According to Native lore, the constellation of stars is a fisher that jumped into the sky while chasing its dinner. A professor in Minnesota is helping tell the story of Native stars and stories.
Ann Wessel of the St. Cloud Times has the story about Annette Lee’s work.Lee, assistant professor of astronomy and physics, explained to a room full of teachers attending a summer conference at St. Cloud State, that in Ojibwe culture the fisher is a clever, fierce and brave animal and a good fighter. It climbed a pine tree and jumped through a hole in the sky to bring back the birds and, therefore, the spring. Fishers are constantly on the move, sleeping for only a few hours before returning to the hunt. Like the fisher, the Big Dipper is constantly on the move in the sky.
On the Dakota star map, the Big Dipper contains the Blue Spirit Woman, who helps newborns pass from the star world to Earth and back again.
Through the Native Starwatchers Project, Lee has introduced audiences in Minnesota and throughout the U.S. to some Dakota and Ojibwe constellations and the stories they carry. Minnesota teachers are tuning in because state science standards require instructors to show how people from other cultures, including the state’s American Indian tribes, have contributed to science.
“I think it’s important for people to understand that although the mainstream science uses European and Greek (constellations), it’s important to know it comes from a certain culture,” Lee said later. “There are many ways of knowing, and that’s just one way.”
Lee said she hoped her efforts would give native people a better sense of their own history — a history that is being lost in a culture where stories were spoken, not written.
“Part of it’s recognizing all different cultures. We all have our connection to the stars, and that’s one of the few things in this day and age that connects us,” Lee said.
Roberta Conner of Tamastslikt Cultural Institute benefits from audience participation as women from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla showcase traditional dances on the last day of the Oregon State Fair. / Thomas Patterson / Statesman Jou
The Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation took center stage on the last day of the Oregon State Fair today.
Four members of the tribe, wearing traditional clothing such as eagle feathers, moccasins, shell earrings and braids, performed their native dances on the Americraft Cookware Stage.
Roberta Conner, director of the Tamastslikt Cultural Institute who led the dancers, described the dances before each demonstration.
Conner said the tribes have been in Oregon for 10,000 years and have always been welcoming to visitors. When visitors would reach the tribes they would be offered food and water along with a performance of the welcome dance.
Kirke Campbell, of Corvallis, said his daughter wanted to be at the fair today to see the Umatilla dancers.
Campbell was randomly selected from the audience to participate in the owl dance.
“I was honored to be picked,” he said.
At the end of the performance, all of the audience members were asked to join in a circle dance. About 50 took advantage of the opportunity.
“(This) has been the best turn out for the three performances we have done,” Conner said.
By Billy Frank, Jr., Chairman, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
OLYMPIA – A crumbling 103-year-old fish-blocking diversion dam and inadequate fish passage system on the White River near Buckley need to be replaced because they are leading to injury and death for hundreds of threatened salmon, steelhead and bull trout, slowing salmon recovery efforts in the river system.
It’s common for some adult salmon to display a few cuts, scrapes and scars by the time they complete their ocean migration and return to spawn. That can take two to six years depending on the species.
But more and more fish are now being found at the foot of the diversion dam with gaping wounds and other injuries caused by exposed wooden boards, steel reinforcement bars and other parts of the deteriorating structure. Many of those fish later die from their injuries.
At the same time, an explosive revival of pink salmon has overwhelmed the inadequate trap-and-haul fish passage system operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. At two years, pink salmon have the shortest life cycle of all salmon and are abundant in the Puget Sound region. Pink salmon returns to the White River have shot up in the past decade from tens of thousands to close to a million.
That’s led to massive crowding of returning adult spring chinook, steelhead and migrating bull trout at the foot of the diversion dam where salmon continually try to leap over the structure – injuring themselves in the process – in their effort to move upstream and spawn. All three species are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
The diversion dam, constructed in 1910, sends water from the river to Lake Tapps. The dam prevents adult salmon from reaching the Mud Mountain Dam farther upstream, which is also impassable to salmon. Instead, fish are collected in a 73-year-old trap just below the diversion dam, then trucked upriver and released above Mud Mountain Dam.
There’s been a lot of talk but no action to fix the fish passage problem in the river.
Back in 2007, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) issued a biological opinion under the Endangered Species Act requiring the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to upgrade the fish trap. So far, the Corps has ignored the order, claiming that it doesn’t have the money. NMFS, meanwhile, has turned a blind eye to the Corps’ documented illegal killing of ESA-listed salmon.
In 1986, only a handful of spring chinook returned to the White River, but today those returns number in the thousands because of the cooperative efforts of the Muckleshoot and Puyallup tribes, state government and others.
The Corps and NMFS need to step up to the plate and do their jobs. When they don’t, what they are really saying is that salmon, treaty rights, and years of effort and investment by so many of us here in Puget Sound don’t really matter.
Salmon Homecoming is all about the people of the Pacific Northwest, whoever they are and whatever they do. That means we’re here for you, because your health, spirit and even your sustainable economy is most certainly about the salmon.
The Salmon Homecoming Alliance is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit foundation, established to organize, plan, develop and facilitate programs and events associated with Salmon Homecoming. Board members represent a variety of governments, associations, foundations and industries. Our objectives are to provide opportunities for tribal and non-tribal communities to come together in a positive atmosphere, learn from one another, and explore ways to support cooperative spirit in salmon restoration and protection.
We are happy to continue the tradition by celebrating the 21st annual Salmon Homecoming ceremony. The celebrations have always included cultural presentations, such as Northwest traditional gatherings, Pow Wows and Cedar Canoe events. We’ve sponsored environmental fairs, educational outreach activities, salmon bakes and even salmon runs. We present “Seventh Generation Legacy Awards” every year to people who have made important contributions to natural resources and Indian/non-Indian relations. We have accomplished much, but our Salmon Story has just begun.
“Salmon are the measuring stick of well-being in the Pacific Northwest.”
-Billy Frank, Jr., Chairman, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
Youth involved in the University of New Mexico’s Honoring Native Life initiative want to be heard. The Native American Suicide Prevention Clearinghouse, a resource to tribes in New Mexico for suicide prevention and suicide response, today helped their voices reach far and wide with the release of a video directed toward tribal leaders and policy makers.
“What we need from our tribal leaders and policy makers is more sympathy towards the different generations that exist in our communities—the elders, parents, adults, youth, adolescents,” says a participant in the video. “Something that will bring those groups together but also recognize their differences.”
The video, which can be viewed at http://honoringnativelife.org, is meant to direct attention to the needs of Native American youth and strengthen tribal leadership and tribal policy makers’ involvement in suicide prevention.
The video was created at the recent Honoring Native Life Summit, an event specifically focused on addressing suicide in Indian Country. The Summit included involvement from the Pueblos of San Felipe and Zuni; Navajo Nation; Mescalero Apache Nation; Albuquerque Area Indian Health Service; New Mexico Indian Affairs Department; White Mountain Apache Tribe of Arizona; and several other tribal communities throughout the State.
“The message that we are hearing from tribal youth is that they want a voice, and in that respect, they want to feel like a priority to leaders and policy makers,” said Sheri Lesansee (Pueblo of Zuni), UNM, Department of Psychiatry, Center for Rural & Community Behavioral Health.
More than 30,000 people in the U.S. die by suicide every year. It is this country’s 11th leading cause of death. New Mexico consistently ranks among the top five states in the U.S. for its suicide rate, which is 1.5 to two times the national average. Suicide is the 9th leading cause of death for New Mexicans.
Aissa Yazzie &150; Navajo Nation, prepares for a career in Native Environmental Science at Northwestern Indian College
Source: Native News Network
WASHINGTON – Labor Day pays tribute to the social and economic achievements of American workers. The first observance of Labor Day was likely on September 5, 1882, when some 10,000 workers assembled in New York City for a parade. That celebration inspired similar events across the country, and by 1894 more than half the states were observing a “workingmen’s holiday” on one day or another.
That same year, Congress passed legislation and President Grover Cleveland signed the bill on June 29, the first Monday in September would be designated as “Labor Day.” This national holiday is a creation of the labor movement in the late 19th century.
The following statistics that provide an overview of the labor force in the country today were furnished by the US Census Bureau:
Who Are We Celebrating?
155.7 million
Number of people 16 and over in the nation’s labor force in May 2013.
Our Jobs
Largest Occupations May 2012
Retail Salespeople
4,340,000 employees
Cashiers
3,314,010 employees
Combined food preparation and serving workers, including fast food
2,943,810 employees
Office clerks, general
2,808,100 employees
Registered nurses
2,633,980 employees
Waiters and waitresses
2,332,020 employees
Customer service representatives
2,299,750 employees
Laborers and freight, stock, and material movers, hand
2,143,940 employees
Janitors and cleaners, except maids and housekeeping cleaners
2,097,380 employees
Secretaries and administrative assistants, except legal medical, and executive
2,085,680 employees
Largest Occupations 1910
Farmers (owners and tenants)
6,132,000 employees
Farm laborers, wageworkers
2,832,000 employees
Farm laborers, unpaid family workers
2,514,000 employees
Operatives and kindred workers, manufacturing
2,318,000 employees
Salesmen and sales clerks, retail trade
1,454,000 employees
Housekeepers, private household – living out
1,338,000 employees
Managers, officials, and proprietors, retail trade
1,119,000 employees
Mine operatives and laborers, crude petroleum & natural gas extraction
907,000 employees
847,516
The number of paid employees (for pay period including March 12) who worked for a gasoline station in the US in 2011. Oregon was the first state to make Labor Day a holiday in February 1887. Oregon (9,634 paid gasoline station employees), along with New Jersey (15,734 paid gasoline station employees), are the only states without self-service gasoline stations.
15.9 million
The number of wage and salary workers age 16 and over represented by a union in 2012. This group includes both union members (14.4 million) and workers who report no union affiliation but whose jobs are covered by a union contract (1.6 million).
14.5 million
Number of female workers 16 and over in service occupations in 2011. Among male workers 16 and over, 11.2 million were employed in service-related occupations.
1.9 Percent
Percentage increase in employment in the US between December 2011 and December 2012. Employment increased in 287 of the 328 largest counties (large counties are defined as having employment levels of 75,000 or more).
7.4 Percent
Percentage increase over the year in employment in Elkhart, Indiana, between December 2011 and December 2012, compared with national job growth of 1.9 percent. Within Elkhart, the largest employment increase occurred in manufacturing, which gained 5,479 jobs over the year.
Another Day, Another Dollar
$48,202 and $37,118
The 2011 real median earnings for male and female full-time, year-round workers, respectively.
Fastest Growing Jobs
70 Percent
Projected percentage growth from 2010 to 2020 in the number of personal care aides (607,000). Analysts expect this occupation to grow much faster than the average for all occupations. Meanwhile, the occupation expected to add more positions over this period than any other is registered nurses (711,900).
Employee Benefits
84.7 Percent
Percentage of full-time workers 18 to 64 covered by health insurance during all or part of 2011.
Say Goodbye to Summer
Labor Day is celebrated by most Americans as the symbolic end of the summer and the start of the back-to-school season.
25,448
The number of shoe stores for back-to-school shopping in 2011. Other choices of retail establishments abound: there were 28,128 family clothing stores, 7,093 children and infants clothing stores, 8,144 office supply and stationery stores, 8,407 bookstores and 8,625 department stores.
21,227
The number of sporting goods stores nationwide in 2011. In US sports, college football teams usually play their first games the week before Labor Day, with the NFL traditionally playing their first game the Thursday following Labor Day.
48,548
The number of travel agents employed full time, year-round in 2011. In addition, there were 15,067 tour and travel guides employed full time, year-round nationwide, according to the 2011 American Community Survey. On a weekend intended to give US workers a day of rest, many climb into their drivers’ seats or board an airplane for a quick end of the summer getaway.
The Commute to Work
5.7 million
Number of commuters who left for work between midnight and 4:59 am in 2011. They represented 4.3 percent of all commuters.
4.3 Percent
Percentage of workers 16 and over who worked from home in 2011.
76.4 Percent
Percentage of workers 16 and over who drove alone to work in 2011. Another 9.7 percent carpooled and 2.8 percent walked from home.
25.5 Minutes
The average time it took workers in the US to commute to work in 2011. Maryland and New York had the most time-consuming commutes, averaging 32.2 and 31.5 minutes, respectively.
Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission Although much work is being done to restore salmon habitat in the Pacific Northwest—such as replacement and repair of culverts, as pictured above—salmon habitat is being compromised faster than it can be put back together.
Millions of dollars were spent on salmon habitat recovery in 2012, and millions more are being spent this year. But a foremost salmon expert says that without federal coordination of those efforts, and enforcement of existing laws, we may have passed a tipping point.
“We need to bring salmon habitat restoration back to the White House,” said Billy Frank Jr., chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and one of the foremost salmon experts, in a 2012 telephone interview with ICTMN. He was about to walk into a meeting with Justice Department officials and members of Congress to ask that the federal government lead a coordinated salmon recovery effort.
“The federal government has turned over all of its responsibility to the state,” he said. “State agencies are broke and they’re not managing anything now.”
It took just 150 years to damage salmon habitat that had flourished for thousands of years. Development in shoreline areas. Dams. Fertilizers. Logging. Polluted storm-water runoff that ultimately made its way to the sea.
Today, dams have been torn down on the Elwha River. Culverts are being removed so that salmon can return unimpeded to natal streams. Dikes are being dismantled so waters can return to estuaries. Pollution sources are being identified and corrected. But according to studies by the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, Washington State is losing salmon habitat faster than it’s being restored, and Frank believes that federal leadership is needed to implement salmon recovery consistently across jurisdictional lines.
Salmon recovery involves many agencies and jurisdictions, but those efforts are often not in sync; in fact they frequently conflict with federal salmon habitat-recovery goals. In one example, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has issued permits for shoreline structures that salmon recovery goals seek to remove. In Washington State’s Shoreline Management Act, homes are considered a “preferred” shoreline use, although home development often is accompanied by the construction of bulkheads and docks. Shoreline armoring and riparian vegetation removal are within the jurisdiction of National Marine Fisheries Service’s policy governing enforcement of the Endangered Species Act, but “there appears to be only one instance of NMFS exercising its enforcement authority over these activities during the past decade,” according to a 2011 report from the fisheries commission, “Treaty Rights at Risk: Ongoing Habitat Loss, the Decline of the Salmon Resource, and Recommendations for Change,” which led to an ongoing initiative of the same name.
But little has changed, and in September 2012 the fisheries commission released another report, “State of Our Watersheds,” documenting the results of local and state planning that have been in conflict with salmon habitat-recovery goals.
With the Connecticut governor joining Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s racist anti-Indian campaign against reforming the federal recognition process, the circle of opposition is almost complete.
The Republican American newspaper reported August 16 that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy “is lining up to oppose the latest efforts to grant federal recognition to three Connecticut Indian tribes.”
There are no “latest efforts” underway to grant federal recognition to Connecticut’s three remaining state recognized tribes – the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation, the Golden Hill Paugusetts, and the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation. But Blumenthal has succeeded in stirring up fear and trembling in Connecticut’s local, state, and federal elected officials over Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn’s “Preliminary Discussion Draft” of potential changes to the federal acknowledgment regulations.
“The governor shares the concerns of Connecticut’s federal delegation and the attorney general regarding the potential impact of the proposed Bureau of Indian Affairs tribal recognition regulations,” Malloy’s spokesman Andrew Doba said in the report.
Two weeks after Washburn released the draft, Blumenthal organized a meeting in his Connecticut office on July 9 to rally officials against it. “Why reopen this very acrimonious and painful chapter of Connecticut and tribal history when we have come to a place of peace and understanding?” Blumenthal said in the report.
This is nothing new on Blumenthal’s part. It’s a replay of his successful effort in 2005 to reverse the federal acknowledgment of the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation (EPTN) and the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation (STN), which were given Final Determinations in 2002 and 2004, respectively. After a relentless and orchestrated campaign of opposition against the STN by local, state and federal elected officials led by Blumenthal and an anti-Indian sovereignty group and its powerful White house-connected lobbyist, Barbour Griffith & Rogers (BGR), the BIA in an unprecedented move issued Reconsidered Final Determinations and took away both tribes’ federal acknowledgment.
The governor joined Blumenthal’s pre-emptive strike on the reform effort a few days after the Hartford Courant, the state’s oldest newspaper, published an editorial supporting the effort to stop additional Connecticut tribes from being acknowledged and opening casinos.
With all of Connecticut’s elected officials and its newspaper of note lining up behind Blumenthal, the only thing remaining to provide a complete déjà vu all over again of Connecticut’s 2005 anti-Indian movement is the resurrection of TASK – Town Action to Save Kent. TASK was a group of wealthy landowners in Kent where the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation has its 400-acre reservation. The group formed a political action group and hired the then White House-connected lobbyist Barbour Griffith and Rogers – now known as BGR to carry out “strategies of surrounding the Department of the Interior” and contacting senior White House and agency officials at Washington events such as the National Governors Association and the Republican Governors Association annual meetings in order to overturn the Schaghticoke federal acknowledgement.
Courtesy Richard Peterson Wolf Point school district voting-rights lawsuit participants, including, left to right, plaintiff Bill Whitehead, plaintiffs’ counsel Jon Ellingson of ACLU Montana, plaintiffs Lanette Clark and Ron Jackson and Jim Taylor, also of the Montana ACLU.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the Wolf Point School District, which has a predominantly Native student population, drawn from the surrounding Fort Peck Indian Reservation, in northeastern Montana. The suit argues that school board districts favor non-Native voters and should be redrawn.
Wolf Point is the largest community on the reservation and has a two-part school district. The predominantly non-Native portion, with 430 residents, elects three members to the eight-member school board of trustees. The 4,205 residents of the predominantly Native American portion—nearly 10 times as many people—elect five members. That means one board member from the mostly white area represents 143 residents, while board members from the mostly Native area each represent 841 people, according to the suit, Jackson et al v. Wolf Point School District.
This imbalance violates the one-person-one-vote principle, said Montana ACLU legal director and plaintiffs’ co-counsel Jon Ellingson. The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Great Falls, Montana, asks for enforcement of equal rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, as well as by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
The suit also invokes Section 3 of the VRA and asks the court to “bail in” the school district and subject it to Section 5 preclearance. If ordered to submit future redistricting plans and other election procedures to the court, the district would have to prove in each instance that its practices were not discriminatory, says the complaint.
Though the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the VRA’s Section 4 in June and sent an existing list of preclearing jurisdictions back to Congress for retooling, the high court left the rest of the law intact. That includes Section 3, which provides an alternate way to require specific jurisdictions to provide this type of accountability.
The unequal representation in Wolf Point has profound effects on students, who have few Native teachers, counselors and others to guide them and provide role models, according to Ellingson. “For 15 years, the school’s board of trustees and other authority figures have been almost exclusively white. The children see Native employees who are mostly support staff.” As a result, said Ellingson, the school does not promote Native children’s culture and aspirations.
In 2003, the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office investigated the school, according to a Helana newspaper. This followed years of activism by Fort Peck tribal member Iris Allrunner and others and a report to the agency on a visit to the school by Indian-education advocate Christine Rose. The agency heard parent allegations ranging from overprescribing of Ritalin and use of a locked, padded isolation room for Indian students to sexual abuse and incidents of racially charged cruelty by white students and staff.
U.S. News & World Report 2013 education ratings show an underperforming school, with reading and math scores below the state average. Enrollment figures provided by the district data specialist for the school year 2012–13 show Native children making up a smaller proportion of the student body as they age: 72 percent of junior high students were Native, while just 48.8 percent of high school students were—a difference of just over 23 percent. Meanwhile, white children made up 10.7 percent of the junior high and 27.8 percent of the high school. The rest of the children were from other population groups or had been identified by their parents as being of two or more races.
A measure of the Wolf Point elite’s blind spot for Native concerns can be found in the history section of the town’s website. In the early 1900s, the area was little more than a railroad station and a collection of settlers who had “poured into” Montana for cheap Indian land, according to the site. The web page continues: “Only one more thing was needed. Wolf Point was on an Indian reservation—a huge reservation with very few Indians…In the early summer of 1914, the date everyone was waiting for arrived—the official opening of the Fort Peck Reservation to homesteading.”
At press time, officials of the school district and board of trustees had not returned calls requesting comments on the various issues the suit raises
Earlier this month, James Czywczynski, the owner of the Wounded Knee site told the Oglala Sioux Tribe they had until Labor Day, September 2 to purchase the land. As the date approaches, tribal President Bryan Brewer says he isn’t worried about the deadline.
In an interview on the Native Trailblazers online radio program, Brewer said Czywczynski’s claims are nothing new. “He has been threatening to sell this land for years. This isn’t the first time.”
He added that even if Czywczynski sold Wounded Knee to an outsider, it would be unusable. “One of the problems is that our tribal lands completely surround his 34 acres. There is no way anyone could ever get to this land to do any type of development or anything else… the tribe would not allow it.
“He wants to sell it, and it has only been valued at about $8,000,” Brewer said. “The owner has valued this land at $6 million, so I say to him, ‘Then why aren’t you paying taxes on land that is valued at $6 million?’ I and some of the descendants of Wounded Knee met with him and I told him, ‘No one will ever buy this.’”
Czywczynski says he has given the tribe every opportunity to buy the land, and believes the tribe has enough money to buy the site. “They received $31 million from the Cobell settlement and they didn’t buy it then,” he said.
Brewer is still hopeful that someone will act on behalf of the tribe. “Some people have said they want to buy this land and return it to the tribe–we may get the land back, but he will be the only one that benefits financially from the sale. I told him that we would gladly offer to support and bless the sale if he could find a place in his heart to give half the money to the descendants of Wounded Knee so that we could fix up the area and our own people could learn about what really happened there. Our history books don’t tell the story.
“I just don’t understand someone making this much money off this land and putting it into their pocket and walking away.”
Czywczynski is still hopeful he will sell Wounded Knee for the full asking price. “I hope to, one way or another we are going to get this done.”
