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Early Pioneers of Indian Gaming Had Same Goal: To Help Their People

Gale Courey Toensing, Indian Country Today Media Network, March 27, 2013

IGRA architect Frank Ducheneaux (left), Macarro (AP)

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the legislation that dramatically changed the economic landscape for tribal nations with casinos. In recognition of that momentous event, Indian Country Today Media Network decided to take a look at some of the early heroes of Indian gaming—the tribes and individuals who advanced it both before and after the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

TABLE STAKES
The precursor to IGRA was the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in California v. Cabazon Band of Indians, which upheld the right of sovereign Indian nations to conduct gaming on Indian lands free of state control when similar gaming is permitted by the state elsewhere. While Cabazon is often cited as the legal foundation for Indian gaming, a Supreme Court ruling more than a decade earlier paved the way for Cabazon: Bryan v. Itasca County. Russell and Helen Bryan, the Chippewa couple who brought the case forward, deserve a top spot on the list of early Indian gaming heroes, even though they had nothing to do with gaming.

In June 1972, the Bryans received a personal property tax bill for $29.85 from Itasca County in Minnesota, an assessment on their trailer home on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation. They took it to the local Legal Aid Society office, and attorneys there brought a lawsuit to challenge the tax bill in state court. The assessment, which kept going up over time, was challenged all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and in June 1976, the high court ruled that states do not have authority to tax Indians on Indian reservations or to regulate Indian activities on reservations.

“Bryan thus was the bedrock upon which the Indian gaming industry began,” Kevin K. Washburn wrote in a Minnesota Law Review article entitled: “The Legacy of Bryan v. Itasca County: How an Erroneous copy47 Tax Notice Helped Bring Tribes $200 Billion in Indian Gaming Revenue”. Washburn, who was Oneida Nation Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Harvard Law School when his article was published in 2007, is currently the Interior Department’s Assistant Secretary—Indian Affairs. “If economic impact is a useful measure of importance, Bryan may be the most important victory for American Indian tribes in the U.S. Supreme Court in the latter half of the 20th century. Indian gaming is simply the most successful economic venture ever to occur consistently across a wide range of American Indian reservations,” Washburn wrote. If there’s any doubt about the importance of Bryan, he added, “consider that on the basis of the Bryan precedent, the Indian gaming industry was generating between copy00 million and $500 million in annual revenue before Cabazon was decided.”

And, indeed, all across the U.S., Indian country was bustling with gaming activities during the 1970s and 1980s.

THE BIRTH OF RED CAPITALISM
One of Turtle Island’s greatest advocates for Indian sovereignty and self-determination was the late, iconic Mescalero Apache leader Wendell A. Chino. Born in 1923, Chino was elected chairman of the Mescalero Apache’s tribal governing committee at the age of 28 and was reelected every two years until 1965 when he was named the first president of the Mescalero Apache Tribe, serving in that capacity for 16 consecutive terms.

Chino spearheaded the tribe’s shift to controlling its own natural resources, and by the same philosophy of “red capitalism,” in 1975 the Mescalero Apache Nation built the Ski Apache Ski Resort and the Inn of the Mountain Gods resort in the Sierra Blanca Peak, including the first tribal-owned golf course in the United States. At the Mescalero resort property, Chino was also instrumental in establishing one of the earliest Indian casinos (now called the Inn of the Mountain Gods Resort and Casino) by asserting that the state of New Mexico could not outlaw gaming on sovereign tribal land.
Chino led his Nation until his death in 1998 at the age of 74. “In the scheme of the 20th century, it has been said that Wendell Chino was a Martin Luther King or a Malcolm X of Indian country. He was truly a modern warrior,” said Roy Bernal, then chairman of the All Indian Pueblo Council and a member of the Taos Pueblo, in Chino’s obituary in the The New York Times.

From left: Hayward, Tommie and Halbritter (Courtesy Seminole Tribune/Seminole Tribe of Florida [Tommie]; courtesy Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation [Hayward]; Onieda Indian Nation [Halbritter])

Fifteen years ago, the National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA) established the Wendell Chino Humanitarian Award in his name to recognize tribal leaders whose actions have improved the lives of citizens in Indian country. For the first time, in 20 the award was presented to an entire tribe, the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma, whose altruistic and humanitarian actions helped tornado victims and their devastated community of Joplin, Missouri.

The winner of this year’s award will be honored on March 26 at the Wendell Chino Humanitarian Award Banquet during NIGA’s Indian Gaming 2013 Tradeshow and Convention in Phoenix.

On the East Coast, the Oneida Indian Nation, the Seminole Indians of Florida and the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation were among the earliest to develop Indian gaming.

FROM THE ASHES
Oneida’s gaming enterprise emerged from a tragedy. In June 1976, the aunt and uncle of Ray Halbritter, Oneida Nation Representative and Chief Executive Officer of Nation Enterprises, parent company of Indian Country Today Media Network, burned to death after their trailer caught fire. “The city of Oneida, which is named after us, refused to send the fire department,” Halbritter says. “It was a very tragic time for us. It was horrible.”

Tensions both on and off the reservation were running high because the nation had filed a lawsuit to restore its land rights, which was opposed by many in the surrounding communities. The reservation by that time had been reduced to 32 acres divided into 36 trailer lots, with a mud road down the center and no services. After that tragic fire, the nation’s leaders knew they needed to provide fire protection for the people, but there was no money, Halbritter recalls. They decided to follow the lead of the small fire departments and charities in the surrounding communities that held bingo and “Las Vegas” gambling nights as fund-raisers.

By October of that year, the Oneidas’ bingo operation was up and running. In an effort to develop a better relationship with the city of Oneida, the nation planned a bingo night fund-raiser for the city police department’s benevolent society. The nation informed the state of its plans and invited members of the police department to the event. “A certain number of police came representing the department, but we didn’t anticipate they would use the opportunity to arrest us for operating bingo without a license,” Halbritter recalls.

The nation didn’t have money to wage a legal battle against the state, so their high-stakes bingo operation was shut down. The Oneidas then opened a high-stakes bingo operation in 1985 after the Seminoles in Florida had fought—and won—some of the most important legal battles for Indian gaming. “After they went through all the legal battles, I went down there to visit and they had a flier that told the story of Seminole bingo and they mentioned the Oneida Nation of New York; they talked about the bingo that we had stared years earlier,” Halbritter says.

By 1993, the Oneida Nation, under Halbritter’s leadership, transformed its high-stakes bingo operation into the hugely successful Turning Stone Resort Casino, a world-class golf, gaming, entertainment and hotel resort destination.

SOVEREIGNTY IN THE SUNSHINE STATE
The Seminoles, under the leadership of Howard Tommie, had opened a high-stakes bingo hall on their reservation on December 14, 1979. It was the first casino on Indian land in the country and Broward County Sheriff Robert Butterworth threatened to shut it down and arrest the Seminoles for allegedly violating a Florida gaming statute the minute it opened. The tribe sued the county in Seminole v. Butterworth and won in both federal district court and in the appeals court, which upheld the lower court ruling that Indian tribes have sovereignty rights that are protected by the federal government from interference by state government. The ruling affirmed the Seminoles’ sovereign right to conduct high-stakes bingo on its land and established the tribe’s leadership in Class II gaming.

THE CONNECTICUT MIRACLE
Meanwhile, in Connecticut Pequot leader Skip Hayward was engaged in a three-pronged battle: (1) to save the Pequot reservation from a state takeover after his grandmother Elizabeth George died in 1973, leaving the 200-acre reservation without any residents; (2) to re-establish the fragmented Pequot people as a tribal community and (3) to gain federal acknowledgment. Working with attorneys in a Legal Aid office in 1974 and following a model set by the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes in Maine, Hayward initiated a land claim lawsuit based on the 1790 Indian Nonintercourse Act and drafted a settlement agreement. The land claim raised a storm of opposition in the community and throughout the state, and was challenged in federal court. In 1983, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation received from Congress 2,000 acres of land, federal acknowledgement, and $300,000 to invest in tribal economic development. Thus began the path that led to the creation of Foxwoods Resort Casino, the largest gaming facility in the country, and to an authentic and astonishing rags-to-riches story for the Pequot people.

“Clearly, we would not be here today without the remarkable dedication and commitment of our early leadership and that goes back to Skip Hayward,” Mashantucket Pequot Chairman Rodney A. Butler says. “His willingness to stand up and fight for Indian rights in the 1970s and again in the 1980s

Clockwise, top left: Wendell Chino, Jana McKeag, Leonard Prescott, Marge Anderson (Richard Pipes/Albuquerque Journal [Chino]; courtesy Leonard Prescott

on Indian gaming can’t be underscored enough. Clearly we wouldn’t be here without his persistence and efforts.”

Hayward started a very successful high-stakes bingo operation in 1986. After the Cabazon ruling in 1987 and the passage of IGRA in 1988, the nation began its pursuit of a casino. By 1993, the bingo operation had evolved into the full-fledged Foxwoods Resort Casino. Hayward had envisioned Foxwoods as the first world-class, family-oriented destination resort casino. “That was a tremendous credit to him and where he wanted it to grow,” Butler says.

Foxwoods’s spectacular success has stood as an inspirational story for all of Indian country, he adds. “Here’s this small tribe from Connecticut now owning one of the largest casinos in the world—we can all do that, right? Well, we can’t all do that, but just the inspiration and hope that it provided, I think, was a big influence on Indian gaming.”

MYSTIC LAKE
The Shakopee Mdwakanton Sioux (Dakota) Community in Minnesota was treading a similar path to Indian gaming success in the early 1980s. The poverty-stricken tribe opened a high-stakes bingo hall in 1982, which laid the groundwork for the development of Mystic Lake Casino a decade later. Leonard Prescott, a founding member of the National Indian Gaming Association in 1985, became the Shakopee chairman in 1987. “I built Mystic Lake Casino in 1991, 1992,” Prescott says. Under his leadership the Shakopee and other Minnesota tribes negotiated the first tribal state gaming compacts in the country in 1989. “The compacts are perpetual,” he says. “We have no time limits. We have no jackpot limits. We pay copy0,000 per tribal government which means today we pay copy50,000 to the state of Minnesota for a $2.5 billion business.”

The Mystic Lake Casino Hotel is one of the most successful in the country, providing the less than 400 citizens of the nation with more than copy million annually in payments. The nation also has a philanthropic program that has distributed hundreds of millions of dollars to local governments, organizations and people in Indian country. Last year, Shakopee donated $29 million.

Prescott says he is astounded at the tribe’s transformation. “When we first developed our bingo hall, we had a dirt road, we were making tracks to our building that sold welfare products, we had no sewer and water. So coming from there to where we are today is miraculous.”

WEST COAST FAST-TRACK
California developed the largest number of Indian gaming facilities in the shortest amount of time in the 1980s and 1990s, and even now—with 62 gaming tribes—it has the highest number of gaming tribes in the country, according to Casino City’s Indian Gaming Industry Report for 2013. The Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians opened its casino in 1995, the last tribe to do in the state during that early era, said Pechanga Chairman Mark Macarro. Numerous California tribes had successful bingo operations in the 1980s—the San Manuel, Morongo, Cabazon, Barona, and Viejas, Sycuan and Yocha Dehe. “These were the first and therefore the trailblazers,” Macarro says.

Several California tribal gaming facilities were shut down in the 1980s by sheriffs eager to prove tribal gaming was illegal under state laws. Those raids led directly to the watershed ruling in Cabazon, “which then rather quickly was contained and abridged in October of 1988 by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act,” Macarro says.

But state opposition didn’t stop even after Cabazon and IGRA. Then-governor Pete Wilson disliked gaming and refused to negotiate with the tribes, despite IGRA’s mandate that he do so. Wilson complained about tribal gaming to anyone who’d listen—federal and state officials, Congress, U.S, attorneys, law enforcement, Macarro recalls. Finally, in March 1997, U.S. Attorney Nora M. Manella took action. “Each tribal chair (myself included) was issued a summons to appear in Los Angeles Federal District Court. Our machines had been legally seized, i.e. they were arrested—it’s called in rem seizure.”

The tribal leaders didn’t go to jail, and they called for a huge demonstration. Around 5,000 to 7,000 employees and supporters rallied and shut down the streets of downtown Los Angeles, Macarro says. “The point was: Shut us down? Do so and lose a huge economic engine and these thousands of people go unemployed. The high-point of this rally was when all the tribal chairs stood literally in unity on the top step of the courthouse—summons in hand—and spoke to the crowd. It galvanized us as a group and forged a strong bond which became the keystone for the first statewide ballot proposition battle—Prop 5—in 1988. This was the next major evolution for tribal cohesion and became a watershed period.” Macarro says. Prop 5 passed with 62 percent of the vote and established tribal-state compacts that allowed, among other things, slot machines in tribal casinos.

DOUBLING DOWN
This has been only a partial look at the early Indian gaming “heroes”—it would be impossible to acknowledge the contributions of everyone who worked to make Indian gaming a reality. But no list of Indian gaming trailblazers would be complete without mention of two great women of gaming: Marge Anderson, of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota, was the driving force behind the opening of Grand Casino Mille Lacs and Grand Casino Hinckley within four years of the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988; Jana McKeag, of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, was one of the commissioners on the newly created National Indian Gaming Commission in 1991 and began the commission’s first task—writing the regulations that govern Indian gaming.

In the years since the passage of IGRA, Indian gaming has grown to a $27 billion-plus a year industry, giving tribal governments the means to build their nations and provide services for their citizens. It has also infused the U.S. economy with hundreds of billions of dollars and almost 700,000 jobs. While there are potential threats to Indian gaming in the long-term, the industry is likely to continue its success into the mid-term future, says economist Alan Meister, author of Casino City’s Indian Gaming Industry Report for 2013. “The economy will continue to improve over time, bringing back disposable income, consumer confidence and spending on casino gambling.” So, in the words of former Shakopee chairman Leonard Prescott, it is likely the country will be able to enjoy the miraculous phenomenon of Indian gaming for the foreseeable future.

Eagles on the mend after scavenging euthanized horses

Seven eagles poisoned nearly to death after feeding on carcasses of euthanized horses in Lewis County should be well enough for release from wildlife shelters this week.

By Lynda V. Mapes, The Seattle Times

A volunteer at the West Sound Wildlife Shelter on Bainbridge Island nurses one of the eagles sickened by eating carcasses of euthanized horses. Photo: Dottie Tison

Seven eagles poisoned nearly to death after feeding on euthanized horse carcasses are expected to be released this week.

The eagles are alert, getting feisty and are being moved to outdoor cages, said Mike Pratt, wildlife director at the West Sound Wildlife Shelter on Bainbridge Island, which cared for six of the eagles. The shelter, funded by donations, takes in wild animals of all sorts that have been injured or orphaned.

The shelter started getting calls over the weekend about first one eagle, then a second found nearly dead on private property in Winlock, Lewis County. By the time shelter staffers arrived to pick up the birds on Sunday, four more had become sick, Pratt said. The six birds — five juveniles and an adult — were so ill they were convulsing, vomiting, and could not stand. Two were comatose.

Back at the shelter, volunteers and two veterinarians were waiting. They administered a charcoal purgative around the clock and, by Tuesday morning, even the sickest birds had revived. They may be released by the end of the week, right back where they came from, Pratt said.

A seventh poisoned eagle had been taken to the wildlife shelter at the Audubon Society of Portland on Friday. That eagle, a first-year male, looks excellent and will be released Wednesday, said Lacy Campbell, operations manager at the wildlife center.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the incident, said spokeswoman Joan Jewett. It is a federal offense to poison an eagle, even accidentally.

It all started with horses, euthanized and left by their owner in a field, said Jewett, who added that the carcasses have since been buried.

Stephanie Estrella, director and wildlife rehabilitator of Raindancer Wild Bird Rescue in Olympia, which cared for the birds before the larger Bainbridge shelter could come collect them, said this was the first time she had encountered raptors poisoned by tainted carcasses.

Most of the raptors she has cared for were victims of car strikes, or torn up in fights with other raptors.

She got the first call from Sharon Thomas, a Winlock resident who saw an eagle acting strangely in a field in front of her house.

“It flopped and flew, and flopped and flew. It crashed several times,” Thomas said. “Then it came right to me, it sat right at my feet as if it had come for help.”

Thomas took the eagle to her house, put it in a kennel, took photos of it, and put them on Facebook asking for help. Ultimately, it was Estrella from Raindancer who came to collect the eagle.

Little did Thomas know she was in for a long weekend of more of the same, as she and her neighbors walked and drove the area, on the alert for more animals in distress. “It was heart-wrenching,” Thomas said. “Seeing a large, majestic bird falling over on its head is very sad. Picking them up, seeing them unresponsive and lethargic. Picking up the two others that seemed dead, their eyes were not open, they were barely breathing.”

Eventually, she and the neighbors walking the field and thickets found two horse carcasses, with eagles feeding on them. “I picked an adult off one of the horses. He was covered in rotten meat and blood and so was I,” Thomas said.

She and other neighbors collected six sick eagles, and drove off others trying to feed on the carcasses. “It was very hard to drive away from the work Monday morning,” Thomas said. “I don’t know what other wildlife may have been affected.”

The Longview Daily News reported Monday that the horses’ owner, Debra Dwelly, said she had no idea she had created a hazard until federal wildlife agents, alerted by the animal-shelter operators to the eagles’ plight, showed up at her home on Sunday, after cruising the area in a small plane and spotting the carcasses.

Dwelly told the Daily News the poisoning was an honest mistake that occurred because a friend’s backhoe had broken down, delaying burial of the horses she had put down earlier last week.

Washington state law requires the owners of animals or owners of land on which animal carcasses are found to bury or incinerate carcasses within 72 hours so they do not become a hazard.

Attempts by The Seattle Times to reach Dwelly were unsuccessful Tuesday.

Meanwhile, all seven eagles were getting stronger by the hour. Thomas said she is eager to seeing them released.

“I look forward to them returning and behaving as an eagle should,” Thomas said. “They should be aggressive. You shouldn’t be holding them in your arms.”

A Monumental Day

“Samuel Gomez, the war chief for Taos Pueblo, was in Washington, D.C., on Monday as President Barack Obama proclaimed a new national monument near the tribe’s reservation in northern New Mexico.”

Originally posted ABQ Journal

By Jackie Jadrnak / Journal North Reporter

on Tue, Mar 26, 2013

Not a single dissenting voice was heard when community meetings were called to discuss making Rio Grande del Norte into a national monument, according to Taos Mayor Darren Córdova.

It should be no surprise, then, that the Taos County Commission Chamber was full to bursting with some 150 residents applauding Monday’s signing of the presidential proclamation declaring the 242,555 acres in Taos and Rio Arriba counties a national monument.

Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., hosted that local gathering, while the official signing ceremony itself took place in Washington, D.C. Area residents who joined President Barack Obama in the Oval Office included former U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, who was credited with spearheading the preservation of this land; Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M.; Questa Mayor Esther Garcia; and Taos Pueblo War Chief Samuel Gomez.

“This is a great day for New Mexico,” Bingaman said in a news release. “I’m glad that President Obama found northern New Mexico’s landscape so compelling that he was willing to make the Río Grande del Norte his largest monument designation to date.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the community, which has strongly supported this effort, will benefit from the conservation and cultural protections that come with this designation,” he said.

Vice President Joe Biden, center, reacts after President Barack Obama signs legislation under the Antiquities Act designating five new national monuments on Monday in the Oval Office. From left are Samuel Gomez, war chief for Taos Pueblo, Biden, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. (susan walsh/the associated press)

That local consensus was key in moving the project forward, Heinrich said in a telephone interview last week. Without it, action on the federal level often is stalled, he said.

“It’s one of those really special places,” Heinrich said, adding that in the mid- to late 1990s, as director and an outfit guide with the Cottonwood Gulch Foundation, he took kids all over the Southwest, including to raft and explore the Rio Grande Gorge.

That gorge is only a piece of the new national monument, which stretches to the Colorado border. Obama’s proclamation lists the riches found in the area, including canyons, volcanic cones, natural springs and native grasslands.

“The river provides habitat for fish such as the Río Grande cutthroat trout, as well as the recently reintroduced North American river otter,” the proclamation reads. “The Río Grande del Norte is part of the Central Migratory Flyway, a vital migration corridor for birds such as Canada geese, herons, sandhill cranes, hummingbirds and American avocets. Several species of bats make their home in the gorge, which also provides important nesting habitat for golden eagles and numerous other raptor species, as well as habitat for the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher.”

Besides bald eagles and other birds, the area includes Rocky Mountain elk, mule deer, pronghorn and Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, and rare Gunnison’s prairie dogs, as well as the ringtail, black bear, coyote, red fox, cougar and bobcat, according to the proclamation.

Petroglyphs, some dating as far back as 7,500 B.C., are found concentrated near hot springs in the gorge, along with a number of artifacts tracing ancient habitation. The Rio San Antonio gorge also contains such historic reminders, while San Antonio Mountain is thought to be the source of dacite used to make stone tools, states the proclamation.

Ute Mountain, at 10,000 feet, is the tallest of the extinct volcanic cones that dot the area. Remnants of homes and people who settled the area right after World War I can be found on the slopes of Cerro Montoso, while other artifacts throughout the area mark the passage of Spanish explorers and settlers.

“The Río Grande del Norte has long supported our cultural traditions in northern New Mexico, such as hunting, irrigation and grazing,” said Udall. “As a permanently protected national monument, it will drive even more economic progress and job growth through tourism in communities that desperately need it.”

The Rio Grande Gorge, looking north from the Taos Gorge Bridge is now part of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument near Taos, NM, photographed on Monday March 25, 2013. (Dean Hanson/Journal)

For tribes, prosecuting non-native abusers still a challenge

“The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon could be the first in Indian Country to assert jurisdiction over non-Indians who commit domestic violence offenses.”

Originally published in PBS Frontline

March 25, 2013, 4:17 pm ET

By Sarah Childress

Follow @sarah_childress

When President Barack Obama signed the Violence Against Women Act earlier this month, he spoke of cracking down on domestic abuse in Indian Country, where the violent crime rate is more than 2.5 times the national rate and impunity is deeply entrenched.

“One of the reasons is that when Native American women are abused on tribal lands by an attacker who is not Native American, the attacker is immune from prosecution by tribal courts,” Obama said.

“Well, as soon as I sign this bill, that ends,” he said. “That ends.”

But for most tribes, closing that loophole against abusers will take time. For some, it may not happen at all.

The law has two provisions that already apply nationwide. Tribal governments can now enforce protection orders filed in state or federal court. The law also imposes stiffer penalties on anyone who inflicts substantial bodily injury on a partner, such as strangling or suffocation.

It’s the law’s controversial provision of trying non-Natives in Native court systems — one that initially held up its passage — that poses the challenge.

Tribal justice systems vary in their capabilities. On some reservations, attorneys and judges aren’t required to have a law degree. Defense attorneys may not be provided. Tribal law enforcement officers often don’t have the proper training to handle major crimes cases.

At the moment, no tribe has a system currently capable of enforcing the new law as it’s written. The law requires that tribes provide non-Native defendants with the same rights they would have in U.S. courts, including a right to an attorney, trained judges, and trial by their peers, meaning the court must at least attempt to include non-Indians in its jury pool.

“It’s Going to Start Small”

Only about 100 of the 566 federally recognized are likely to be able or interested in implementing the new protections over the next five years, according to John Dossett, the general counsel for the National Congress of American Indians, a D.C.-based group that represents the interests of Native Americans.

Of those, only 10 to 20 are likely to come into compliance in the next two years.

Many tribes are just too small to have their own justice systems and leave law enforcement to the state and federal authorities entirely. Others have remote reservations with few non-Native residents, so that prosecutorial power isn’t as much of a priority.

As always, there’s also the question of money. The law provides $5 million a year for five years — a total of $25 million — to help tribes strengthen their justice systems. That’s assuming Congress allocates the funding, which could be jeopardized by the sequester.

“The tribal criminal jurisdiction is more of a long-term project, and I think everyone understands that — I hope they do,” said Sam Hirsch, the deputy associate attorney general at the Justice Department’s Office of Tribal Justice.

Hirsch said the office will consult with the tribes before drawing up a written policy outlining the next steps, and work with those who want to take advantage of the new provision. The office will also help the tribes find the funding they need, he said.

“It’s going to start small, and it’s going to spread and build,” he said.

A Symbolic Victory

Even if only a few tribes enforce it, the law is important as a symbolic victory, said Sarah Deer, a professor at the William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota and a tribal justice expert.

“It provides more options to tribes, and that’s what I think sovereignty is about, being able to make decisions that are best for your community,” she said. “The less federal intrusion we have in sovereignty, the better off Indian people are going to be.”

Tribal advocates pushed for this new legislation in part because without it, domestic violence crimes were left to the federal government to prosecute — which often didn’t happen.

The federal government declined to prosecute 50 percent of the cases in Indian country referred to U.S. attorneys from 2005 to 2009, according to a 2010 Government Accountability Report (pdf). That rate was higher for violent crimes, at about 52 percent. For sexual abuse, the rate was 67 percent.

Federal officials have said the high declination rates occur in part because evidence is difficult to come by, especially in assault cases, and witnesses are often reluctant or unwilling to testify.

According to a 2010 law, the Justice Department is required to report its declination rates for cases on Native American reservations to Congress, but has yet to report rates for recent years. A Justice Department spokesman said it would be filing a report to Congress with that information in April.

One federal prosecutor told FRONTLINE that the declination number for major crimes has since gone down, in part because cooperation between tribes and federal officials has improved, making it easier to gather the evidence needed to try and win cases. But he declined to provide specific figures.

One Tribe on the Fast-Track

For the most part, justice on the reservation for the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla in northeastern Oregon looks a lot like justice elsewhere in America.

Tribal law enforcement officers receive the same training as state police, and the judge has a law degree. Defense attorneys are provided for those who ask for them, and the tribe is able to prosecute major felonies. Those who are convicted serve their time in the county jail.

But when it comes to domestic violence, it’s almost as if the system doesn’t exist.

About half of the 3,000 people living on or near the Umatilla reservation are non-Native, many of them married to women from one of three tribes: the Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla. Tribal officials have no jurisdiction over non-Native men on the reservation.

Women there often don’t even bother to report abuse, said Brent Leonhard, an attorney for the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla’s Office of Legal Counsel.

“There’s real reluctance because of the belief — which was correct — was that it wouldn’t be prosecuted, which just makes it more dangerous for the victim,” he said.

Leonhard said the lack of domestic violence prosecutions had led some to buy into the false belief that abuse doesn’t even exist on the reservation, further isolating victims and emboldening their abusers.

The law could change that.

At Umatilla, it’s a practical matter of updating the tribal code to allow the tribes’ courts to prosecute non-Indians. Under the Tribal Law and Order Act, passed in 2010, tribes were allowed to prosecute some felonies, and even to impose jail sentences of up to three years. Most tribes didn’t use the new power because their systems weren’t strong enough, and they lacked the funds to upgrade them.

But for the communities that did, like the Umatilla, their legal codes are current enough that they won’t need to make as many adjustments, Leonhard said.

Leonhard hopes to have the provisions in place by the end of the year. Then, he’ll petition the attorney general to expedite the process to begin prosecutions of non-Native abusers.

“I think, and I hope, it will make a very large difference,” he said.

Source

Italian court orders new trial for Amanda Knox

Italy’s highest criminal court ordered a whole new trial for Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend on Tuesday, overturning their acquittals in the gruesome slaying of her British roommate.

By FRANCES D’EMILIO

Originally published Tuesday, March 26, 2013 at 3:46 AM

Associated Press

ROME —

Italy’s highest criminal court ordered a whole new trial for Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend on Tuesday, overturning their acquittals in the gruesome slaying of her British roommate.

The move extended a prolonged legal battle that has become a cause celebre in the United States and raised a host of questions about how the next phase of Italian justice would play out.

Knox, now a 25-year-old University of Washington student in her hometown of Seattle, called the decision by the Rome-based Court of Cassation “painful” but said she was confident that she would be exonerated.

The American left Italy a free woman after the 2011 acquittal and after serving nearly four years of a 26-year prison sentence from a lower court that convicted her of murdering Meredith Kercher. The 21-year-old British exchange student’s body was found in November 2007 in a pool of blood in the bedroom of a rented house that the two shared in the Italian university town of Perugia. Her throat had been slit.

Raffaele Sollecito, Knox’s Italian boyfriend at the time, was also convicted and acquitted.

It could be months before a date is set for a fresh appeals court trial in Florence, which was chosen because Perugia has only one appellate court. Italian law cannot compel Knox to return for the new trial and one of her lawyers, Carlo Dalla Vedova, said she had no plans to do so.

`’She thought that the nightmare was over,” Dalla Vedova told reporters on the steps of the courthouse. “(But) she’s ready to fight.”

He spoke minutes after relaying the top court’s decision to Knox by phone from the courthouse shortly after 2 a.m. local time in Seattle.

Another Knox defender, Luciano Ghirga, was gearing up psychologically for his client’s third trial. Ghirga said he told Knox: “You always been our strength. We rose up again after the first-level convictions. We’ll have the same resoluteness, the same energy” in the new trial.

Still, it was a tough blow for Knox, and she issued a statement through a family spokesman.

“It was painful to receive the news that the Italian Supreme Court decided to send my case back for revision when the prosecution’s theory of my involvement in Meredith’s murder has been repeatedly revealed to be completely unfounded and unfair,” she said.

Knox said the matter must now be examined by “an objective investigation and a capable prosecution.”

“No matter what happens, my family and I will face this continuing legal battle as we always have, confident in the truth and with our heads held high in the face of wrongful accusations and unreasonable adversity,” Knox said.

The young woman had planned to sit down with a U.S. TV network to tell her story in a prime-time special to be broadcast April 30. The exclusive ABC News interview was timed to the publication of her new book `’Waiting to Be Heard.”

It wasn’t immediately clear if there were any plans to delay the book, given the court setback.

Dalla Vedova said Knox wouldn’t come to Italy “for the moment” but would follow the case from home. He said he didn’t think the new appeals trial would begin before early 2014.

Prosecutors alleged Kercher was the victim of a drug-fueled sex game gone awry. Knox and Sollecito denied wrongdoing and said they weren’t even in the apartment that night, although they acknowledged they had smoked marijuana and their memories were clouded.

An Ivory Coast man, Rudy Guede, was convicted of the slaying in a separate proceeding and is serving a 16-year sentence. Knox and Sollecito were also initially convicted of the murder and given long prison sentences, but were then acquitted on appeal and released in 2011.

Whether Knox ever returns to Italy to serve more prison time depends on a string of ifs and unknowns.

Should she be convicted by the Florence court, she could appeal that verdict to the Cassation Court, since Italy’s judicial system allows for two levels of appeals – by prosecutors and the defense alike. Should that appeal fail, Italy could seek her extradition from the United States.

Whether Italy actually requests extradition will be a political decision made by a new government being formed right now after last month’s inconclusive national election.

In the past, Italian governments on both the left and the right refused Italian prosecutors’ request to seek extradition for the trial of 26 Americans accused in the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Milan as under the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. All 26 were tried in absentia, convicted of having roles in the abduction and received sentences ranging from seven to nine years. It will be up to the new government to decide if they will seek extradition to serve the sentences, all but three of which have been confirmed by the supreme court to date.

Ultimately, it will be up to U.S. authorities to decide to send Knox to Italy to serve any sentence if she was convicted. Dalla Vedova noted that U.S. authorities would likely carefully study all the documentation in the case to decide whether the U.S. citizen had received fair trials.

U.S. and Italian authorities could also come to a deal that would keep Knox in the United States.

The United States in the past extradited to Italy an Italian woman convicted in a domestic U.S. terrorism case after a deal was reached that she would serve out the rest of her sentence in her homeland. Instead, Italian authorities released her from prison not long after she arrived back in Italy, citing medical reasons.

Sollecito, who turned 29 on Tuesday, sounded shaken when a reporter from Sky TG24 TV reached him by phone to ask about the legal setback.

“Now, I can’t say anything,” said the Italian, who has been studying computer science in the northern city of Verona after finishing up an earlier degree while in prison.

One of his lawyers, Luca Maori, said neither Sollecito or Knox ran any danger of being arrested. `

‘It’s not as if the lower-court convictions are revived,” he said, noting that the Cassation Court didn’t pronounce “whether the two were innocent or guilty. ”

The appeals court that acquitted Knox and Sollecito had criticized virtually the entire case mounted by prosecutors, and especially the forensic evidence which helped clinch their 2009 convictions. The appellate court noted that the murder weapon was never found, said that DNA tests were faulty and that prosecutors provided no murder motive.

In arguing for the acquittals to be overturned, the prosecutor described the Perugia appellate court as being too dismissive about whether DNA tests on a knife prosecutors allege could have been the one used to slash Kercher’s throat and DNA traces on a bra belonging to the victim could be reliable findings, as well as tests done on blood stains in the bedroom and bathroom.

Whether that argument swayed the top court at this point was unclear, said Dalla Vedova.

Sollecito’s attorney, Giulia Bongiorno acknowledged that perhaps the appeals court ruling had been “too generous” in ruling that the pair simply did not commit the crime, but was confident that Sollecito’s innocence would be affirmed.

The court on Tuesday also upheld a slander conviction against Knox. During a 14-hour police interrogation, Knox had accused a local Perugia pub owner of carrying out the killing. The man was held for two weeks based on her allegations, but was then released for lack of evidence.

Her defense lawyers have contended that Knox felt pressured by police to name a suspect so her own interrogation could end.

Because of time she served in prison before the appeals-level acquittals, Knox didn’t have to serve the three-year sentence for the slander conviction. The court on Tuesday also ordered Knox to pay 4,000 euros ($5,500) to the man, as well as the cost of the lost appeal.

It was not known why the court concluded the appellate court had erred in acquitting Knox and Sollecito and won’t be until the Cassation judges issue their written ruling.

But Prosecutor General Luigi Riello, who successfully argued before the Cassation panel of judges for the acquittals to be overturned, said he thought it could be significant that the slander conviction was upheld. He noted that the appellate court – in explaining the acquittals – apparently didn’t attribute to Knox’s falsely accusing the pub owner a possible motive of covering up any of her own involvement.

The new trial in Florence will be `’guided by the principles” laid down in the written Cassation’s explanation, Riello said. Should the Cassation judges think `’there is a link” between Knox’s reason for fingering the pub owner and the murder, it could bolster prosecutors, he said.

The Kercher’s attorney, Francesco Maresca, said after Tuesday’s ruling: “Yes, this is what we wanted.”

In her statement, Knox took the Perugia prosecutors to task, saying they “must be made to answer” for the discrepancies in the case. She said “my heart goes out to” Kercher’s family.

—

AP writer Colleen Barry in Milan contributed to this report.

Feds say Native Mob gang dented but work remains

Federal prosecutors say they’ve weakened a violent American Indian gang known for terrorizing people in the Upper Midwest now that an alleged leader and two members have been convicted in one of the largest gang cases to come out of Indian Country.

By Steve Karnowski, Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS — Federal prosecutors say they’ve weakened a violent American Indian gang known for terrorizing people in the Upper Midwest now that an alleged leader and two members have been convicted in one of the largest gang cases to come out of Indian Country.

But investigators acknowledge their work isn’t done in Minnesota or other states where the Native Mob is active, noting that the gang has been around for a long time.

“We have some conservative confidence that we did put a dent (in the gang) but we’re also very realistic and know that law enforcement will continue to pursue gang activity including the Native Mob,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Winter said after jurors handed down convictions Tuesday on an array of racketeering and other charges.

“The verdicts reflect the seriousness of the crimes that were being committed by the Native Mob, which includes not only drug trafficking, but discharging of firearms at innocent people, and trafficking firearms, and basically wreaking havoc through communities throughout the state of Minnesota,” he said.

A federal jury in Minneapolis convicted the alleged Native Mob leader, 34-year-old Wakinyon Wakan McArthur, on drug and weapons charges – but also on a charge of racketeering conspiracy, which is often used to target organized crime.

Two of the gang’s alleged “soldiers” – Anthony Francis Cree, 26, and William Earl Morris, 25 – also were convicted of multiple charges including attempted murder in aid of racketeering. The latter charge stemmed from the shooting of another man that prosecutors alleged McArthur ordered, though his attorneys disputed the claim and McArthur was acquitted on that charge. But only Morris was acquitted on the top racketeering charge.

Defense attorneys said the government’s case was overblown, arguing that while gang members may have committed individual crimes, there was no evidence to support racketeering charges alleging the trio was part of a large, organized criminal group.

The three men were the only defendants who rejected plea deals after 25 people were indicted in the case last year. Several of those individuals testified during the trial, which Winter said should give other gang members pause knowing they can’t trust their co-conspirators.

A sentencing date has not yet been set, but all three men face between 20 years and life in prison, prosecutors said.

“The Native Mob has been a real detriment to native American communities throughout the state of Minnesota,” fellow prosecutor Steve Schliecher said. “Their game plan is to promote fear, and that’s the base of their power, and I think their power is diminished by this jury’s verdict. It’s going to allow people to have the rights to not live in fear, to continue on their peaceful lives.”

McArthur’s attorney, Frederick Goetz, said his client’s acquittal for attempted murder indicates the jury recognized the three defendants’ culpabilities varied.

“It was a mixed result for a mixed verdict,” Goetz said, adding that he would likely appeal.

Cree’s attorney, John Brink, said the verdicts were inconsistent, giving them an issue to use in their appeal.

Morris’ attorney, Tom Shiah, cited the same issue about inconsistent verdicts. He said he was glad Morris was acquitted of the racketeering charge but acknowledged his client was still “looking at a boatload of time.”

Federal authorities say they’ve been investigating the Native Mob, though not these three defendants, since 2004, and have now secured 30 convictions since 2007.

In the latest case, investigators said they were targeting a criminal enterprise that used intimidation and violence to maintain power. Prosecutors said the case was important not only because of its size, but because the racketeering charge is rarely used against gangs.

The 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment called the Native Mob one of the largest and most violent American Indian gangs in the U.S., most active in Minnesota and Wisconsin but also in Michigan, North Dakota and South Dakota. It is made up of mostly American Indian men and boys, and started in Minneapolis in the 1990s as members fought for turf to deal drugs. The Native Mob is also active in prison.

The Native Mob had about 200 members, with a structure that included monthly meetings where members were encouraged to assault or kill enemies, or anyone who showed disrespect, according to the indictment. Authorities said McArthur would direct other members to carry out beatings, shootings and other violent acts to intimidate rivals.

The trial, which began in January, included nearly 1,000 exhibits and 180 witnesses.

—

Associated Press writer Amy Forliti contributed to this story.

As casinos struggle, tribes seek more federal aid

Once the envy of Indian Country for its billion-dollar casino empire, the tribe that owns the Foxwoods Resort Casino has been struggling through a financial crisis and pursuing more revenue from an unlikely source: U.S. government grants.

By Michael Melia, Associated Press

LEDYARD, Conn. — Once the envy of Indian Country for its billion-dollar casino empire, the tribe that owns the Foxwoods Resort Casino has been struggling through a financial crisis and pursuing more revenue from an unlikely source: U.S. government grants.

The money provided annually to the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation through the Interior Department and the Department of Health and Human Services has risen over the last five years to more than $4.5 million, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act. One former tribal employee says department leaders were encouraged to offset dwindling resources by seeking more federal grants.

The Pequots, who once distributed stipends exceeding $100,000 annually to adult members, are not alone among gaming tribes seeking more federal aid. Several, including the owner of Foxwoods’ rival Connecticut casino, the Mohegan Sun, say they have been pursuing more grants – a trend that critics find galling because the law that gave rise to Indian casinos was intended to help tribes become financially self-sufficient.

“The whole purpose of the 1988 law which authorized Indian casinos was to help federally-recognized tribes raise money to run their governments by building casinos on their reservations,” said Robert Steele, a former Congressman from Connecticut. “I would argue strongly that federal money was meant for struggling tribes. Certainly the Mashantucket Pequots and the Mohegans couldn’t under any circumstances be put in that category.”

As long as they have federal recognition, casino-owning tribes are eligible for the same grant programs as the larger tribes based on large, poverty-stricken reservations in the American West. The grants, which don’t need to be paid back, support tribal governments by paying for programs such as health screenings, road maintenance and environmental preservation.

“The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation is proud of the work they do with the use of federal funds when it comes to assisting the region and fellow Native Americans,” said Bill Satti, a tribal spokesman, who said the grants have supported the tribe’s medical clinic and repair work on local roadways.

Thomas Weissmuller, who was chief judge of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Court until 2011, said that near the end of his tenure the tribal council said they had distributed too much money to members and urged department leaders to pursue more federal grants. He said there was resistance from some council members, who raised questions about the effects on sovereignty, but he was personally encouraged to pursue grants by officials including the tribal chairman, Rodney Butler.

Weissmuller said he was not comfortable seeking such assistance for the tribal court system because most of the issues it dealt with were related to the casino, which is essentially a commercial enterprise.

“A billion-dollar gaming enterprise should fully fund the tribal government,” said Weissmuller, who said that he was forced out of the job by tribal officials who told him he did not appear to have the tribe’s interests at heart on other matters.

The reversal of fortunes for the Pequots began around 2008, when Foxwoods completed a major, costly expansion with the 30-story MGM Grand hotel and casino just as the recession began to show its teeth. The following year the tribe defaulted on debt exceeding $2 billion.

Since then, the tribe of some 900 people in rural southeastern Connecticut has ended its member stipends. The Pequots have kept some other benefits in place, covering payments for members pursuing higher education and offering supplemental pay for tribal members taking entry-level jobs at the casino.

The federal grants provided to the Pequots through the Interior Department and its Bureau of Indian Affairs, meanwhile, rose from $1 million in 2008 to $2.7 million in 2011, with partial records for 2012 showing $1.7 million in grants for the year. Grants provided to the Pequots through the Indian Health Service, a division of Health and Human Services, increased gradually from $1.7 million in 2008 to $1.9 million in 2012. That money is to support health care services such as community health, nutrition, substance abuse treatment and pharmacy services.

The federal money opened the door to scrutiny by the FBI, whose investigation of tribal finances led to the January indictments of the tribe’s treasurer, Steven Thomas, and his brother Michael Thomas, a former tribal chairman. The two are accused of stealing a combined $800,000 in tribal money and federal grants. The tribal council has expressed full confidence in its treasurer.

Mohegan Tribe officials said they took pride in refusing federal grants for years, in acknowledgment that there were needier tribes. But tribal officials said they had relaxed that position as their Mohegan Sun casino, like Foxwoods, has faced growing gambling competition from neighboring states.

“It’s a sign of the times. Everybody is” seeking grants, Mohegan Chairman Bruce “Two Dogs” Bozsum said. “There’s some that we qualify for and it helps us to keep everybody healthy and working. At the end of the day, why shouldn’t we apply for it? If we get approved, it’s always for a good cause, usually health or jobs created.”

Tribal officials said they receive modest grants to contribute to the cost of health care for their 2,000 members.

The tribe that owns the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort in Michigan, one of the country’s largest Indian casinos outside of Connecticut, has been aggressively pursuing grants in areas including environmental protection and health services as it struggles with the weak economy, according to Sylvia Murray, grants and contracts manager for the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe.

Sam Deloria, director of the American Indian Graduate Center in Albuquerque, N.M., said he has no issue with tribes pursuing grants for which they are eligible. It’s no different, he said, from the state of Alaska participating in federal programs despite the annual payouts to residents from the state’s oil savings account.

As the federal money reflects financial distress for gaming tribes, however, he does worry that their struggles ultimately could have a ripple effect throughout Indian Country and affect the ability of tribes to participate in the marketplace.

“It has got to raise a set of issues that either in the courts, or in the Congress, or in the marketplace, eventually it will get people looking at tribal participation in business in a different light,” he said.

Chile’s Crimson Shore Under Investigation

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

Thousands of dead sea creatures blanket the southern shores of Chile. photo: AP

Thousands of dead prawns washed ashore along with hundreds of dead crabs, blanketing the beaches of southern Chile in crimson.

These massive mounds of dead sea creatures on the shores of Coronel Bay are extremely disturbing to all, but the cause of death is still unknown and under investigation.

Chilean fishermen are accusing local thermoelectric plants for heating the waters while using it as a cooling agent for their generators. In an article by the Associated Press, Chilean prosecutor Ana Maria Aldana, told state television, “We’re going to be collecting as much evidence as possible to determine if this is an environmental crime.”

However, others believe this may have been caused by El Niño, a weather phenomenon that occasionally warms the Pacific Ocean, according to BBC News.

Endesa Chile, the country’s largest electric utility company, is rejecting any blame. The company said studies indicate these deaths are “due to the flow of deep waters coming from the continental platform, induced by currents of wind on the ocean,” the Associated Press reported. Experts are testing the water’s temperature and oxygen levels in search of an explanation.

Whether it’s due to a natural phenomenon or man-made pollution, local fishermen are worried about the future of their livelihood.

“The way everything is being destroyed here, come the high season in November, we’re already thinking we won’t have anything to take from the sea,” Marisol Ortega, a spokeswoman for the fishermen, told BBC News.

This is reminiscent of some of the bizarre, massive sea creature die-offs in Indian Country, such as the millions of lifeless sardines that floated into the Redondo Beach Harbor of southern California in 2011 and last year’s colossal fish kill on the Canadian shores of Lake Erie.

Historic Federal Lawsuit Dealing with Removal of Indian Children Filed on Behalf of Lakota

Levi Rickert, editor-in-chief in Native Currents, http://www.nativenewsnetwork.com

RAPID CITY, SOUTH DAKOTA – Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union Thursday filed a lawsuit on behalf of three American Indian parents, the Oglala Sioux Tribe and Rosebud Sioux Tribe for the illegal removal of Indian children from American Indian families in the US District Court in Rapid City, South Dakota.

ACLU and Tribal Leaders at Court House

The 39 page lawsuit pertains to the lack of adequate hearings when American Indian children are removed from their familial home.

In one case cited in the lawsuit, one custodial hearing lasted a mere 60 seconds. American Indian parents were not even allowed or permitted to see the court papers. The judge signed the documents to remove the children within in seconds.

The case has been in the making for months as American Civil Liberties Union attorneys reviewed the circumstances surrounding the procedures used in the Pennington Court system.

“This case is not about numbers, this case is about the procedural fairness,”

stated Stephen Pevar, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney.

“This lawsuit seeks to put an end to disgraceful and unlawful practices that unfortunately have been standard practice in Pennington County, South Dakota, for a long time.”

Signs say it all

Outside of the Andrew W. Bogue Federal Building in Rapid City, American Indians began to gather to protest shortly before 9:00 am. Facing brisk temperatures on the second day of spring that were in the low 20s, some 100 tribal members stood outside the federal building as the attorneys and Oglala Sioux Tribe President Bryan V. Brewer, Sr. went inside to file the lawsuit.

“This is the first step. Our children have been abused for far too long,”

stated President Brewer outside before he went into the federal building to file the lawsuit with American Civil Liberties Union attorneys.

“ This has to stop, we will not tolerate this any longer. Today is a historic day.”

People carried signs that read: “Protect our children from the state” and “No more exploitation of Indian children.”

Several tribal members were visibly upset as they took the microphone to tell their stories of how children were removed from their homes without due process by county or state of South Dakota officials.

Mary Black Bonnet, 38, a tribal citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, spoke about being removed from her family when she was only 18 months old and adopted by a non-Indian family and ended up in Niles, Michigan.

“I fought for 22 years to get back to my people. I kept telling myself, “I have to get away from these crazy people.” I wanted to get back to my people,”

referring to her natural, American Indian family. As she spoke, her daughter clung to her.

Mary Black Bonnet – Rosebud Sioux

Some of the attendees discussed how the state of South Dakota and Pennington County officials have ignored the Indian Child Welfare Act, ICWA, that was passed by Congress in 1978 in response to the large number of American Indian children who removed from their homes in at disproportionate rates.

“This hits the heart of our tribe. With this lawsuit we want to see our rights that ICWA should guarantee to us. Pennington County is violating our rights,”

stated Juanita Scherich, ICWA director for the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

“I had to witness the actual filing of this lawsuit. This is so historic,”

said Sheris Red Feather, whose son, Patrick, committed suicide while in the custody of the State of South Dakota when he was 15.

She went upstairs of the federal building to watch the filing of the lawsuit at the federal court by the lawyers and President Brewer.

Tribal Councilors Robin LaBeau and Robert Walters of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe attended the event to demonstrate the support of their Tribe to the lawsuit.

“We are here to support this lawsuit 100 percent. It comes down to our support of all Lakota children,”

Native Americans march against coal trains

Idle No More
by LOR MATSUKAWA / KING 5 News, kgw.com, March 22, 2013

SEATTLE — Two-hundred Native Americans and their supporters marched through Seattle during Thursday night’s rush hour to protest proposed coal trains that would pass through the city on their way to a shipping terminal planned to be built near Bellingham.

The group called “Idle No More” represented several tribes who support the Lummi Nation, which opposes the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal because they say it would hurt the environment.

“There’s wind energy, there’s solar enegy, there’s tidal energy,” said one of the event organizers, Olivia One Feather of the Standing Rock Nation. “Now is the time to come together and brainstorm on what we can do to move past coal.”

The group rallied at Westlake Park before following a police escort to the headquarters of SSA Marine on Harbor Island. SSA Marine is the terminal’s developer. Senior Vice President Bob Waters said the company respects the right of people to express their opinions. He said the $700,000 project is undergoing a “vigorous” environmental study co-lead by the Washington State Dept. of Ecology, Whatcom County and the Army Corps of Engineers. He said construction is easily “a couple years out.”

As the participants played drums and sang songs of healing, Shania Belgarde, a senior member of the Chippewa Nation, clapped along. Her message to government leaders: “I’d just like them to listen to us, the Native Americans. We need our land.”

Watch video coverage here.