Today, Alcatraz Island is a deservedly popular tourist destination. Perhaps best known through inaccurate Hollywood film representations, Alcatraz Island, located in the middle of the San Francisco Bay and Golden Gate National Recreation Area‘s main attraction, offers a close-up look at the site of the first lighthouse and U.S.-built fort on the West Coast, the infamous federal penitentiary long off-limits to the public, and the 18-month occupation by Indians of All Tribes. Rich in history, there is also a natural side to the “Rock”—gardens, tide pools, bird colonies, and bay views beyond compare. But it is the occupation beginning in 1969 that is perhaps most relevant to Indian country.
For information about visiting Alcatraz Island, go to Nps.gov/alca. Meanwhile, here are five videos about the occupation that are well worth watching to inspire your visit to the Rock.
It’s official: Jesse Smith, Mohawk from Six Nations, has qualified for the U.S. Open, the second major golf tournament of the season.
Smith, 33, who has golfed professionally for seven years, played his way into the U.S.’s national championship by finishing in the top four at a sectional qualifying round staged at Century Country Club in Purchase, New York on June 3. This will be Smith’s first appearance in a major–and in a PGA Tour event. The last Native American to compete at the U.S. Open was Jeff Curl, Wintu, son of former PGA Tour player Rod Curl, according to Stephen Tooshkenig, the president of ST Golf, which works with Native golfers to develop their game.
According to ST Golf, Smith has traveled the globe searching for a spot on the world’s biggest golf stage, the PGA Tour. He has competed on the Canadian Tour, Nationwide Tour, and international events. A humble golfer from New Hampshire, Smith has firm family roots planted in Ohsweken/Six Nations (“I actually lived up there last year with them while I played the Canadian (PGA) Tour,” Smith recently told Golfweek.). He has assisted with ST Golf golf clinics which develops the golfer from top to bottom. As a professional golfer Smith has been focused on helping Indian country reach new levels through his drive and dedication to the game of golf.
And as Smith has strengthened his ties to his Six Nations roots, he’s also reached out to a major Native golfing star: Notah Begay, Navajo/San Felipe/Isleta, a four-time PGA Tour winner. (Related: Tiger Woods to Join Notah Begay III for NB3 Foundation Challenge)
According to Golfweek, Smith called Begay last year. “Prepared to leave a voice mail, Smith was stunned when Begay answered the call and not only listened to a tale of frustration from a struggling professional, but offered advice. They’ve become friends, and when the news of what happened in Purchase made the rounds, one of the first calls to Smith was from Begay.”
Through this excitement, Smith is enjoying it all. “It really is a great feeling,” he said. “A bit overwhelming, but I’m dealing with that now and it’s all positives.”
The 113th U.S. Open Championship begins Thursday, June 13, at Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. Smith’s scheduled starting time is 2:42 p.m./ET. Follow the action online at USOpen.com. ESPN and NBC will split the coverage on the tournament’s opening day; check your local listings for details.
A family on the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners area of the Southwest makes kneel down bread, a traditional food made with blue corn. Photo: Brett Ramney.
By Tory Field and Beverly Bell, Toward Freedom
“At one point ‘agriculture’ was about the culture of food. Losing that culture, in favor of an American cultural monocrop, joined with an agricultural monocrop, puts us in a perilous state…” says food and Native activist Winona LaDuke. [i]
Her lament is an agribusiness executive’s dream. The CEO of the H.J. Heinz Company said, “Once television is there, people, whatever shade, culture, or origin, want roughly the same things.”[ii] The same things are based on the same technology, same media sources, same global economy, and same food.
Together with the loss of cultural diversity, the growth of industrial agriculture has led to an enormous depletion in biodiversity. Throughout history, humans have cultivated about7,000 species of plants. In the last century, three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops have been lost. Thirty crops now provide 95% of our food needs, with rice, wheat, maize, and potato alone providing 60%. Eighty-five percent of the apple varieties that once existed in the US have been lost. Vast fields of genetically identical crops are much more susceptible to pests, necessitating increased pesticide use. The lack of diversity also endangers the food supply, as an influx of pests or disease can wipe out enormous quantities of crops in one fell swoop.
Native peoples’ efforts to protect their crop varieties and agricultural heritage in the US go back 500 years to when the Spanish conquistadors arrived. Today, Native communities throughout the US are reclaiming and reviving land, water, seeds, and traditional food and farming practices, thereby putting the culture back in agriculture and agriculture back in local hands.
One such initiative is the White Earth Land Recovery Project in Minnesota, which is recovering healthy stewardship of local tribes’ original land base. They are harvesting and selling traditional foods such as wild rice, planting gardens and raising greenhouses, and growing food for farm-to-school and feeding-our-elders programs. They are reintroducing native sturgeon to local waters as well as working to stop pesticide spraying at nearby industrial farms. They are also strengthening relationships with food sovereignty projects around the country. Winona LaDuke, the founding director of the project, told us, “My father used to say, ‘I don’t want to hear your philosophy if you can’t grow corn’… I now grow corn.”
Another revival effort involves buffalo herds. In the 1800s, European-American settlers drove wild buffalo close to extinction, decimating a source of survival for many Native communities. Just one example of the resurgence is theLakota Buffalo Caretakers Cooperative, a cooperative of small-family buffalo caretakers, on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The cooperative sees its work as threefold, to “restore the buffalo, restore the native ecology on Pine Ridge, and help renew the sacred connection between the Lakota people and the buffalo nation.” At the national level, the Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative is a network of 56 tribal bison programs from around the country with a collective herd of over 15,000.
In New Mexico, Native communities are organizing a wealth of initiatives. Around the state, they have started educational and production farms, youth-elder farming exchanges, buffalo revitalization programs, seed-saving initiatives, herb-based diabetes treatment programs, a credit union that invests in green and sustainable projects, and more. Schools like the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and the Santa Fe Indian School – along with grammar schools, high schools, and non-profit programs – have developed agricultural education programs. The Traditional Native American Farmers’ Association helps farmers get back onto the land, hosts workshops on seed saving and agricultural techniques, and has a youth program.
The annual Sustainable Food and Seed Sovereignty Symposium at the Tesuque [Indian] Pueblo in northern New Mexico brings together farmers, herbalists, natural dyers, healers, cooks, seed savers, educators, water protectors, and community organizers. From the 2006 symposium came the Declaration of Seed Sovereignty, which denounced genetically engineered seeds and corporate ownership of Native seeds and crops as “a continuation of genocide upon indigenous people and as malicious and sacrilegious acts toward our ancestry, culture, and future generations.”
In addition to the symposium, the Tesuque Pueblo also hosts Tesuque Natural Farms, which grows vegetables, herbs, grains, fruit trees, and cover crops, including varieties long lost to the region. The project is building a Native seed library. The overarching goal is to make the Pueblo autonomous in both food and seeds. Emigdio Ballon, Quechua farmer and geneticist at Tesuque Natural Farm, said, “The only way we can get our autonomy is when we have the resources in our own hands, when we don’t have to buy from seed companies.”
The farm provides fresh foods to the senior center, sells at the farmers’ markets, and trains residents to begin farming themselves. The farm also grows medicinal herbs to treat HIV, diabetes, and cancer, and makes biofertilizer from plants. The preschoolers at the Head Start program garden; grammar school students are beginning to, as well.
People from across the nation come to Tesuque Natural Farms to study agricultural production and to take workshops on pruning, beekeeping, poultry, soil fertility, composting, and other topics. Soon the farm hopes to create a research and education center, where people can come for three to six months.
Nayeli Guzman, a Mexica woman who worked at the farm, said, “What we’re doing is very simple. These ideas are not an alternative for us, they’re just a way of life… We need to all work together as land-based people.
“Creator is not exclusive, so there’s no reason we should be,” she said. “They tell us, ‘The more biodiversity you have, the richer your soil is going to be.’ It’s like that with people. The more different kinds of people you have, the more able we’re going to be to survive. We can’t compartmentalize ourselves. That’s what industrial agriculture does.”
Notes
[i] Winona LaDuke in “One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum,” Alice Waters, ed., The Nation, September 11, 2006, 18.
[ii] Sharon Beder, Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism (Devon: Green Books, 2002), 184.
Skokomish steelhead biologist Matt Kowalski and natural resources technician Aaron Johnson slowly drag a seine net through one of the small channels in the Skokomish Tidelands to gather a sample of marine life.
Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
The Skokomish Tribe has solid data showing how salmon are using the Skokomish Tidelands after a year of monitoring the 400-acre restored estuary.
While the tribe monitors the estuary year round, the first full year of sampling (December 2011 to November 2012) showed 20 fish species, including chinook, chum and coho salmon, using both the large and small tidal channels in the restored areas of the estuary.
Prior to 2006, the estuaries had been filled with fish-blocking culverts, dikes and roads for 70 years, preventing development of good fish habitat. Restoration started in 2007, which included removing man-made structures and opening historic tidal channels that allow juvenile fish to find places to feed and hide while heading out to the ocean.
“Chinook were found in 90 percent of the channels and chum were found in 100 percent of them,” said Matt Kowalski, the tribe’s steelhead biologist. “This proves that salmon have access to and are utilizing the restoration sites.”
All 20 different species were captured in large channels, while only nine different species were captured in small channels and were mostly salmon, stickleback and sculpins, he said.
“Some of the small channels are old drainage ditches that had limited fish access and others are completely newly formed channels from the restoration,” Kowalski said. “Over time, a more complex system of small channels will form and provide more and higher quality habitat for fish.”
In addition to fish monitoring, restoration work will continue this summer with more dike and culvert removal, connecting the restored 400-acre estuary to 600 acres of forested wetlands.
Undergraduate students at the UW will be required to complete a class in some area of social, political or economic diversity before they can graduate.
By Lornet Turnbull, The Seattle Times
Saying it has an obligation to prepare students for a more global society, the University of Washington will require undergrads to complete a course in some area of diversity — economic, cultural or political — before they can graduate.
The new policy, initiated by a group of mostly minority students, followed three failed attempts over the past 22 years to introduce changes meant to ensure that all graduating students know a little more about other cultures and people who differ from them than they did when they first arrived.
The three-credit course won’t add to the number of hours students now need to obtain a bachelor’s degree. And it won’t apply to current undergrads, only to the incoming class in the year the policy takes effect — possibly next fall.
Helen Fillmore, a graduating senior majoring in environmental science and resource management, is a member of First Nations @ UW and of the UW Students for Diversity Coalition, which began pushing for these changes nearly three years ago.
“Students come from different places with different backgrounds and … arrive at the university where we’d become part of this huge melting pot,” she said. But the differences that students bring with them aren’t always positively recognized.
“Here we are in a place where we have a lot of ability to grow, not just while we’re here but after we graduate and enter the workforce. We’re so much more connected than ever before … yet there’s still so much bickering.”
The new requirement is tailored around a broad definition of diversity, covering areas such as sexual orientation, disability, class, race, age, gender, religion and politics.
To satisfy it, students on the UW’s Seattle, Bothell and Tacoma campuses would be able to choose from among 400 and 500 courses that are already part of the curricula, such as Peasants in Politics, Class and Culture in East Asia, Gender and Spirituality and World Music. Two-thirds of UW students already take classes that satisfy the diversity requirement.
The three credits would count toward the general-education requirement students already must meet to graduate.
Fine-tuning proposal
To be sure, the UW isn’t blazing any new trail here, and in fact may be behind the curve with this requirement, which has been approved by President Michael Young.
A majority of four-year institutions across the country, including Washington State University, already have a diversity requirement for graduation.
At least three other times in the 1990s, UW student groups tried, but failed, to get a similar policy implemented. Fillmore said at first she worried this effort would fail as well.
Some faculty members thought the definition of diversity in the proposal was not broad enough, excluding areas such as politics and economics, and some raised concerns that it put too much emphasis on concepts such as power and privilege.
Fillmore said initial questions also suggested some faculty members felt the minority students were angry about something or that their effort amounted to a political statement of some kind.
Over two years, faculty members in various committees worked with the students to fine-tune the proposal and expand the definition of diversity. The requirement also was changed from five credits to three.
James Gregory, chairman of the Faculty Senate, which must approve all such changes, said “there was a lot of wordsmithing and adjusting the resolution at various stages.”
“There were changes in executive committee, more changes on the floor of the Senate,” said Gregory, a history professor. “A lot of the things that bothered certain faculty members were worked out.”
In retrospect, Fillmore believes it helped, too, that students met repeatedly with faculty members to make sure they understood the significance of what the students wanted to accomplish, even before the proposal was brought up for a vote.
“In the last part of last year and first part of this year I spent more time in meetings with faculty than I spent with my friends,” Fillmore said.
The Faculty Senate approved the measure in April.
Now, the dean of each school and college within the UW must approve a list of courses to satisfy the diversity requirement for their students.
Some opposition
Comments on a UW student newspaper article about the new policy reflected some opposition, including from one person who noted the UW is not a liberal-arts school and referred to the requirement as another hoop students with coursework-heavy majors would have to jump through.
Gregory, though, characterized the final policy as “a very modest curriculum requirement.”
“It doesn’t complicate the curriculum,” he said. “We were careful not to do that.”
Universities, Gregory said, are preparing young people for adulthood and for jobs that in many cases will involve visits to countries around the world and interactions with people of different cultures abroad as well as at home. UW students “have a chance to explore that in a classroom environment,” Gregory said.
“The fact that so many students are already taking courses that deal with some aspect of diversity shows a recognition among students that this is valuable.”
Susanne Patles in prayer, as New Brunswick RCMP confer. [Photo: M. Howe]
2 more charged as New Brunswickers rally against seismic testing
By Miles Howe, Halifax Media Co-op
ELSIPOGTOG, NEW BRUNSWICK, CANADA – About 25 RCMP officers in uniform, along with about a dozen police cruisers, today continued to flank equipment owned by gas exploration company SWN Resources Canada as they proceeded with their seismic testing of highway 126 in Kent County, New Brunswick.
Pushing the scattered crowd of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people back “50 metres distance” from the southward approaching seismic trucks – or ‘thumpers’ – the RCMP first arrested one demonstrator and chased another into the woods before arresting Susanne Patles.
Patles, a Mi’kmaq woman, had scattered a line of tobacco between herself and the approaching police, then proceeded to draw a circle of tobacco in the highway, where she then knelt and began to pray. After about two minutes, the police proceeded to arrest Patles. An officer Bernard noted that she was being charged with mischief.
Today’s two arrests follow another three made last Wednesday, when people again placed themselves in the path of SWN’s thumpers. Residents fear that the tests will lead to hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – of the area.
Lorraine Clair, arrested on Wednesday, continues to recover from nerve damage suffered from the rough treatment handed down on her by RCMP officers.
RCMP arrest Patles. [Photo: M. Howe]Resistance to SWN’s presence, which is located in a part of traditional Mi’kma’ki territory known as Signigtog – or district 6 – has so far been strong. Thumper trucks have for days now been met with people who object to fracking from the surrounding communities, as well as supporters from around the Maritimes who are now beginning to flock towards the focal point of the highway.
A cow grazing on the lush pasturelands of Cornwall in southwest England and a seal swimming in the ice cold waters of the Arctic might not appear to have much in common. The link between the two is tuberculosis, with a strain of the disease threatening cattle populations in Britain and elsewhere now showing up among seals in the high Arctic.
Dr Claire Heffernan, a trained vet and a specialist in global health and disease interaction between animals and humans, says that as the climate warms in Arctic regions, more and more diseases from Europe and elsewhere are spreading there, threatening both animal and human populations.
“In the past diseases might not have survived in the cold temperatures and the ice of the Arctic but as the region warms a new dynamic is introduced” Heffernan told Climate News Network.
“We need to fundamentally alter the way we look at disease in the context of climate change. We should recognize disease as a harbinger of a warming world.”
Dr Heffernan, a senior fellow at the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford and director of the livestock development group at the University of Reading says a wide variety of diseases have recently become evident among Arctic animal populations.
Toxoplasma, a parasite common in European cat populations, is now being found in polar bears in Greenland. Erysipelas, a disease of domestic pigs, is being found in Musk Oxen in the Canadian Arctic: the animals have also been found to have contracted Giardiasis, an intestinal parasite of humans. Meanwhile West Nile virus has been found in wolf pups in the Canadian Arctic.
Transmission
Such diseases could have been transmitted in a variety of ways, says Heffernan. The spread of Toxoplasma, for example, might be the result of people flushing cat faeces down toilets in the US and Europe which are then carried by tides to the Arctic. More people are visiting the region. Tourists defecating in the wilds might be the cause of the spread of Erysipelas.
“The Arctic is like a Heathrow airport in terms of bird, seal and other migration patterns so that’s another way disease is easily spread” says Heffernan. “And the disease pathway is not all one way – they can also be transmitted from the Arctic to elsewhere in the world.
“The point is no one is really joining up the dots between climate change and the spread of disease. There’s a whole new disease transmission cycle appearing in the Arctic which we just don’t understand.”
Impact on humans
Human disease levels in the Arctic are a continuing concern says Heffernan. Rates of TB among the Inuit of northern Canada are far higher than in the general population.
Major economic change and development now taking place in the Arctic means previously nomadic people are moving to towns in search jobs. Ice melt is also forcing more into settlements. With people living in close proximity to each other, disease tends to spread faster. Infant mortality in the Arctic, much of it due to diseases curable elsewhere in the world, is considerably higher than elsewhere.
“In 1930s there was a temperature spike in the Arctic which led to an outbreak of malaria” says Heffernan. “In subsequent years chloroquine was used to combat it. But what happens now, with temperatures rising and the prevalence of chloroquine resistant malaria?”
Anthrax alert
Early in the last century there were periodic outbreaks of anthrax in the Russian Arctic, resulting in the deaths of thousands of deer and cattle. Some Russian scientists and officials have warned that burial sites of those anthrax infected animals are now being exposed.
“As the Arctic melts, ancient pathogens can suddenly escape” says Heffernan. “No one knows for certain how many livestock burial sites there are in the Russian Arctic – I’ve seen estimates ranging from 400 to 13,000.”
In recent years there have been several anthrax outbreaks affecting both cattle and people reported in the region, particularly among communities of the indigenous Yakut, who often live near to such burial sites.
With Arctic temperatures rising at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world, Heffernan says there’s an urgent need to link disease and climate change and tackle health issues.
But there are a number of problems preventing concerted action: the Arctic is governed by different states with different laws. There’s not even a common agreement among Arctic nation states on the region’s boundaries. There’s a dearth of trained medical staff and research across the region. When it comes to statistics, the Arctic is something of a black hole with health data subsumed into more general country wide statistics.
“There’s very little biosecurity work going on in the Arctic” says Heffernan. “Yet we have the means to control so many of these diseases. There must be urgent, concerted, joined up action.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed taking the gray wolf off the federal Endangered Species List, saying it is no longer in danger of extinction, and replacing it with the Mexican wolf, a species under siege.
Gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains and the western Great Lakes are already out from under federal protection. Today’s announcement lifts the federal restrictions from all lower 48 states. The wolves will still be managed, Ashe said, but the states will do it. Tribes are also important in these efforts, he said. (Related: Proposed Settlement Would De-List Idaho, Montana Gray Wolves)
Working with state partners in Arizona and New Mexico, “our goal is to reinvigorate our Mexican wolf recovery program,” Ashe said. “No one is suggesting” that gray wolves require less protection, but the question is whether they still require federal protection, he added.
Tribal input will be key during both the gray wolf’s transition away from federal management and the Mexican wolf’s continued regeneration, Ashe said.
“We have worked historically through the reintroduction and recovery effort with tribes, and our principal partner is the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho,” he said. “In fact, during key juncture in the recovery effort, when the State of Idaho was not participating—government and political leaders had prohibited the state fish and game agency from participating—the Nez Perce Tribe played a critical role with us and was really a vital partner in the early stages.”
“Regarding the Mexican Wolf, the White Mountain Apache have been a key partner so far to recover the Mexican Wolf,” he said, “and tribal partners will be increasingly important in the Southwest as we reinvigorate our efforts to recover the Mexican wolf.”
The dual move reflects the fact that the federal government has fulfilled its responsibility under the Endangered Species Act, which turns 40 this year, to ensure that “the gray wolf is going to remain a part of the landscape of our nation and for future generations of Americans,” Ashe said. The gray wolf population has grown from a few hundred in the early 2000s to :at least 6,100 gray wolves in the contiguous United States, with a current estimate of 1,674 in the Northern Rocky Mountains and 4,432 in the Western Great Lakes,” according to the Fish and Wildlife Service on its website.
“About this time next year we should be talking about a final proposal,” he said. The clock on a 90-day public comment period begins on June 7, after which the Fish and Wildlife Service will evaluate the results and come up with a determination and a plan.
The wolves have been considered endangered for the entire tenure of the protection law. Ashe admitted the government had “persecuted” the animals before they were listed for protection—hunting them from the air, gassing them in their dens and poisoning them in the wild. But in 1995, wildlife officials had released a few dozen wolves into Yellowstone National Park and in Idaho, and today there are more than 1,700 in that region alone, he said.
Vincent Schilling, Indian Country Today Media Network
Remember these ladies!? ICTMN takes a look back at the Conversations With Champions series, including a sit-down with the sensational Sisters. Read more at https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/06/09/eight-native-basketball-players-you-need-know-better-149785
After the incredible, unprecedented run through the 2013 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament that Shoni and Jude Schimmel, Umatilla, led the Louisville Cardinals on, ICTMN reached out to some of the most amazing and historically important Native hoops players to get their thoughts on the state of Native basketball, how to succeed in life and where they’re headed next–including from the Sisters themselves. “Let’s give them somethintg to talk about!,” we promised. And so we kicked off a Conversations With Champions series, sitting down with eight basketball trailblazers, champions and builders for some one-on-ones. Here is a recap of the series, in case you missed any of the engaging discussions. These are men and women you need to know.
ONE: Cliff Johns, the first Native American to play for legendary NCAA coach Lute Olsen at the University of Arizona, shared his thoughts on how to overcome tough circumstances and succeed in life, what the amazing Jim Valvano taught him and how the Schimmels have inspired him and Indian country.
Cliff Johns
“There were three simple factors about life and basketball that Jimmy Valvano would share with his players and basketball campers. One: Your family. Jimmy would talk about family and how important they are. They are your support system and number one throughout the whole process. You have to love and respect your family and listen to them.
Two: The love for the sport. The passion, the dedication, the blood sweat and tears and how much time you put into it into learning the fundamentals is the second most important part.
Three: Your spirituality. You have to have some sort of spiritual roots and spiritual identity going through this process.
You have to keep these three concepts in mind to be successful in life and successful on the basketball court. I have always kept this in my mind. In paralleling this with the Schimmel sisters, they have all of these qualities. It is obvious through their parents and the support and love that they have. They also have that cultural aspect, which drew a lot of attention.”
TWO: In catching up with Kenny Dobbs, the all-universe dunking star, he discussed the great accomplishments of Native Americans on the hardwood in 2013 and about his own life choices that have led to his success and which drive him to help American Indian youth.
The sky-walking Kenny Dobbs
“Part of the testimony that I share with kids when I go out and do tours and speaking engagements is figuring out what your dream is and what your goal is in life. Whether you believe in God or not, we have a greater purpose instead of just partying it up. There is something that each one of us has a destiny to fulfill. We have all been given a talent to be used for that purpose.
You have to figure out that talent. Maybe you’re not a basketball player or dunker – maybe you write poetry, or sing or make beats, or you are a doctor. Whatever it is, if you have different dreams and talents, the main message is to focus on those things and put energy into it now instead of later on.
I was given a second chance at life. I capitalized on that opportunity. I tell kids, ‘either change your life right now hearing my story and watching these cool dunks’ or later you might remember this message and change your life out of desperation. Make these changes because of inspiration, as opposed to being back against the wall and make the changes out of desperation.”
THREE: University of Kansas star guard Angel Goodrich sat down with ICTMN soon after being drafted into the WNBA, only the second Native American to be so. A contemporary of the Schimmel Sisters, Goodrich is now starring with the Tulsa Shock. Among a wide variety of subjects, the Cherokee hoopster shared on how she has overcome obstacles to succeed.
Goodrich is now a Shock.
“I am teachable. I like to learn new stuff and if it is going to make me better or help me adjust to a different style of play I am willing to learn, listen to others, be a sponge and take everything in. If they’re going to make me better I am willing to do whatever it takes. I think that is how my personality has always been. I want to get better every single day. If someone comes in and wants to teach me something new, I’m down for it no matter what their age is or whoever it is. That taught me how to get where I am.”
FOUR: ICTMN was thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with Hall-of-Famer Reyneldi Becenti, who was the first Native American to play in the WNBA and the first woman to be inducted into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame. She discussed her climb to the top, what it takes to succeed as a Native woman hooops player and what her thoughts are about the accomplishments of Native American basketball players today.
Becenti, during her Scottsdale CC days. She’s in that school’s Hall of Fame.
“You cannot teach passion and you cannot teach heart toward the game of basketball. It comes from within you. At a young age I was instilled with a passion to love the game of basketball. I wanted it so much. I was inspired by my parents who played in Indian reservation tournaments. They had passion and heart and loved basketball.
I grew up being a gym rat and at that time I didn’t have a Native American who was out there playing college ball or anything, so that was one of my motivations. When I saw Cheryl Miller playing on the Olympic team, and I saw that she was African-American, she became one of my role models. On top of all this, I thought, maybe I could be the first.
For me, I just had that driving force to accomplish so much. My dad said that I was given talent and I was given the gift of basketball. He told me about peer pressure and that people would be jealous. I was given that push from him. Once I became a good player, I knew I had to push 10 times harder to get where I wanted to get to.”
FIVE: Two-time Continental Basketball Association champion with the Yakama Sun Kings Richard Dionne was about to complete his master’s degree in counseling when ICTMN caught up with the Fort Peck small forward. A truly great player who played his way into a professional contract with the Sun Kings, a childhood dream, Dionne will be inspiring generations of Native youth by becoming a student counselor–another dream of his that he realized through hard work and dedication. Dionne told what it was like to win titles, shared about his personal accomplishments in education and offered what he thinks about the recent successes of Native basketball players.
Dionne: proud Native, master’s degree earner
“I think in any situation, there are going to be barriers [to success for American Indian youth]. It depends on the choices you make. I knew the choices that I had to make to get where I needed to be.
It was also nice having a great support system from my family growing up to include my Mom and Dad growing up, and now my wife, Nettie, and my kids. That is now my motivation, to do better for them each and every day.
A lot of students and a lot of kids growing up probably do not have that support system. They might choose the wrong friends and hang out with the wrong people. The big thing is the choices that we make growing up. Yes, there are all these different obstacles and barriers, but you can choose whether to do that or not.”
SIX: Cofounder of the Native American Basketball Invitational basketball tournament GinaMarie Scarpa was nothing but positivity when she spoke with ICTMN, and the bearer of good news about the upcoming 2013 NABI tournament. While she isn’t a player the way the other of our seven stars are, Scarpa is a major player in helping Native youth succeed through basketball. And in our eyes, that makes her a champion we needed to speak with. Scarpa discussed the state of the NABI, its exciting growth, and her thoughts about the accomplishments of Native American basketball players this year.
Scarpa, with NIGA’s Ernie Stevens Jr
“NABI’s ultimate goal is for the advancement of Native American athletes. Through our tournaments, programs and college fund, NABI is a tool to showcase and create opportunities for our talented youth. Sports are a tool in which we create these opportunities. We want to encourage our Native youth to know they can accomplish anything if they put their minds to it and tap into the power of believing in themselves. We will be there to assist them in their journey.”
SEVEN AND EIGHT: Finally, we caught up with the Sisters themselves, Jude and Shoni Schimmel. These young women thrilled Indian country and are inspiring girls to aspire to follow in their footsteps–on the court and off. The Schimmels sat down with ICTMN to discuss their devotion to basketball, the hype that has engulfed them and what they will do next.
“Shoni: It’s an honor for both Jude and I to be an inspiration to so many people. To represent Native American people just by playing basketball and for us to do something we both love and get so much out of is a privilege.
Jude: It’s fun to do something we love and at the same time affect people positively. It is a privilege and a blessing.”
Join the Tulalip Health Clinic staff and WSU Master Gardeners in planting new gardens, Tuesday, June 11 10am-4pm. Garden walk, salmon lunch and health screenings and prize giveaways!
![Susanne Patles in prayer, as New Brunswick RCMP confer. [Photo: M. Howe]](http://www.tulalipnews.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/img_7549.jpg)
