Lateesha “Teesha” Mae Jack, 21, passed away August 5, 2013.
She was born April 12, 1992 in Everett, WA to Rainey Jack Sr. and Roseanne Iukes. She graduated from Tulalip Heritage High School. She loved playing Call of Duty, and basketball.
She is survived by her parents, Rainey Jack Sr., Roseanne Iukes; siblings, Veronica Iukes, Jennifer Flores, Jesse Wolf-John, Loreal Jack, Rainey Jack Jr., Terrell Jack; her daughter, Maliya Henry; grandparents, Mary Jack, Geraldine and Hank Williams, Nelson and Jennifer Iukes; numerous, aunties, uncles, nephews, nieces, cousins, and friends.
She was preceded in death by brother, James Titus Jack; grandfather, Windy Jack; uncles, Harvey Jack, Harold Enick and Gerald Enick.
A prayer services will be held Sunday, August 11, 2013 at 1 p.m. at Schaefer-Shipman Funeral Home with an Interfaith Service following at the Tulalip Gym at 6 p.m.. Funeral Services will be held Monday, August 12, 2013 at 10 a.m. at the Tulalip Gym with burial following at Mission Beach Cemetery.
Arrangements entrusted to Schaefer-Shipman. Marysville.
Jeffery Ernest Jack, 51, of Tulalip, WA passed away August 4, 2013 in Everett.
He was born December 7, 1961 in Everett to Sandy and Henrietta Jack.
Jeff is survived by his sisters, Roxanne Miramontes, Shirley Jack and her husband, Terry McGovern and Sandra Senner; nieces, Rocio Hatch, Jasmine Ancheta, Jacque Nye; nephews, Roberto Jack, Kody Johnson, Richard Johnson, Joshua Senner; aunt, Beverly Grant; uncle, Mike Cladoosby; and numerous cousins; and his special Wayne Peters.
He was preceded in death by his father, mother, grandparents, Ernest and Lena Cladoosby; brother, William Jack; and sister, Brenda Jack.
Jeff loved making people laugh. He was uncle dad and he will be missed by all.
A Service will be held Thursday, August 8, 2013 at 1 p.m. at Schaefer-Shipman Funeral Home with an InterFaith Service following at 6 p.m. at the Tulalip Gym. Funeral Services will be held Friday at 10 a.m. at the Tulalip Tribal Gym with burial following at Mission Beach Cemetery.
Arrangements entrusted to Schaefer-Shipman Funeral Home.
Suzette Brewer, Indian Country Today Media Network
After Dusten Brown was charged last Monday in a Charleston, South Carolina courtroom with failing to appear on Sunday for a scheduled four-hour visitation to begin his daughter Veronica’s transition to the Capobianco’s, he was ordered to “immediately” transfer the child to the couple’s custody. Monday’s order negated the proposed plan and demanded that Veronica be brought to South Carolina with no transition.
But Brown has been in Iowa with his Oklahoma National Guard unit for a mandatory training that had been on the books since January. This was known to all parties in the dispute, including Judge Daniel Martin, who issued the order.
“They absolutely knew where this man was and that he had no physical or legal way of being present for the transition visitation with his daughter,” says a source familiar with the case. “This whole canard that he somehow flouted the law is just absurd. [Monday’s order] was nothing more than posturing and intimidation, because weren’t these the very same people who had originally proposed that they would moved to Oklahoma to ease her transition? What happened to that? How did they go from moving to Oklahoma to demanding that he magically show up in South Carolina within 48 hours of the finalization of the adoption when they know he was not even in Oklahoma? As usual, they painted him with the broad stroke that he broke the law. He did not.”
As rhetoric on both sides heated up throughout the week during appearances on multiple media outlets, it became apparent to those watching the case that the Capobiancos and their legal team were prepared to enforce the judge’s order by any means necessary—even if it meant sending Veronica’s biological father to jail.
Equally, it became apparent that Dusten Brown was prepared to dig in his heels to continue his battle to seek justice in what many are calling an “unethical adoption” in which his infant daughter should never have been taken to South Carolina in the first place.
Friday evening, doubling down on their threat to seek intervention by law enforcement, the Capobiancos pressed criminal charges against Brown in South Carolina for “custodial interference.” The felony warrant carries a five year sentence and fines at the discretion of the court.
Attorneys for the Capobiancos said that the arrest was “necessary to ensure the rule of law.” They also said that officials for the Cherokee Nation and anyone refusing to divulge Veronica’s whereabouts would be “actively assisting in an ongoing felony.”
The Cherokee Nation declined to comment on the Capobiancos’ statement.
Authorities in South Carolina had been working with Polk County, Iowa authorities, who have jurisdiction over the civilian communities surrounding Camp Dodge, to arrest Brown on Sunday morning.
But that didn’t happen.
On Saturday, the Oklahoma National Guard granted Brown emergency leave so that he could attend an emergency hearing in Cherokee Nation Tribal Court on Monday without having to go absent without leave, thereby further endangering his military career. Brown and wife, Robin, then returned to Oklahoma.
“This is a purely civil criminal matter,” Colonel Greg Hapgood, a spokesman for the Iowa National Guard, said in a brief statement. “Our job was to facilitate communication with the local authorities.”
The exact Oklahoma whereabouts of the Browns, Veronica and their extended family is unknown. The Cherokee Nation had no comment.
Of all the things that veteran “weather god” Charles England regrets about his tenure as the main meteorologist for Channel 9 in Oklahoma City is that he never consulted local tribes about their knowledge of tornadoes.
The New York Times Magazine this week profiles the weather guru of Tornado Alley, as the swath of storm-prone flatlands in central Oklahoma is known. This past spring saw some of the most devastating tornadoes in history rip through the state, decimating Indian country.
“One big regret, he said, is that although he grew up surrounded by Cheyenne people in Seiling, he never asked them about tornadoes,” wrote Sam Anderson at the end of a several-page story in The New York Times Magazine of Sunday August 11. “He didn’t know any of the tribes’ severe-weather folklore or survival strategies—the wisdom they must have built up over centuries on the Plains.”
The writer was told the same thing by Greg Carbin at the National Weather Service, that little indigenous tornado knowledge had survived.
“Both men had an attitude of sad resignation,” Anderson wrote. “Despite all of our Dopplers and Storm Trackers and Dominators, the feeling seemed to be, we have lost the old wisdom forever.”
Anderson contacted the Cheyenne Nation and spoke with Chief Gordon Yellowman, who told him what little the elders are able to share.
“For the Cheyenne, the tornado is not some kind of evil predatory force or a random assault from a blind and dumb atmospheric soup with no concern for human life,” Anderson learned. “A tornado has a job, Yellowman told me, and that is to restore balance to the environment. The tornado speaks to the native people, in their respective tribal languages, in a voice that sounds like fire. Before it reaches the tribal land, the tornado tells the elders how big it’s going to be, not in the technical language of the EF scale but in colloquial terms: small, medium, big, huge. The tornado of May 31 was huge.”
TULALIP — The Greater Marysville Tulalip Chamber of Commerce will roll out this year’s televised candidates’ forum series starting on Friday, Aug. 23, with an in-depth look at the race for Snohomish County Council District 1.
“Our goal is to present the candidates and the issues in a fair and impartial format that will aid citizens in their decision-making process when casting their ballots,” Chamber President and CEO Caldie Rogers said.
With Snohomish County expected to continue to grow, the Chamber will give the County Council candidates an opportunity to address questions such as where the county will fit housing for 200,000 to 300,000 incoming residents, what kind of roads county residents will be commuting on, how the county will balance expansion needs with environmental needs, and whether the county can build fiscal sustainability in the face of the many functions and services that it provides.
Sponsored by Walmart, the forum will feature Al Aldrich of Strategies 360 as the moderator, guiding the Council candidates through a series of eight questions. The program will include candidate rebuttals, and conclude with each candidate posing their own question to their opponent.
The forum is slated for Aug. 23 in the Tulalip Resort’s Canoes Cabaret Nightclub, located at 10200 Quil Ceda Blvd. Doors open at 7 a.m. for the program starting at 7:30 a.m. and ending at 9 a.m.
Please RSVP with the Greater Marysville Tulalip Chamber of Commerce, by phone at 360-659-7700 or via e-mail to admin@MarysvilleTulalipChamber.com. Admission is $23 for pre-registered guests and $28 at the door.
Swedish retailer H&M has become the latest victim of its own fashion.
The clothing store has pulled an item that had been dubbed the “hipster headdress” off of Canadian shelves after Kim Wheeler, Ojibwe-Mohawk, called out the company in an e-mail after seeing the feathered hair bands in a Vancouver store, CTV News reported on Friday August 9.
“They are a sign of honor and respect and leadership, they’re not a cute accessory to be worn in a nightclub while people are dancing to music,” Wheeler told CTV News, noting that headdresses are sacred items worn by chiefs and that donning them as trifles is anything but a sign of respect. “I appreciate where people are coming from and that they want to say ‘we’re respecting you,’ but it really isn’t. There are other ways that we can respect our culture instead of wearing colorful faux headdresses.”
A spokesperson for H&M in Canada told the Canadian Press that the headbands, which sport bright pink and purple flowers, formed part of the “summer music festival collection” titled “H&M Loves Music,” along with flower-powered ‘Sixties-style wreaths and other items.
“Of course we never want to offend anybody or come off as insensitive,” said the spokeswoman, Emily Scarlett. “We’re always about being there for our customers.”
H&M’s 62 Canada stores had been told to remove the headbands, Scarlett told the Canadian Press. H&M has now joined Urban Outfitters, Victoria’s Secret and a host of other retailers in being educated about the significance of headdresses and other ceremonial garb.
“My first instinct was to buy all of them and throw them in the garbage. It’s not honoring us. It’s not flattering us. It’s making a mockery of our culture. We just don’t think it’s cool,” said the 44-year-old Wheeler, who lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. “People in my community have kind of been fighting that whole ‘hipster headdressing’ for awhile now.”
A medicine man once told Mark Sorensen that true education can heal.
That counsel rang true for Sorensen, principal and co-founder of STAR Charter School, a small school near Flagstaff, Arizona, that serves a 98-percent Navajo student population. Sorensen has spent 37 years working in Indian education, and the medicine man’s advice echoed Sorensen’s philosophies in and out of the classroom.
“I’d like to see our education system heal rather than punish,” he said. “When we listen to wise people and make education better, that’s what really matters.”
Sorensen likes curriculum that integrates academic standards, real-world skills and community service. Students at STAR, which stands for Service To All Relations, are challenged to participate in projects that teach math and English basics while moving them out of the classroom and into the community.
The 130 students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade engage in projects like farming, recycling and producing videos that document Native traditions or current events.
At STAR, the first solar-powered charter school in the U.S., teachers no longer focus on scores and punishments. Instead, they concentrate on what Sorensen calls “authentic assessment.”
“Our thinking is that if we can introduce projects that have to do with food or energy or recycling, that’s an indication of a deeper philosophy and students are empowered to do service,” he said. “It helps the community, families and the school. We’re trying to teach them that it’s a privilege to be able to respond to community needs.”
Students at STAR Charter School near Flagstaff, Arizona, work together on a puzzle. (STAR Charter School)
That’s why Sorensen is embracing the Common Core State Standards, curricula that focus on skills that are relevant in the real world while preparing students for college and careers. Forty-five states have adopted Common Core State Standards, including all three of the states that contain parts of the Navajo Nation—Utah, New Mexico and Arizona. The standards, unveiled in 2010, were designed to allow schools to develop more in-depth and specific curricula.
From a Native perspective, these standards can help level the playing field, said RiShawn Biddle, communications director for the National Indian Education Association.
“We have far too many of our students who are not graduating,” he said. “They don’t complete high school and don’t go to college. Knowledge is power and an education is key to being successful in the knowledge-based economy of today.”
According to the NIEA, 69 percent of Native freshmen will graduate from high school within four years. Nationally, the rate is 78 percent and 83 percent for Anglo students. While other minority groups are closing the achievement gaps, it stays constant for Natives, the NIEA reports.
All 34 tribally controlled schools on the Navajo Nation are adopting Common Core State Standards, said Kalvin White, program manager for the Office of Diné Science, Math and Technology.
For areas like the sprawling, 27,000-square-mile Navajo reservation, the new standards mean consistency for students, White said.
“This will benefit the Navajo Nation because we are in three states, and all three states will be aligned to the same content,” he said. “We will no longer be dealing with three different standards in three different states.”
Common Core State Standards can also boost the presence of traditional values and languages in classrooms—and in Native communities, Biddle said. Teachers can incorporate Native knowledge through nonfiction reading or projects like those at STAR, meeting students’ academic and cultural needs.
“In addition to having academic knowledge, they need to understand their culture,” Biddle said. “When our students are highly educated, they can be future leaders and defenders of culture that our tribes need.”
In 2012, only 33 percent of STAR students passed the Arizona standardized test in math and 44 percent passed in reading. Statewide, the average was 65 percent in math and 79 percent in reading.
The nine teachers in this school that prides itself on small class sizes and an emphasis on Native tradition are hoping the switch to Common Core State Standards helps improve performance.
“What I’d love to see here is more authentic testing of Native students,” Sorensen said. “I would like to see them demonstrate what they know while they’re doing something for their communities.”
It’s Friday, a day also known in Twitterland as FollowFriday, when many faithful Tweeters take a moment to give a shoutout to the accounts they think others should follow. We hang out on Twitter quite a bit as @indiancountry (and there’s @ICTMN_Arts as well, kind of a kid-brother feed) and we could go on and on about all the great people Tweeting news, views, humor and miscellanea relevant to Native readers. But on this occasion we’ll keep it to 15 — here are our must-reads and must-follows:
Indian country’s master Tweeter, Sherman Alexie has a ratio of original tweets to retweets-of-others that is off the charts — this is some real talk from a guy who has something to say every day and it’s often provocative. The fact that he’s a phenomenal, award-winning author helps. You know — the words thing.
RECENT TWEET: “Santa Fe leads the world in White People Trying to Look a Little Bit Indian.”
Lawyer, author, filmmaker, father, and the mad genius behind ICTMN’s Thing About Skins — Gyasi tweets a mixture of Native calls to action, political insight, banter with his influential friends in Indian country, and fond memories of growing up rez.
RECENT TWEET: “Our communities used to raise kids and shame parents that didn’t contribute to that uprbinging. Now we pretend we don’t see it.”
Toronto-based Lisa Charleyboy is the jet-setting maven of Native style, cool and entertainment. If it’s hip, hot, and Canadian-indigenous, she’s on it, and she never stops working. She’s the Native… Oprah-Gwyneth Paltrow-Martha Stewart? Something like that. Arch-enemy: Gluten.
RECENT TWEET: “So all you need to be a successful fashion blogger is to look like a model, have $ like a billionaire, and have a photog boyfriend? Easy.”
Corntassel, a college professor, follows the news and sends out important links with thoughtful commentary. A walking and talking — and tweeting — cheat sheet.
RECENT TWEET: “Decolonization starts w realization: your vision for the future is radically different from those encroaching on your homelands”
She calls herself “a casting director for film, television, dance + print w/focus on American Indian talent only,” — her tweets keep you posted on current events in the entertainment industry, and much more. You get a little bit of everything with Michelle — which is the whole point of Twitter.
RECENT TWEET: “Seriously? The news is reporting on the outrage over Suri Cruise wearing heeled shoes. Why is this news?”
Idle No More… you have heard of this, right? Tweets are a mixture of news links and networking — if you’re doing something Idle-No-More-ish in your community, the women behind this feed want to know about it and help spread the word.
RECENT TWEET: “If there are ACTIONS or events in your area related to: Indigenous issues, Environmental protection, Nation2Nation (treaty) etc. let us know”
Abiyomi Kofi tweets a smorgasbord of news and views on racism, colonialism, and injustice from his Afro-Indigenous perspective. These tweets serve as a reminder that the cause of indigenous rights and racial equality is a global effort.
RECENT TWEET: (sparring with another Tweeter) “Again, you assume that ‘truth’ is of European origin. That is cultural arrogance in spades. Europe is not the world.”
The Native Appropriations blogger is always on the lookout for cultural wrongdoing in the public square. High-minded criticism you don’t need a Ph.D. to understand.
RECENT TWEET: “I’m trying to write a post that combines 200 million things I’ve been thinking about lately and it’s already not working. Trimming back.”
Douglas Miles is a gifted artist, and you’ll get a lot of that from his Tweets (which link to his Instagram and Tumblr blog) — but you’ll also get plenty of tough talk on issues of art, culture, and society. Everyone is fair game — if you’re Native and you’re doing it wrong, he’ll let you know.
RECENT TWEET: “Since when did Natives resort to using ‘authentic’ as some stamp of approval, are we sides of beef?”
The voice of Turtle Island’s EDM heroes A Tribe Called Red doesn’t suffer fools — bring your half-baked ideas about race and culture onto his timeline and he will nail you for it. Repeatedly. You can practically hear him giggling as he demolishes ingrained bigotry and false equivalencies.
RECENT TWEET: “You’re right. Having to argue what’s important to your culture from someone NOT of the culture is a DUMB battle.”
Tirelessly fighting against the Washington NFL team’s racist name — an operation that may have begun as an effort to sell a few parody t-shirts is now the Twitter standard-bearer of a grassroots movement that is a topic of national debate.
RECENT TWEET: “can’t wait to see who’s the next high-profile personality to speak up against the Redskins racist name, quite an impressive list so far”
Actually, since Ryan dove head-first into Idle No More, he’s not only about the funny-haha. But there’s still plenty of funny-haha. Plus he used his feed to publish “Pow Wow Shades of Gray,” a novella, delivered in installments, about people fooling around at pow wows. Delivered in tiny, tiny installments.
RECENT TWEET: “I smell like camp fire, hot dog water & bug spray. And, no, Cree women, that’s not a pickup line. I just got home from camp.”
Part indigenous woman, part robot, part golden Barbie doll — we are not quite sure we understand what Robohontas is or wants to be, but she tweets good links and daily wise quotes from her blog. And we hope there is a Robohontas movie someday, with lots of action and ass-kicking. And we hope it is not produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.
RECENT TWEET: “Robohontas’ Facebook Page – Can she get to 200 page “likes” by the end of the week? Currently at 192…”
Possession for medicinal use led to expulsion from reservation
Dan Bates / The Herald Dennis Boon says he feels connected to his tribe through Quilceda Creek, which flows through where he is staying in north Marysville, on its way to Tulalip reservation. Boon accepted a deal banning him from the reservation after the tribes found him guilty of marijuana possession. Boon says he uses marijuana medicinally, which is illegal on the reservation.
By Bill Sheets, The Herald
TULALIP — Dennis Boon was a healthy child, he says, until he was hit in the head with a 7-iron.
He was 14 years old when he and some other boys were hitting Wiffle golf balls in eighth-grade PE class. Boon’s ball rolled away, in front of another boy.
Boon saw the boy talking to someone else, so he thought it was safe to reach down and get his ball.
The boy turned around without looking and swung to hit his own ball, striking Boon in the head.
“It put a hole in my skull,” he said.
Soon afterward, Boon started having small epileptic seizures; years later, he began to have larger, violent ones. The episodes took over his life for the next decade, said Boon, now 47.
Conventional treatments didn’t help. He turned to marijuana as a remedy.
“The results were immediate,” Boon said.
A Tulalip tribal member, Boon cannot lawfully use his preferred medication on his home reservation.
While marijuana has been legalized both for medicinal users and others in Washington state, it’s still illegal under federal law. That’s the law to which most Indian tribes, including the Tulalips, subscribe.
Last month, Boon was banned from the Tulalip reservation for possession of 240 grams of cannabis — about 8 ½ ounces.
He’s currently staying with friends in Marysville. In a year, Boon can petition to return, but he’ll have to agree to give up using marijuana, a tribal spokeswoman said.
As a semi-sovereign nation under federal law, the tribes do not have to recognize state laws that conflict with those of the U.S. government, according to Robert Anderson, a law professor and director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington.
Marijuana is illegal on the Tulalip reservation without exception, said Niki Cleary, communications director for the tribes.
“We’re bound by tribal law and federal law; we’re not bound by state law,” she said. “Remember that our people have existed as a sovereign since long before the United States government existed, and our treaty with the U.S. government predates the creation of Washington as a state.
Tribes basically can choose their own course in the matter, Anderson said.
“They make their own laws just like any state or county government does on criminal matters or civil matters,” he said.
At least one tribe, the Puyallup Tribe in Pierce County, has chosen to follow state law regarding marijuana rather than the federal rules, according to a web page listing tribal laws. This includes recognition of medicinal pot.
At Tulalip and other reservations where federal law is followed, the only criminal jurisdiction the state has over tribal members is on land that’s been deeded to a non-Indian property owner and for traffic incidents on public roads, Anderson said.
The Tulalip Tribes oppose legalization of marijuana, Cleary said, “because we, the community as a whole as well as our governing leadership, do not see the drug as beneficial, but rather view it as a harmful substance.”
The tribes found Boon guilty of possession with intent to sell. This, Cleary said, “is the only time generally that somebody is excluded from the reservation. We understand that addiction is a disease and takes some choice away from people.”
Boon said he had no intention of selling the marijuana. Police found the cannabis at his home in January. He was stocking up after receiving his tribal dividend check over the holidays, he said.
State law allows medicinal marijuana patients to possess up to 24 ounces, or 15 plants — nearly three times the amount for which Boon was charged.
Boon’s home was searched after a police officer visited him investigating a report of stolen property. Boon was not charged in that case.
While talking to Boon in front of his home, the officer detected “the odor of burnt marijuana,” according to the charging papers. The officer did not search the home at the time.
Boon disputes that the smell would have been detectable outside his home.
Knowing he had someone coming over to install a carbon-monoxide detector, he took care to air out his place so as not to flaunt the marijuana or raise questions, he said
“My girlfriend was baking cinnamon rolls,” he said.
A few days later, armed with a search warrant, police came back and found the cannabis.
“The warrant was issued on state of Washington paperwork,” Boon noted.
He said he had the marijuana properly stored according to state guidelines, with his doctor’s recommendation prominently posted.
The crime, per tribal law, is a high-end misdemeanor. Boon faced a penalty of up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine. He was offered a deal: a $100 fine and expulsion from the reservation. He accepted, he said, feeling he had little choice.
Boon had been living in tribal housing for people with disability status, for which the tribes receive federal funding — all the more reason that federal law be followed, according to the charging documents.
Boon points to an arrangement in which Tulalip police officers are cross-deputized in state law, which he says should require enforcement of those laws on the reservation.
“There’s an oath of office in place that specifically states that ‘I will follow all the laws of the state of Washington and protect the citizens within,’ ” he said.
Cleary said tribal officers are cross-deputized only so they can arrest non-tribal members if necessary.
“If there’s a beating happening or someone gets shot, the police officer needs to be able to respond,” she said.
Also, “it’s to assure non-tribal members that our officers are trained to the same level as any other peace officer in Washington state, that if an officer signals you to pull over, you need to pull over.”
The state law that authorizes the cross-deputization arrangement says the law does not supercede tribal sovereignty.
Boon’s disability is primarily from old injuries he suffered during his seizures, he said. Boon said he operated a commercial smokehouse business for a grocery store chain in the Midwest for a couple of years and had other supervisory restaurant jobs, but recently it’s been difficult.
“I’ve broken numerous bones, I’ve hyper-extended most of my appendages,” he said. “It’s hard for me to stand on my feet.”
Boon said he had been a precocious child and a good student until the 7-iron accident. He was living with his father in Minnesota at the time.
He had reconstructive surgery on his face, and to this day his left eye socket is made of Teflon, he said.
Later, while attending high school in Alaska, his teachers began to notice that he would seem to fade out for no reason.
They told his father that Boon “just stops in the middle of conversation and just stares,'” he recalled.
Tests determined that these episodes were petit mal seizures, and he was diagnosed with epilepsy, he said.
When he was 18, he was in a car wreck and hit his head again. Soon, he was having grand mal seizures with blackouts and convulsions, as many as seven per week.
“It’s like someone over your shoulder ready to hit you with a baseball bat,” he said. “You can’t see him, you can’t hear him, you never really know it’s coming. That constant anxiety takes a toll on your health.”
A neurologist referred him, on the sly, to a man who had controlled his own seizures by using marijuana.
When the man told Boon his story, he didn’t believe it.
He remembers his response.
” ‘I smoke pot and I still have seizures. That’s a load of crap,’ ” he said.
The man told Boon he had to treat it like medicine and regularly use small amounts to keep it in his system. He asked Boon if he could remember having any seizures while high.
Later, he and some family members pondered the question.
“We couldn’t really think of a single time, not a one,” he said. “From that point on, I started a different approach with the way I handled marijuana in my life.”
He had only a few seizures in the years afterward, he said, and those were mild in comparison to those he had before. Now, he says, he hasn’t had a full-blown seizure since early 2003.
“I couldn’t imagine years ago that I could go 10 days (without one),” Boon said.
Prior to using marijuana to treat his condition, Boon’s medical bills averaged $122,000 per year, according to his attorney, Jay Carey of Arlington. Since 1996, those annual costs have been about $6,000, Carey said.
Boon moved back to Tulalip permanently in 2004, partly because of the state’s medical marijuana law, he said.
Then, three years ago, he heard tribal officials making anti-drug statements at the fall tribal council meeting, a semi-annual gathering at which tribal members meet to discuss issues and elect officers.
Boon said he felt at that point that the tribal administration wouldn’t permit medicinal marijuana without pressure from tribal members at large.
“I knew that I was probably going to have to do something that I really didn’t want to do,” he said. “I was going to have to go in front of all of my people and say ‘I’m a medicinal marijuana patient’ and the reasons why, and I was going to have to put it to a vote. I was basically going to go out and put a target on my back.”
At the spring 2011 tribal council meeting, Boon made a motion to legalize medicinal marijuana on the reservation.
He said many others spoke in favor.
Some of the comments, according to Boon, were along the lines of, ” ‘You can’t go five gravestones (in the tribal cemetery) without passing somebody who died directly from alcohol, and we’re selling booze up here seven days a week like there’s no tomorrow. I haven’t heard of a single person ever, ever dying from marijuana, but we’ve got a graveyard full of people who died from booze,’ ” Boon recounted.
He felt the motion would pass, but it wasn’t voted upon.
“After some discussion, another member asked to have the motion tabled,” according to Cleary. “The motion to table carried.”
Alcohol, Cleary acknowledged, “is a dichotomy that our membership and leadership have wrestled with for years.” Other tribal members have brought up motions to have it banned and have been unsuccessful, she said.
Boon said he personally knows more than 40 other tribal members who use marijuana medicinally, but that most are afraid to make themselves known.
Boon believes police targeted him after he criticized tribal government at a council meeting two years ago.
“I firmly believe this has nothing to do with medical marijuana,” he said.
Cleary said the fact remains that Boon broke the law. “To the best of my knowledge, our laws are enforced equally across the board,” she said.
Boon’s ban from the reservation became effective in mid-July. It’ll be difficult, he said. For instance, he had been accompanying his mother as she sang at funerals.
On the property where Boon is staying with other tribal members, there is a sweat lodge. Made of willows tied together, it’s covered with blankets or other material, and fire-heated stones are brought in. Water is poured over them, creating a sweat-inducing steam that helps purify the body and spirit, according to many American Indian traditions.
“I consider myself an extremely spiritual person,” Boon said.
Cleary said Boon also can petition ahead of time to return to the reservation for cultural events and to fish or use other natural resources.
“I really do appreciate that Dennis has a dilemma,” she said. Cleary said she knows of least one other tribal medicinal marijuana patient who decided to live off the reservation.
“None of this would have been an issue if he had chosen to live in Marysville,” she said. “If you don’t want to abide by the laws of a municipality, then don’t live here.”
According to the coin collecting news site CoinUpdate.com, the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) has reviewed seven proposed designs for the 2014 Native American one dollar coin and made its recommendation to the Secretary of the Treasury. The Native American one dollar coin has a portrait of Sacagawea on its obverse (heads) side, and features a different themed design each year on its reverse (tails). The 2013 Native American one dollar coin commemorates the Delaware Treaty of 1778.
The theme for the 2014 coin is the cooperation among Natives and the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-06. Of the seven designs below, the CFA chose the sixth, a depiction of Chief Cameahwait recommending the alternate route to Captain Lewis. Which is your favorite?
The Secretary of the Treasury will consider the CFA’s recommendation, as well as that of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, the Congressional Native American Caucus, the National Congress of American Indians, and the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, before making a final selection. For more details, see the original story at CoinUpdate.com.
Lateesha “Teesha” Mae Jack, 21, passed away August 5, 2013.
