Oglala Sioux president Brian Brewer being harassed before arrest. Photo: Intercontinental Cry
Levi Rickert, Intercontinental Cry Magazine
WHITE CLAY, NEBRASKA – Oglala Sioux Tribe President Bryan Brewer was arrested today [June 17] in White Clay, Nebraska.
It was not immediately known what he is charged with at press time. He was reportedly taken to Rushville, Nebraska for booking, according to Toni Red Cloud, public relations director of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who talked to the Native News Network just after the arrest.
Several dozen Oglala Sioux tribal members were in the border town of White Clay to protest the sale of alcohol. The protest began as a walk into White Clay. A sheriff deputy asked the crowd to allow a beer truck through the road.
When the protesters did not move fast enough, security and police officers moved. One deputy began shouting at President Brewer and pointing his finger in the president’s face prior to President Brewer being arrested.
White Clay, Nebraska, is just over border from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It is a small town of 14 people, but sells almost five million cans of 12 oz. beer annually.
Last week, the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council on Tuesday, June 11, passed a resolution that allows for a referendum to have tribal citizens living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to decide if sales of alcohol should be legal.
President Brewer was threatened with arrest when he led some 100 tribal members in a protest at White Clay in March, 2013.
[Of all the protesters, ] only President Brewer was arrested.
The last hurrah for the Radnor High School Red Raider, an American Indian mascot, may be the parting photos contained in the school’s 2013 yearbook. As of June 11, the Red Raider has graduated to the history books.
According to MainLineMediaNews.com, RHS Principal Mark Schellenger announced a mascot change to the Radnor Township School Board policy committee Tuesday. Going forward, the school’s sports teams will be known simply as the Raiders, without an accompanying mascot. Schellenger said the decision to end the mascot’s tenure was “a great example of student involvement.”
“There will be no mascot,” said Schellenger. “No character of an Indian on our sidelines. The Red Raider is graduated, while at the same time we will maintain the tradition of the Radnor Raiders.”
It appears the community at large was not involved in the decision, as the school’s students were. MainLineMediaNews.com reports that Board Member Charles Madden wished the larger community, including alumni, had been consulted before a decision about the mascot was made.
“This has been an issue for quite a long time and we’ve pushed it off,” said Madden. “It’s bigger than the school community. It’s bigger than the high school.”
One outsider who was involved in the process was Villanova University sociology professor Rick Eckstein. In addition to speaking with students about the “cultural insensitivity of having a Native American for a mascot,” Eckstein spoke at a board policy meeting in February about the matter.
Schools in New York and Idaho recently had to halt plans to change their “Redskins” mascots after community outrage at the decisions which were made without consultation.
AP Images Kevin Washburn, Sally Jewell, David Hayes.
Rob Capriccioso, Indian Country Today Media Network
When Kevin Washburn became Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs in September 2012, he had some work to do. Not just the typical demands of running a complex subsection of a large federal agency, but also the complicated work of regaining a portfolio that had been siphoned off by overeager Obama administration officials.
Tribal officials and Indian insiders nationwide saw firsthand the shift in power away from the assistant secretary’s office in the early days of this administration, when Larry Echo Hawk, Washburn’s predecessor, was forced to recuse himself in several important Indian issues due to family ties and other possible conflicts of interest.
Concurrently, David Hayes, retiring Deputy Secretary of the department, began taking credit for progress in Indian affairs, including the Cobell settlement, water and other tribal trust settlements, while shifting any blame for problems in Indian affairs to others. Hayes, in perhaps his last leadership action on Indian affairs before exiting the department, has scheduled a June 18 teleconference on the latest aspects of the Cobell settlement land consolidation tribal trust land buyback plan. Washburn is scheduled to join him on the call.
Early on in Washburn’s tenure, Kevin Gover, who was Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs during part of the Clinton administration, warned that Washburn was coming into a power-depleted office. “He has to confront the reality that decisions about Indian affairs are being made all over the department—not just at the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs],” Gover told ICTMN. “His predecessor… recused himself on a lot of key issues, including Cobell, trust, and the federal recognition cases. That means somebody else, somewhere else in the building, handled those issues. Those are major responsibilities for the assistant secretary to get back under his portfolio.”
There were some early signs that Washburn, former dean of the University of New Mexico School of Law, was working hard to take back the reins—he made several early land-into-trust decisions, announced plans to release a long overdue tribal jobs report, expressed concern that gaming has wrongly “hijacked” the federal Indian policy agenda, and promised to clean up the federal tribal recognition and trust systems.
But in the middle of this shift, his new boss, Secretary of the Department of the Interior Ken Salazar, announced he was moving on; his replacement was Sally Jewell, former CEO of an outdoor gear and clothing company, who beat out Hayes for the top spot at Interior.
That meant Washburn had a new boss to deal with, while the old guard at Interior, including Hayes, was advising Jewell on how they thought the BIA should run. Jewell has never worked in the federal government, and has little familiarity with Indian issues, which set up a potentially precarious position for Washburn.
His peril was evident on May 15, when Jewell testified before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs for the first time to explain her Indian affairs agenda. On that day, Washburn was a thousand miles away, attending a child welfare conference in South Dakota. The same week, Jewell announced a long-awaited fracking policy affecting Indian lands with Hayes at her side; Washburn was not part of the announcement ceremony. Interior Department officials also attended and offered input an Indian affairs-focused hearing before the House Natural Resources Committee. Again, no Washburn.
Did this mean Washburn was being cut out of the loop? Jewell insists that’s not the case, telling ICTMN in a press conference call that nothing should be read into his absence, and that his attendance at the child welfare conference was a priority. “It’s difficult to get everybody in town when you want to do these,” she said, referring to the fracking announcement. “There was certainly no intent, in any way, to exclude.”
When Washburn returned to D.C., he immediately made news. Big news. He announced a so-called “Patchak Patch” to remedy a controversial and problematic Supreme Court decision tribal trust. His decision is expected to close the door on some costly lawsuits facing tribal projects on lands put into trust by the Department.
When he called ICTMN to talk Patchak, he made it very clear he was still the boss of Indian affairs—and he had a compelling argument for the recent power blips. “I was upset as anybody that I couldn’t be with the Secretary during her inaugural appearance before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, but I had this prior engagement that was exceedingly important and very substantive,” he said. “The Indian child welfare summit was crucial to a lot of tribes, and that’s why I was there.”
The many tribal leaders who like Washburn and want him to succeed fervently hope these recent incidents are truly attributable to scheduling conflicts or even honeymoon hiccups between Washburn and his new boss, and don’t signify a continuation of the neutered power structure that hobbled Echo Hawk. With Hayes heading out the door, there is plenty of reason to be optimistic that more strong tribal-centric fixes to federal Indian policy are yet to come under Washburn.
After getting another rebuff in tribal court, Nooksack Indians facing loss of their tribal membership have filed a new lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
Seattle Attorney Gabriel Galanda filed the federal suit Monday, June 17, on behalf of Rudy St. Germain and Michelle Roberts, two tribal council members who are among the 306 who could be stripped of their tribal membership because the validity of their Nooksack lineage has been called into question.
The suit declares that the move to purge the 306 is based on “racial animus,” because all 306 are part-Filipino. That charge is hotly denied by Nooksack Tribal Chairman Bob Kelly and his supporters, who have noted that many other Nooksacks have Filipino ancestors but can demonstrate their Nooksack lineage in a way that meets the requirements of tribal law.
But as Galanda and his clients see it, Kelly and the other five members of the council are in the process of changing that law to keep them out.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs of the U.S. Department of the Interior is currently supervising a mail-in constitutional amendment election that could make it more difficult to qualify for Nooksack membership. Kelly and his five supporters on the council have asked voters to repeal a constitutional provision that makes tribal membership available to anyone who has at least one-fourth Indian blood, plus Nooksack ancestry “to any degree.”
That election is scheduled to conclude June 21.
Galanda’s lawsuit argues that repeal of that provision of the tribal constitution would make it more difficult for his clients and other challenged Nooksacks to re-enroll in the tribe if the current effort to strip them of membership succeeds.
That, the suit contends, denies the affected Nooksacks the right to equal protection under law and is therefore a violation of the Indian Civil Rights Act. Galanda wants the judge to order federal officials to halt the constitutional election.
All of the 306 facing loss of membership are descendants of the late Annie George. Tribal officials contend that George did not qualify as Nooksack under tribal law, because her name does not appear on a tribal census of 1942 or on the list of those who got an allotment of tribal lands. Galanda and his clients have submitted other records and letters from anthropologists indicating that Annie George was, in fact, a Nooksack.
Also on Monday, Nooksack Court Tribal Chief Judge Rachel Montoya repeated the legal arguments of her earlier rulings and refused to stop the constitutional election. She found that a majority of the tribal council was acting within its proper authority in launching the constitutional election to change the membership rules.
The 306 challenged Nooksacks face loss of housing and medical benefits, tribal hunting and fishing rights, tribal jobs and other benefits if they are pushed out of the 2,000-member tribe.
Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2013/06/17/3056967/nooksack-tribal-dispute-heads.html#storylink=cpy
WASHINGTON — Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn is calling on Congress to stop coal trains from rolling through the state.
McGinn doesn’t want the coal trains rolling through any cities in the Northwest, especially not in Seattle along the waterfront.
McGinn made his case testifying before members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee Tuesday.
He updated them on the plan by coal companies, railroads and international shipping companies to build two new export facilities in Washington state.
The arguments against the coal trains are familiar. People are worried about pollution from coal dust in the air and extra traffic from the mile-long trains.
Those who support the coal export expansion plans argue shipping more than 100 million tons of coal to Asia each year helps the state and federal economy and the new export facilities would create jobs.
McGinn called on lawmakers in Washington, D.C., to do an environmental impact study.
The award-winning chefs who design and oversee the restaurants at the Tulalip Resort Casino share their favorite recipes and tips with our readers. Although the dishes look and taste like gourmet treats, even household cooks can follow these instructions to put the wow factor back into family dinners.
Resort Casino Chef John Pnticelli
As the Tulalip Resort Casino Garde Mange Chef, I like to create fun dishes for everyone to enjoy. With summer upon us, I wanted to showcase an easy recipe for scallop ceviche. I chose scallops because they are sweet, tender and will complement many flavor profiles. Anyone can serve their favorite Ceviche in a bowl… I thought it would be more unique to deconstruct the dish by marinating the scallops, then topping it with a lively relish and lime vinaigrette to help transform the ceviche into a salad.
Using Asian spoons are a striking way to serve this ceviche salad. Everyone will love the presentation.
Makes about 30 spoons
Scallop Ceviche
Ingredients
1 pound scallops (med size), cut in half
4 limes, freshly squeezed
2 lemons, freshly squeezed
1 bunch cilantro, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
Procedure
To marinate the scallops, mix the above ingredients in a large bowl. Store for 2 hours in the refrigerator.
Relish
Ingredients
4 roma tomatoes (remove seeds and meat), finely diced
1 english cucumber (remove seeds), finely diced
1 red onion, finely diced
2 jalapeños (remove seeds), finely diced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 lime, freshly squeezed
4 ounces cilantro micro greens (place the micro greens on top of each scallop right before serving)
Procedure
Place ingredients in a large bowl and mix together. (Note: Do not mix in the cilantro micro greens into the relish) Reserve in the refrigerator until serving.
Cilantro Lime Vinaigrette
Ingredients
1 bunch cilantro, rinsed cleaned
2 limes, freshly squeezed
1 lemon, freshly squeezed
2 tablespoons dijon mustard
2 tablespoons honey
Place all the ingredients into a blender and mix until smooth. Reserve the vinaigrette in the refrigerator until serving.
Assembling the Dish
Using an Asian spoon, place a half teaspoon of the vinaigrette in the bottom, add one scallop, and top with a small dollop of the ceviche relish and cilantro micro greens.
United Way of Snohomish County will be investing $7.9 million over three years toward 107 programs in Snohomish County addressing a set of priorities identified by three panels of volunteers. These targeted investments represent an increase of more than $300,000 over the last three-year cycle.
Six north Snohomish County programs will receive $370,000 over the next three years.
Two of the programs are local to Marysville. One provides early childhood education and intervention to children living on the Tulalip Indian Reservation and is managed by Little Red School House. The other program supports the expansion of English language learner classes organized by YMCA of Snohomish County. The programs will receive $30,000 and $90,000 respectively from United Way over the next three years.
Four of the programs are based in Arlington. Village Community Services will receive almost $160,000 over three years for three different programs: a career planning and placement services program, a residential services program to help people with developmental disabilities live with dignity and respect in their own homes and a community access program to provide adults with significant disabilities learn essential life and job skills. The Stillaguamish Senior Center will receive $90,000 over three years for their Comprehensive Senior Social Services program.
Volunteers who serve on United Way’s Kids Matter, Families Matter and Community Matters Vision Councils spent more than 2,500 hours over the past year in a three-step process that included reviewing community conditions, establishing priority investment areas and evaluating grant applications.
“This was the first time I’d participated in the grants review process,” said Karen Madsen, former president of the Everett School Board. “As a donor, I saw firsthand how much time and effort goes into these decisions. Every program, whether or not they were funded last year, was reviewed very closely.”
Madsen and the 52 other volunteers who reviewed proposals work for a range of Snohomish County-based companies, educational institutions, nonprofits and local government agencies. They represent a broad cross-section of our community.
The 107 programs will serve people living in 23 communities throughout Snohomish County from Stanwood and Darrington in the north, Sultan and Gold Bar in the east and the larger cities along Interstate 5. Volunteers gave careful consideration to vulnerable populations, geographic diversity and programs that address critical service gaps in our community.
A complete list of funded programs is available on United Way’s website, uwsc.org.
The settlement provides $1.9 billion to buy fractionated interests from willing Indian sellers. The land will be returned to tribal governments as part of the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations.
“Our plan is to begin … initial purchase offers by the end of the year,” deputy secretary David Hayes, who is leaving the department at the end of the month, said on a conference call this afternoon. “We expect to accelerate that process in the next two or three years.”
“This is one of the most important parts of President Obama’s agenda,” Washburn said of the effort to restore tribal homelands.
Washburn said ten to 12 reservations are being targeted for initial offers by the end of the year. They include the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, the Makah Nation in Washington, the Crow Reservation in Montana and the Sisseton-Wahpeton Reservation in South Dakota.
The administration is finalizing cooperative agreements with tribes to encourage and accelerate the purchases. “That means the tribal employees will be doing a heck of a lot of the work on this program,” Washburn said.
Additionally, the department has established a $75 minimum purchase for fractionated interests “no matter how small,” Hayes said on the conference call. So beneficiaries with extremely small ownership stakes stand to gain from the program.
While certain tribes are being targeted, Hayes said landowners across Indian Country will be able to participate because the department has imposed a purchase ceiling to prevent the funds from being exhausted in any one reservation or reservations.
“We heard loud and clear from Indian Country that we need to have equity in this program — that every tribe that has fractionated interests needs to be able to participate in this program,’ Hayes said. “And that is our commitment. We are going to do that.”
“Every tribe can be assured the money will not run out” due to the purchase ceiling, Hayes said.
Scott Terrell / Skagit Valley Herald The temporary span portion of the I-5 bridge over the Skagit River is shown Monday.
Jerry Cornfield, The Herald
MOUNT VERNON — The Skagit River bridge on I-5 is slated to reopen Wednesday with slower speeds for vehicles and a ban on trucks hauling excessively large cargo like the one which caused it to crumble into the water.
A temporary four-lane span will open without fanfare just shy of a month after a semi-truck carrying an oversized load struck several of the bridge’s overhead trusses, causing a 160-foot section to fall into the river.
Two vehicles went into the water but the three people traveling in them survived the harrowing May 23 incident.
Gov. Jay Inslee visited the site Tuesday as workers paved and prepared to stripe the roadway, a major artery for commuters and commerce that carries an average of 71,000 vehicles a day.
There will be some new rules when the bridge reopens.
The maximum speed will be 40 miles per hour, down from the 60 mph limit in effect before the collapse. That’s because each of the four temporary lanes will be 11 feet wide, which is about a foot narrower than those on the section that fell into the water.
Nearly all cars, commercial vehicles and big rigs carrying legal loads allowed on the bridge before will be able to use it again, transportation officials said.
There will be a barrier between north and south traffic, but it will be made of steel trusses instead of the concrete that separates traffic on the rest of the bridge.
What won’t be allowed are trucks that require a special permit to travel on state highways because they exceed legal rules for height, width, weight or length, said Travis Phelps, a Washington Department of Transportation spokesman.
“If you’re getting a permit to drive on the highway, you won’t be going over this bridge. You’ll be using the detour routes,” he said.
EVERETT — As they puzzled over how to go about replacing the Broadway bridge, city engineers initially thought they would keep lanes open during construction.
Then they considered a complete shutdown.
Turns out, the city stands to save $1 million and a full year of construction time by closing a block on one of the main drags through Everett until the work is done.
Drivers can expect to find a massive roadblock there about six months from now, when the $9 million project is expected to begin.
“It’s the pain calculus,” Everett city engineer Ryan Sass said. “Do you want 100 percent pain for one year or 90 percent pain for two years? When you look at it that way, it’s an easy choice.”
The planned closure will prevent people from driving Broadway between Hewitt Avenue and California Street for up to a year. The city has planned extensive detours and intends to warn drivers well in advance, through signs along I-5 and Highway 529. A city public awareness campaign is in the works for later this year.
Drivers can be forgiven for not noticing the 101-year-old bridge, which looks like a hump in the road.
The bridge carries traffic over the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad tracks, with about 30,000 vehicles traveling it every day. The only major renovation occurred in 1931.
The city for years as listed the bridge replacement among its top infrastructure needs.
In the meantime, city engineers took precautions. Load restrictions were placed on the span in 2008. Parking isn’t allowed on the bridge either. The structure is weaker toward the edges than in the middle, so trucks are asked to stay in the middle lanes.
The current schedule is to put the work out to bid in October. Prep work is expected to begin late this year and demolition in early 2014.
Construction should be complete by fall of next year, leaving only cleanup before it reopens.
The finished product will look similar, but not identical, to the arched Pacific Avenue bridge near Everett Station, Sass said.
“I hope we get another 100 years out of this one,” he said.
Construction should have no impact on rail operations, BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas said. The railroad expects to expand freight operations with the approximate foot or so of extra clearance city engineers have said the new bridge would provide.
About $8 million of the cost is being paid for with a federal grant. The remaining $1 million will be split between Everett and BNSF.
