Native American Archives - Page 8 of 24

Number of Homeless Native American, Black Students in Washington State Increases

The state of Washington’s Native American and black K-12 students are three times more likely to be homeless than their white peers, a new study finds.

In the 2013-14 school year, 7.6 percent of Native American students in Washington were counted as homeless. Likewise, 7.6 percent of the black students there were also counted as homeless, according to a reportby the state’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

That same year, Washington’s Hispanic and Latino students suffered a 4.1 percent homelessness rate. In comparison, 2.3 percent of white students were counted as homeless.

The overall percentage of homeless K-12 students throughout the state jumped six points from the previous year, Joseph O’Sullivan of The Seattle Timesreported. During the 2012-13 school year, there were 30,609 homeless students. The next year, there were 32,494.

Elected officials in Washington are struggling with a recent state Supreme Court ruling to fully fund all K-12 schools, which threatens the funding to some social services programs.

“These numbers make it clear that funding education at the expense of the safety net is a false choice,” Rachael Myers, executive director of the The Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, told O’Sullivan in a statement. “Sufficiently funding basic education means funding what children need both inside and outside the classroom.”

Caleb Dunlap, Ojibwe, who worked with Washington’s Native American homeless community for three years as program manager for the Seattle-based Chief Seattle Club, a local nonprofit that works to provide homeless Natives with basic needs and services, told ICTMNhe believes the increase in homeless students is due to the spike in homeless families.

Dunlap said even the state’s health and human services information line, 2-1-1, where families in need can seek assistance, often falls short.

“All they’re telling you is ‘this shelter’s full’ and ‘that shelter’s full’,” he said. “They’re just giving you the run around.”

Dunlap added that the endemic of homelessness in Washington is punctuated by certain rules and regulations. The age of a child, for example, is reason enough to deny a parent access to temporary housing, he said.

“I would say that Seattle needs to provide better direct access to emergency shelters and temporary to permanent housing options for families facing homelessness,” he said. “Often family services can be limited due to the age of children. In the case of single mother families it can be harder for them to find housing placements if they have male children over the age of 13 due to often being in housing placement with domestic violence victims.”

Seattle, Dunlap said, was designated as a relocation city during the Indian relocation acts of the 1950s and ’60s. The acts encouraged Native Americans to relocate from reservations to cities with promises of jobs and vocational training. The city soon experienced a growing number of homeless Native Americans after some began to lose employment.

“They ended up not getting the very best jobs and that’s kind of where it started,” he said.

First DNA tests say Kennewick Man was Native American

By Sandi Doughton, The Seattle Times

SEATTLE — Nearly two decades after the ancient skeleton called Kennewick Man was discovered on the banks of the Columbia River, the mystery of his origins appears to be nearing resolution.

Genetic analysis is still under way in Denmark, but documents obtained through the federal Freedom of Information Act say preliminary results point to a Native American heritage.

The researchers performing the DNA analysis “feel that Kennewick has normal, standard Native American genetics,” according to a 2013 email to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for the care and management of the bones. “At present there is no indication he has a different origin than North American Native American.”

If that conclusion holds up, it would be a dramatic end to a debate that polarized the field of anthropology and set off a legal battle between scientists who sought to study the 9,500-year-old skeleton and Northwest tribes that sought to rebury it as an honored ancestor.

In response to The Seattle Times’ records request, geochemist Thomas Stafford Jr., who is involved in the DNA analysis, cautioned that the early conclusions could “change to some degree” with more detailed analysis. The results of those studies are expected to be published soon in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Stafford and Danish geneticist Eske Willerslev, who is leading the project at the University of Copenhagen, declined to discuss the work until then.

But other experts said deeper genetic sequencing is unlikely to overturn the basic determination that Kennewick Man’s closest relatives are Native Americans.

The result comes as no surprise to scientists who study the genetics of ancient people, said Brian Kemp, a molecular anthropologist at Washington State University. DNA has been recovered from only a handful of so-called Paleoamericans — those whose remains are older than 9,000 years — but almost all of them have shown strong genetic ties with modern Native Americans, he pointed out.

“This should settle the debate about Kennewick,” Kemp said.

Establishing a Native American pedigree for Kennewick Man would also add to growing evidence that ancestors of the New World’s indigenous people originated in Siberia and migrated across a land mass that spanned the Bering Strait during the last ice age. And it would undermine alternative theories that some early migrants arrived from Southeast Asia or even Europe.

It’s not clear, though, whether the upcoming study will provide tribes the legal ammunition they need to reclaim what they call “The Ancient One.”

Controversy flared over the skeleton almost from the moment in 1996 when two students stumbled across human bones near the Southeastern Washington town of Kennewick.

Bothell archaeologist James Chatters, the first scientist to examine the skeleton, said the skull looked “Caucasoid,” not Native American. A facial reconstruction that bore a striking resemblance to Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (actor Patrick Stewart) of the television series “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” further inflamed members of local tribes, who argued that the remains were rightfully theirs under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

After eight years of litigation, a federal appeals court ruled in 2004 that Kennewick Man’s extreme age made it impossible to establish a clear link to any existing Northwest tribes.

A scientific team led by Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution, won the right to study the skeleton, which is stored at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

The results, including a new facial reconstruction based on more thorough analysis of the skull, were published last year in a 669-page book. Owsley, the lead author, told Northwest tribal members in 2012 that he remains convinced Kennewick Man was not Native American.

In an interview last week, Owsley explained that he bases that conclusion on the shape of the skull, which doesn’t look anything like the skulls of modern Native Americans. Its narrow brain case and prominent forehead more closely resemble Japan’s earliest inhabitants and people whose genetic roots are in Southeast Asia, not Siberia and other parts of Northeast Asia.

“His origins are going to go back to coastal Asia,” Owsley said.

That wouldn’t preclude the possibility of some distant, shared ancestry with Native Americans, he added. But chemical analysis of the bones suggests Kennewick Man ate a lot of marine mammals, which means he probably spent most of his life along the coast of Alaska or British Columbia, not on the Columbia Plateau where his bones were discovered, Owsley said.

With its ability to settle questions about lineage, DNA analysis has become one of the most powerful tools for the study of the ancient world, said Peter Lape, curator of archaeology at the Burke Museum.

“This is yet another case where genetics are really revolutionizing the way we think about ancestry and calling into question older scientific methods that rely on looking at the shape of bones,” he said.

Nevertheless, the majority of visitors he encounters at the museum still have the impression that Kennewick Man is caucasian.

“That initial media storm from 1996 just kind of stuck,” Lape said.

Chatters, the man who kicked up that storm, changed his mind after studying the 13,000-year-old skeleton of a young girl discovered in an underwater cave in Mexico. As with Kennewick Man and other remains of the earliest prehistoric Americans, the shape of the girl’s skull was unusual. But DNA analysis proved that she shared a common ancestry with modern Native Americans, originating with the people who migrated into the land mass called Beringia beginning about 15,000 years ago.

“The result from Kennewick is the same one we’re getting from the other early individuals,” Chatters said. “It’s what I expected.”

Attempts to extract DNA from Kennewick Man’s bones in the late 1990s failed. But the technology has advanced so much since then that researchers recently succeeded in analyzing the genome of a 130,000-year-old Neanderthal from a single toe bone.

Willerslev’s Danish lab is a world leader in ancient DNA analysis. Last year, he and his colleagues reported the genome of the so-called Anzick boy, an infant buried 12,600 years ago in Montana. He, too, was a direct ancestor of modern Native Americans and a descendant of people from Beringia.

Until details of the Kennewick analysis are published, there’s no way to know what other relationships his genes will reveal, Kemp said. It may never be possible to link him to specific tribes, partly because so few Native Americans in the United States have had their genomes sequenced for comparison.

“My feeling is once you get the Kennewick genome, there are going to be people lining up to find out if they’re related to him,” he said.

Members of Northwest tribes visit the Burke Museum regularly to pay their respects to The Ancient One, and continue to press for his reburial.

Willerslev met with tribal representatives in Montana before analyzing the Anzick boy’s DNA. Last summer, after those studies were done, he joined tribal members — including several Northwest veterans of the Kennewick Man wars — as they reinterred the boy’s bones on a sagebrush-covered slope near the spot where he was discovered.

‘World’s Greatest Athlete’ Jim Thorpe

n this historical images of Jim Thorpe,the athlete sports a Canton Bulldogs uniform.

BY CHARLES PULLIAM (ALASKAN ALEUT), NATIVE PEOPLES MAGAZINE

His stories usually start and end with head-shaking disbelief.

More or less at the same time in the early 1900s, Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox) was the world’s best college football player, professional football player, hurdler, short-distance runner, shot-putter and discus thrower. He played professional baseball and basketball as well and even was recognized for his dancing ability.

Before Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders, Thorpe was the original multi-sport athlete. But he didn’t just play, he dominated.

His Olympic feats in 1912 are asterisked because it was uncovered that he was paid to play baseball during his time at Carlisle Indian School. However, the Stockholm Summer Games gave Thorpe international recognition and legendary status as he won gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon in record fashion. Thorpe competed in 15 events and won eight of them, all while wearing mismatched shoes.

Take that in for a moment. His shoes didn’t match.

Thorpe still won four of the five events in the pentathlon and finished third in the other.

A true testament to his glory is Thorpe’s time in the 1,500-meter run—he finished in 4 minutes, 40.1 seconds in the decathlon event at the Stockholm Games in his second time running the event in two days. The time wasn’t beaten by another decathlete until 1972, and even with all of the technology, specialty (and matching) shoes and training available to athletes today, 100 years later, American silver medalist Trey Hardee ran the same event in 4:40.94 at the 2012 London Games.

Even the simple stories surrounding Thorpe carry a legendary, schoolyard prowess.

His Olympic roommate, Abel Kiviat, recalled one instance where Thorpe ended an elementary competition of trying to touch a hanging chandelier in the grand ballroom of the S.S. Finland—the ship that transported the Americans to the Games and served as the boarding house in Stockholm. It was a simple feat, but in a room full of athletes, no one came close until Thorpe leaped and grabbed the chandelier.

Kiviat said Thorpe only had to watch someone do something once and he’d try it and do it better.

Thorpe was born on May 28, 1888, near Prague, Oklahoma, on Sac and Fox Indian land. When Thorpe was 11, he was sent to Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, and in 1904, he entered the nation’s other Indian school set up by the government and military in Pennsylvania: Carlisle.

This is where Thorpe began his track-and-field career in 1907, and just like the chandelier on the S.S. Finland years later, Thorpe turned heads by clearing a high-jump bar on his first attempt with ease when others were failing.

Carlisle also launched Thorpe’s football career. Books are dedicated to single games, like when the Thorpe-led Indian school toppled defending-champion Harvard 18-15 in 1911, or the famous game a year later when Thorpe scored two touchdowns and drilled three field goals to lead Carlisle to a 27-6 dismantling of Army at West Point.

“It was like trying to clutch a shadow,” wrote The New York Times on Thorpe’s running against Army. Carlisle won the college national championship in 1912, led by Thorpe’s 25 touchdowns. He was named an All-American for the second straight year.

In 1913, he signed to play professional baseball with the New York Giants.

Thorpe’s fame from his college days at Carlisle carried over onto the football field as well, where he helped lay the foundation for the league that became today’s mighty National Football League while playing for the Canton Bulldogs. Canton happens to be where the NFL Hall of Fame is located.

Thorpe was recognized as the greatest athlete of the first half of the century by the Associated Press in 1950 and in 1999, with the AP ranking only Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan ahead of him.

Thorpe died of a heart attack at the age of 64 on March 28, 1953, and yet his story continues both in history books and in the news.

Just in October, a federal appeals court ruled that Thorpe’s remains would stay in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, a town named after the legendary athlete, despite the objections of two of his sons. They had wanted Thorpe’s remains to be returned to Sac and Fox tribal lands in Oklahoma.

Taking charge of our health

Rocky Renecker has his blood-pressure readings explained. Photo/Micheal Rios — Someone has a little fear of needles. Luis
Hernandez has his blood drawn for the A1C diabetes screening. Photo/Micheal Rios

by Micheal Rios, Tulalip News

Despite growing awareness, men usually take a back seat approach to maintaining their health. We will shy away from seeking advice, delaying possible treatment and/or waiting until symptoms become so bad we have no other option but to seek medical attention. To make matters worse, we refuse to participate in the simple and harmless pursuit of undergoing annual screenings.

Enter the Annual Men’s Health Fair held at the Tulalip Health Clinic on December 12. This year’s health fair provided us men the opportunity to become more aware of our own health. With various health screenings being offered for the low, low price of FREE we were able to get in the driver’s seat and take charge of our own health. Cholesterol screening, prostate screening, diabetes screening, and dental screening were among the options for men to participate in. Along with all the preventative health benefits of participating in these screenings, as if that was not reason enough, they gave out prizes and a complimentary lunch to every man who showed up.

At 16.1 percent, American Indians have the highest age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes among all U.S. racial and ethnic groups. Also, American Indians are 2.2 times more likelyto have diabetes compared with non-Hispanic whites (per Diabetes.org). Clearly we are at a greater risk when it comes to diabetes, making it all the more crucial to have glucose testing and diabetes screenings performed on an annual basis. For those men who attended the health fair, they were able to quickly have their glucose (blood sugar) tested with just a prick of the finger.

“The blood glucose test is a random check. Random is good, but doesn’t give you all the information which is why we do the A1C testing. It’s just nice to know if you are walking around with high blood sugar. This is a good way of saying ‘Hey, you need to go see your doctor.’ It’s not a definitive diagnosis,” said Nurse Anneliese Means of the blood sugar test.

Taking diabetes awareness one step further, an A1C test was available, by way of a blood draw that would also be used to test for high cholesterol.

“A1C is a diabetes screen. A1C is more of a long term indicator of glucose control as opposed to a regular blood glucose screening, which is here and now. A1C tells you what your blood glucose has been doing for the past 3 to 4 months,” states lab technician Brenda Norton.

How often should we have a diabetes screening performed? “Everyone should be checked once a year,” Norton said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), heart disease is the first and stroke the sixth leading cause of death among American Indians. High blood pressure is a precursor to possible heart disease and stroke. High blood pressure is also very easily detected by having routine checks of your blood pressure taken periodically.

Nurse Tiffany Lee-Meditz states, “Measuring your blood pressure basically gives us a non-invasive look at your heart health. It can tell us if your heart is too large, if its beating too fast, if its pumping enough blood for the flow to get to all of your tissue and organs, and it can tell us if we need to look further. It can also tell us the health of your vasculature or your vessels, and if we need to look further into that.”

Along with the various health screenings being offered there were information booths available that ranged from alternative health care options in the local area, ways to have cleaner air in your home, and methods to change eating habits as to live a heathier life. There was a booth where we could have our grip tested, a method used for assessing joint and muscle fatigue. Another booth offered us the opportunity to have our BMI (body mass index) and body fat percentage measured. Wondering if you need to cut back on those weekend treats? Or if you need to start leading a more active lifestyle? Well if that BMI was too high and you didn’t like what your body fat percentage was, now you know the answer.

Face it, as we get older, we all need to become more aware of the inevitable health concerns that may one day affect us. The possibility of having to deal with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, or the possibility of prostate cancer looms over us all. The only way to avoid such health concerns to heighten our awareness of these preventable conditions. Health educators empower us to be more proactive about our health by getting annual screenings, detecting issues early, as well as seeking medical treatment before a simple, treatable issue becomes life altering.

Tribal member Mike Murphy having an oral cancer screening performed.Photo/Micheal Rios — Tribal member Mike Murphy having an oral cancer screening performed.
Photo/Micheal Rios

To all of the men who attended the Men’s Health Fair, Jennie Fryberg, front desk supervisor for the Tulalip Health clinic, issued the following statement, “Again thanks for all the men that came out today. Thanks for taking care of your health, and thanks for the staff that helped me today and made today a huge success for our men. Thanks again.”

Whatcom’s new Superior Court judge has tribal background

Raquel Montoya-Lewis, shown in her office at Fairhaven College in 2011, was appointed to a new seat on the Whatcom County Superior Court by Gov. Jay Inslee on Monday, Dec. 15, 2014.RHYS LOGAN | WWU — Courtesy to The Bellingham Herald — Raquel Montoya-Lewis, shown in her office at Fairhaven College in 2011, was appointed to a new seat on the Whatcom County Superior Court by Gov. Jay Inslee on Monday, Dec. 15, 2014.
RHYS LOGAN | WWU — Courtesy to The Bellingham Herald

By Ralph Schwartz, Bellingham Herald

Whatcom County will have its first Native American Superior Court judge in 2015.

When Raquel Montoya-Lewis begins her term in January, she also will be the only Superior Court judge of tribal descent in the state.

Gov. Jay Inslee announced Monday, Dec. 15, he had appointed Montoya-Lewis to Whatcom County Superior Court. Montoya-Lewis, 46, is from the New Mexican tribes Pueblo of Laguna and Pueblo of Isleta. She is chief judge for the Nooksack and Upper Skagit tribes, and an associate professor at Western Washington University’s Fairhaven College.

“I’m really excited and honored to serve Whatcom County in this role,” Montoya-Lewis said in a phone interview on Monday. “I also recognize the importance of the appointment in terms of the question of diversity. I think it’s really important that the state court system reflect the people that it serves.”

“Raquel’s 15 years of experience as a judge will be well appreciated on the Superior Court,” Inslee said in a statement. “She is wise and has a strong commitment to service and to promoting justice. I know she will serve the community and the court exceptionally well.”

Montoya-Lewis was named this year to the Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice. She also is an appellate judge for the Northwest Intertribal Court System.

She was heartily endorsed by Bellingham City Council member Roxanne Murphy, a member of the Nooksack Indian Tribe.

“She has handled some of our most complex cultural, political and societal issues and managed these cases with the utmost care, intelligence, timeliness and fairness,” Murphy wrote in an email to the governor she sent on Wednesday, Dec. 10.

Montoya-Lewis has presided over the highly publicized “Nooksack 306” case in tribal court. The tribal council seeks to disenroll 306 members who the council says were mistakenly added to the rolls in the 1980s. The case has gone back and forth, but Montoya-Lewis has generally ruled in favor of the council, saying it has broad authority over membership decisions.

Montoya-Lewis remains the presiding judge in the case, and she said Monday she couldn’t comment on it.

The governor’s appointment stems from a bill passed by the 2013 Legislature authorizing a fourth Whatcom County Superior Court judge. Inslee’s selection comes two years after Deborra Garrett became the first woman to be elected to Whatcom County Superior Court. Besides gender balance, the appointment provides the court with another judge to take on the backlog of civil and felony criminal cases in the court.

“I think Raquel is going to be able to come in and hit the ground running,” Judge Charles Snyder said. “We’ll probably start giving her cases as soon as she gets in the door.”

Snyder sat with Montoya-Lewis on a panel discussing diversity in the legal system in 2012.

“I found her to be a very bright person who obviously has a good knowledge of the law,” Snyder said on Monday. “She will bring a new perspective, being the first Native American to come on the (Whatcom) bench.”

Montoya-Lewis emphasized her impartiality, regardless of who comes before her in the courtroom.

“There is certainly a large number of native people that come through the civil and criminal court in Whatcom County,” she said. “I think I will bring a unique perspective in serving that part of the community, but I see my role as serving the entire county. I see my role as being fair and neutral and unbiased.”

Congress Giving Sacred Apache Lands To Foreign Mining Company

By Reverb Press

In a late night addition to the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) bill, Congress slipped in a provision that will hand off 2,400 acres of land sacred to the San Carlos Apache to a foreign mining concern. The ancestral and ceremonial lands, a part of the Tonto National Forest, includes the site, Apache Leap, where Apache warriors jumped to their deaths rather than be captured by US troops.

“Since time immemorial people have gone there. That’s part of our ancestral homeland. We’ve had dancers in that area forever – sunrise dancers – and coming-of-age ceremonies for our young girls that become women. They’ll seal that off. They’ll seal us off from the acorn grounds, and the medicinal plants in the area, and our prayer areas,” said Terry Rambler, Chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe.

The measure which has failed several times in the past but was inserted into the must-pass defense appropriation bill thanks to the efforts of Arizona Republican Senator, John McCain. On passage of the NDAA, the land will be given over to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of the Rio Tinto, a massive mining concern based in London, England and Melbourne, Australia that has been salivating over the prospect of mining the area for years.

Interior Secretary, Sally Jewell was critical of the way the provision moved forward. Speaking of the numerous land bills being considered, she said, “I’m happy to see public lands bills make progress. The preference on public lands bills is that they go through a typical process of public lands bills and they get debate and discussion.”

Of the way Tonto National Forest land was handled, she said however, “I think that is profoundly disappointing.”

Perhaps ironically, tribe Chairman, Terry Rambler was in Washington DC at the time for the White House Tribal Nations Conference.
Leaders from the 566 federally recognized Native nations engaged with the President, Cabinet Officials, and the White House Council on Native American Affairs on key issues facing tribes including, respecting tribal sovereignty and upholding treaty and trust responsibilities.

Rambler had been concerned that the long sought land deal might be inserted into the NDAA. When the latest version of the bill was read on Tuesday evening, (Dec 2) there was no mention of the Apache land. On Wednesday morning, there it was. He is asking that the Senate not vote on the appropriation until the measure is removed.

Rambler is organizing grass-roots opposition and is circulation a White House petition, STOP APACHE LAND GRAB;

“It may seem impossible but our elders have taught us not to lose faith in the power of prayer and of course prayer will be there to help guide us through, but as far as a strategy, we know it’s going to take a grassroots effort and a lot of awareness in the public eye to see our side of the story and that’s what we need to get out there,”

Beyond the symbolic and spiritual importance of the lands involved, Rambler is also concerned about the potential ecological aspects of the mine and how it will affect his people in years to come. The company plans to us a mining technique called block cave mining which digs under the ore and then lets it collapse into the hollow for recovery. Eventually, the land above it will subside as well. Rambler explained,

“What those mountains mean to us is that when the rain and the snow comes, it distributes it to us,” Rambler said. “It replenishes our aquifers to give us life.”

He’s not sure how that will happen once the land starts subsiding. Resolution Copper promises to monitor it.

Overall, the land deals being considered for inclusion with the NDAA are a compromise. There is bipartisan support for the give and take process and there are benefits in most of them, but somewhere, a line must be drawn.

TERO Vocational Training Center winter graduation

Winter Quarter GraduatesPhoto/Micheal Rios — Winter Quarter Graduates
Photo/Micheal Rios

By Micheal Rios, Tulalip News

Sixteen students celebrated their graduation from an intensive three month pre-apprenticeship construction trades program on Monday, December 8, at the Tulalip Tribes administration building. The program, which is managed by the Tulalip TERO department, is the first state recognized Native American pre-apprenticeship program in the United States. The program is accredited through the Edmonds Community College and all in class curriculum has been formally approved by the Washington State Apprentice and Training Council. The three month course provides students instruction in the basics of the construction trade. In addition, they are awarded certifications in flagging, first aid/CPR, and an OSHA 10-hour safety card. Upon completion of the program students are ready to safely enter the construction work environment.

During the graduation ceremony, students shared what the program has meant to them, their favorite part of the program, and what their goals are after graduating. TVTC graduate Aaron Kornish commented on his favorite part of the program, “the opportunities of learning how to build things with various techniques, getting the opportunity to meet different trade representatives, and having the opportunity to expand my horizon.”

While presenting their final thoughts to the audience of family, friends, trade representatives, and community members, students also presented their personal projects, a project they build as a class final that encompasses all the techniques and concepts they’ve learned over the past three months. Some projects included a skate board ramp, a four foot tall dresser, a cabinet for PlayStation 4 games, and an entertainment center.

Tulalip vice-chairman Les Parks delivered a brief speech to the graduates and audience members before the diplomas were handed out, noting that after graduating high school in 1975 he started a construction training program that was very similar to the TVTC program. “My recommendation to the students is to follow your dream, find your passion, find what fits you and go for it. Make it work,” Parks expresses to the students, “Wherever you find your passion, follow it, and make it work for you.”

Mark Newland, nine year instructor of the construction program, was presented with and wrapped in a Pendleton blanket by his graduating students to honor all the hard work and dedication he has given to his students and the program.

This winter session marked the second successful completion of the program since undergoing reform. No longer titled the Native American Construction Trades Employment Program (NACTEP), the program has been transformed into the TERO Vocational Training Center (TVTC) and is completely funded by Tulalip TERO in partnership with Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) and the Tulalip Foundation. TVTC classes are offered at no charge to Tulalip tribal members, tribal members of federally recognized tribes, spouses/parents of Tulalip tribal members, and employees of the Tulalip Tribes. The next TVTC session starts January 27, 2015. For more information contact Lynne Bansemer, TERO Client Services Coordinator, at (360) 716-4746 or lbansemer@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov.

Winter Quarter Graduates

Bradley Althoff, Tulalip

Mangus Bauer, Round Valley Indian Tribes

Nathan Bayhurst, Tulalip

Leonard Begay, Navajo

Joe Fox, Tulalip Spouse-Parent

Arrion John, Yakima

Aaron Kornish, Parent of Tulalip Tribes

Jordan Laducer, Turtle Mountain Chippewa

Micah Laducer, Turtle Mountain Chippewa

Blaze Medina, Tulalip

Dylan Monger, Tulalip

Greg Moses, Tulalip

Robert Ramos, Tulalip

Dylan Rivera, Yakima

El Tico Tyson, Spouse of Tulalip

Tyrone Yazzie, Navajo

How is the National School Lunch Program Working in Indian Country?

Dianne Amiotte-SeidelToas-Pueblo-InterTribal-Buffalo-Council-School-Lunches: This little guy at Taos Pueblo really enjoyed his buffalo dish and ate most of his salad, too. Taos is one of the schools included in the ANA grant awarded to the InterTribal Buffalo Council. — Dianne Amiotte-Seidel
Toas-Pueblo-InterTribal-Buffalo-Council-School-Lunches: This little guy at Taos Pueblo really enjoyed his buffalo dish and ate most of his salad, too. Taos is one of the schools included in the ANA grant awarded to the InterTribal Buffalo Council.

Tanya H. Lee, Indian Country Today Media Network

New guidelines for the National School Lunch Program are aimed at providing the nation’s children with healthy, age-appropriate meals in an effort to reduce childhood obesity and improve the overall well-being of kids, especially poor kids, across the country.

A Matter of National Security

The federal government established the school lunch program in the early 1930s to try to prevent widespread childhood malnutrition during the Depression and to support struggling farmers by having the federal government buy up surplus commodity foods. By 1942, 454 million pounds of surplus food was distributed to 93,000 schools for lunch programs that benefited 6 million children.

But when the U.S. joined World War II, the U.S. Armed Forces needed all of the surplus food U.S. farmers were producing. By April 1944, only 34,064 schools were participating in the school lunch program and the number of children being served had dropped to 5 million.

In the spring of 1945, Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, a former school principal, told the House Agriculture Committee that as many as 40 percent of rejected draftees had been turned away owing to poor diets. “Whether we are going to have war or not, I do think that we have got to have health if we are going to survive,” he testified. Within a year, Congress passed legislation to appropriate money to support the program on a year-by-year basis and by April 1946, the program had expanded to include 45,119 schools and 6.7 million children.

In 1946, Congress established a permanent National School Lunch Program (NSLP). In the legislation, adequate child nutrition was explicitly recognized as a national security priority. The program was administered by the states, which were required to match federal dollars. Nutritional standards were set by the federal government, and states were required to provide free and reduced priced lunches to children who could not pay.

Nawayee Center School in Minneapolis serves 55 American Indian high school students. (Nawayee Center School)

Childhood Obesity Epidemic

Fast-forward half a century. By 2009, the Department of Defense reported that more recruits were being rejected for obesity than for any other medical reason. This was around the same time that First Lady Michelle Obama was taking on childhood obesity as a national health crisis.

Childhood obesity, reports the Centers for Disease Control, has more than doubled in children (to 18 percent) and quadrupled in adolescents (to 21 percent) in the past 30 years. In 2012, more than 30 percent of American children and adolescents were overweight or obese. These children are at increased risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, bone and joint problems, sleep apnea, and social and psychological problems such as stigmatization and poor self-esteem, according to the CDC. By 2030, 50 percent of Americans are predicted to be obese, according to the Harvard School of Public Health.

In the American Indian community, the rate of obesity is even higher. In 2010, the Indian Health Servicereported that 80 percent of American Indian/Alaska Native adults and about 50 percent of AI/AN children were overweight or obese.

Nawayee Center School garden and raised bed. Students built the fence around the garden in the second year. Since then they have built flower boxes, started doing seed saving and added recycling and composting. (Nawayee Center School)

Obese and overweight children have access to too many cheap calories with too little nutritional value, leading to the paradox of malnourished overweight children. Poor nutrition, often in the form of too much sugar and other simple carbohydrates, can lead to diabetes, which is rife in AI/AN communities.

Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act

Michelle Obama’s child health initiative included her “Let’s Move!” exercise campaign, the first-ever task force on child obesity and her backing for the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which passed Congress with bipartisan support in 2010.

The act set new standards, which went into effect in early 2012, for school lunches. These include reduced calories, reduced sugar and reduced sodium combined with increased fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains. In some cases, schools’ inability to prepare nutritionally adequate, attractive, kid-friendly meals under the new guidelines has led them to drop out of the NSLP altogether. Despite the fact that as of September 2013, only 524 out of 100,000 schools participating in the NSLP, or one half of one percent had dropped out, news coverage has been extensive, complete with photos of unappetizing meals, accounts of student protests and a good deal of criticism of Michelle Obama, who as the point person for the healthy school lunch initiative, is an obvious target.

Nawayee Center School students working in the garden. (Nawayee Center School)

Poor Children Need School Lunches

But the schools dropping out of the program are mostly schools with few students who qualify for free and reduced-price school lunches. The federal government mandates that schools participating in the NSLP provide free lunches for children from families whose incomes are 130 percent of the poverty level or less. That is, if the poverty level for a family of four is $24,000 per year, then children from families of four whose income is under about $31,200 per year are eligible for free lunches. Reduced-price lunches must be provided for children from families with incomes between 130 percent and 185 percent of the poverty level. So if the poverty level is $24,000 for a family of four, children from families of four earning between $31,200 and $44,400 are eligible for reduced priced lunches. Reduced price lunches may cost no more than $0.40.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 68 percent of AI/AN students are eligible for free and reduced-price school lunches, compared with only 28 percent of white students. USDA dataindicate that 70 percent of children receiving free lunches through the NSLP are children of color, as are 50 percent of students receiving reduced-price lunches.

The very public criticism of the new guidelines poses a threat to AI/AN and other children of color, as well as poor children in general. If the loudest voices cause the federal government to back down on the nutrition standards, the children who will be most affected are those who rely on school breakfasts, lunches, snacks and summer food programs for a significant portion of their nutrition—that is, poor children, the ones receiving free and reduced-price lunches, as do more than two-thirds of AI/AN children in public and non-profit private schools.

Students at the Nawayee Center School designed and built the garden, and they do all of the planting, weeding, watering and harvesting. The lush garden supplies food for the school lunch program. Students have learned to preserve fruits and vegetables for the winter. (Nawayee Center School)

Successful School Lunch Programs in Indian Country

Not everyone is having trouble meeting the new guidelines.

Joe Rice (Choctaw), executive director of the Nawayee Center Schoolin Minneapolis, says his school started serving healthier meals to its 55 American Indian high schoolers long before the new guidelines went into effect. “We’re sponsored by the Minnesota Department of Education so we have a licensed food and nutrition service that allows us instead of buying food from the local district to buy through a caterer who serves healthier food in line with our diabetes initiative. The fresh food from our garden and the healthier food from the caterer mean that we’re addressing one of the two modifiable risk factors for diabetes, which is diet. We’re getting away from sugar and saturated fat and more into healthy whole foods.”

And that’s having an impact. The school screens the kids every year and those who have been with the program for a while “typically have better blood glucose levels, and they report exercising and eating more healthy foods throughout the week. We also see healthier BMIs for the kids who have been in the program longer. Overall, we get good health results.”

The garden is a kid-centered endeavor. The students designed and built the garden and decide what crops to grow. The garden, says Rice, is “reconnecting kids to the earth. I remember the first time we had some stuff from the garden, the kids refused to eat it because it came out of the ground.” It also serves as a means of teaching biology, botany, math and language. “We found that gardening could be the starting point for a very rich curriculum and for cultural preservation and revitalization.”

The STAR Schooljust outside Flagstaff, Arizona, serves about 120 Navajo students in grades pre-K through 8. There, too, gardening is a key component of the nutrition program, although until the school can get its gardens and food safety practices certified by the government, garden produce is used only for cooking classes and community events.

Seventh and eighth graders at the STAR School shucking Navajo white corn in the early fall of 2014. The corn was then shaved and stored in the freezer to be used later. (STAR School)

Louva Montour (Diné) is food services manager. She says the school has had no trouble meeting the new guidelines. STAR School has its own garden and greenhouses, and students also work on a Navajo farm about 20 miles from the school, where they help with planting, watering, weeding and harvesting. “It really helps that they get hands-on experience working with food, from planting, even preparing the soil, composting (Our kids know a lot about composting!), the whole cycle,” says Montour.

Montour gives an example of the value of having kids grow the food they are going to eat: “We’re on our third year now using our salad bar. When we started putting out different types of vegetables, like beets, the students didn’t really know what beets were and they weren’t really trying it. But then they grew some in our greenhouse. Once they harvested them—those things are really big, about half a pound!—kids were saying ‘What is it?’ and ‘I want to eat it.’ They cleaned it and then we just cut it up right there because they wanted to eat it right there. And we let them because that’s the time for them to try it, when they’re willing.”

Beets have become a salad bar favorite, she says, as have other unlikely vegetables such as kale. Even though the school cannot yet use produce from its own gardens or those of local Navajo farmers, they are able to get local and organic produce through their regular food distributor who works with local producers.

Special Circumstances in Indian Country

Dianne Amiotte-Seidel, Oglala Sioux, project director/marketing coordinator for an ANA grant awarded to the InterTribal Buffalo Councilin South Dakota, which is a coalition of 56 tribes committed to reestablishing buffalo herds on Indian lands in a manner that promotes cultural enhancement, spiritual revitalization, ecological restoration, and economic development.

Amiotte-Seidel has already more than met the grant’s requirement that she introduce bison meat, which is much healthier for kids than beef, into eight school lunch programs, but it hasn’t been easy. “You can’t just put buffalo meat in the schools. You have a lot of different steps to take and each state is different,” she says.

A child at Taos Pueblo school finished her buffalo entree first! This is one of the schools included in the ANA grant awarded to the InterTribal Buffalo Council. (Dianne Amiotte-Seidel)

In order for a school to serve bison, “a tribe has to have enough buffalo to supply the school for one meal a week or a month, or whatever, and then they have to have a USDA plant nearby. They have to be willing to sell the buffalo meat to the school for the price of beef and they have to be able to have a supplier from a USDA plant take the meat to the school. The meat needs to bear a child nutrition label. The school has to be able to have a supply area big enough store the bison meat they need for the year, since tribes usually only do their harvest once a year.”

Amiotte-Seidel adds, “The biggest obstacle is the requirement to have USDA-certified slaughtering plants, because on the reservations that I’m dealing with, let’s use Lower Brule, for example. Lower Brule is four or five hours away from a certified USDA plant. They have to haul buffalo four to five hours to have USDA certify the meat for the school.”

This is one area where perhaps guidelines should be modified to better fit the unique circumstances in Indian Country and other areas where they present a burden so severe that the NSLP fails to meet its original goal—feeding poor children—as well as it could.

Art Of The American West Comes To The Tacoma Art Museum

Buffalo At Sunset by John NietoTACOMA ART MUSEUM, HAUB FAMILY COLLECTION — Buffalo At Sunset by John Nieto
TACOMA ART MUSEUM, HAUB FAMILY COLLECTION

By Jennifer Wing, KPLU

Images of the American West line the walls of a brand new addition to the Tacoma Art Museum. The collection, a gift from a German family with ties to the Northwest, is a once-in-a-lifetime acquisition that is raising the museum’s profile.

The transformation of the Tacoma Art Museum over the last two years began with a phone call between the museum’s director and the lawyer for Erivan and Helga Haub. The museum was looking for a donation to help with the redesign of its lobby. But Laura Fry with the museum says the Haubs, through their lawyer, made an incredible and unexpected offer.

“He said, ‘Well, would you be interested in their collection of Western American art?’” Fry said.

That conversation resulted in the new 16,000-square foot addition designed by Tom Kundig. It houses four galleries that contain what is now one of the top collections of Western American art in the world. The collection boasts 295 paintings and bronze sculptures, 130 are currently on view. The Haubs also gave money for the construction of the new wing and set up endowments for 10 new positions, including Fry’s, who is the collection’s curator.

Albert Bierstadt, Departure of an Indian War Party, 1865

CREDIT TACOMA AT MUSEUM, HAUB FAMILY COLLECTION

“This is the biggest donation of artwork in the Tacoma Art Museum’s History,” said Fry. “In 79 years of operating, this is our single biggest gift. So this really does transform the institution.”

By this point, you’re probably wondering: Who are the Haubs?

“Erivan and Helga Haub are from Germany. They also have a home here in Tacoma and a ranch in Wyoming,” said Fry.

The Haubs made billions in the grocery store business. They came to the U.S. after World War II and honeymooned near Tacoma. Because the medical care was better here than in Germany at the time, all three of their children were born at Tacoma General Hospital.

In a video produced by the museum, Erivan Haub says his dream of seeing the American West started when he was young and read books by Karl May. The stories glorified the plains Indians of the American West. They were as popular in Germany at the time as the Harry Potter series is today.

“The story of the west I had learned long before I ever came to the west through Karl May who was a famous German author that made me hungry to get to see this and to get to experience it myself. So we made it to America and never regretted one moment of it,” said Haub.

Cinematic images of the American West dominate the Haub collection. Wide open plains, blue skies hanging over mountains and rivers and Native Americans in formal dress.

Fry points to a painting, two feet tall and three feet wide, of a buffalo grazing on the wide prairie. As real and detailed as a photograph, the image by Nancy Glaizer is called Birds of a Feather. This is the first piece the Haubs bought in 1983. It’s the painting that started the collection.

“It shows a group of bison in Yellowstone park,” said Fry.” Here you have this proud bison bull. He’s rendered in this photographic detail. But you have little birds resting on his back. It shows how he’s part of the whole ecosystem even though he’s this giant bull. These little tiny birds are still benefiting from his presence. It’s showing the whole cycle in Yellowstone.”

The Haubs, who are now in their 80s, both lived through WWII and avoided artworks with images of violence. Helga Haub says the couple never started off with a master plan for their art.

“We did not collect with vision of ever giving it to a museum. We only collected what we liked,” she said.

As artworks filled up the walls and shelves in their homes they started purchasing with more guidance from professional galleries. Some of the standout works include Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington. This is the image printed on the dollar bill. It’s from 1791 and is the oldest piece in the collection.

There is also Piñions with Cedar, the museum’s first painting by Georgia O’Keeffe. Fry says the painting of a bare leafed tree in the desert can be used as a bargaining chip.

Piñions with Cedar by Georgia O’Keeffe, 1956

CREDIT TACOMA ART MUSEUM, HAUB FAMILY COLLECTION

“It will give us a greater ability to borrow from other institutions to bring really wonderful works here,” Fry said.

Images and sculptures depicting Native Americans from the Northwest are absent from the collection. To bring the Native American perspective into the fold, the museum is asking prominent native artists to comment on specific pieces in the collection. Their honest, and sometimes critical, reflections are part of the exhibit.

Marvin Oliver, a Seattle-based premier Native American printmaker and sculptor, is thrilled TAM has this collection, but says many of the paintings aren’t historically accurate. To really know what you are seeing Oliver says you need to read the labels to understand the context in which the pieces were made.

“Some people will say, ‘Gee, you know this is really glorifying the noble savage and the beautiful maiden,’ whatever, you know. But you don’t know what the intention is. it kind of puts it in a stereotypical category. It’s up to the museum to document and identify each and every piece that has the correct labeling. And they’ve done a pretty good job of that,” Oliver said.

Over the years Erivan And Helga Haub have supported other Tacoma institutions. They’ve contributed to the Museum of Glass, the LeMay Car Museum and the University of Washington’s Tacoma campus.

In a Seattle Times article about the Haubs in 1994, Erivan foreshadowed what we see today. He told the reporter, “If I construct anything, there it must be extraordinary, something Tacoma can be proud of.”

Native Art Mart – Daybreak Star, Nov 22 and Dec 20

The Native Art Mart is Saturday, November 22, 10am – 4pm
Get your Holiday Gifts at our Art Mart at Daybreak Star in Discovery Park! Nov15th and Nov 22nd and Dec 20th.

Holiday Shopping at the Annual Art Mart at Daybreak Star!

Beautiful work by Native American Artists, Salmon, Fry Bread, Entertainment and Great Music.

Benefit for United Indians Elder Meals and Community Programs.

Buy Local, Buy Authentic

Native American artists will be selling and showcasing handmade authentic arts and crafts. UIATF is in full support of The Indian Arts and Crafts Act. This is a free event open to the public.
http://www.unitedindians.org/arts-culture/indian-art-mart/