Native Americans Archives - Page 15 of 22

Daugherty dies; lead archaeologist of ‘Pompeii of America’

In this undated photo, WSU archaeologist Richard Daugherty looks at the effigy of a whale fin found among thousands of artifacts at the Ozette site on the Olympic Peninsula.

By Eric Sorensen, WSU News, February 28, 2014

PULLMAN, Wash. – Richard Daugherty, a Washington State University archaeologist who led the excavation of the Ozette village site, “the Pompeii of America,” and numerous other key Northwest finds, died Saturday of bone cancer. He was 91.

Starting in the 1970s, Daugherty worked closely with the Makah tribe during the 11-year Ozette excavation on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, setting a new standard for native and archaeological cooperation, said Allyson Brooks, state historic preservation officer.

“He really set the path for archaeologists and Native Americans to work together instead of in opposition,” she said. “That’s a big deal.”

“The way he involved elders in helping identify artifacts was very progressive,” said Janine Ledford, executive director of the Makah Cultural and Research Center, which houses 55,000 Ozette artifacts, all of which date from before Europeans arrived on the continent.

“Doc” Daugherty, as he was known to the Makah, had already surveyed the Ozette site and some 50 others along the coast when a winter storm in 1970 eroded a bank near Cape Alava, revealing five longhouses buried by a landslide, possibly from the magnitude 9 earthquake of 1700. The site had been occupied continuously for at least 2,000 years before it was abandoned in the 1920s when the federal government forced the last remaining inhabitants to move 20 miles to Neah Bay so their children could attend school.

Called to the site by Ed Claplanhoo, a Makah tribal leader and WSU graduate, Daugherty saw the first artifacts of an enormous trove preserved in the oxygen-free environment of wet clay: a canoe paddle, wooden halibut hooks, a harpoon shaft, wooden house planks. A village soon emerged as dozens of scientists, students and locals focused on three longhouses that yielded 1,424 arrow shafts, 103 bows, 110 harpoon shafts, 1,000 baskets, 13 looms, perfectly preserved cedar rope, whale bones and more.

It became the largest, most complex archaeological site in the Pacific Northwest.

“Anyone who takes a college class in archaeology covers the Ozette site,” said Ledford.

The site yielded numerous insights into Makah culture. The people had long been whalers, for example, and whale bones were everywhere in the dig. But the Makah also ate fur seal, sea lion, halibut, waterfowl and various berries. Many insights came in consultation with elders as the archaeologists tapped them to identify the meaning and uses of mysterious objects.

“If you work in partnership, you can’t have a better way of gaining the cultural side, because they”—the natives—“are the experts on the cultural side,” said Dale Croes, WSU adjunct faculty member and president of Pacific Northwest Archaeological Services. As part of the archaeologists’ partnership with the Makah, Croes had to learn basket weaving from the elders.

“I probably learned more in that semester than any graduate class here,” Croes said. His doctoral dissertation is one of nine produced from the site.

Daugherty was born and raised in Aberdeen, Wash. During World War II, he piloted blimps out of Lakehurst, N.J., to look for enemy ships and submarines off the East Coast.

He earned a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Washington in 1946 and spent four years as a WSU anthropology instructor until 1954 when he finished his Ph.D. in ethnography at UW and became a WSU assistant professor.

At various times over nearly 30 years, he served as department chair, director of the WSU Laboratory of Archaeology and History and director of the Washington Archaeological Research Center. Many of his graduate students were women, with “Daugherty’s Daughters” going on to serve in the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service and private archaeological services.

In addition to the Ozette site, he directed excavation of the Marmes rockshelter before it was inundated by waters behind the Snake River’s Lower Monumental Dam. The state’s only archaeological national historic landmark, it had the oldest set of human remains in North America when it was investigated.

Daugherty also was the principal investigator of a burial site at the mouth of the Palouse River where a Jefferson “peace medal” was found. The medal was one of fewer than 90 carried by Lewis and Clark on their journey to the Northwest in 1805. In 1971, at the request of the Nez Perce tribe and on Daugherty’s recommendation, WSU gave the medal to the tribe.

In 1977, Daugherty was co-investigator with Carl Gustafson of a hand-hewn projectile point in a mastodon bone found near Sequim, Wash. The artifacts turned back the clock on North American settlement as subsequent new research determined they were 13,800 years old, 800 years older than the Clovis people long regarded as the New World’s oldest culture.

Daugherty also left a legacy in how future archaeological research is done, working with Washington senators Warren G. Magnuson and Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson to bolster passage of the National Historic Preservation Act. The act requires federal agencies to consider the impacts of federally funded or permitted operations on archaeological sites and historic structures.

Daugherty is preceded in death by his first wife, Phyllis. He is survived by his wife, Ruth Kirk, whom he married in the replica of an Ozette village longhouse at Neah Bay in 2007. Other survivors include Melinda Beasley of Pullman, Carol Ewen of Pendleton, Ore., Rick Daugherty of Ellensburg, Wash., five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

The family is planning a gathering of friends, family and colleagues in the spring. Memorial donations may be made to the Phyllis and Richard Daugherty Scholarship for Graduate Student Excellence in Anthropology at WSU and the Makah Cultural and Research Center.

Alaska Senate committee supports Native American veterans memorial

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. will be the site of an American Indian Veterans Memorial. A resolution supporting the memorial cleared an Alaska Senate committee on Tuesday. (Photo by cayusa/Flickr Creative Commons)

By Casey Kelly, KTOO News

The Alaska Legislature could join the chorus of voices calling for an American Indian Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. An Alaska Senate committee on Tuesday passed a resolution supporting the project.

Native Americans have fought in every United States military conflict since the Revolutionary War, and have some of the highest per capita service rates of any ethnic group.

Since Alaska became a U.S. territory and later a state, Alaska Natives have served their country as well. During World War II, the Alaska Territorial Guard included more than 6,000 volunteer soldiers from more than 100 communities.

“American Indians have established a long and distinguished legacy of military service,” said Kalyssa Maile, an intern in the office of Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage. ”Senate Joint Resolution 19 affirms the Alaska Legislature’s support of Alaska Native and Native American veterans, and recognizes their great sacrifices for our country.”

Wielechowski sponsored SJR19, approved Tuesday by the Senate State Affairs Committee. He said the American Indian Veterans Memorial is supported by the Alaska Federation of Natives, the National Congress of American Indians and Vietnam Veterans of America, among other groups.

“There were several people that came up from Florida to attend AFN and push for this resolution,” Wielechowski said. “I attended the Vietnam Veterans of America national conference in Florida last year and they were there. I spoke with people there. They were urging us to do this as well.”

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, sponsored Senate Joint Resolution 19, which supports construction of an American Indian Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Skip Gray/Gavel Alaska)

Congress approved the Native American Veterans’ Memorial Act in 1994, but the project didn’t go anywhere. Stephen Bowers, a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida and a Vietnam veteran, started lobbying Native American groups to support the memorial in 2011. Bowers says it’s long overdue.

“It’ll mean that finally someone is recognizing the fact that the American Indians fought for this country and against the European invaders back since 1492,” he said.

While Bowers says many supporters want the memorial to be built near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, President Obama late last year signed legislation to place it at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, two miles away. Bowers says the location isn’t as important as getting a memorial concept approved, a process he says will take several years.

“When they built the National Mall, they didn’t make it easy for organizations or for anyone to put a statue or a memorial on the mall,” said Bowers.

He expects the National Museum of the American Indian to sponsor a contest and form a committee to shepherd the project through the design phase.

Senate Joint Resolution 19 now heads to a vote on the floor of the Alaska Senate.

Legislation to recognize Virginia’s Appalachian Cherokee Nation carried over to 2015 session

By Bill Sizemore, The Virginian- Pilot

RICHMOND, Virginia — Maybe they needed a celebrity — say, someone like Wayne Newton — to make their pitch.

But they didn’t have one, and a delegation from Virginia’s Appalachian Cherokee Nation was sent away empty-handed last Monday in their quest for state recognition of their tribe.

Descendants of refugees from the famous “Trail of Tears” relocation in the 19th century, the Appalachian Cherokees have been seeking state recognition for three years.

The state’s imprimatur would help the tribe get grants to build a community health clinic and a home for homeless children in southwest Virginia, Gregory (Soaring Osprey) French of Virginia Beach, the group’s spokesman, told the House Rules Committee.

But state Sen. Kenny Alexander’s legislation (SJ87) to recognize the tribe was carried over to the 2015 General Assembly session after the committee chairman, House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford County, expressed doubts about it.

“I’m just not sure that we’re ready today to do this,” Howell said.

Alexander, D-Norfolk, retorted in frustration: “This is the third year they’ve been asked to wait. At some point, you should just tell them to go home. Vote it up or vote it down.”

Howell assured Alexander the committee would resolve the matter after another year of study.

Alexander said after the vote he’ll take Howell at his word, but he’s not happy about it. “Every year they move the goal posts,” he said. “It’s not fair.”

Alexander compared the delegation’s reception Monday with the 2010 appearance in Richmond by Newton, the Las Vegas crooner, on behalf of legislation seeking recognition of his tribe, the Patawomecks.

That measure — sponsored by Howell — sailed through the Assembly after the “Danke Schoen” singer dazzled the committee with his profession of pride in his Native American heritage.

“That bill passed out of here in seconds,” Alexander groused.

Virginia now recognizes 11 Native American tribes. The Cherokees’ failure to win recognition has hindered the tribe from achieving its goals, French said.

French, a member of the tribal council, said his Cherokee ancestors have lived in Virginia for 500 years. The tribe has about 500 members, including 80 in Hampton Roads, but there are believed to be as many as 10,000 Cherokee descendants in Virginia, he said.

Thousands of Cherokees were living in the southern Appalachian region when the U.S. government forced them to migrate to Oklahoma in the 1820s and 1830s. That harsh 1,000-mile trek became known as the “Trail of Tears.”

There were fewer federal troops in Virginia to carry out the forced march than there were in North Carolina, French said, so many of the tribe’s Virginia members were able to avoid the relocation.

“The Virginia Cherokees hid out in the mountains,” he said. “We never left.”

Howell’s move to delay the recognition question for a year was prompted by a letter to the committee from William Leighty, a former chief of staff to Govs. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. Warner and Kaine are now U.S. senators and Leighty is a Richmond-based consultant.

Leighty said he was speaking for himself as a student of Virginia history. He said he believes the state needs a more deliberative process for recognizing Native American tribes — one that includes a scholarly review of historical records.

“We need a more meaningful process than we have of just passing a resolution as if it was a championship basketball team,” he said.

Whitewashing Redskins Tour Gets Navajo Code Talkers Assoc. Endorsement

Gale Courey Toensing, Indian Country Today Media Network

Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins, has been trying to sway public opinion to support his football team’s racist name for years now. He’s dangled money in front of needy schools in and around Pine Ridge. He tried—unsuccessfully—to get Haudenosaunee leaders to say disparaging things about Oneida Nation Representative Ray Halbritter, who launched the Nation’s campaign to change the offensive name. He got Jennifer Farley, former high level White House employee during the George W. Bush administration, who was on the receiving end of gifts from disgraced former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, to facilitate a meeting with the Poarch Band of Creek Indians and other Indian leaders—who have been asked to sign non-disclosure agreements about what’s been said and done at the meetings. He’s waved tempting 50-yard-line D.C. game tickets and Super Bowl tickets under the noses of lobbyists and leaders, and presented a poorly orchestrated series of online endorsements by fans who are supposedly Native (mostly claiming Cherokee heritage) in an effort to prove the team’s ugly name is not offensive to Indians.

And now, in a sad turn of events, he’s managed to snare the endorsement of seven World War II veterans. After months of courting support in Indian country, Snyder finally chalked up a big success: Seven octogenarian Navajo Code Talkers have endorsed the Redskins name and mascot. But judging from the reaction in Indian country, it could be his greatest misstep yet in this sordid campaign.

The endorsement was approved at a meeting of the Navajo Code Talkers Association (NCTA) in Window Rock, Arizona on February 28 – and was met with outrage from the descendants of code talkers actively involved in the association and devoted to honoring the legacy of their fathers and grandfathers. Much of their ire is directed at Association Chairman Peter MacDonald, who they allege has “hijacked” the NCTA and manipulated the code talkers to endorse the name for his own benefit.

In an interview with Indian Country Today Media Network, MacDonald vigorously denied having any financial involvement with the Redskins team. “There’s been all kinds of rumors and innuendos and theories going around about what our relationship with the Washington Redskins is all about. We wanted to set the record straight. There have been calls that Redskins paid us money… this is all totally wrong. Let me say this: The Redskins’ invitation and visit by Navajo Code Talkers was totally, totally funded by Redskins… to honor the Navajo Code Talkers. It was completely initiated by the Redskins as part of their annual tribute to all armed forces.

“The Navajo Code Talkers weren’t paid one cent to be there, nor were there any promises made about donations… ”

Reports of the NCTA endorsement showed up on Facebook late in the afternoon of February 28, and the news spread quickly. Here are a few typical posts. (Both the Facebook link and people’s names have not been used in order to protect their privacy.)

“People are crying. I almost threw up when I read it.”

“Sad day… so much for honor.”

“Rather give more attention to the medicine man association… code talkers have become nationalist puppets and fall for anything.”

Several Navajo descendants and other Navajo citizens expressed suspicion about MacDonald and his motives. Their common theme was, “He divided the Nation.” A former Navajo Nation president, MacDonald was removed from office by the Navajo Tribal Council in 1989 under suspicion of accepting kickbacks from contractors and corporations. The chaos that followed led, a few months later, to a riot in Window Rock in which two MacDonald supporters were shot to death and tribal police officers were injured. “It was an event that would forever change life for many people on the Navajo Nation,” the Navajo Times reported.

MacDonald was tried and sent to federal prison in 1992 for 107 violations of U.S. law, including charges of fraud, extortion, riot, bribery, and corruption. He served eight years of a 14-year sentence and was released in January 2001, when his sentence was commuted by then-President Bill Clinton on his last day in office.

MacDonald was voted president of the NCTA in January 2012.

***

In November, Navajo Nation Councilman Joshua Lavar Butler condemned what he called team officials’ “antics to use our beloved and cherished Navajo Heroes as pawns in their Public Relations battle to perpetuate this indignity and ignorance.”

Butler has drafted a legislative resolution opposing the Redskins name and distancing the Navajo government from the NCTA. He stressed that people should differentiate between the NCTA and the Nation’s government. “I must remind the public that the endorsement is not from the Navajo Nation government or the Navajo Nation as a whole,” he said.

“I know this really hurts our inter-tribal relationships around the country,” Butler added. ”As a council member, I’ve been very involved statewide and on the national level with advocacy efforts with other tribal leaders and something like this, it does affect unity and our working relationships inter-tribally.”

The Navajo Nation is not a member of the National Congress of American Indians, which recently published a white paper called “Ending the Legacy of Racism in Sports & the Era of Harmful ‘Indian’ Mascots,” but it does partner with NCAI on issues of common concern.

“The NCTA is putting us in an awkward position because some tribes, especially on the east coast, are fighting this aggressively. At the end of the day, we have to work with those tribes as well and the NCTA is sending the wrong message by endorsing the utilization of that term,” Butler said. “It’s very upsetting, it’s shameful, it’s wrong, it’s derogatory and the Redskins should be ashamed of themselves.”

***

MacDonald and members of the NCTA met Snyder last fall after he began his tour of Indian country, seeking support for his team name and mascot. A friend of Snyder’s told the Washington Post that the trips to Indian country were motivated by Snyder’s “feelings about the pain and depression – depression is the word he has used with me – of Native Americans who have no jobs, who have obesity issues, whose children are suffering.”

The trips also coincide with launching of a national campaign against the team name supported by the Oneida Indian Nation (which owns ICTMN) called “Change the Mascot.”

In recent months, Snyder and his team officials have visited the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, a tribe under fire from other tribes for building a casino on Hickory Ground, a site that’s sacred to the Muscogee Creek Indians, and the poverty-stricken Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, among other tribes. Redskins spokesman Tony Wyllie told the Washington Post that Snyder and company have taken more than a dozen unpublicized trips around Indian country.

RELATED: The Battle For Hickory Ground

While those trips were unpublicized, Snyder’s pursuit of the Navajo Code Talkers was no secret. In late November, the Redskins plane flew MacDonald, and members George James Sr. and George Willie Sr. from Gallup, New Mexico to D.C. for the November 25 Washington-San Francisco game to “honor” them, accompanied by a blitz of media attention.

Suzan Harjo wrote of the event: “The Redskins’ ‘honoring’ of Navajo code talkers consisted of four frail veterans standing in the end zone and receiving a round of applause. Three of the four Navajo elders wore Redskins jackets, with the new-clothes price tags still hanging at their wrists. These seniors probably thought this was another in a long line of recent recognitions of their WWII achievements some 70 years ago, rather than any implied endorsement of the team’s name.”

On hearing about the Code Talkers endorsement of the Redskins, Harjo honed in on MacDonald’s involvement. “He has a long history of exploiting his people,” she said, “and I think this is an example of that.”

***

MacDonald has a simple explanation for the endorsement: he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the name, and he claims other Navajo feel the same way. “So far as we’re concerned, so far as people are concerned here at Navajo, redskins have always meant Native Americans or Indians to us – nothing more. So I don’t know who decided to make that a slur word or offensive. To us, redskins, whiteskins, blackskins, yellowskins, brownskins – we here on earth did not create the color of human skins; it was the Great Spirit that created us with different colors and we honor His creation and have no problem with anyone using those colors to identify the Lord’s creation.”

Asked if he’d mind if his grandchildren were called redskins, he said, “No! As a matter of fact we have schools right here on Navajo Nation – Red Mesa school – it’s a Navajo high school. The school [nickname] name is Redskins.”

He said he was not familiar with the origins of the name, or the 1755 Phips Proclamation in Maine that detailed the bounty prices the colonial government paid for Indian scalps, “but humans around the world have different colored skin – what’s wrong with calling them by the color of their skin?” he said.
The suggestion that most Native Americans and others see the name as a hateful racist word set MacDonald on an anti-media diatribe. “You press people! I don’t know what’s wrong with you! We have so many issues with Native American people – states, the federal government stealing our water, taking our land. There’s poverty and high unemployment on Indian reservations. Why don’t you go over there and report those things? Is the change of [the] name going to change poverty on Navajo? Will that create thousands of jobs?

“There’s the cancer rate, as well as diabetes, alcoholism, the suicide rate – all much higher than outside society. It’s a third-world nation in the back door of the United States. Report that! Forget about this name change business. We can talk about that after we put the Indian back on equal footing with the rest of the world.”

MacDonald brushed aside the fact that studies show the offensive name is emotionally and psychologically harmful to Indian children. “The children here at Navajo at Red Mesa don’t want to change their name, they want to remain redskins,” he said.

***

The NCTA endorsement of the Redskins name passed by a vote of 7-0-0, meaning only seven code talkers attended the meeting. MacDonald said there are currently around 40 code talker members and all of them were notified of the meeting, but several descendants said their fathers and grandfathers were not notified.

Ron Kinsel, son of Code Talker John Kinsel, added that his dad did not approve of the endorsement of the Redskins name or the way the vote was conducted. “It was done without the association’s awareness. They were trying to pass it without a quorum,” Kinsel said.

MacDonald told ICTMN that the association’s bylaws define a quorum as 10 percent of the total member and therefore the seven-member vote was legitimate. However, Section 13 of the NCTA bylaws says, “The greater of ten (10) voting members or ten (10) percent of the voting members” constitutes a quorum, meaning that 10 members were required for the vote. The bylaws also mandate that “Notice of any meeting shall be given by oral or written notice delivered to each member. . . not less than ten (10) days nor more than fifty (50) days before the date of the meeting.”

The NCTA endorsement has mobilized the code talkers’ descendants into action. A meeting for concerned descendants of Navajo Code Talkers has been scheduled for Saturday, March 15, 2014 at 9:00 a.m. at Cafe Iina at the Navajo Nation Museum. Duvonne Manuelito, whose late grandfather James Manuelito was one of the original 29 code talkers, said it’s an opportunity for all the code talkers’ descendants to come together and plan a strategy to protect their fathers’ and grandfather’s legacy. “We need to let people know there’s another side to what’s going on.”

Tribes, BIA and BLM collaborate on oil, gas operations

By The Ranger staff reports

The Arapaho and Shoshone tribes and the Department of the Interior, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Land Management, signed a memorandum of understanding Feb. 25 in Fort Washakie.

Through the MOU, the parties said they will engage in a cooperative environmental program to promote compliance on oil and gas properties by lessees and operators on the Wind River Indian Reservation.

“This MOU is a good opportunity for all of us to start fresh, to be on the same page and to work toward the same goals,” said BIA acting Rocky Mountain regional director Darryl LaCounte.

Specifically, the MOU outlines a process and timelines for the parties to:

– review all ongoing oil and gas operations on the reservation with tribal ownership interest to identify actual or potential adverse environmental effects;

– identify prospective sources of federal funding to the tribes to support monitoring, inspection and enforcement;

– develop an environmental plan for oil and gas operations; and

– formalize a structure for future communications between the parties regarding environmental concerns arising from oil and gas operations.

“We look forward to working collaboratively with the Arapaho and Shoshone tribes, as well as with the BIA, to manage oil and gas activities on the Wind River Indian Reservation,” said BLM Wyoming state director Don Simpson.

For more information, call BIA realty officer Marietta Shortbull at 332-4639 or BLM resource adviser Stuart Cerovski at 332-8400.

Dead eagles found in Neb. used by Native Americans

By Associated Press

NORTH PLATTE, Neb. (AP) — The carcasses of dead bald and golden eagles found in Nebraska are collected and recycled for religious purposes.

The North Platte Telegraph reports (http://bit.ly/1nwRtQ2 ) the state is part of an unusual federal recycling program that provides parts of eagle carcasses to Native Americans who hold valid permits.

The feathers and other body parts of eagles are considered sacred by some Native Americans. But federal laws designed to protect the birds make it illegal for most people to possess any part of a golden or bald eagle.

Lauren Dinan with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission says the state recently sent 37 eagles to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Eagle Repository in Commerce City, Colo.

___

Information from: The North Platte Telegraph, http://www.nptelegraph.com

McClung prehistoric statue set to be state’s official artifact

By Amy McRary, Knoxville News Sentinel

KNOXVILLE – Tennessee’s got a state bird, a state flower, a pair of state rocks and several state songs. So why not a state artifact?

That designation likely will soon go to an ancient figure at the University of Tennessee’s McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture.

The 700-year-old Native American sandstone statue is called “Sandy” by the museum and is often used as a symbol for the center. It’s an ancient sandstone figure of a kneeling, older man carved sometime between 1250 and 1350 AD. The 18-inch figure from prehistory’s Mississippian period likely represents a chief.

“Sandy” was found in a Wilson County farm field in 1939. It’s on exhibit as part of the McClung’s permanent exhibit, “Archaeology and the Native Peoples of Tennessee.”

A bill that would make Sandy the official state artifact passed the state Senate and House and awaits Gov. Bill Haslam’s signature. The bills were introduced by legislators at the request of the Tennessee Council for Professional Archaeology.

“Naming Sandy as an official Tennessee symbol acknowledges the state’s ancient past, and will encourage Tennesseans to learn more about and work to help preserve our shared history,” TCPA President Tanya Peres, a Middle Tennessee State University associate professor of anthropology, said in an announcement about the bill’s passing. “Listing Sandy as the state artifact also honors the legacy and accomplishments of Native Americans who lived in Tennessee for more than 10,000 years before the arrival of European settlers.”

“The McClung Museum is thrilled to receive this recognition of Sandy and our museum,” said McClung Director Jeff Chapman. “Sandy is such an important example of prehistoric Native American art, and we are proud to be the stewards of this piece of Tennessee history.”

‘Cobell’ Dishonored by Interior’s Buy-Back Plan

By Gabriel S. Galanda, ICTMN

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Indian Land Buy Back Program has been lauded as the “hallmark” of the $3.4 billion Cobell v. Salazar settlement. As the Buy Back Program now lifts off in hurried fashion at Makah and Pine Ridge, the program dishonors both the letter and spirit of Cobell.

Cobell settled more than 500,000 tribal members’ trust land and asset mismanagement claims, dating back to the 1890s. Not tribal government claims; tribal member claims. Now, copy.9 billion in tribal member settlement monies has been allocated to help tribes “buy back” those members’ allotted or restricted fee lands. In practice, these “buy backs” are accomplished through the forced sale of tribal members’ ancestral lands. Injustice to individual Cobell class members aside, assuming that financially supporting a tribe will benefit that tribe’s members, one would hope that the buy-back wealth would be spread throughout Indian Country. After all, those 500,000 members of the Cobell class surely represent the vast majority of the 566 federally recognized tribes.

But it has recently come to light that Interior has limited the lion’s share of the copy.9 billion in buy back funding to only 40 tribes. Interior’s outside appraisers recently let it slip that “the program will exclude reservations east of the Mississippi and in Alaska.” Interior was quick to retract that statement, but the genie was already out of the bottle. If that were not bad enough, other swaths of Indian Country with large Indian populations west of the Mississippi, like all of California Indian country (save the Washoe Tribe, which is headquartered in Nevada), are excluded from the program.

Cobell, for better or worse, was fought for all of Indian Country, not just 40 tribes. For the sake of the 500,000-plus Cobell class members whose land and related claims were extinguished for eternity, tribal communities west of the Mississippi, in Alaska and California, and elsewhere, all deserve to share in the Buy Back wealth.

The fact is that the Buy Back Program and its goal to consolidate fractionated Indian lands have little to do with what is right or fair. The program is not really about affording “benefits of those lands for the tribes and their members” as Interior Deputy Secretary David Hayes once professed; or “expand[ing] tribal economic development opportunities across Indian Country” as Assistant Secretary Kevin Washburn said more recently. The program is designed to serve the best interests of the United States; to resolve “enormous administrative difficulties for the government” – and related liability – caused by fractionation.  Cobell v. Salazar, 573 F.3d 808 (D.C. Cir. 2009). To feign otherwise is dishonest.

As to the letter of the law that is Cobell, the Buy Back Program fares no better. In 2004, the U.S. District Court for the District Court of Columbia in Cobell v. Norton, affirmed that “Interior may acquire land from individual Indian owners to consolidate fractional ownership interests and thereby ‘lessen the number of owners.’” 225 F.R.D. 41 (D.D.C. 2004). However, the court went on to hold that the United States’ trust-fiduciary responsibility requires that the “individual Indian owner of trust lands . . . give truly informed consent to the sale of trust corpus” before any sale is approved by Interior.

The Cobell court made clear that any such sale requires clear “communication between individual Indian trust-land owners and agents of Interior” and that “trust beneficiaries ought not have to make the decision to sell trust assets without access to all the relevant information,” including answers to any questions or concerns they may have. More generally, legal scholar Derek Haskew explains that the United States’ fiduciary duties to tribal member landowners includes consultation, which “can roughly be understood as communication by Indian beneficiaries of their desires to the federal trustees who make ultimate determinations about what happens with the lands Indians occupy.” 24 AM. IND. L. REV. 21 (2000).

Because the Cobell court found such consultation, communication and information wanting, it felt compelled, as a matter of law, “to guarantee that Interior adheres to its fiduciary duties, and to ensure that trust beneficiaries receive the full value of conscientious behavior by their Trustee.”

Yet, despite Cobell’s clear instruction, Interior now embarks on a hastily developed “plan” to cause the sale of individually owned Indian lands. “Mass appraisal valuation techniques” will be utilized, amidst “categorical exclusion” from any federal environmental review. Federal regulations that require Indian land sales to occur by “auction or negotiation” are not being brought to light. Cobell v. Norton, supra. Pivotally, “offer packages” will be mass mailed to individual Indian owners with, among other things, a cover letter, conveyance deed and related sale instructions, as well as “self-addressed return envelope, postage prepaid, if the individual chooses to return…the signed and notarized Deed.” In not so many words: “sign here.”

Mass mailings do not effectively facilitate “communication by Indian beneficiaries of their desires to the federal trustees.” Offer packages with self-addressed return envelopes do not afford a landowner “all the relevant information” to make any informed decision. These one-size-fits-all sale mechanisms do not “ensure that trust beneficiaries receive the full value of conscientious behavior by their Trustee.” In all, the buy back process is simply not designed to obtain “truly informed consent” from tribal member landowners. It is designed to serve federal interests – and it dishonors Cobell.

Gabriel S. Galanda is the managing partner at Galanda Broadman, PLLC, an American Indian-owned law firm.

Tester and Begich Call for Faster Action on Tribal Disaster Recovery Provision

Provision enables tribal leaders to call on President for major disaster and emergency response

Press release: United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs

(U.S. SENATE) – U.S. Senators Jon Tester (D-MT), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and Mark Begich (D-AK) this week expressed concern over the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) lack of timely implementation of their tribal disaster declaration provision in the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act (SRIA).

Tester and Begich’s letter to FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate emphasizes the need to ensure Native American tribes and Alaska Natives are true partners in the emergency management community. In January 2013, Congress passed Tester and Begich’s provision, which allows Indian tribes to directly request federal assistance after a natural or man-made disaster. Under previous law, tribes had to work through state governments to seek assistance after a disaster on their land.

“We are disturbed by the long delay in promulgating guidance and urge FEMA to move quickly to finalize it,” Tester and Begich wrote. “As the original authors of legislation to amend the Stafford Act to allow the Chief Executive of a federally recognized tribe to make a direct request to the President for a major disaster or emergency declaration, we recognized the importance of promoting tribal sovereignty and highlighting the pressing needs of tribal communities. As with any new federal provision, guidance from the relevant agency is an important step in ensuring the policy is applied consistently across the country.

“Following the release of draft guidance, FEMA must move swiftly to implement an effective outreach strategy that recognizes the unique needs of different Tribes across the country. Tribal communities range in membership, geography, and organizational structure and a “one size fits all” approach to consultation will not produce meaningful feedback. As members of both the HSGAC and Appropriations Subcommittees with jurisdiction over FEMA we are keenly aware of the need for adequate resources to conduct critical outreach and we urge you to keep us informed of any resource gaps that may affect your ability to meet your required targets.”

Full text of the letter sent by Senators Tester and Begich to FEMA Administrator Fugate is below:

March 4, 2014

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Dear Administrator Fugate,

We are writing to you today to acknowledge the work FEMA has done to implement the direct tribal disaster declaration provision of the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act (SRIA), P.L. 113-2 [Sec. 1110], but to also strongly encourage faster action, more outreach and better communication with tribal nations as guidance is developed.

As the original authors of legislation to amend the Stafford Act to allow the Chief

Executive of a federally recognized tribe to make a direct request to the President for a major disaster or emergency declaration, we recognized the importance of promoting tribal sovereignty and highlighting the pressing needs of tribal communities. As with any new federal provision, guidance from the relevant agency is an important step in ensuring the policy is applied consistently across the country. We are disturbed by the long delay in promulgating guidance and urge FEMA to move quickly to finalize it.

Following the release of draft guidance, FEMA must move swiftly to implement an effective outreach strategy that recognizes the unique needs of different Tribes across the country. Tribal communities range in membership, geography, and organizational structure and a “one size fits all” approach to consultation will not produce meaningful feedback. As members of both the HSGAC and Appropriations Subcommittees with jurisdiction over FEMA we are keenly aware of the need for adequate resources to conduct critical outreach and we urge you to keep us informed of any resource gaps that may affect your ability to meet your required targets.

While consultationwith tribal communities on the SRJA provisions is the most urgent matter at hand, FEMA must sustain its efforts to work with Alaska Native and Native American tribes. In order to ensure tribal communities are true partners in the emergency management community, we urge FEMA to hire full-time, tribal liaisons for each FEMA region. As members of both the Committee on Indian Affairs and the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, we are uniquely positioned to advocate on behalf of tribal communities across the country and understand each FEMA region must approach outreach differently. By positioning a tribal liaison in each region, communities can be active partners and provide localized expertise on disaster related issues. They must be involved in the development and execution of policy from the beginning and cannot simply be used to validate decisions made internally at FEMA.

We appreciate the work FEMA has done to address the unique needs of Alaska Native and Native American tribal communities and we look forward to working with your Agency as new policies are implemented. Thank you again for your efforts and please contact my office with any questions or concerns.

Sincerely

Mark Begich

U.S. Senator

Jon Tester

U.S. Senator

Can a Tipi Stop a Pipeline? South Dakota Tribes Stand Firm Against Keystone XL

Vimeo/Moccasins on the GroundCan a Tipi Stop a Pipeline? Many American Indians are game to find out. Above, a still from the video compiled by Moccasins on the Ground about Keystone XL resistance. — Vimeo/Moccasins on the Ground
Can a Tipi Stop a Pipeline? Many American Indians are game to find out. Above, a still from the video compiled by Moccasins on the Ground about Keystone XL resistance.

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

From the Oglala Lakota Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation to the Rosebud Sioux and others, American Indians are standing firm against the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run through or skirt their territory if approved.

The Lakota Sioux have been pushing back against TransCanada, the conglomerate that wants to run the 1,700-mile-long pipeline from the oil sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast of Mexico, for years. Last week the Rosebud Sioux passed a unanimous resolution against the project. And a group of American Indian tribal leaders opposing the pipeline have vowed to take a “last stand” and are working together, training opponents to put up passive resistance if it comes to that.

“We see what the tar sand oil mining is causing in Canada, we see what the oil drilling in the Dakotas is doing—as they gouge her [Mother Nature] and rape her and hurt her, we know it’s all the same ecosystem that we all need to live in,” Lakota activist and Pine Ridge resident Debra White Plume told Inter Press Service News Agency last month. “For us it’s a spiritual stand—it’s our relative, it hurts us.”

The Rosebud Sioux Tribe approved a resolution on February 25 to reject outright a document that the federal government wants the tribe’s leaders to sign saying that they have been adequately consulted according to the law.

“This Programmatic Agreement for the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline project has not met the standards of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, because the Rosebud Sioux Tribe has not been consulted,” said Council Representative Russell Eagle Bear in a statement from the tribe. “Additionally, the Cultural Surveys that have been conducted already are inadequate and did not cover adequate on-the-ground coverage to verify known culturally sensitive sites and areas.”

Keystone XL would wend its way through the Great Sioux Nation, including the lands of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, making them the appropriate tribe to be consulted on land within Tripp, Gregory, Lyman, Todd, and Mellette Counties in South Dakota, the statement said.

“This is a flawed document and it will not be accepted,” Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council President Cyril Scott said of the federal agreement they are being asked to sign. “It is our job as the Tribal Council to take action to protect the health and welfare of our people, and this resolution puts the federal government on notice.”

It is not the first time the government has been accused of fabricating consultation. The first draft of the environmental assessment report, released a year ago, met with resistance from tribes over what they said were inaccuracies, shoddy research and incomplete consultation, among other objections.

The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) also came out against the conclusions in the draft environmental assessment.

The U.S. Department of State is currently evaluating the final version of the environmental assessment report and accepting input from several federal agencies during a 90-day public comment period that began on January 31, when the report was issued, according to U.S. News & World Report. The State Department is also studying the consultants on the report as more and more revelations about their ties to TransCanada come to light.

Nearly 400 people, many of them students, were arrested last weekend when they chained themselves to the White House fence in protest of the pipeline, the Washington Post reported.

The Native group Moccasins on the Ground has been conducting training sessions and recently hosted a conference in Rapid City, Help Save Mother Earth from the Keystone Pipeline, to teach civil disobedience tactics.

“As the process of public comment, hearings, and other aspects of an international application continue, each door is closing to protecting sacred water and our Human Right to Water,” said Debra White Plume, a Lakota activist who lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation and has been very vocal in opposing the pipeline, in a statement from Moccasins on the Ground. “Soon the only door left open will be the door to direct action.”

Below, Moccasins on the Ground leaders explain what draws them to protect the sacred water and address the question, Can a tipi stop a pipeline?