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Haida-Tsimshian Boy is One of Top Bowlers in Washington State

Richard Walker, Indian Country Today Media Network

My bowling partner’s ball hugged the edge of the lane before curving into the pocket. He started game one with a spare, and followed with a strike and a spare in the next two frames.

My performance? Not so good.

Keep your eye on your mark, my partner reminded me. When I finally got a strike, he gave me a high five and was as happy as if he had gotten it.

My partner, Cosmo Castellano, is the winner of the Pepsi State Bowling Championship. He bowled a 202 high game and a 505 series to win the title in his age group May 19 at Pacific Lanes in Tacoma, Washington.

Some bowlers say he could be the next Earl Anthony, the Professional Bowlers Association Hall of Famer who hailed from Tacoma. Here’s the kicker: Cosmo is 7 years old.

Cosmo, Hawaiian/Filipino/Haida/Tsimshian, is the son of Zachary and Rosita Castellano of Tacoma and a member of the Argel family of Metlakatla, Alaska. Cosmo’s grand-uncle is the late Julian Argel, who served in the Office of Minority Affairs at the University of Washington, directed education and social programs for Native communities in Washington and Alaska, and helped develop curricula for Native education.

Cosmo Castellano autographed the score sheet at Tower Lanes in Tacoma April 28. (Molly Neely-Walker)

Cosmo is a leading youth bowler in Washington state. This year, he won the state Division 3 Classic Masters title; during practice, he bowled a 220, his highest non-league score. Of state Little Juniors League bowlers, he led the list of top 50 bowlers for 26 of 28 weeks of the 2012-13 season, and led in high scratch games (189), high scratch series (471), and high average (33 pins higher than the nearest competitor).

Rosita said her bowling phenom first rolled a ball down a lane at age 2. She and her husband were bowling and they heard a ball in the lane next to them. It was Cosmo.

The boy started bowling regularly at age 3. His dad, a competitive amateur bowler, started his son with a 6-pound ball his first year, and Cosmo was bowling with a 12-pounder by age 5-and-a-half. Cosmo now bowls three days a week, including six to eight hours on weekends, and competes in tournaments throughout western Washington. Cosmo has topped his dad 201-173 and 188-187.

To handle his 12-pound ball—only four pounds lighter than his dad’s—Cosmo uses a two-handed style similar to his favorite pro bowler, Jason Belmonte, 2009 PBA Rookie of the Year.

Rosita, a reading specialist at Gates High School in Tacoma, said the science of bowling engages her son’s curious mind. He likes the challenge of a spare, figuring out ball speed and amount of spin needed to pick it up. Cosmo likes the challenge of getting a knocking down a split, and once picked up a 6-7-10—easier to pick up because of the 6 pin, but a killer shot nonetheless.

Cosmo enjoys watching other bowlers on the lanes and on TV. His role models: Belmonte; Chris Barnes, the third bowler in PBA history to win Rookie of the Year and Player of the Year honors in a career; and Osku Palermaa of Finland, who’s bowled more than 50 perfect games.

“He’s made goals for himself,” said Rosita. “As a parent, you can’t ask for anything more for your child than for him to set goals and to self-assess [his progress].” One goal he’s set: A clean game, in which every frame has a strike or spare.

Cosmo has also learned valuable life lessons from the sport. “He had a rough spot in his early 5s,” Rosita said of Cosmo’s sportsmanship. “He’s learned to encourage other bowlers, to be collegial. He still enjoys the game even when he doesn’t bowl well.”

When he won the state championship, Cosmo’s parents asked him, “Do you know what you did? You’re the best bowler in the state,” Rosita said, “It didn’t faze him. It was nice to not see him gloat. He was more concerned about being with his friends.”

Cosmo is indeed a collegial player. When I left a hidden pin standing in a spare attempt, Cosmo said, “That was a sleeper,” and gave me five for a good try.

Cosmo applies the same discipline in school that he does on the lanes. He’s a first-grader at Brookdale Elementary School in Tacoma but participates in the third-grade reading program. He’s received several Bobcat Excellence awards (the bobcat is his school’s mascot) for attendance, courtesy and thoughtfulness. He studies Northwest Native culture through his school district’s Indian Education Program.

The money he and other youth bowlers win is placed by the league in a college tuition savings account, his mother said.

Cosmo and I closed out our third and final game with strikes in the 10^th frame, and Cosmo finished in the lead by 37 pins.

I asked, and he shyly gave me his autograph. It’s not the first he’s been asked for. It likely won’t be his last.

Judge: Urban Outfitters Case Can Continue

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network

A couple of the products Urban Outfitters sold using the Navajo name.

A federal judge has ruled that the Navajo Nation’s lawsuit against Urban Outfitters can proceed.

Senior U.S. District Judge LeRoy Hansen filed an order on March 26 stating that the court is still considering allegations by the Navajo Nation against the retailer. However, as a report from the Farmington Daily-Times has noted, the court has dismissed some elements of the lawsuit.

The lawsuit stems from Urban Outfitters’ use of the terms Navajo and Navaho in referring to products not made by the Navajo Nation. Court documents said that “The Navajo Nation alleges in its Amended Complaint that it and its members have been known by the name ‘Navajo’ since at least 1849, have continuously used the NAVAJO trademark in commerce, and have made the NAVAJO name and trademarks famous with numerous products.”

The claims dismissed by the court were those that condemned the merchandise itself as “derogatory, scandalous, and contrary to the Navajo Nation’s principles” and labeled the alternate spelling “Navaho” as “scandalous.” The products that precipitated the lawsuit, which were re-labeled or pulled from stores altogether, included the “Navajo Hipster Panty” and the “Navajo Print Fabric Wrapped Flask.”

The Daily-Times adds that the Navajo Nation has until the end of the week to file a revised amended complaint.

One Healer’s Story Started With Healing Himself Through Drumming and Singing

Redhouse now uses drumming and singing to help addicts in recovery programs. (Lee Allen)

Lee Allen, Indian Country Today Media Network

Navajo Native Tony Redhouse doesn’t look his age, and for several decades he didn’t act it either. Now in his mid-50s, he was what is referred to as a “bad boy” in his formative years. In fact, because he was high all the time, he says he received his early education not in school, but on the street. “I was first incarcerated at the age of 14, put in a California mental hospital in a straightjacket, from an LSD overdose,” he says. “They called me Gas because of my habit of inhaling gasoline as a cheap high.”

Redhouse, who says there isn’t a drug he didn’t do, later got kicked out of his family’s home and ended up in foster care, where things just got worse because, he says, members of his adoptive family were also addicted to drugs.

What followed over the next 20 years and stretched from the Bay Area to England was a series of marriages (five), more trips to detox than he can remember (100-plus), medical problems (hepatitis C), a stint in prison (two years), and five alcohol-drug-related DUIs. “I had a habit of running into telephone poles and totaling vehicles,” he recalls. “I was in the dark for a long time. I wandered the streets unaware of where I was and not really caring. I ate out of Dumpsters. I committed crimes to get money for more drugs. I was suicidal and self-destructive.” Recognizing the inevitable end to the path he was on, family members intervened and had him committed to a mental hospital when he was 50.

And there he found both himself and a new path. “Although it had taken me half a century to reach that point, I came to my senses and decided to change my life.”

Once Redhouse decided to become a good guy, new vistas opened up for him as an inspirational speaker, a recording artist and a sound healer. He says those are all ways he can help others in need—addicts, domestic violence victims, grief and trauma survivors, and hospice members about to transition. “Because I had already walked the negative footsteps and knew their pitfalls, I began alternative teaching, sharing spirituality as a means of recovery influenced by Native American culture.”

(Photo: Lee Allen)

He now lectures to capacity crowds across the Southwest and also teams up with such lecture-hall luminaries as Deepak Chopra and Dr. Oz. He speaks passionately of his years working with Native Ways women in recovery program at a Tucson, Arizona facility. According to that facility’s web page: “Therapy is designed to meet the unique needs of Native women and draws on their cultural strengths to promote healing and recovery” and quotes a Great Spirit Prayer—“Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people.… I seek strength not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy—myself.”

“The audience is 25 to 30 female addicts, some just out of prison or detox—a lot of them still strung out on meth and coke—and here I am, [at] the first phase of their recovery. I’m a visual artist in musical form—bells, bar chimes, wooden blocks, shakers, flutes, drums, a palette of sound equipment. The lights are turned off, candles are lit, and I start playing the flute and drum while humming a chant. These women don’t have an inkling about where we are headed, but every time the music begins, they put their heads down on the table and go into their own internal, calming space. The nurturing sound of the heartbeat drum brings security and takes them back to before their addiction, before being molested or beaten, returning back to the days before anything bad had happened.”

Redhouse says the simplicity of sound healing takes the mind to a place where it can begin to be clear enough to make healthy decisions. “If you think about indigenous cultures, there are three ancient forms of expression used in ceremony to express our emotions and dreams—voice, drum and flute. They speak louder than words and allow us to connect with the spiritual realm. When I use these sounds, they evoke thoughts, images, feelings that take people back to their beginning, back to the simple state, the sound of a heartbeat, a breath, the hum of a lullaby—back to a peaceful place, a sacred place, for us to start healing inside. We remove all the built-up complications and come back to the point where you can see clearly what your life is and what you want it to be.”

The healer’s philosophy, as he explained in a documentary co-produced by Chopra called Death Makes Life Possible, came from his hospice work. “I teach that if you are ready to die, then you are ready to live. Spending time with people who are transitioning, you see them settle old scores and make peace with people and situations so they can stop struggling and depart. We’d be wise to adopt that concept of clearing up unfinished business, closing the chapters in our lives that no longer serve us. If we can make peace to depart this world, we can also make conditions that will allow us to live passionately and completely.”

Continuing to help others helps him to continue helping himself. “I feel like I’m right in the center of my destiny, why I’m on this Earth, my life’s purpose, why I’ve gone through everything I’ve gone through so far that has shaped me, the ups and downs, the darkness. I’m doing things right now. I’m a tool in the hands of spirits, that’s all. I’ve become another instrument, blessed to have an opportunity to change other lives for the better.”