota, then we’ll know we did it right,” Randi said. “Then we can die happy.”

Listen to Lakota

American Indian College Fund President Has Lifetime of Preparation for Challenges

December 1, 2013

DiverseEducation.com

By Helen Hu

Days before the government shutdown ended in October, Cheryl Crazy Bull calmly recounted some of the steps already taken by tribal colleges to cope with funding cuts.

“Over the years, they’ve never had enough [resources],” says Crazy Bull, who became president of the American Indian College Fund last year. “They operate with frugality and worst-case-scenario behavior.”

Cheryl Crazy Bull was president of Northwest Indian College near Bellingham, Wash., for nearly 10 years before joining the American Indian College Fund.

Crazy Bull knows this firsthand. She was president of Northwest Indian College near Bellingham, Wash., for nearly 10 years before joining the college fund.

“I remember as college president literally looking at cash flow every day to see what bills we could pay,” she recalls.

Crazy Bull, 58, who takes to heart her Lakota name, which means “They depend on her,” brings to her latest job persistence, business know-how, passion for the tribal college’s mission, and a willingness to take on unfamiliar challenges.

Growing up on the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota, Crazy Bull was one of five children. Her parents ran a grocery store until her father joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Her parents, whom she describes as “well-educated public servants,” stressed education. But it took Crazy Bull a couple of tries to get on the right track.

She first enrolled at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. — and left after one quarter. Academics weren’t a problem, but she had a sheltered life and the social scene was a “huge shock,” Crazy Bull says.

She transferred twice — to Northern State University in Aberdeen, S.D., then finally settling in at the University of South Dakota, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in business management. She later earned a master’s degree in education administration from South Dakota State University.

After graduating, Crazy Bull taught business and Native studies and held administrative positions at Sinte Gleska University, the tribal college that serves Rosebud. After 15 years at the school, she left to oversee an agency that assisted local home-based businesses, including auto mechanics, quilting and food catering.

At this point, Crazy Bull was the single parent of three children and did some consulting on the side to help support her family.

Crazy Bull then became the equivalent of a superintendent at St. Francis Indian School, which enrolled Rosebud children in kindergarten through 12th grade.

After nearly five years at the school, Crazy Bull moved to the northwest to be near her daughter and take a post that she had always wanted — president of a tribal college.

While at Northwest Indian College, she resolved issues with financing and accreditation before taking the school from a two-year to a four-year institution, something she said the community wanted badly. The college had to identify and recruit students who wanted to get their bachelor’s degrees, ensure the facility had the requisite advanced degrees, and build its curriculum and facilities. Much of the campus was rebuilt.

Crazy Bull was new to many of the tasks.

“I find myself in situations where I don’t know anything, but something needs to be done,” she says.

Sharon Kinley, director of the college’s Coast Salish Institute, which Crazy Bull established, says she brought a good mix to the school. “[Crazy Bull] is a visionary, but not just that, she has the practical, deliberate background with which visions become real,” says Kinley.

After almost 10 years at Northwest, Crazy Bull felt she should move on. She was appointed president of the American Indian College Fund, based in Denver, after her predecessor retired.

Crazy Bull’s accomplishments at Northwest helped her get the job, says Dr. Elmer Guy, chairman of the College Fund’s board of trustees.

But Crazy Bull has more mountains to climb in heading an organization that gives financial support to the nation’s 37 tribal colleges and to students who come from more than 250 tribes around the country.

The college fund is pushing for legislation to fully fund the schools, which are authorized to receive $8,000 per student per year but get more like $5,500.

Next year, to mark its 25th anniversary, the college fund will mount a $25 million fundraising campaign that Crazy Bull wants to follow with a bigger campaign for scholarships and endowments.

When she is not working on behalf of the college fund, Crazy Bull makes quilts as gifts and for traditional ceremonies. She also writes poems, stories and essays and is currently writing her memoirs.

EarthFix Conversation: A Call For Philosophical Shift On Use Of Hatcheries

Source: OPB.org

In the late 1800s, when dams were first built around the Northwest, salmon and steelhead stocks began to decline. Fish hatcheries were put forth as a solution. Wild fish were taken from Northwest rivers and spawned in captivity, ensuring future generations of fish could be released back into the wild every season.

Jim Lichatowich is a biologist who’s worked on salmon issues as a researcher, manager and scientific advisor for more than 40 years. He sat down with EarthFix’s Ashley Ahearn to talk about his new book: “Salmon, People and Place: A Biologist’s Search For Salmon Recovery.”

Ashley Ahearn: For someone who doesn’t know what a hatchery is or doesn’t understand how it operates, what happens at a hatchery?

Jim Lichatowich: Fundamentally at a hatchery, salmon are taken out of the river, put into ponds until they’re ready to spawn and then the eggs are taken. They’re fertilized. Various different procedures are used at different hatcheries but that’s basically it. The eggs hatch, the juveniles are reared in the hatchery for varying levels of time and then they’re released back to the river and expected to migrate downstream fairly rapidly and go out to the ocean and from that point on pick up the normal life history of a regular wild salmon.

I guess the idea of how hatcheries started and [what] sustained them was, habitat was degrading and the fish weren’t doing as well in the degraded habitat. So the hatchery became a solution, a way of circumventing the problems we were creating ourselves by building dams, pumping out irrigation water, poor forestry practices that put silt and sawdust into the streams. The hatchery was supposed to take the salmon away from that problem, circumvent the problem.

Ashley Ahearn: Jim you talk about the ‘machine metaphor’ for nature. What is that? Can you read a section from your book here?

Jim Lichatowich: Sure I’ll read where I talk about the machine metaphor and the fish factory. And I might add here that I use ‘fish factory’ instead of hatchery through a large part of the book because that’s what hatcheries were originally called when they were first being used. They were called ‘pisce factories,’ or fish factories.

“The fish factory and the machine metaphor are a perfect match. The mechanistic worldview reduced salmon-sustaining ecosystems to an industrial process and rivers to simple conduits whose only function was to carry artificially-propagated salmon to the sea. The mechanistic worldview still has a powerful grip on salmon management and restoration programs in spite of a growing scientific understanding that the picture of ecosystems created by the machine metaphor was seriously flawed.”

And really, it’s been the factory metaphor that has guided a lot of the operation of hatcheries.

Ashley Ahearn: One of the things I really liked about your book is these side channel chapters that you sprinkle in between some pretty heavy critique of the way we manage our fisheries in this region. One of your side channels that I particularly liked was when you write about a trip to Indiana to the St. Joe River. Tell me about that side channel.

Jim Lichatowich: Well I grew up outside of South Bend, Indiana and the St. Joe River flows through South Bend. When I grew up there the St. Joe was pretty much a sewer that didn’t have much in the way of fish life. And over the years, particularly since I left — I left there in the 60s — there’d been a lot of clean up. And with the introduction of salmon into Lake Michigan — the St. Joe flows into Lake Michigan — they built a salmon hatchery and had a Chinook salmon run up the St. Joe River. They had to build a hatchery and clean the river up, too.

I was there and I was walking along the river and I came to where a tributary came into the St. Joe, and there was a salmon carcass — a Chinook salmon carcass laying up on the bank of the stream — and it just struck me how out of place it was. Seeing carcasses along rivers is pretty common here, but in Indiana that was a sight. And later on in watching the river, I saw salmon trying to spawn and I knew that their spawning was not going to be successful because the gravel was so silted in that the eggs weren’t going to get oxygen. I talked to a biologist a couple of days later and they confirmed that there’s very little or no actual reproduction, even though there are fish out there spawning.

I thought, you know, this really robs the salmon of their whole heroic story of battling up stream to get to the place where they spawned and where they could complete the cycle of parent to offspring. Even though it’s looked on by sportsmen in Northern Indiana as a positive thing, and there were a lot of people fishing for these fish that were in the river, I somehow had this nagging feeling that ‘should we be doing this to other species? Should we take them from where they belong and put them in a place where they have no chance of surviving without our intervention in a hatchery and call it salmon management?’

Ashley Ahearn: Is that what is happening here in the Northwest? I mean, we have salmon. The salmon have lived here for thousands of years — it’s not like Indiana, but arguably it’s a similar closed … are we robbing the salmon of their story here in the Northwest?

Jim Lichatowich: Well when we rely on hatcheries instead of healthy rivers, then we are robbing them of part of their story. Fortunately most of the rivers in the Northwest can support some wild production, some more than others.

But by relying more and more on hatcheries we’re creating a charade of sorts where the river that can’t support a salmon becomes a stage prop where fishermen and fish play out their respective roles, reenacting something, an important part of our past, that now is sort of a hollow empty memory of it.

Ashley Ahearn: Jim from your perspective are all hatcheries bad? Is there a good hatchery?

Jim Lichatowich: I think there might be, but the answer to that question hasn’t been answered. There has been attempts to reform hatcheries in the past and they haven’t been successfully implemented. There is a lot of good science now that should help managers change the way hatcheries are being operated to begin to see if they can begin to be integrated into a natural production system in a watershed. But it remains to be seen whether that will actually happen.

Ashley Ahearn: So if you were in charge, what needs to happen? What would be your order of operations to get salmon recovery back on track in this region?

Jim Lichatowich: Well I have two kind of strong ideas and those strong ideas were what I followed in writing this book. One was from John Livingston who said that all environmental problems, and I take that to mean salmon problems, are like icebergs, because, like an iceberg, environmental problems have a visible tip and for the salmon that tip is dams, over harvest, poor hatchery practice, poor logging practice –- the litany of things that we’re all aware of. But he says in addition there’s this huge hidden mass that an iceberg has. In that mass he calls it, he says in that mass there are the myths, beliefs and assumptions about how nature works that drive the decisions that either create the issues or prevent them from being corrected. And I think that’s a pretty powerful idea. We need to examine that body of myths, assumptions and beliefs. What I call in my book, our salmon story, and improve upon it. Make sure it reflects the latest science and not some really outdated myths or beliefs.

Ashley Ahearn: Or machine metaphors.

Jim Lichatowich: Or machine metaphors, right. And the other is Gary Nabhan’s idea. In one of his books he says that animals don’t go extinct because someone shoots the last one, or a bulldozer scrapes the last habitat. They go extinct because the web of relationships that sustain them unravels. He then put it in anthropomorphic terms and said, they go extinct because of a lack of ecological companionship. I think that idea is intuitive but at the same time very powerful. It should lead us to instead of defining the salmon’s problem in terms of numbers, which is really limiting your definition to the symptoms, it would be defined in terms of the unraveling of those relationships. And recovery, instead of boosting numbers by releasing more hatchery fish, would be a mending of those relationships. Trying to re-institute those relationships, and that’s a different approach than what we’ve been doing.

Ashley Ahearn: It seems your solutions center around a fundamental philosophical shift that needs to happen in the way we view management.

Jim Lichatowich: That’s right, and that is a good summary of my purpose in this book, is to make an argument for that shift.

Jim Lichatowich is the author of “Salmon, People and Place: A Biologist’s Search For Salmon Recovery.”

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Tackles the Broad American Mythology

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry weekend program on December 1 featured a panel that discussed “the foundational myths perpetuated about America and the realities of inequality,” according to MSNBC.com.

The two-hour program featured Ray Halbritter, Oneida Nation representative and CEO of Nation Enterprises, parent company of Indian Country Today Media Network, as one of the guest panelists.

Joining Halbritter as panelists were Chloe Angyal, editor at Feministing.com; Raul Reyes, NBC Latino contributor and New York Times columnist; and Jonathan Scott Holloway, professor of African American Studies, History and American Studies at Yale University and author of Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America since 1940.

Harris-Perry led the panelists through discussions on American traditions like Thanksgiving and how they relate to American values; along with the possible contradictions that exist between these traditions and our country’s public policies, as they relate to issues like hunger, immigration, and the economy.

Following the program’s introduction, Harris-Perry opened the discussion with the first question for Halbritter on how the country’s founding myths continue to impact the country today.

“The Thanksgiving mythology, to some extent, papers over the often painful and tragic history of American Indians and the way they’ve been treated,” Halbritter said. “Even though it was the shared celebration and tradition of Indian people to have this ceremonial of Thanksgiving and they gave to the first immigration group and shared with them in a way that allowed for their survival but it’s a celebration that should be of mutual inclusion and respect and often that’s not the case for American Indians in this country.”

Keeping on the Thanksgiving leftovers, Harris-Perry engaged Halbritter to elaborate on the Oneida Nation float making its appearance for the fifth year in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City. Where Halbritter mentioned that one of the reasons for the float is to show that American Indians are real people and not relics or mascots.

The discussion shifted from a topic usually synonymous with abundance of food like Thanksgiving to one that has become bare bones in the SNAP program cuts, followed by poverty levels throughout the country. Holloway mentioned how it’s currently easy for politicians to make scapegoats of those without power.

Harris-Perry elaborated on the scapegoat issue by mentioning an empathy deficit – a topic that President Barack Obama has talked about and wrote about. She discussed how the empathy deficit basically recognizes the country’s “ability to potentially have sympathy for people” while it still has an “inability to see one another across differences.”

Halbritter responded saying, “That’s some of the challenges for American Indians because they are often not viewed except as relics or mascots and as a result the real issues they suffer from the lowest standard of living, the highest mortality rates in the country, highest unemployment. And 7 of the 10 poorest counties in the United States are Indian reservations.

“So they really struggle to have their real issues dealt with in a way that’s real especially this time of the year. Especially because in some ways all this is connected, their self-image, their self-esteem and how they relate to themselves and the rest of society,” Halbritter said.

View videos of the program here.