Indian Affairs Committee Examines 2 Bills to Address Water and Lands Claims of the Blackfeet Nation and the Pueblo of Sandia
Source: United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs
WASHINGTON D.C. – Today Chairwoman Maria Cantwell (D-WA) held a legislative hearing to address water and lands rights that are essential to the Blackfeet Nation of Browning, Montana, and the Sandia Pueblo of Bernalillo, New Mexico. The hearing examined the Blackfeet Water Rights Settlement Act of 2013 (S. 434) and the Sandia Pueblo Settlement Technical Amendment Act (S. 611).
“At the core of the principals of tribal self-governance and self-determination is the ability of tribes to exercise jurisdiction over their lands and their resources,”said Cantwell. “Often legislation is necessary to ensure that tribes can exercise those rights.”
The Committee heard testimony from the Department of the Interior, the State of Montana, and the Blackfeet Nation on their views of the Blackfeet Water Rights Settlement Act of 2013 (S. 434). The bill, introduced by Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Jon Tester (D-MT), would settle a longstanding water dispute between the Blackfeet Nation and the State of Montana, and would ratify an agreement that the two parties have reached.
The Committee heard from Shannon Augare, Councilman for the Blackfeet Nation, which has over 16,000 members, half of whom live on the reservation. “Safe and clean drinking water supplies are vital for the growing population on the Reservation, and water is critical to our economy which is heavily dependent on stock raising and agriculture,” Augare said. “The Blackfeet Reservation’s location along the eastern Rocky Mountain Front makes it the home of abundant fish and wildlife, which depend directly on the water resources of the Reservation to support them and allow them to thrive.”
The Committee also heard from Jay Weiner, Assistant Attorney General for the State of Montana. “The State of Montana and the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council agree that this is a fair and equitable settlement that will enhance the ability of the Tribe to develop a productive and sustainable homeland for the Blackfeet People,” said Weiner. “This settlement is the product of over two decades of negotiations among the parties, which included an intensive process of public involvement.” Weiner continued: “The compact promotes development for the benefit of the Blackfeet Nation while protecting other water uses.”
Witnesses from the Department of Agriculture and the Pueblo of Sandia testified on the Sandia Pueblo Settlement Technical Amendment Act (S. 611) at Wednesday’s hearing. The bill, introduced by Senators Tom Udall (D-NM) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), would make a technical amendment to the T’uf Shur Bien Preservation Trust Area Act to accomplish the transfer of 700 acres of land to the Pueblo of Sandia that was intended to happen when Congress passed the original Act in 2003. The bill would clarify the valuation of the lands and require the Department of Agriculture to complete this transaction within 90 days of the Act’s passage.
The Committee heard from Stuart Paisano, Councilman of the Pueblo of Sandia. “The Pueblo hopes that with the passage of this technical amendment, the land exchange that Congress authorized over 10 years ago in the T’uf Shur Bien Preservation Trust Act will finally happen,” Paisano said. The Sandia Mountains have special cultural and spiritual significance to the Pueblo. Completion of the land transfer would ensure their preservation for members and future generations.
ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday that New York’s Indian casinos could face competition in their backyards if talks with tribes over his gambling expansion proposal fail to yield results soon.
Cuomo’s harder public stance with the tribes comes as he tries to shepherd his proposal to bring three Las Vegas-style casinos to upstate New York at yet-to-be-identified locations.
The owners of the former Nevele hotel in Ellenville and the former Concord in Sullivan County are among those hoping to win approval to operate non-Indian casinos.
State lawmakers are considering casino legislation, and a public referendum to change New York’s Constitution to allow non-Indian gaming halls could be on the ballot as early as November.
Three of the six upstate regions Cuomo is looking at already have Indian casinos. The governor said he would not allow a new casino to operate in a region where there already is a casino run by a tribe in good standing with the state. But that could change for tribes that fail to resolve issues with the state in current rounds of talks.
“The Senecas have a decision to make, the Oneidas have a decision to make, the Mohawks have a decision to make,” Cuomo told reporters at a Capitol news conference on Thursday. “It’s the same decision factors today that there are going to be in nine months. For the legislation to work, we need certainty and we need closure.”
The Seneca Nation of Indians and the St. Regis Mohawks have, for years, been withholding casino payments to the state, claiming New York violated contracts with the tribes by allowing gambling in their exclusive territories. The Senecas, who operate casinos in Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Salamanca, have withheld more than $500 million since 2009 and are in binding arbitration with the state.
The Mohawks, who operate a casino on their northern New York land straddling the Canadian border, decided in October 2010 to stop making payments and have withheld $59 million.
The Oneida Indian Nation’s 20-year-old compact with the state does not require revenue sharing from its Turning Stone casino east of Syracuse, but it also does not grant them an exclusive territory. Cuomo suggested the Oneidas could acquire exclusive rights to their central New York territory, perhaps in context of settling longstanding land claims.
Cuomo stressed new casinos could bring desperately needed economic activity to parts of upstate New York that have been struggling for generations.
But the state, for generations, has had only mixed success in dealing with Indian issues, and it was unclear if the governor’s latest attempt would work. Even Cuomo, citing long-simmering issues with the Mohawks and Senecas, said he was dubious.
“We respect the governor’s comments today on the complexities of the issues, and we are engaged in a constructive dialogue with his administration,” Ray Halbritter, an Oneida Nation representative, said in a prepared statement.
A spokeswoman for the Senecas said they were abiding by the gag order set by arbitrators and could not comment. A Mohawk spokesman said the tribe had not had enough time to review the issues brought up by Cuomo to comment right away.
Cuomo hopes to strike a casino deal soon with the Legislature, which is scheduled to end it regular session June 20.
Under the governor’s proposal, potential casino sites would be identified by a special selection committee. No casinos would be located in New York City for at least five years, giving upstate operations a better chance to thrive, Cuomo said.
“A New York City franchise would eat at the buffet table of the upstate casinos,” he said.
Host localities and counties in the region around new casinos would split 20 percent of the government’s revenue, with the state getting the rest. The state uses gambling revenue for education aid.
SNOHOMISH, Wash. – Two people on a motorcycle were injured late Tuesday when they veered into the path of oncoming traffic on Highway 9 and slammed into a car, the Washington State Patrol reported.
Drugs or alcohol were believed to be a factor in the crash.
State troopers responded to the scene, near the intersection of Highway 9 and 136th Street SE, at about 11:15 p.m. Wednesday after receiving a report of a serious accident.
A preliminary investigation found that a 2010 Harley Davidson Fatboy with a man and woman aboard was heading south on Highway 9 when it crossed the center line into the northbound lane.
The motorcycle crashed head-on into a 2011 Nissan Versa driven by a 59-year-old Tulalip man.
The motorcycle’s driver, a 44-year-old Snohomish man, and the passenger, a 31-year-old Snohomish woman, were taken to Harborview Medical Center for treatment of serious injuries. Both were wearing helmets.
The driver of the car was uninjured.
The accident remains under investigation and possible charges are pending.
Dead shiner perch lay in the mud after hundreds of the fish died on April 26 in Browns Slough. Just the day before, Skagit River System Cooperative counted 416 Chinook fingerlings in this same area.
Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
The Skagit Valley Herald reports on a fish die-off in Browns Slough. Last week, hundreds of shiner perch and some fingerling chinook were found dead near Fir Island Road:
Other than the dead fish, nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Because there was no obvious cause of the fish deaths, Wildlife called in Ecology, which arrived about an hour later.
But Ecology workers saw no sheen on the water that might indicate a chemical spill and didn’t note any chemical smell. And though many suspected agricultural overspray, they were unlikely to identify a responsible party.
Ecology spokesman Larry Altose said workers took fish and water samples, but by that time the water already had drained from the slough into Skagit Bay. Without a responsible party, Ecology would not test the samples, he said.
“Samples are used if you have a potential responsible party, and you’re able to confirm that because you can bill the cost to the responsible party,” he said.
Altose said there have been no fish kills reported in that area in the week since then. He said it could be “an isolated fish kill incident that could be related to anything.”
“It’s possible the fish kill will be unsolved,” Altose said. “It won’t be the first time, and it won’t be the only time that this happens.”
In departmental emails on April 26, Ecology workers seemed dismissive of the fish kill.
“The WDFW people there don’t seem to have much interest so I’m not sure why we should,” wrote Dale Davis with Ecology’s spills program.
Brian Williams, a habitat biologist out of Wildlife’s La Conner office, said, “We are in fact very interested and concerned. … However, without a clearer understanding of what triggered the fish kill, it is premature to engage enforcement staff.”
But Ecology said nothing could be done unless a cause was obvious.
“Ecology is the correct contact for a water contamination issue, but like you, we are not able to do much without a (responsible party),” Davis wrote.
Davis was clear: If there’s no responsible party, Ecology will not test the samples.
“So fill me in on why we would ever call you again if you can’t be bothered to establish a cause,” wrote La Conner District biologist Brett Barkdull. “We would have called enforcement if we had cause, we can’t arrest someone without cause. You basically wasted our time.”
Altose said that testing is only done if Ecology knows the culprit.
“Testing is usually done as a confirmational exercise, but not for the purpose of fishing (for a cause),” Altose said in a phone conversation. “There could be any number of things that could be out there.”
Ecology’s budget also plays a role, he said.
“We have to make judgment calls in what we can attend to and cannot attend to,” Altose said.
Estuaries like Browns Slough are critical salmon-rearing habitat, said Eric Beamer, director of research for the Skagit River System Cooperative. The Cooperative has studied that exact spot on Browns Slough for the past 18 years.
Every two weeks or so, a crew from the Cooperative traps the fish in a fine-mesh net. As the tide recedes and flows out of the nearby tide gate, the fish are harmlessly captured, counted and released.
On Thursday, April 25 — the day before the fish kill — the Cooperative noted 416 Chinook fingerlings in its trap. Beamer called it a “good, solid catch” during a peak time of year.
There also were several hundred chum salmon, a handful of coho smolts and several other species. The group also monitors dissolved oxygen, food sources and water temperature — all of which were fine that day.
“Places like Browns Slough are full of these chinook salmon,” Beamer said. “The Skagit has millions of juvenile chinook coming down, passing Mount Vernon and colonizing the estuaries.”
The estuaries, like Browns Slough, are critical for the salmonids’ survival. In the weeks and months they are present, Beamer said they can double their length and increase weight tenfold.
“It’s a critical part of what they need to survive in the ocean,” Beamer said.
Anyone who witnesses a fish kill, pollution discharge or knows the cause of the die-off in Browns Slough in April should call the state Department of Emergency Management: 1-800-258-5990.
From where Mike McHenry stands he can see several gray, torpedo-shaped bodies moving slowly through the brown water of this side channel of the Elwha River, not too far from the site of the largest dam removal project in U.S. history.
“You are looking at several wild winter steelhead. These are the native remnant stock of the Elwha River,” explains McHenry, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s fisheries habitat biologist.
These fish are some of the last wild steelhead in the Elwha – biologists estimate that there are between 200 and 300 left, and they’re here to spawn. But despite the fact that tearing down two dams has opened nearly 70 miles of pristine habitat on the upper Elwha River and its tributaries in the Olympic National Park, it’s made life rather difficult for fish in this river right now.
Millions of cubic yards of sediment and debris are flowing down from above the two dams, making this murky lower stretch of the river a bad place to spawn. But nevertheless, these few wild fish represent the prospect of a restored river, populated with thousands of salmon and steelhead – rivaling the numbers of fish that were here before the dams went in 100 years ago.
With that future in mind, McHenry and a team of field biologists and technicians are capturing, tagging and relocating these ready-to-spawn steelhead into a clear tributary of the Elwha, above the former site of the lower dam.
It’s a fascinating scene, filled with silvery flailing and splashing and men carrying fish from the pool up the hill to the waiting tanks to be anesthetized and tagged before the drive to the drop-off point upstream.
Then all that activity is brought to a halt by a slightly sleepy steelhead resting in a tank. It’s captured the attention of John McMillan, a contract biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“This is probably broodstock,” McMillan says.
Broodstock is another term for a fish that has spent time in a hatchery, even though its parents were wild.
This moment of discovery symbolizes a much larger debate playing out as different groups struggle over how best to rebuild the Elwha’s fish runs.
A broodstock fish discovered among wild steelhead. Credit: Ashley Ahearn
The Great Hatchery Debate
The 20th century wasn’t just an era of dam building in the Northwest. It’s also when hatcheries went up along the region’s rivers to supplement wild populations reduced by those dams, among other causes.
Some Native Americans support hatchery use as a way to restore fish runs that provided subsistence for earlier generations before the dams. But there are some who think hatcheries should not be used to speed up the return of wild, native fish.
It’s not just tribes that favor hatcheries on the Elwha as a way to provide a safe haven to keep native-origin steelhead alive in the tumultuous conditions that have accompanied dam removal.
“In this case what is very clear, crystal clear to us, is that the fish are in such bad shape and the conditions in the river are so unprecedented that any risk that the hatchery poses to these fish is more than outweighed by the benefits,” says Rob Jones, chief of production for inland fisheries with the National Marine Fisheries Service – one of the defendants in a lawsuit to stop the use of fish hatcheries on the Elwha.
Jones says wild steelhead numbers are dangerously low in the Elwha so the hatchery is necessary to steelhead survival. “The job is to help them hang on until these conditions improve enough and then, the strategy is, as we see that improvement that we start to phase out the hatchery.”
Jones says the hatcheries will be phased out when salmon and steelhead numbers increase, but the Elwha River Fish Restoration Plan does not give a set timeframe or hard date when the hatcheries will be removed.
Small-Brained Fish Or The JV Team?
Research has shown that when some types of salmon and steelhead are raised in hatcheries they can become domesticated. Other research suggests hatchery fish’s brains don’t grow as big and steelhead hatchery fish don’t produce as many offspring once they’re released. They’re also less likely to survive to adulthood than wild fish. But as the two hatcheries on the Elwha have demonstrated for years now, they’re a way to ensure that fish return to the river when conditions are hostile for wild, native fish.
The lawsuit over hatcheries in the Elwha recovery plan is a measure of how staunchly some groups oppose them.
“We believe that wild fish in the Elwha would recover better in the absence of hatchery influence,” says Jamie Glasgow, director of science and research for the Wild Fish Conservancy. “You cannot raise a fish in a hatchery without having a negative impact on it’s genetics and its behavior.”
The Wild Fish Conservancy is one of the non-profits that filed the lawsuit against the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, the National Marine Fisheries Service and several governmental agencies responsible for the Elwha restoration project.
The group says that hatcheries aren’t necessary for fish recovery in the Elwha, but if hatcheries are going to beallowed, it should only be for a limited time.
“From our perspective the plan lacks teeth,” says Glasgow. “It does not give us assurance and a real commitment to when hatchery production will be stopped.”
But keep in mind, the recovery process, underway on the Elwha right now, is unlike anything scientists have ever encountered. It is truly a grand experiment. No government or tribe has ever tried anything like this before – and no one knows exactly how it will play out.
Here’s the central question: with so few wild salmon and steelhead in the Elwha, should hatchery fish like be used as sort of junior varsity subs to boost the overall numbers of fish in this river as it recovers post-dam removal?
The science isn’t settled on how hatcheries impact wild fish, though there’s been a debate among fisheries managers on that for years.
Right now the Elwha is a difficult place to live if you’re a salmon or steelhead but it’s not impossible. Last year 500 wild Chinook made the journey above the lower dam to spawn on their own.
‘We Need To Make A Decision’
The debate over hatchery use in the Elwha recovery is playing out in real time as Mike McHenry stands over the tank and looks down at the fish with the nibbled dorsal fin that John McMillan has singled out as possibly coming from the nearby hatchery.
“Here’s where we need to make a decision,” he says, looking at McMillan.
Do the biologists bring these hatchery fish up into the pristine habitat above the dam? Or do they leave them here?
The team decides to bring two hatchery-raised fish upstream, along with six wild steelhead, to be released into the newly-available habitat above the former site of the lower dam.
McHenry leans down into the cold clear waters of this side creek and unzips a black bag. Two large steelhead slip slowly into the shadows along the bank nearby.
The biologists have DNA samples from all of the fish they’re releasing today – hatchery and wild. Mike McHenry and John McMillan say that will allow them to see who spawned with whom and which pairings led to more successful offspring.
“It’s a mixture, and that’s what we have,” McHenry says. McMillan nods his head in agreement.
“Yeah. It’s all we have to work with and you figure nature will sort it out ultimately. Nature sorts out who wins and who loses — and it will.”
For now anyway, nature is getting a little bit of help in the natural selection process.
Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times Barry Bidwell walks through a patch of Scotch broom, which can grow between 6 and 12 feet tall, at the Glacial Heritage Preserve. Bidwell has battled broom for two decades.
Scotch broom, also called Scot’s broom, blossoms in full color at Thurston County’s Glacial Heritage Preserve. A member of the legume family, its seeds are produced in pods. The pods dry in the summer sun and open with a pop, shooting seeds as far as 20 feet.
Who would think this soft landscape, with its undulating blue waves of wildflowers, flitting butterflies and calls of meadowlark, could be the scene of such battle.
But war it was, to win back, acre by acre, more than 700 acres of native prairie at Thurston County’s Glacial Heritage Preserve south of Olympia, from an invasion of Scotch broom.
The sunny flowers of Scotch broom are just now coming into full bloom, painting roadsides, highway ramps, clear cuts and any other open ground yellow all over Puget Sound country and beyond. But its pretty face conceals a commando’s swagger.
Since it was brought here, probably as an ornamental during white settlement in the 1860s, Cytisus scoparius has turned into one piggy guest. A native of western Europe, Scotch broom, also called Scot’s broom, has so worn out its welcome it’s classified as a noxious weed and been quarantined by the state Department of Agriculture. That means it is not to be sold, and is discouraged from planting by anyone for any purpose. Yet it continues to devour more acres of native habitat every year.
No wonder:
A member of the legume family, its seeds are produced in pods, which, as they dry in the summer sun, literally go ballistic, splitting and twisting open with a pop, ejecting seeds as far as 20 feet.
As if that wasn’t enough, the plant can even enlist an army of soldiers to help it conquer ever more ground. Ants eagerly pick up its seeds, dispersing them far and wide as they take the seeds back to the nest to feed fatty deposits on the seed surface to their young. The ants then deposit the seeds in their waste pile — where the seeds vigorously sprout in a compost of ant poo.
Left alone, Scotch broom can grow in stands so dense it alters the very chemistry of the soil in which it grows, as it sets nitrogen in nodules on its roots, making the ground less suitable for the native plants it replaces.
That same ability to fix nitrogen in the soil also enables Scotch broom to thrive just about anywhere, even in the nutrient-poor soils of native grasslands and prairies, where it quickly grows 6 to 12 feet tall.
Its green stems enable it to photosynthesize even in winter, when rains stoke its lush growth, notes Sarah Reichard, director of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens. She and one of her students, Dean Dougherty, published an article in 2004 that noted a single plant could be covered with more than 800 seed pods, producing more than 9,650 viable seeds per year that can last decades — 50 years is not unheard of. And every time soil is disturbed where Scotch broom grows — say to pull it — more seed is churned up, to sprout a new generation.
Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times Barry Bidwell, of Graham, pulls up Scotch broom after first loosening it with a Weed Wrench, a tool developed specifically for removing the noxious weed. Thanks to volunteers like Bidwell, where Scotch broom once reigned blue camas flowers now bloom in the Glacial Heritage Preserve.
But persistence has its rewards. At the Glacial Heritage reserve, volunteers cut, pulled, poisoned and burned back broom. They have sawed it down and attacked it with WeedWackers fitted with metal blades. Mowed it with brush hogs, pulled it out with chains tied on the bumper of their cars and poisoned it with herbicide.
Scotch broom may be the only weed with a tool created just for it: a Weed Wrench. A demolition demon standing chest high, it’s used to clamp onto the trunk of the most mammoth specimen of Scotch broom, and lever it out of the ground with a satisfying crunch.
When volunteer Michelle Blanchard, of Olympia, first started clearing Scotch broom at the reserve, it grew so tall that as she rode her horse into its thickets, she disappeared from view.
“It’s raining out, and it’s cold, and snowing, and we are looking around thinking, ‘This is crazy, there is still another 1,000 acres of Scotch broom,’ ” she said of the early days of the battle of the broom.
Two things helped turn the tide: fire, deployed repeatedly in controlled burns, and judicious doses of herbicide. Followed with diligent hand pulling, volunteers working first with The Nature Conservancy, and then the Center for Natural Lands Management, which stewards the property today, started making headway. With continued work ever since, the results today are dramatic.
As Blanchard walked the prairie this week, a meadowlark called across the open, rolling terrain. Checkerspot, a rare native butterfly, sipped nectar from blue pools of camas flowers. Golden paintbrush, one of the rarest native plants in Washington, glowed as if lit from within.
To Barry Bidwell, a volunteer slugging it out with broom at this site for nearly 20 years, seeing the native plants here swell into full bloom this week was a pleasure dearly felt. A former Boeing engineer, with the license plate ECOVOL (short for ecology volunteer), he first started working at the prairie to give shape and purpose to his retirement.
Over the years, Bidwell said, he has come to believe restoration work is good for more than just the land.
“It gives people the insight that something can actually be made better.”
Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com
The majority of mainstream Americans know little to nothing of the violent and unjust history of the colonization of Native America. Anytime such truth is revealed to the public on the big screens, it should be done fairly since these are rare opportunities to reach the masses. The brutality of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 is one of the most horrific events in American history, but it is so shameful and remains out of sight, ignored, and therefore out of the minds of the majority of Americans. Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 includes the story of Sand Creek in the first real acknowledgement of the massacre in the modern mainstream film industry, but Black miserably fails to take advantage to shed some light on the dark and shameful history of the U.S.
In the movie the villain called the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) justifies his violence in a series of propaganda videos. One video showed historic pictures of Cheyennes, even children at Carlisle boarding school, with his voice-over telling how the U.S. waited for warriors to depart on a hunt before soldiers attacked the peaceful camp. The Mandarin then asserts that this same tactic inspired his terrorist group to attack a church in Kuwait filled with the families of American soldiers. Initially, I was generally impressed that Sand Creek was actually mentioned in the blockbuster film. I was even fascinated that the fictionalized villain correlated the Sand Creek Massacre to conflicts in the Middle East. Unfortunately, by midway through the film, I was completely disappointed and deeply upset that the massacre was even mentioned.
The purpose for using Sand Creek wasn’t too clear, but results in too many wrong assumptions. Are Americans supposed to hold resentment towards their terrorists as Cheyenne survivors held resentment towards the U.S. after Sand Creek? Does the correlation promote sympathy for unjust acts of genocide committed by the U.S. in 1864, or condemn terrorists as unjust and irrational as the U.S. soldiers? Whatever the case, the use of Sand Creek further confuses the populace of crimes of the past.
If the movie had made a parallel between the U.S. atrocities committed at both Sand Creek and in modern Middle East conflicts, like the revisionist films of the 1970s, then it would actually promote sympathy for the insurgents, since they defend their families and homelands against the same imperial aggression. The Mandarin’s comparison had potential to be an intelligent reflection of the George Santayana’s celebrated quote: “those who ignore history are bound to repeat it.” But this was not the case and such parallels are likely to never happen in Hollywood. Besides this isn’t my primary concern.
What upset me the most is that when the Mandarin was captured and exposed as a fraud, and as he lost all credibility, he took the true story of Sand Creek with him. By virtue of association, the true story of the massacre was falsified, devalued, and in all likelihood, branded in the minds of viewers as nothing short of propaganda from a fictional terrorist played by a drug-addicted actor, played by Ben Kingsley. I would rather have the events of Sand Creek completely ignored than be subjugated to so many levels of fictionalization.
Those who teach American Indian history already face major challenges because we are often doubted for teaching unpopular content. We are also not easily respected as experts, nor are we privileged with credibility when teaching of America’s history of deception and violence against Indians. We must learn an art of teaching that encourages students to intellectually engage and evaluate unpleasant and threatening truths, while ensuring that they are welcomed and respected, as they are encouraged to welcome and respect Indian perspectives. We also must substantiate and cite facts in access to avert the appearance of bias. This is not an easy art that one can learn over night, but must be done as we sincerely and honestly impart valuable knowledge and wisdom. Both the Mandarin and Iron Man represent a source of such challenges.
I understand that the Mandarin had to develop as a worthy villain and at the end of the day it was just a movie. But when actual events, especially well-documented heinous acts of genocide, are included in make-believe stories the truth in history can also become make-believe, especially to those with no prior knowledge. Viewers may come to pompously devalue or fiercely contest any future exposures to American Indian history, especially when learning of events where innocent Indian people fell victim to the violence perpetrated and condoned by the U.S.
Most who have never learned of American Indians typically rely on Hollywood for education, whether they know it or not. Hollywood has refined their art of deception.
Iron Man 3 represents that deception, enabling ignorance to thrive while disgracing the nearly 200 innocent Cheyenne men, women, and children who were murdered that cold day on November 29, 1864. Any massacre should never be fictionalized.
Dr. Leo Killsback is a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation of Montana and culturally and spiritual identifies as a Cheyenne person. He is an qssistant professor in American Indian Studies at Arizona State University.
In 2002, a group of retired men began hiking together once a week in the Southern Appalachian Mountains and started finding old, scenic trails they claimed nobody knew about. They decided to revive these trails and make them available to the public, first forming a nonprofit group called Mountain Stewards, headed by president Don Wells.
Operating initially under an agreement with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the Mountain Stewards began work on their first trails in 2005. With the help of grants and private donations, the group has refurbished and interconnected more than 70 miles of hiking and water trails in Georgia, and constructed a number of bridges and canoe launch sites, providing safe outdoor recreation to the public and preserving the region’s cultural and historic beauty.
“It’s refreshing; you get out in nature. It’s like our own personal health-care program,” the 73-year-old Wells says by way of explaining what motivated this “trail crew of nine old men” to work two days a week, 46 weeks a year for about five hours a day.
During some of their hikes, the Mountain Stewards discovered something unexpected. “We started finding Indian trails that we could document from historical maps… and we were locating oddly shaped trees on these trails that had been bent by Indians,” Wells said, adding that Native Americans used these trees like ancient global positioning systems, to help them find their way to and from a particular destination.
Realizing they had stumbled upon living Native relics, the Mountain Stewards, in collaboration with Wild South, and people from five other states, started the Indian Trail Tree Project and Indian Trails Mapping Program that aimed to map Indian trails and document these amazing trail trees not only in Georgia, but all across the country, in the highly confidential National Trail Trees database that now includes 2,034 trees in 40 states.
Now known as the Indian Cultural Heritage Program, these trail-saving efforts have evolved into a book written by Wells and his wife, Diane. Mystery of the Trees, published in December 2011, caught the attention of Sam Proctor, an elder and culture consultant with the Muskogee (Creek) Nation in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, who had a dream about a particular bent tree more than a decade ago. “When I was visiting down in south Georgia, I dreamed that my ancestors showed me a trail they used back and forth from the village to the watering hole. They also showed me this oddly shaped tree and I never even thought anything about it until I saw Don Wells’s book,” Proctor said.
Wells knew the exact spot Proctor had seen in his dream, and on a visit hosted by the author and his wife, they found the bent tree and watering hole once used by the Muskogee (Creek) Indians. “It was a very spiritual experience,” Proctor recalled.
Since then, Wells has confirmed seven other Muskogee (Creek) trail sites in Georgia and Alabama, and is making plans with Proctor for future visits. Wells has also helped elders from a number of other tribes find their ancestral roots—literally.
ICTMN talked with Wells about the Indian trail trees. A documentary about them is also in the works.
What are Indian trail trees?
Back in the 1600s and 1700s, when Indians were traveling from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Canada to Mexico, there were trails all over the United States. They didn’t have GPS or a map, so to find their way from A to B and back home again, they had marker trees, or trail trees, or a signal tree or a yoke tree—they had all kinds of different names for them. These trees would be bent as saplings, when they were about ¾-inch in size, and tied down. They would be left that way for a year and lock into that position. They used them to mark trails, crossing points on streams, springs to find water and medicinal sites where they would get plants.
Are these trees sacred?
The Indians believe the trees are sacred, and one reason it was hard to find a lot of information about them is because Indians didn’t want the white folks to know about them. Because, like everything else we’ve touched, we destroyed. When Indians are standing near these trees, they believe their ancestors are there or nearby. Particularly the Ute Indians, who call their trees prayer trees. They think these trees are very sacred, so we treat them that way.
Does your book tell people where these trees are?
No, it does not. These trees are not protected by national preservation laws, so people can cut them down, damage them or do bad things to them. You can go to our website…and get a bigger picture, but all you know is that tree is somewhere within 1,000 square miles in a certain state. You will never be able to find it from the information that we show. People call us all the time and say, “Please tell us where this tree is, we want to go see it.” And I say, “No, I’m not going to tell you because I don’t want you to go destroy them.”
How do you find these trees?
Not easily. With urban development and agriculture, we have lost hundreds, if not thousands of them. So where you can find them is in national forests and areas that have not been greatly disturbed, mountain community areas. We also rely on the public to tell us, if someone comes across one.
How does someone report a tree to you?
Go to our website MountainStewards.org, and under Trail Tree Project, click on Submit a Tree. Then we dialogue with you. We have some researchers scattered around the country, and if one is near that tree, we’ll ask them to go look at it and collect data.
How do you confirm that the tree is an authentic Indian trail tree?
The ideal way is to core the tree—find out the age of the tree to determine if it would have been there around the time of the Indians. But we can’t go all over the country coring trees. Second way is to look for artifacts around the area. We collect as much information as we can, then make the best judgment call.
What is the most spectacular trail tree you have seen?
Probably the one that is on the front cover of our book—it is in northeast Georgia. That tree is roughly three feet in diameter, bent fairly close to the ground, and stretched out about 20 feet before it goes up vertically. You look at that and say, “No way in heck could that have ever been done by mother nature.”
What do these trees tell you about Native Americans from many years ago?
That they were very smart and very close to the Earth. They could name every plant and know what they could use it for. They knew the trees and could use them to their benefit. That’s why pioneers hired Indians as guides—that’s the only way they could get around. These people knew a lot and they were very smart and very knowledgeable. Unfortunately, a lot of knowledge is gone now because we lost the elders.
Tell us about the documentary.
About the same time we were publishing the book, a friend named Robert Wells (no kin to me), who is a filmmaker, said we needed to make a documentary about the trees. So in 2007, we started traveling across the Southeast and out West to interview Native American elders from numerous tribes who have confirmed that their ancestors bent the trees. We have 80 hours of film in the can, and about half is edited. We are in the script writing stages right now, and we have narrators and a music guy lined up. Hopefully by this summer, we will have the first hour of a three-hour series that will be in a DVD format, to go with the book. We also want to produce a 21-minute version that will go into a half-hour TV program, and a 42-minute version for a one-hour show. Then we’ll take it to PBS or some public TV group and get them to air it.
So far, you have identified 2,034 trees in 40 states. How many more do you think are still undiscovered?
Every year, I say, “This must be the end of it. We don’t have any more.” Then we find another hundred or so. I don’t know if we will ever find the end of it. They haven’t dried up. There are another 12 states that we haven’t looked in yet. We’re also finding them in Canada.
Price, 16, is one of the top-ranked gymnasts in the state of Montana. She was the all-around state champion at Level 10 for the state of Montana in March, then competed at regionals in Seattle in April, qualifying for the national championships in Minneapolis.
This is the first time in nearly 20 years that Missoula, Montana has sent a female gymnasts to nationals. Price has been competing in gymnastics since she was 7 years old at Mismo Gymnastics in Missoula. She has been Montana state AA champion for levels 5, 6, 8 and 10 (twice). A sophomore at Hellgate High School, Price is aiming for a college scholarship for her sport. Price lives with her grandparents, George and Barbara Price, on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana. After 9 years of hard work (she works out about 20-25 hours a week, year-round) this is her first time qualifying for nationals.
“Gymnastics has been my passion almost my entire life. It’s not a casual sport, it requires daily dedication and drive all year-round,” says Kiyana. “I’ve put so much into gymnastics for so long so that, for me, going to nationals is finally having something to show for what I’ve put into this sport. I see it as my chance to prove to myself and everyone else that I’m capable of being great and I deserve to be there.”
To learn more about Price, including the family’s efforts to fund-raise for their trip to Minneapolis, click here.
Jewell told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the Interior Department suffered an $881 million cut due the sequester of the federal budget. Employees are being furloughed and services are being reduced as a result.
“It’s just very, very difficult for us to carry out the mission in the way it’s expected,” Jewell testified.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is taking a hit, Jewell acknowledged. She said officials are trying to prioritize education, law enforcement and self-determination needs.
“There’s no question in Indian Country, we’ve got needs that far exceed the ability to meet them,” Jewell said.
“I know there’s not enough money to go around but we’re certainly working with tribes to do the best that we can,” she added.
