New iTunes tracks and new artists

The iTunes shop has again been updated.
New artists added include Primeaux & Mike, Wayne Lavallee, Qua' Ti' Si', The Boyz, Eagle & Hawk, Eyabay Singers, & the Mandaree Singers. Artists with updated listings include Carlos Nakai, Keely Smith, Mildred Bailey, Ulali, Rita Coolidge,
Jim Boyd, Burning Sky and Glen Bonham.

Community building at Pine Ridge: A 30-year project comes of age

by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today

Involvement in community grassroots movements requires work with all kinds of families from which emerge leaders who will encourage and help guide the people toward common goals over the long term.

To build upon a community culture that can focus on behalf of the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who will inherit the Earth and the responsibilities of the nations: this is the task of community organizers of the highest order.

Such is the track record of the Pine Ridge Homesteads Initiative, long known as the ''Slim Buttes Agriculture and Development Project.'' This project involved a long-term commitment by a core group of families and working people based in the Slim Buttes community in western Pine Ridge Reservation, but with practical extension work with approximately 500 families across the reservation. The project assists in building grassroots facilities and living conditions for Oglala-Lakota families long destitute in remote lands and reservation districts.

Navajo Head Vetoes Gay Marriage Measure

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (AP) -- The president of the Navajo Nation vetoed a measure Sunday that would have banned same-sex marriage on the Indian reservation.

The Tribal Council voted unanimously last month to pass legislation that restricts a recognized union to a relationship between a man and a woman, and prohibits plural marriages as well as marriages between close relatives.

Supporters said the goal was to promote Navajo family values and preserve the sanctity of marriage.

President Joe Shirley Jr. said in a statement released Sunday that he strongly supports family stability but the proposed measure said nothing about domestic violence, sexual assault and gangs on the Navajo Nation -- problems that are rampant.

''Same-sex marriage is a non-issue on Navajoland,'' he said. ''So why waste time and resources on it? We have more important issues to address.'

Colombia War Spills Into Indians' Peaceful World

TACUEYó, Colombia, April 28 - The Nasa Indians appear to live well on their lush reservation here in southern Colombia, a swath of mountains and valleys where sweet fruit grows, trout teem in fast-flowing creeks and colorful birds dart about.

They live in tidy, well-kept homes, growing coffee, bananas and beans. Emphasizing economic independence, they run a successful fish farm and are trying to strike up a marble mine.

The one major threat to their existence is Colombia's unrelenting civil conflict, which has ground on for 41 years. But the Nasa, an Indian nation that numbers about 100,000 in this region, has used a pacific civil resistance campaign to stay out of the drug-fueled war, which pits the army and right-wing paramilitaries against Marxist rebels intent on toppling the state.

For four years, the Nasa's stern-faced but unarmed Indigenous Guards - now a force of 7,000 men and women - have simply driven away the fighters who venture into these fog-shrouded mountains in Cauca Province. They confront rebel and soldier alike with ceremonial three-foot batons decorated with tassels in the colors of the Nasa flag, green and red, and persuade the outsiders to leave.

Their success has earned the acclaim of the United Nations and the foreign governments that pay for Nasa development programs.