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Prehistoric bison slaughter site uncovered in MT

Crews working to build a new dormitory for a boarding school on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana have unearthed a prehistoric bison slaughter site.

An excavation team from the Blackfeet Tribal Historic Preservation Office works on unearthing a bison processing site at the foot of a buffalo jump on the Blackfeet Boarding School campus in August. / (Photo by Rion Sanders, Great Falls Tribune)
The discovery prompted the tribal government there to issue a resolution ordering the BIA to stop construction.

David Murray, of the Great Falls Tribune, has the full story:

Blackfeet tribal officials allege the Bureau of Indian Affairs failed to conduct a proper environmental assessment of the site before initiating the project or to consult with the tribe regarding their plans to build a new dormitory at the Cut Bank Boarding School. If true, the BIA would be in violation of both the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act. The construction project sits immediately adjacent to a well-known prehistoric bison jump that was extensively excavated in the 1950s

“It’s kind of a big thing because the BIA never really consulted at all with us,” said Blackfeet Tribal Business Council Chairman Willie Sharp Jr. “There’s been a stop order placed on all work and for people not to enter the site. They’ve halted everything down there and the Tribal Historic Preservation Office has secured the site because people were trying to steal some of the artifacts.”

Hundreds of pounds of bison bones have been discovered at the site.

One Blackfeet archaeologist called the Boarding School site a “once-in-a-lifetime” discovery.

Sharp said construction work at the site has been halted for a minimum of two weeks while tribal officials attempt to sort out how to proceed. The tribal council is hoping Department of Interior officials from Washington, D.C., will travel to the Blackfeet Reservation to view the excavation and consult with tribal officials.

Native History: A Non-Traditional Sweat Leads to Tragedy

AP Photo/Jack Kurtz, PoolJames Arthur Ray at his bond hearing in Camp Verde, Arizona on February 23, 2010. — AP Photo/Jack Kurtz, Pool
James Arthur Ray at his bond hearing in Camp Verde, Arizona on February 23, 2010.

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

This Date in Native History: The often misguided and misrepresented spiritual representation of traditional Native practices broke into mainstream media on October 8, 2009 when James Arthur Ray, a 53-year-old “self-help guru,” saw tragedy strike his latest retreat.

Ray, a controversial spiritual leader, offered sweats in a sweat lodge to those willing to shell out almost copy0,000 for a week in Sedona, Arizona. Tragedy struck when three of the participants died, two in the lodge and one in a nearby hospital following a week in a coma.

Ray drew the ire of Indian country from the start as the ceremony he was selling bore little if any resemblance to an actual sweat lodge ceremony.

Indian Country Today Media Network West Coast Editor Valerie Taliman wrote an award-winning opinion piece where she stated, “It was a bastardized version of a sacred ceremony sold by a multimillionaire who charged people $9,695 a pop for his ‘Spiritual Warrior’ retreat in Sedona, Arizona.”

RELATED: Selling the Sacred

In June of 2011 Ray was found guilty of negligent homicide in the three deaths. The victims participated in the “Spiritual Warrior” retreat, where 18 people were hospitalized for burns, respiratory arrest, kidney failure, loss of consciousness and dehydration.

Taliman was quoted by CNN following the tragedy as saying, “What right does Ray have to mimic, mangle, and manipulate Native ceremonies that have been carefully handed down among indigenous cultures over millennia? Ray does not own any rights to Native spirituality, because they are owned collectively by Indigenous Peoples and cannot be sold.”

Ray however is one of many who Taliman also referred to as a “huckster posing as the real thing” and was only found guilty of a crime when the loss of life occurred.

Following the guilty charge Ray was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay $57,000 in restitution to the families of the victims—he was released from prison on parole on July 12 of this year.

Breaking the Cycle of Poverty and Crime in Indian Country

By Duane Champagne, ICTMN

Poverty is a root cause of crime, and without solving the poverty issue it may not be possible to solve the violent crime issues plaguing Indian reservations. Where there are high rates of poverty, so there are high rates of crime. The official poverty rate for individual Indians in the United States on reservations is 29.4 percent, compared to the U.S. national average of 15.3 percent. The reservation poverty rate for Indian families on reservations is 36 percent, compared to the national average of 9.2 percent. Urban Indians have a poverty rate of 22 percent, which is better than reservation poverty rates. Some of the worst poverty rates are on reservations in the states of Washington, California, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arizona and New Mexico, where poverty rates often are higher than 60 percent.

Poverty is associated with low income, high unemployment, poor health, substandard housing, lack of market opportunities, and low educational achievement. Cycles of poverty are extremely difficult to break and tend to last over generations.

Poverty is closely related to social distress. Impoverished persons are more likely to be engaged in underground economy, use drugs and alcohol, which, in turn are highly associatied with violent crimes, domestic violence, and high crime rates.

In 2009, rapes in Indian country outpaced the total in Detroit, which is one of the most violent cities in the United States. Violent crime in Indian country increased during the 2000 to 2010 decade. Over the same decade, national violent crime rates fell, while Indian country violent crime rose by 29 percent.

Murder rates in Indian country increased 41 percent between 2000 and 2009. Nevertheless, federal funding for police and courts serving Indian country declined during the same period. While the decline in federal funding of public safety in Indian country may account for the rise in violent crimes, the funding decline does not account for the persistence of high rates of violent crime. More police, courts and jails will only partially address the fundamental issues of violence associated with poverty and social distress.

A recent study on high violent crime rates in U.S. cities points to the relations between poverty and violent crime. The 10 cities with the highest violent crime rates all had poverty rates over 20 percent, while the cities with the worst violent crime rates had poverty rates from 30 to 41 percent. On a per capita basis, cities provide more funds to police, courts, and jails than Indian reservations.

U.S. cities and counties also pride themselves on having better trained police, courts, and incarceration facilities. The two worse cities for violent crimes were Flint, Michigan, and Detroit, Michigan. Flint has a poverty rate of 40.3 percent and Detroit’s poverty rate is 40.9 percent. These statistics suggest that much of the violent crime on Indian reservations is highly associated with poverty, and increase funding of public safety, by itself, may not significantly curtail violent crime and improve public safety.

Indian reservations with poverty rates above 30 percent are particularly at risk. High rates of violent crime on reservations can be expected on reservations like Pine Ridge and San Carlos, which both have poverty rates over 50 percent. High rates of poverty combined with justice discrimination and cultural marginalization may account for higher rates of violent crime on Indian reservations than the rest of the nation. More investment in police, courts and public safety are necessary, but not sufficient for reducing crime and restoring healthy tribal communities.

More police and courts may help contain violent crimes, but do not address the root causes of crime. Solving the poverty issues in Indian country is only a partial solution. Federal Indian policies, and tribal governments need to meet the challenges of providing college education for tribal youth, achieve market sustainability, provide jobs to tribal members, restore individual health, improve housing, support cultural renewal, and reestablish the exercise the inherent powers of tribal governments. High crime rates are symptoms of deeper social and cultural distress, and there will be no solution to high rates of crime without solving the causes of distress.

Tribe Prevails In Washington State Legal Battle for Water for Salmon

Swinomish Tribal Chairman Brian Cladoosby

Source: Native News Network

SWINOMISH INDIAN RESERVATION – The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community learned Thursday that the Washington State Supreme Court ruled in the Tribe’s favor in a challenge to the Skagit River Instream Flow Rule amendments adopted in 2006 by the Washington Department of Ecology.

The Court’s October 3 decision concludes that Ecology department’s 2006 Skagit Rule amendments are invalid because they are inconsistent with Washington State’s laws to protect minimum instream flows for fish and other environmental values.

“This decision is a huge victory for Swinomish, for salmon, and for the water that salmon need to survive. Ecology had a choice to do the right thing or the wrong thing in 2006, and unfortunately, it chose to do the wrong thing. The Court’s decision vindicates the Tribe’s position and confirms that Ecology cannot make an ‘end run’ around laws that protect instream flows for fish,”

said Swinomish Tribal Chairman Brian Cladoosby.

The 2006 Rule amendments radically changed Ecology department’s original rule, which was adopted in 2001. The 2001 Skagit Instream Flow Rule established minimum instream flow levels for the Skagit River and several important tributaries.

“We spent years collaborating on what became the 2001 Rule with the City of Anacortes, the Public Utility District, Skagit County, Upper Skagit and Sauk-Suiattle Tribes and the State of Washington. The result of those efforts was a good rule based on sound science. Our collective agreement provided certainty for agriculture, for the Cities, for the County and for the Tribes for decades to come,”

Cladoosby continued.

In 2004, Skagit County sued Ecology department challenging the 2001 Rule. Multiparty discussions ensued as the Swinomish and other tribes, water purveyors, and the State tried to resolve the County’s complaints. Eventually, Ecology and the County settled the County’s lawsuit without consulting any of the other parties to the negotiation. In return for Skagit County agreeing to drop its lawsuit, Ecology department agreed to adopt the 2006 Rule Amendments.

The 2006 Rule amendments created 27 “reservations” of water for future out-of-stream use for a wide variety of purposes despite the fact that the senior minimum instream flow right established in 2001 is frequently unmet.

In 2008, the Tribe and the City of Anacortes (the “City”) filed a lawsuit challenging the 2006 Rule amendments. The Tribe and City contended that Ecology’s decision to create the reservations exceeded Ecology department’s authority.

Today, the Washington State Supreme Court agreed that:

“Ecology’s Amended Rule, which made 27 reservations of water for out-of-stream year-round non-interruptible beneficial uses in the Skagit River basin and which would impair minimum flows set by administrative rule, exceeded Ecology’s authority because it is inconsistent with the plain language of the statute and is inconsistent with the entire statutory scheme. The Amended Rule is invalid.”

“We would have preferred to work together to find a solution to everyone’s water needs as we did prior to the original 2001 Rule,”

observed Cladoosby,

“but, Ecology chose to go it alone with the County and we were left without any option other than calling the problems with the 2006 Rule amendments to the attention of a court. If we had not acted, the stream flows needed to support our diminishing salmon stocks would have been further impacted.”

The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community is a federally recognized Indian Tribe with approximately 900 members. Swinomish is a signatory to the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott, which guarantees the Tribe’s treaty fishing rights. Its 10,000 acre reservation is located 65 miles North of Seattle, Washington on Fidalgo Island and includes approximately 3,000 acres of tidelands.

Obama Says Redskins Should Think Seriously About Changing Name

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

In an interview with the Associated Press, President Obama said that if he were Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington D.C. NFL franchise, he would consider changing the football team’s name.

“If I were the owner of a team and I knew that there was a name of my team–even if it had a storied history–that was offending a sizeable group of people, I’d think about changing it,” Obama said to the AP.

Snyder, the Redskins owner, has said that he would never change the team’s name, but has been urged by Native American leaders, media outlets and U.S. lawmakers to change it. This is the first time that the president has publicly weighed in on the name-change debate.

Last month, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who previously agreed with Snyder, shifted his stance on the issue slightly, saying that those who are offended by the name should be considered. “All these mascots and team names related to Native Americans, Native Americans feel pretty strongly about it,” Obama told the AP. “And I don’t know whether our attachment to a particular name should override the real legitimate concerns that people have about these things.”

U.S. colleges and universities have changed mascot names that were offensive to Native Americans. According to the AP, St. John University changed its name from the Redmen to the Red Storm, Marquette is the Golden Eagles instead of the Warriors and Stanford University was the Indians, now they’re the Cardinals.

Obama also said he understands that fans have a long-standing attachment to their team and they don’t “mean offense” by supporting them. “I don’t want to detract from the wonderful Redskins fans that are here. They love their team and rightly so.”

NFL owners are meeting in Washington on Monday for their fall meetings and a protest against the team name is planned.

“The President has heard and given voice to the major national Native organizations, parents, educators and students who have long called for an end to race-based stereotypes in sports,”said Suzan Shown Harjo, a Native American policy advocate who is the lead plaintiff in the trademark challenge to the Washington Redskins name.”These public slurs — even when used by enthusiastic fans who have no ill intent — cause harm and injury to our young people and can no longer be tolerated in polite society.”

Obama said he doesn’t have a direct stake in the Redskins name debate because he is not a team owner, according to USAToday.com. But he hinted that it was an interest of his.

“Maybe after I leave the presidency,” Obama said. “I think it would be a lot of fun.”

Standing Rock Sioux Move to Rescue Children, Accuse South Dakota of Genocide

Stephanie WoodardA view of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation outside the capital in Fort Yates, North Dakota. — Stephanie Woodard
A view of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation outside the capital in Fort Yates, North Dakota.

Stephanie Woodard on

Indian Country Today Media Network

10/3/13

Citing the 1987 Proxmire Act, which enables the United States to prosecute acts of genocide, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has asked the federal government to file suit against the state of South Dakota for crimes against tribal children. The tribe’s homeland is in the prairies and badlands of North and South Dakota; one of its most revered leaders was Sitting Bull, who is said to have prayed Native forces to victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Standing Rock’s tribal council urged the United States to take action in a September 17 resolution claiming that South Dakota has been taking its children into care and adopting them out of the tribe illegally, in violation of the Indian Child Welfare Act. The resolution was passed the day after a child-welfare advocate informed the council that a young tribal member whom the state’s Department of Social Services (DSS) had placed with a white adoptive couple was homeless on the streets of Aberdeen, South Dakota.

The advocate, Shirley Schwab, recalled tracking down the 18-year-old. “When she came into the Burger King where we’d agreed to meet, I saw that her life had been reduced to what she could fit into a small blue duffel bag. No driver’s license, no money, no cell phone, little more than the clothes on her back.”

“When she turned 18, she exercised her right to live on her own,” said the teen’s adoptive mother, Wendy Larson Mette. “As far as I knew, she was living with friends, going to school.”

Schwab said a fellow Aberdeen resident had contacted her about the teen’s plight because of Schwab’s prior knowledge of the girl. Public court records show that in 2010, the teen and her siblings reported that their adoptive father, Richard Mette, had sexually and physically abused them for more than a decade. A deputy state’s attorney initiated a law-enforcement investigation. Police visited Richard and Wendy Larson Mette’s house and found sex toys and stacks of pornographic magazines and videotapes in bedrooms and common areas. The children were moved to another home. Schwab became their court-appointed special advocate.

DSS appears to have been long aware that this was a problem household. As early as 2001, Richard and Wendy signed an agreement, now a court document, with DSS. In the agreement, the couple, who are divorced, promised DSS officials to lock up their pornography and stop “swatting, spanking, kicking and tickling” the foster children placed with them. DSS later allowed the couple to adopt most of the children.

When asked if she believed her children had been sexually abused, Larson Mette said, “I fully believe and support my children in this accusation.” She said she found her ex-husband’s treatment of the children “horrifying,” but said that over the years, she had never noticed any indications of the sexual abuse, including related injuries or behavioral changes: “What are perceived to be the obvious signs were not there. They had great attendance in school.”

Larson Mette called the 2010 police report accurate in terms of “room location or quantity” of pornography, but claimed that over the years she had personally seen only some of the material.

Court records and local media reports show that South Dakota cut a deal with the father, who is now serving the relatively light sentence of 15 years for child rape. The state dropped cruelty charges against Larson Mette, and despite allegations that she had tolerated the sexual abuse, returned the children to her.

The state then undertook to discredit publicly the children and their advocates. This included a retaliatory prosecution of Schwab and the deputy state’s attorney, who were fully acquitted at trial. Court documents and sworn testimony show state criminal investigators took the teen and her younger siblings to a basement interrogation room in order to get them to recant the abuse claims. The children were interrogated individually, without an adult present on their behalf. They wept and said they were frightened, but none recanted.

“When I met the 18-year-old and saw what her life had become after such trauma, I was devastated,” said Schwab. “I could hardly breathe.”

Within a few days of Schwab contacting Standing Rock, the tribe had flown the teen to safety with tribal kin out of state. “Our chairman said, ‘She’s our relative, get the plane ticket now,’” recalled tribal councilwoman Phyllis Young, who added that adoptive and foster parents have been known to turn children away after they turn 18 and government subsidies end.

Young said that three Standing Rock children remain in the Larson Mette home, and the tribe is very concerned about their safety; as a result, it will sue for custody. The councilwoman noted that in recent years Standing Rock children have been victims in notorious and widely reported South Dakota cases involving sexual abuse by white adoptive fathers, all of whom are serving time.

“If they file, I will do whatever is necessary,” said Larson Mette. “My children are happy. I love them, they love me. We are trying desperately to put our lives back together and move forward.” She called that a “fair” representation of their situation.

In addition to moving to protect young tribal members, Standing Rock has requested that the South and North Dakota Congressional delegations hold hearings on Indian child welfare. The tribe has also contacted the United Nations about submitting material for the United States’ upcoming human-rights review.

Importantly, the tribe is working with the federal government to develop its own child-welfare infrastructure. This will help solve a problem that tribes and Indian-child-welfare advocates have long decried—South Dakota’s habit of taking Native children into custody and placing them in white households and white-run group homes, thereby undermining tribal culture and sovereignty. The Oglala and Rosebud Sioux tribes and the American Civil Liberties Union recently sued the state in a related matter.

“This all epitomizes the state of South Dakota’s total disregard for Native children,” said Schwab.

Neither South Dakota’s attorney general nor DSS director replied to requests for comments on any of these matters.

“The language of the Standing Rock tribal council resolution is both specific and global,” said Young. “We act on behalf of this teen and her siblings, and for all Native children who have been taken from their tribal communities.” The Proxmire Act includes reparations, she said, and the tribe wants the children’s reparations to include lifelong therapy for the abuse they have suffered.

“What is happening to our children is like war crimes,” Young continued. “We heard terrible things at hearings we just held at Standing Rock. Over the years, many Indian women have asked me to help get their children back. Some of our children the state has in its custody right now are Sitting Bull descendents. This has historic dimensions. We at Standing Rock are taking this to the limit.”

Native History: Construction of Mount Rushmore Begins

gizmodo.comThe carving into the mountain the Sioux call Six Grandfathers began October 4, 1927. — gizmodo.com
The carving into the mountain the Sioux call Six Grandfathers began October 4, 1927.

This Date in Native History: On October 4, 1927, sculptor Gutzon Borglum began carving the faces of four presidents into the granite of the sacred Black Hills.

Christina Rose

Oct. 4, 2013

Indian Country Today Media Network

For the Lakota, the slashing of the stone exemplified disrespect in itself, but beyond that, there was something almost mocking about having four American presidents, all of whom had supported genocidal Indian policies, looking down at the Lakota people.

The heads of each of the four presidents measure 60 feet high and the monument took six and a half years to complete.

The presidents represented on the face of the mountain the Sioux called Six Grandfathers had some terrible Indian policies, here are some highlights:

Lincoln was responsible for hanging the Dakota 38, the largest mass hanging in U.S. history.

George Washington declared an all-out extermination against the Iroquois people in 1779.

Thomas Jefferson supported a policy of assimilation, and failing that, extermination of the Cherokee and the Creek. He said all Natives should be driven beyond the Mississippi or, “take up the hatchet” and “never lay it down until they are all exterminated.”

Theodore Roosevelt, who, shortly after being elected governor of New York, announced, “This continent had to be won. We need not waste our time in dealing with any sentimentalist who believes that, on account of any abstract principle, it would have been right to leave this continent to the domain, the hunting ground of squalid savages. It had to be taken by the white race.”

Six Grandfathers before it was desecrated.

Mount Rushmore was carved into the land that was promised in perpetuity through the Treaty of 1868. The Black Hills are central to the creation stories of the Lakota, where they have always lived and prayed. However, the 1860s were a time when promises were made, but soon broken. In 1877, gold was found in the Black Hills and the land was confiscated by the U.S. government. To this day, the Lakota have refused payment for the land of their origins.

One well-intentioned, if unpopular, result was that in 1939, Henry Standing Bear, Lakota graduate of Carlisle Indian School, wrote a letter requesting Connecticut sculptor Korczak Ziolowski come to South Dakota and carve the likeness of Standing Bear’s ancestor, Crazy Horse, into another mountain. Standing Bear wrote, “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, too.” The Crazy Horse Memorial, which is substantially bigger than Mount Rushmore, is a result of their relationship.

The Crazy Horse Memorial is seen here during a school field trip in September called Autumn Volksmarch.

While the majority of local Native Americans agree that Mount Rushmore could not have been a more offensive undertaking, in 2003, things began to change with the arrival of the monument’s new superintendent, Gerard Baker, Mandan-Hidatsa. From the beginning, Baker set about turning over what the Rapid City Journal called “misconceptions about travel and tourism on the reservations,” addressing the questions of tourists, such as, “Do Indians still live in tipis?”

Baker, described as having long braids and standing close to 6’6”, hired two members of Pine Ridge’s Akicita (Warrior) Society and set up a Native American village. He recommended that his employees read Black Elk Speaks, and that they bone up on the Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1868. Baker took visitors to Pine Ridge’s Red Shirt Table and Wounded Knee. According to historian Donovin Sprague, Lakota, Baker truly rang in a new era.

Gerard Baker (right) with a fellow park ranger during his time as superintendent at Mount Rushmore. (PBS)

“I think Gerard Baker did wonders up there, he got a little village going, and he faced some heat on that. I knew him from the Battle of the Little Big Horn site, and he was part of the big change up there. It had been Custer’s battlefield, and he had it renamed to reflect both cultures,” Sprague said. “Then there was, of course, the Two Cents Column of racist comments in the newspaper. He’s an outstanding person who worked for the National Parks Service since he was a young man.”

When Sprague was asked his opinion of Mount Rushmore, he sighed. “Putting the presidents faces on treaty land, I have always known all my life these things are here and not going away, so I was raised to think about it educationally. What can we do to use it to bring people together?”

Having worked with the former education director at Rushmore, Sprague said, “They [the staff at Rushmore under Baker] were very into integrated culture. We had a graduate studies credit program through Black Hills State University, where I was an instructor. They had staff for the Lakota side of history and culture, and Gerard was there to speak. There was a balancing. We had a really good working relationship during Gerard’s era.”

Baker is reportedly now working in Pine Ridge to establish a new park in the Badlands. Quoted in Esquire Magazine, Baker said, “When I got offered the job [at Rushmore], I called the elders up and asked their advice. I was expecting to hear, ‘Don’t work there. You’ll be a turncoat!’ But instead what I heard was just the opposite, ‘What a place to begin the healing process!’”

Since the monument has been closed due to the government shutdown, there is no information about whether or not the programs instituted under Baker have continued.

County feels effects of government shutdown

By Jerry Cornfield and Gale Fiege, The Herald

The federal shutdown is starting to be felt in Snohomish County.

Campers on U.S. Forest Service lands are being asked to leave. The Smokey Point Commissary, which serves military families, is planning to shut down on Wednesday. Job training programs could soon be closed.

And students from a Catholic school in Everett who raised money for a year to visit Washington, D.C., may miss many of the sights they had been hoping to see.

Here are some of what is happening around the county.

Campers asked to leave

The U.S. Forest Service is closing its recreational facilities in all forests including the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, which includes much of eastern Snohomish County.

Visitors in campgrounds or cabin rentals are being asked to leave. Law enforcement is set to help clear people out, said Renee Bodine, a Forest Service spokeswoman in Everett.

The federal agency also canceled a meeting for the public on Oct. 9 in Everett over a long-range plan on what roads should be left open in the forest.

A big crowd was anticipated at the Everett meeting, the last of a series of open-house events designed to gather public opinion. It will be rescheduled when the federal government reopens, said Bodine, who was furloughed late Monday night, but who worked without pay Tuesday morning to make sure people were notified of changes.

Tour sights closed

A group of Everett eighth-graders will experience the effects of the shutdown when they arrive in the nation’s capital Wednesday for a five-day visit.

The 34 students of St. Mary Magdalen School in Everett, who’ve spent more than a year planning and raising money for the trip, scheduled stops at the Lincoln Memorial, Holocaust Museum and other Smithsonian Institute museums. But all of those are closed until there’s a federal budget in place.

They are still very excited, school Principal Bruce Stewart said.

“They are learning more about the United States government as a result,” he said.

Not all of the students’ itinerary will be wrecked by the political turmoil.

They do intend to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, visit the Mount Vernon home of George Washington and attend a mass at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

Job training programs closed

Workforce Snohomish furloughed 33 employees in its administrative office at 10 a.m. Tuesday. The private not-for-profit agency provides an array of education and job training services using federal funds passed on through the state Employment Security Department.

Three career centers, which serve roughly 1,300 residents, will be open for a few days with limited services and staffing then close until the government shutdown ends.

WorkSource Monroe will be available at least through Friday while WorkSource Everett and WorkSource Mountlake Terrace will operate at least until Monday.

They could be open longer. The state Employment Security Department issued a press release Tuesday afternoon indicating money is available to keep the centers open beyond Monday.

However, the WorkSource Youth Center and the resource room at Everett Station for those dislocated from Kimberly-Clark closed Tuesday, according to agency officials.

Navy bases send home civilian workers

Naval Station Everett and Whidbey Island Naval Air Station sent home civilian employees this week who work in food service, administrative support and maintenance.

The Smokey Point Commissary, at 13900 45th Ave. NE in Marysville, was open Tuesday, but plans to shut down on Wednesday. The commissary provides low-cost groceries for military families.

Military personnel will still receive paychecks under a bill signed by President Barack Obama this week.

Some civilian employees involved in emergency services and other essential operations will be kept in their jobs, said Navy Chief Petty Officer Daniel Pearson.

Pearson is manning all public affairs operations for Navy Region Northwest.

“We’re filling a lot of shoes right now,” Pearson said.

Full-time active members of the National Guard will not be furloughed, but roughly 1,000 federal technicians, including vehicle and aircraft maintenance, computer technicians and human resources personnel will be.

National Parks shuttered

The National Park Service closed all of its 401 sites, including 10 in Washington state.

They are: Mount Rainier National Park; North Cascades National Park; Olympic National Park; San Juan Island National Historical Park; Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park in Seattle; Fort Vancouver National Historic Site; Lake Chelan National Recreation Area; Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area; Ross Lake National Recreation Area; and Whitman Mission National Historic Site.

Eleven recreation areas in Washington overseen by the Bureau of Land Management closed Tuesday. San Juan Islands is the closest location to Snohomish County.

People can continue to drive, bike or hike at parks where access is not controlled by gates or entrance stations.

A total of 67 BLM employees who work in Washington were furloughed.

Spokeswoman Jody Weil said each came to a BLM office in Wenatchee or Spokane to receive their notice and do an “orderly shutdown” before departing.

As for their mood, she said: “I think they are hopeful for an early resolution.”

Breaking Bad or Already Broken? Drug Crime on the Rez Is All Too Real

By Walter Lamar, Indian Country Today Media Network

What does it say about safety in Indian country when a television plot featuring meth distribution incorporates tribal land? Breaking Bad might give Indian country the new name of “Broken and Bad” after the brutal television series, featuring tribal lands, exemplified a continuing public safety crisis. Season 5, Episode 13, entitled “To’hajiilee,” aired on September 8, 2013 and marks the beginning of the end for the wildly popular AMC series. It’s also one more example of how the media persistently depicts Indian country as the place to go to commit drug crimes, murder, and general mayhem.

From the very first episode, and periodically throughout the series, the remote To’hajiilee lands have been the setting for drug manufacture, murders, and concealing evidence. To’hajiilee is a non-contiguous section of the Navajo Nation lying in parts of three New Mexico counties, about 32 miles west of Albuquerque. Despite its proximity to an urban area, To’hajiilee feels isolated and remote. A tangle of secondary roads, many both unmarked and unpaved, crisscross the reservation’s 121 square miles. With only 2000 residents, you may go miles without seeing a soul. In “Breaking Bad,” the series of crimes committed on these tribal lands (theft, murder, extortion, drug manufacture and distribution, assault and much else), set the stage for what promises to be a violent and action-packed series finale.

To’hajiilee is not so different from tribal lands across the nation. All this got me to thinking, “What if the crime depicted in Episode 13 had really happened?” The To’hajiilee reservation is in trust status, which means concurrent federal and Navajo Nation criminal jurisdiction. Federal statute and Navajo Nation codes, ordinances and statutes govern the activities of visitors and residents. But wait, it’s not that easy. Indian Country is the only place in the world where jurisdiction is dependent on race. When a crime is committed within the exterior boundaries of the reservation, law enforcement has to determine if the perpetrator is American Indian, if the American Indian perpetrator is an enrolled tribal member of a federally recognized tribe, whether a tribal or federal statute is being violated, whether the land is indeed trust land, and whether officers responding to a crime are properly certified or deputized.

With that in mind, back to how the To’hajiilee showdown might play out in reality. White supremacists show up with fully automatic weapons (non-Natives to be sure), called by drug kingpin Walter White (another non-Native) when approached by two armed DEA agents and their informant. Everyone knows that $80 million in cash is buried in plastic barrels at the site. Predictably, the shooting starts. Some folks are wounded, some killed. Let’s say one of the wounded tries to make a panic-stricken call to 911. Too bad there’s not good cell phone coverage on the rez— he is out of luck. But wait, some distance away, a Navajo family hears the SUVs rumbling by, followed by a barrage of gunfire, and one heroically drives to a spot of known cell coverage and calls 911. The 911 call gets routed to a surrounding country dispatch, who places a telephone call to Navajo Police dispatch at Crownpoint, New Mexico.

Only about 300 officers patrol the Navajo Nation, which covers a territory larger than many US states. The tribal government has been active in stepping up law enforcement activity under the Tribal Law and Order Act, but cuts in funding have prevented the tribe from hiring anywhere close to the level they need- estimated to be about 800 officers. A couple of officers are on duty at the To’hajiilee substation when the call comes in, and one of them responds by driving to meet the family who called. They direct him toward the area where they heard the gunshots.

The brave officer approaches the scene and finds himself seriously outgunned. When fired upon, he retreats and finds that he doesn’t have radio coverage to call for help, so he drives until he gets a signal so he can communicate he has been fired upon and that there are multiple armed subjects. At best, there are two other Navajo Nation officers on duty at To’hajiilee and back up is 118 miles away in Crownpoint. Back at the substation, they call in to the FBI and the BIA, 32 miles away in Albuquerque. They think about calling in the State Patrol (“Wait, is there a cross-deputation agreement in place? Who could we ask?”). Then they realize, “Whoa, is the incident for certain on our land? Isn’t that near the boundary with Laguna Pueblo? Do we call them, too?”

Meanwhile, the white supremacists kill everybody, grab the money and head out. After no shooting for a period of time, the Navajo officer cautiously approaches the crime scene fraught with death and destruction, over an hour after gunshots are first heard. Later, the FBI and BIA arrive on scene. They realize two DEA agents are among the dead. The FBI and DEA immediately engage in a turf battle as to primary jurisdiction. BIA is caught in the middle and the tribal police are left out. Another twist comes when US Attorney’s office decides where and how survivors are going to be prosecuted, a result of Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, a 1978 United States Supreme Court case wherein the court found that non-Indians are not subject to tribal jurisdiction.

Sure, television is fanciful, but it’s true that criminals have found that doing business in Indian country is profitable because of the remoteness, the lack of officers on patrol, and the jurisdictional tangles created by non-Indian crime on Indian land. Tribes struggle constantly with violent crime and drug trafficking committed by non-tribal members. Meth certainly is a problem on the Navajo Nation and elsewhere in Indian Country; Native Americans are more than twice as likely to abuse this terrible drug.

The effects of meth on people and the environment are truly horrific and would require another article to describe. Methamphetamine use affects the user’s physical health, mental health and emotional stability. The production creates toxic fumes and chemicals, as well as explosive gases, and abatement can require residential demolition. Children exposed to meth either in utero or in the home can develop neurological, cognitive, developmental and behavioral problems.

The Navajo Nation actually has a zero-tolerance policy toward methamphetamine sales, and in the past, the Navajo Nation Division of Public Safety has successfully collaborated with the Drug & Gang Unit, the FBI, the BIA, the Flagstaff police and even the Phoenix police to investigate, arrest and prosecute meth distributors, resulting in entire rings being busted up.

There hasn’t been a high-profile arrest in years, but it’s not necessarily because there are fewer people manufacturing, smuggling or selling drugs on our tribal lands. Just as with tribes across the country, the Navajo Nation police, courts and corrections have been hit hard by the double whammy of planned budget cuts and an across-the-board sequester. The Navajo Nation Department of Corrections has completed two new jails, built as part of the TLOA promise, but the department faces a shortfall in completing the remaining five, or even staffing the new ones. Law enforcement is staffed at less than half of recommended levels. Criminal investigators routinely cover 600 or 700 miles a day to accomplish a single task. The 19 lawyers in the US Attorney’s office dedicated to prosecuting crime are too few to cope with the volume of cases, and end up declining to prosecute about half the time.

Everyone is frustrated by their inability to curb the violent drug crimes that are occurring in their jurisdictions. Officers at Fort Peck, another large reservation, know about drug smuggling from Canada, but often can’t respond in time when planes touch down on remote airstrips. Tribal law enforcement from New York to California know about gang or cartel members who seduce Native women, who protect them (and abet them) as they distribute drugs in the jurisdictional limbo of Indian Country.

How do cartels know that Indian country is the best place to commit crimes? To come around full circle, we can thank the media, from NPR to the New York Times, for sensationalist coverage about reservation crime. Breathless coverage of a Mexican drug trafficking organization on the Wind River Reservation, who exploited Native women to move meth, spurred copycat cases across the country. Evidence collected in one cartel bust actually yielded a Denver Post article discussing how hard it is for drug dealers to get busted in Indian country.

What can be done? The fact is that meth use is ever so slowly lessening its grip on our people, and part of the change is coming from community members. Events like Meth éí Dooda Awareness Day involve everyone in the community from small children to grandparents, and from people in recovery to representatives of the tribal government. In the case of tribal communities like To’hajiilee, outreach to citizens on the best information to give to 911 for a speedy response would also help. Community awareness is the first step in community policing, but there has to be actual policing as well, and that’s where the stumbling block remains.

To effectively police the lands under their jurisdiction, tribal police need resources, and they just don’t have them now. The Tribal Law and Order Act, if fully funded, would enable tribal police departments to patrol remote territory, to negotiate shared resources with state and county agencies, to engage in outreach to endangered youth, and to staff tribal courts and tribal prosecutors’ offices. Congress is back in session this month and we need to put pressure on them to address this problem by fully funding TLOA.

This week, To’hajiilee made the news again as catastrophic flooding hit the Navajo Nation and took out a chunk of the Interstate through the To’hajiilee lands, in the midst of evacuations in many communities, and alarm about the dam failing. The Navajo first responders worked smoothly with each other and with state police and tribal agencies to rescue, evacuate, direct traffic and keep the dam from breaching. Our Native law enforcement officers have proved that they can meet the challenge of To’hajiilee’s real-life crisis. The question remains whether Congress can meet the challenge of keeping their promise to our tribal police.

Government Shutdown Frustrates Tribal Leaders

Rob Capriccioso, ICTMN

The federal government has a trust responsibility to tribes and their citizens. It is a unique relationship, which means there will be unique – and painful – consequences as a result of the government’s current shutdown, tribal leaders say.

The shutdown, which began at 12:01 a.m. on October 1, occurred because U.S. House Republicans passed several short-term continuing resolution budgets that included provisions to delay and/or defund portions of the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare. Both the Democratic Senate and White House would not agree to those provisions, which set the stage for the first federal shutdown in 17 years.

Tribal leaders, widely tired of political games surrounding the federal budget – as well as the profound impacts of ongoing sequestration – are frustrated, to say the least.

“What is just partisan game playing in Washington, D.C. is a battle for survival in Indian country where many of us barely subsist,” said Edward Thomas, president of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes. “Many of our 28,000 tribal citizens live at the very edge of survival and depend upon our tribe’s ability, with federal funding, to provide critical human services.

“Any interruption in federal funding, especially for a self-governance tribe like ours without gaming or other substantial economic development, means we must borrow money – from an expensive line of credit we cannot afford – to meet our payroll obligations to child welfare workers, to job trainers, to housing workers, and to natural resource subsistence protection,” Thomas said.

Ron Allen, chairman of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, said he was disappointed in Republican House tea party members for insisting on defunding Obamacare as part of the budget process. “’My way or the highway’ is not a way to run the federal government,” Allen said. “Tribal leaders have many frustrations with the federal government, but we try to find ways to make it work. That’s what Congress needs to be doing.”

Allen predicted that the shutdown would be “devastating” for over half of the tribes he estimates do not have gaming or other enterprises to fall back on for funding during a federal shutdown. “So many of us – the majority – of tribes are dependent on federal resources,” he said. “It’s going to be tough for the tribes.”

Dozens of tribal leaders have voiced similar concerns to officials with the Departments of the Interior, Health and Human Services, and other federal agencies that serve large amounts of American Indians, according to federal officials. The White House, heeding that concern, held a teleconference with some tribal leaders on September 30 during which administration officials blamed the House Republicans for the shutdown. Kevin Washburn, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs at Interior, also sent a letter to tribal leaders explaining the department’s contingency plan.

The House’s attempt to tie a suspension of Obamacare to a budget bill is unpopular with tribal leaders, as many tend to support the law, since it includes provisions to support the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. If Republicans had their way, a new way to support that Indian health-focused part of the law would be necessary unless lawmakers agreed they no longer wanted to focus on improving Indian health via that law. Republicans will not have their way, however, as Obamacare is the crown jewel of Barack Obama’s presidency to date, and Democrats have been trying to pass universal healthcare since Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.

The real impact on tribes will depend on how long the government is shuttered. It will stay closed until the House Republicans and Senate Democrats can agree on a plan to fund it.

Congress and the president will still be paid during the shutdown.

Public opinion to date is largely against the House Republican position, yet many tea party GOPers, over objections of more moderate Republicans, continue to favor a budget bill that ties Obamacare to it. They have made the case that Obamacare, which goes in effect October 1, is too costly, so they believe it is worth delaying. But Obamacare is intended to reduce health-care costs for individuals and the country, Democrats have countered. And even with the shutdown, Obamacare will still be implemented.

Ironically, the most recent continuing resolution that has passed both the House and Senate thus far – excluding the Obamacare portions – is good for Indian country in that it does not include provisions pushed by the White House Office of Management and Budget that would limit the federal government’s payment of contract support costs to tribes. “That’s encouraging,” Allen said, noting that the White House proposal to cap tribal contract support costs was originally included in the Senate continuing resolution, but faced with widespread tribal opposition, it was withdrawn by Senate leadership. “We have some key people who are supportive of keeping it out.”

Tribal advocates are widely hopeful that once a long-term budget is agreed on – however long that takes – funding for tribal contract support costs will be included without a cap, despite lingering White House opposition to paying its tribal bills.

Despite progress on the contract support cost front, the continuing resolution supported by the House, Senate and White House maintains funding for Indian country at a sequestered level, which means programs that support tribes continue to face dramatic cuts. A joint decision by Congress and the White House, first made in 2011 and carried out on March 1 of this year, allowed an across-the-board 9 percent cut to all non-exempt domestic federal programs (and a 13 percent cut for Defense accounts). This sequester has dramatically harmed Indian-focused funding, and tribal leaders across the nation have claimed it is a major violation of the trust responsibility relationship the federal government is supposed to have with American Indians, as called for in historic treaties, the U.S. Constitution and contemporary American policy.

“The tribes would rather their budgets be exempt from this stuff,” Allen said. “But the political ability for that to happen is next to nil. The new options that people are considering is pushing for two years or longer forward funding for Indian health programs and essential government services, like some programs for veterans.”

Tribal leaders have been pushing hard to get sequestration on Indian programs removed, Allen noted, but the White House has said that it is not going to protect any programs. When asked by tribal leaders if tribes could be exempted from sequestration given the Obama administration’s stated belief in federal-tribal trust responsibility, Charlie Galbraith, the Associate Director for Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House, said at a February gathering of the United South and Eastern Tribes, “That’s just not going to happen. We have the entire military machine, every lobbyist, every contractor, trying to exempt the military provision—the president is not going to cut this off piecemeal. We need a comprehensive solution that is going to address the real problem here.”

Beyond Obamacare, contract support costs and sequestration, the immediate impact of the shutdown will be on the federal workforce, and that impact will soon trickle to Indian country. Overall, approximately 800,000 non-essential government employees are expected to be furloughed.

At the U.S. Department of the Interior, 2,860 of 8,143 employees focused on Indian affairs will be laid off during this shutdown. At the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) alone, the following programs will cease, according to the DOI.gov/shutdown website: management and protection of trust assets such as lease compliance and real estate transactions; federal oversight on environmental assessments, archeological clearances, and endangered species compliance; management of oil and gas leasing and compliance; timber harvest and other natural resource management operations; tribal government related activities; payment of financial assistance to needy individuals, and to vendors providing foster care and residential care for children and adults; and disbursement of tribal funds for tribal operations including responding to tribal government request.

The situation is less dire at Interior for Indian affairs cutbacks than it had been during previous shutdowns in the 1990s, Interior officials said, because they have since implemented a forward-funding plan in the areas of education and transportation, which will keep the employees in those areas working. There is also a comparatively larger law enforcement staff that will remain on duty through the shutdown, and power and irrigation employees will be able to continue working to deliver power and water to tribal communities because their salaries are generated from collections, not appropriated funds.

Employees at the Indian Health Service (IHS), which provides direct health service to tribal citizens, will be largely unaffected by the shutdown. Under Department of Health and Service’s shutdown plan, IHS will continue to provide direct clinical health care services as well as referrals for contracted services that cannot be provided through IHS clinics. On the negative side, “IHS would be unable to provide funding to Tribes and Urban Indian health programs, and would not perform national policy development and issuance, oversight, and other functions, except those necessary to meet the immediate needs of the patients, medical staff, and medical facilities,” according to a plan released by the agency.

Chris Stearns, a Navajo lawyer with Hobbs Straus, said the current shutdown is another hit to the relationship between the federal government and tribes. “The trust responsibility, and the right to federal services, which Indian country has already paid for with its lands, will be diminished,” he said of the current situation. He should know, having worked on Capitol Hill during the government shutdowns of the mid-1990s, which saw thousands of BIA employees laid off, and lease payments to tribes and individuals delayed.

Now, like a bad dream, it’s happening all over again.

“Perhaps it might be fair, if during a shutdown, Indian tribes got to take back our lands in lieu of payments,” Stearns said.