Tulalip News

Arizona plans separate voting systems despite tribal victory

Officials in Arizona are planning to set up separate voting systems for state and federal elections after losing to tribal interests in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, a voting rights case that was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in June.

By a 7-2 vote, the court held that certain provisions of Proposition 200, a state referendum, are pre-empted by federal law. That means the state can’t ask people to prove their U.S. citizenship when they register to vote.

Arizona officials, however, say the ruling only applied to federal elections. So anyone who wants to register to vote for state elections must prove they are U.S. citizens.

The change could affect the voting rights of tribal citizens who were born in the U.S. but lack proper documentation. That was one of the key issues raised by the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona in the Supreme Court case.

Get the Story:
Arizona law may restrict voting in local elections (The Washington Post 10/9)
Arizona to have two-track voting system (The Arizona Republic 10/8)

An Opinion:
Editorial: Nice voting trick, boys, but it won’t work (The Arizona Republic 10/8)

Prehistoric bison slaughter site uncovered in MT

Source: The Buffalo Post

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.

High-End Extras Aren’t A Sure Bet For Tribal Casinos

by Jessica Robinson, NWNewsNetwork

October 09, 2013

Jessica Robinson/Northwest News NetworkYvonne Smith is the director of La Rive Spa at Northern Quest Resort and Casino in Washington state. Across the country, Native American tribes are hoping high-end extras will draw visitors to casinos. — Jessica Robinson/Northwest News Network
Yvonne Smith is the director of La Rive Spa at Northern Quest Resort and Casino in Washington state. Across the country, Native American tribes are hoping high-end extras will draw visitors to casinos.

What used to be no-frills slot parlors off the highway are turning into resort-style destinations with spas, golf courses and luxury hotels. Native American tribes are hoping these added amenities will give them an edge in an increasingly competitive gaming market.

Three years ago, Northern Quest Resort and Casino in eastern Washington opened a luxury spa that’s been on the covers of and magazines. La Rive Spa has its own seasonal menu and moisturizers that cost as much as an iPod.

Nothing about this spa screams casino, by design. Spa director Yvonne Smith says it’s not what you’d expect from a casino in a field outside of Spokane. “The one thing I hear all the time is, ‘Oh my gosh, I had no idea this was here,’ ” she says.

Across the country, tribes are trying to step up their game. Casino profits plus more interest from investors have funded new spas, fine dining, concert venues and other amenities. Phil Haugen, a Kalispel Tribe member and manager of Northern Quest, says tribal casinos are now drawing clientele that might have otherwise chosen a weekend in Las Vegas or at a resort.

“It used to be that people thought tribal casinos were dirty and small and that they just didn’t have what Vegas had or what Atlantic City had,” Haugen says. “But now you have these first-class properties.”

Getting To The Gaming Floor

Out at the Circling Raven Golf Club in Worley, Idaho, Rhonda Seagraves drives her ball toward the first hole. Seagraves is a banker in north Idaho. She says this course at the Coeur d’Alene Casino is one of her favorite places to golf.

“It was just like this little hole in the wall, and now, it’s just spectacular,” Seagraves says.

But she says she is unlikely to gamble after her round — which runs counter to what these casinos are banking on.

“Those amenities are really designed to get people in and start gaming,” says Valerie Red-Horse, a financial analyst who specializes in tribal casinos.

Even with the resort amenities, these ventures still make 80 to 90 percent of their revenue from gambling. Red-Horse calls golfing and spas a loss leader.

“We had a client that had a beautiful facility, one of the prettiest markets I’ve ever worked in in New Mexico, actually. And it had big picture windows in the resort, and they had camping and they had hunting and they had skiing. Well, they found they were not making money because people were not going to the gaming floor,” Red-Horse says.

The casino restructured its debt and hired a management team that specialized in gaming.

In Idaho, former Coeur d’Alene Casino tribal chairman Dave Matheson has watched the operation grow from a buffet in a bingo hall to a restaurant with an award-winning chef. Matheson says the swanky expansions do drive business, but they’re also a source of pride.

“And I think it gives us a chance to prove what we can do,” Matheson says.

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s casino has expanded so much in the last few years, it’s been dubbed by workers “the world’s most hospitable construction site.”

AP IMPACT: Audits show Indian tribes mishandle millions in fed funds, suffer few consequences

By Associated Press, Published: October 6

ETHETE, Wyo. — American Indian tribes have been caught misappropriating tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, according to internal tribal audits and other documents. But federal authorities do little about it — due to a lack of oversight, resources or political will.

The result? Poor tribes like the Northern Arapaho of Wyoming suffer.

One Arapaho manager pocketed money meant to buy meals for tribal elders. Another used funds from the reservation’s diabetes program to subsidize personal shopping trips. And other members plundered the tribal welfare fund, then gambled the money away at one of the tribe’s casinos.Altogether, employees drained at least a half-million dollars from the coffers of a tribe whose members have a median household income of about $16,000 a year.

Federal agencies questioned millions more dollars the Northern Arapaho government spent, but decided not to recover any of the money — and even increased funding to the tribe.

The Wyoming tribe is hardly unique.

An Associated Press review of summaries of audits shows that serious concerns were consistently raised about 124 of 551 tribal governments, schools or housing authorities that received at least 10 years of substantial federal funds since 1997.

Fraud and theft occur across the range of nonprofits and local governments that get federal money. But tribes are five times as likely as other recipients of federal funds to have “material weaknesses” that create an opportunity for abuses, according to the review. Overall, one in four audits concluded that tribal governments, schools or housing authorities had a material weakness in their federally funded programs; the rate was one in 20 for nontribal programs.

Thousands of pages of audits and dozens of reports by federal investigators, obtained by the AP under the Freedom of Information Act, show evidence of embezzlement, paychecks for do-nothing jobs, and employees who over-billed hours and expenses. The audits, conducted by private firms, are required of tribes that spend more than $500,000 in federal funds annually.

Agencies often cannot legally cut funding because of treaties, Supreme Court decisions and acts of Congress, and frequently refuse to take control of failing programs.

“It’s basically a reluctance to take on tribes. The Department of the Interior bends over backwards to be their friends,” said Earl Devaney, the former inspector general at the department that houses the bureaus of Indian Affairs and Indian Education. “It’s ‘make nice,’ and what you don’t know, you don’t know.”

Many amounts were relatively small. But there are so many instances of abuses that the total was substantial.

Tribal council members in Northern California used federal grants to pay their utility bills and mortgages. A Nebraska tribe spent health clinic money on horses and ATVs. An environmental supervisor with a Washington tribe received $16,000 for mileage and other charges he either exaggerated or never incurred. Among grant programs with a significant track record in a government database of audits, tribes ran 16 of the 20 with the highest rates of rule-breaking. Auditors flagged welfare grants to tribes, for example, 39 percent of the time. Most prominent were programs funded by Interior’s bureaus of Indian Affairs and Indian Education and the Indian Health Service, under the Department of Health and Human Services.

Amherst College Acquires Rare Native Book Collection

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

According to a release by Amherst College it is the “most complete collection of Native American literature and history in existence,” and it’s now at the college’s Frost Library in Amherst, Massachusetts.

The collection includes items ranging from religious pamphlets from before the United States existed to first-edition crime by noted novelist Martin Cruz Smith.

“This collection is significant because it is a collection of works written by Native Americans,” College Librarian Bryn Geffert said in a story about the collection. “It presents a unique opportunity for Native American Studies scholars here at Amherst and elsewhere to mine the most complete collection ever compiled by a single collector.”

The Younghee Kim-Wait ’82 Pablo Eisenberg Collection, so named to honor the financial support of alumna Younghee Kim-Wait, who helped make acquiring the collection possible.

The 32 boxes holding some 1,500 volumes written from the 1700s to the 21^st century astounded Native American Studies scholars at Amherst, who began the task of unpacking the boxes.

“Since the collection arrived, it is difficult to describe how it has felt—like suddenly being amidst a seemingly infinite living sea, a literary and intellectual tradition that I have been studying and teaching, immersed in, my whole life,” said Lisa Brooks, associate professor of English and American Studies at Amherst College, and co-chair of the Five Colleges Native American Indian Studies program, in the college’s story.

“It is one thing to know it exists, to write about the authors, the networks between them, to teach them in classes, to once in a while, hold a first edition, signed by the author, in your hands,” Brooks added. “It is another to experience that immersion, physically surrounded by these books—some of them hundreds of years old, in perfect condition—and to see that vast network all around you, to visibly see the connections between them, to hold one book after the other in your hands, the pages opening before you, inviting you to know, to understand more.”

It’s been emotional for Kiara Vigil, an assistant professor of American Studies at Amherst.

“I was brought to tears upon finding an original handbook of the Constitutional by-laws for the National Council of American Indians, created and founded by Gertrude Bonnin in 1926,” Vigil said in the story. “Bonnin’s life and writings are central to my first book on turn-of-the-20th-century Native intellectuals. As far as I know no other archival collection, including those that have Bonnin’s personal papers, have a copy of this particular document.”

Michael Kelly, director of archives and special collections at Amherst, says the collection has got it all—even hundreds of items you won’t find at Harvard or Yale.

“The comprehensive nature of the collection is what makes it special. We have the Native American authors you’ve heard of and for every Native American author you’ve heard of there are two dozen you haven’t heard of whose books we also now have,” Kelly said in the story.

See a full list of the collection here.

And the collection is already being incorporated in the curriculum. Brooks plans on teaching a course focused on Native American literature and intellectual traditions, and Vigil is planning a seminar course called History of the Native Book.

Read the full story by Amherst College’s Peter Rooney, here.

NCAI Welcome President Obama’s Support to Change Offensive NFL Team Name

President Obama joins the DC Mayor and City Council, leaders inCongress, and state governments around the country. — President Obama joins the DC Mayor and City Council, leaders in
Congress, and state governments around the country.

Source: Native News Network

WASHINGTON – In an interview with the Associated Press, President Obama joined the growing chorus of Americans calling for the Washington NFL Team to consider changing its name.

The President noted that the team name is offensive to a “sizeable group of people.” Obama also affirmed the “real and legitimate concerns” of Native peoples – and many others – calling for the team to drop the “R” word.

“President Obama’s remarks underscore the fact that has become increasingly obvious – the Washington franchise is on the wrong side of history,”

said NCAI President Jefferson Keel in a statement responding to the President’s remarks of support.

“The “R” word is a racial slur, deeply offensive to Native Americans. It originated in the bounty paid for Native body parts and human flesh. It does not honor Native peoples in any way and has no place in modern American society.”

“It’s 2013. It’s time for leadership at the Washington team to heed the growing chorus – from high school students to Commissioner Goodell, and now the President of the United States – and close the chapter on this offensive name,”

added NCAI Executive Director Jacqueline Pata.

Background on the 45 Year Effort to Urge the Washington Team to “Drop the R Word”

Removing the name and caricatures associated with the Washington football team and other denigrating sports teams and mascots has long been the position of NCAI, the nation’s oldest, largest, and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization serving the broad interests of the nation’s 566 tribal governments and the over 5.2 million Native peoples.

In a soon to be released background paper on the era of racist “Indian” sports mascots, the organization underscores the importance of dropping the “R” word and provides contemporary and historical background on the need to end the era of harmful and racist mascots. Among the key insights from the paper:

The Washington team’s name is part of the racist legacy of the franchise, most prominently represented by former owner George Preston Marshall’s hard fought campaign against racial integration.
Native organizations and tribal nations have undertaken a sustained 45 year campaign to get Washington to change the name – since the team’s name was registered as a trademark.
President Obama joins the DC Mayor and City Council, leaders in Congress, and state governments around the country who have called for an end to racist “Indian” mascots.
There is a growing sense from the NFL itself that considering a name change is warranted. This year alone, Rodger Goodell has noted that “if one person is offended we have to listen” and has responded to racial language by Riley Cooper (who used the “N word”) by calling it “obviously wrong, insensitive, and unacceptable.” Also, former Washington Hall of Famers Art Monk and Darrell Green said a name change “deserves and warrants conversation” because it is offensive to Native peoples.
There is a diverse and growing chorus of organizations standing against the racist name and sporting teams (from high school to college) dropping the “R” word.

A hike for fall colors, waterfalls and mushrooms

Jessi Loerch / The HeraldFalls colors are lovely on the Pratt Lake trail right now. — Jessi Loerch / The Herald
Falls colors are lovely on the Pratt Lake trail right now.

By Jessi Loerch, The Herald

Walking the trail to Pratt Lake right now is kind of like walking through a fairy tale. Maybe something like “Alice in Wonderland,” with plenty of crazy toadstools growing everywhere.

I hiked the trail on Saturday, and I’ve never seen so many mushrooms in my life. The recent rains also mean there are many lovely waterfalls, some big and some small, along the way.

My friend and I went out for an 8-mile hike and it ended up being more like 11. We couldn’t resist wandering a bit farther.

Pratt Lake is off I-90. It’s easily accessible; the trailhead is barely off of the interstate. You can clearly hear the road from the parking area. That’s the bad news. The good news is it doesn’t take too long to get down there and the trail isn’t yet buried in snow.

The best news is that the trail is glorious with color right now. (And if you check the weather forecast, you’ll see that a few days later this week look promising for hiking.)

When you start out, you get the lovely browns and greens of a Northwest forest. As you climb, you’ll find more and more mushrooms in many shades of brown, red, orange, yellow and white. I may have gotten carried away taking mushroom photos. As you get higher, you’ll start to see excellent fall color. The vine maples are really putting on a show right now.

By the time you reach the ridge top, at about 4 miles, you’ll be able to see Mount Rainier on a clear day. You can also see the top of the higher peaks nearby are dusted in snow.

The trail splits at about 4 miles. One way (to the left) heads toward Island Lake. The other heads toward Pratt Lake.

If you head toward Island Lake, you will find a lovely lunch spots among an open area of rocks. If you keep going, you’ll get even better views of Mount Rainier.

If you head toward Pratt Lake, you’ll have to drop down (And that means, of course, you’ll have to come up). After hiking down about three-quarters of a mile or so, you’ll be rewarded by hillsides covered in glorious fall colors.

This is not a hard hike. The trail climbs nearly nonstop for about four miles and 2,300 feet, but the trail is wide and the grade is gentle. If you continue down to Pratt Lake, you’ll add another 1.5 miles one-way to your trip. This trail is narrower and steeper. You don’t need to go all the way to the bottom to enjoy the fall colors, though.

The trail is on Forest Service land. You can still hike it, though. As of Saturday, the privy was even still unlocked. (Bring your own TP.) You should probably still display a NW Forest Pass, although it’s unclear if anyone is checking for them.

Directions: To get to the trailhead, head east on I-90 to exit 47. Take a left at the end of the exit. Cross the freeway and then turn left at the T intersection. The trailhead is just a minute or so down the road.

Obituary: Anna M. Hatch

On Sept. 30, 2013, Anna M. Hatch left to be with the good Lord and her loving husband. She was a homemaker for the first twenty years of her marriage, then worked for twenty years at the Tulalip Smoke Shop. Anna leaves behind a brother, Earl (Moxy) Renecker (Bernice-D); a sister, Isabelle Legg (James); three daughters, Karen Bayne (Hatch), Vicki Hatch-Jablonski (Steve), Gloria Hatch (Steve); a grandson, Punkies (Buck-Jones-Hatch), who lived with her since he was born; Isabelle Cervantes and Anna Leigh Hatch who lived with her too; her other grandchildren, Tressa, Anderson (Kenneth M.), Jamen Anderson, Tever Anderson, Jessica Anderson (Luther), Anthony “Tony” Reese (Sarah) and Linzee Jablonski; and 10 great-grandchildren; Anna was preceded in death by her husband, Verle Hatch, of 60 years who passed away in April; brother, Henry (Hank) Gobin who passed in April; her mother, Isabelle Walker Brown; father, Henry Gobin Sr.; and siblings, Shirley, Emery, Daryl, Frank and John. A visitation will be held Wednesday, October 2, 2013 at 1:00 p.m. at Schaefer-Shipman Funeral Home with a service following at the home at 6 p.m. Funeral services will be held Thursday, October 3, 2013 at 10 a.m. at the Tulalip Gym with a burial following at Mission Beach Cemetery. Arrangements entrusted to Schaefer-Shipman Funeral Home – See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/heraldnet/obituary.aspx?n=anna-m-hatch&pid=167298265&fhid=2242#sthash.QUNbIKlY.dpuf

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.