Would-Be Tribes Entice Investors

It has become a ritual in every part of the nation: a group of people of American Indian heritage, eyeing potential gambling profits, band together and seek federal recognition as a tribe.

But in their quest, these groups have created another tribe in search of wealth: the troop of genealogists, historians, treaty experts, lobbyists and lawyers they hire to guide them through the process. And the crucial players in this brigade are the casino investors who can pay for it all.

Hoopa, Yurok tribes plan settlement

Eureka, CA - "The Yurok and Hoopa Valley tribes have agreed on a plan to settle a long-standing legal battle over land and timber, a pact that could dramatically change the face of the Yurok Reservation in years to come.

The settlement plan signed last week would, if approved by Congress, allow the U.S. Interior and Agriculture departments to turn over or facilitate the purchase of 238,000 acres of federal and private land to the Yurok Tribe and redraw the boundaries of the reservation. The land in question is held by a hodgepodge of owners, including the Simpson Resource Co., the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service.

The land would be bought from willing sellers or by transferring land from the federal government. The intent is to establish a land base for the tribe that allows 11 million board feet of timber to be harvested each year."

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Native Canadians Seek Ways of Healing

DITIDAHT, British Columbia — Vancouver Island is home to many seemingly idyllic Native Canadian villages like this one, where bald eagles swirl overhead, deep fir and cedar forests scent the air and windy Nitinat Lake offers plenty of wild salmon, crab and trout for the 200 residents.

But among the island's forests and sheltered coves, Clarence Dennis drifted — drinking, robbing and hurting his children. Daisy Edwards spent years in a stupor, working as a prostitute after being raped by her father. Jack George Thompson beat his family, stuck a pistol in his mouth and nearly pulled the trigger.

Their stories, like so many others here, have a common thread: a childhood spent at one of the more than 100 residential schools for Native Canadians financed for more than a century by the government to force assimilation. The abuses at the schools, the last of which was closed in 1986 and which were run by the Roman Catholic, Anglican, United and Presbyterian churches, are well documented. Lawsuits have been filed against the churches and the Canadian government.

Judge Denies Janklow's Bid for Release

FLANDREAU, S.D. (AP) -- A judge on Tuesday refused to release former Rep. Bill Janklow from jail while he appeals his manslaughter conviction in an auto accident that killed a motorcyclist.

Circuit Judge Rodney Steele said that he does not believe the conviction will be overturned and that putting off the sentence would delay a resolution to the case for the victims and the public.

A Split Tribe, Casino Plans and One Little Indian Boy in the Middle

KENT, Conn. - There are more people dead than alive on the Schaghticoke Indian Reservation overlooking the Housatonic River in northwest Connecticut. There are more headstones than houses. There is more silence than sound.

Just one member of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation lives on the 400-acre reservation at the foot of Schaghticoke Mountain in the tidy town of Kent.

His name is Brett Rothe, and he is 4, a child of a divorce between a father who is Indian and has rejected the Tribal Nation government and a mother who is not but has embraced it. But Brett is also caught in a larger divide, between the Tribal Nation and a separate Schaghticoke faction at odds over control of the reservation and who will capitalize on the tribe's newfound leverage in the region's escalating casino wars.

Ex-Congressman Goes to Jail for Fatal Crash

SIOUX FALLS, S.D., Feb. 7 (AP) — Former Representative Bill Janklow reported to jail on Saturday to start serving his 100-day sentence for a manslaughter conviction from a crash that killed a motorcyclist.

Accompanied by his son, Russ, and a friend, Mr. Janklow walked past reporters and camera crews and into the Minnehaha County Public Safety Building at 9 a.m., and checked in.

Jury Convicts Former AIM Member in Murder

RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) -- A federal jury Friday convicted a former American Indian Movement member of murdering a woman who had been suspected of being a government informant.

Arlo Looking Cloud, 50, faces a mandatory life sentence for the 1975 shooting death of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, a 30-year-old fellow member of the Indian militant group. Her frozen body was found in 1976 on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Jurors deliberated for about seven hours before convicting Looking Cloud of first-degree murder committed in the perpetration of a kidnapping. He had been indicted in March with another former AIM member, John Graham.

In Court, AIM Members Are Depicted as Killers

RAPID CITY, S.D., Feb. 4 — The former companion of a leader in the American Indian Movement clutched a single feather as she took the witness stand in a federal court here on Wednesday and tearfully depicted the movement's leaders as murderous.

In a full but silent courtroom, the witness, Ka-Mook Nichols, said leaders of the militant Indian civil-rights group known as AIM had orchestrated the death of one of its own members, Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, nearly three decades ago. And Ms. Nichols implicated Leonard Peltier, AIM's best-known member, in the earlier killing of two federal agents, crimes for which Mr. Peltier has been sent to prison for life.

Murder Trial Revives Intrigue of the 70's Indian Movement

RAPID CITY, S.D. — Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, a young mother and American Indian activist, was shot in the head and left to die on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the winter of 1975. The trial of one of two men accused of killing her begins here on Tuesday. Between those moments, decades apart, lies a mystery, and a bitter struggle.

Law enforcement authorities and Indians across the country are watching closely, not just for what the trial will reveal about Ms. Pictou Aquash's death, but for what it threatens to expose about suspicion and violence inside the American Indian Movement, or AIM, the militant group whose clashes with federal authorities drew the eyes of the world to the Pine Ridge Reservation in the 1970's.

Resistance to Indian Casinos Grows Across U.S.

Connecticut's two large Indian casinos pump $400 million into state and local treasuries each year, but so many residents dislike the casinos that the state's legislature repealed the law that allowed them to be built.

In New York, Buffalo has a shot at a new casino to help revive its sagging downtown and bring in new cash. But residents oppose the idea.

And in Pennsylvania, Gov. Edward G. Rendell has promised lower property taxes if slot machines are allowed at racetracks in the state, but the measure to permit the machines is still bottled up in the General Assembly.

Janklow Sentenced to 100 Days in Jail

FLANDREAU, S.D. (AP) -- Bill Janklow, who dominated South Dakota politics for three decades as governor and then congressman, was sentenced to 100 days in jail Thursday for an auto accident that killed a motorcyclist and ended Janklow's career.

Janklow to be sentenced in S.D. accident

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- Former Rep. Bill Janklow is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in his boyhood hometown of Flandreau, S.D. The 64-year-old former governor and state attorney general was convicted Dec. 8 of second-degree manslaughter, speeding and running a stop sign, as well as reckless driving which killed motorcyclist Randy Scott.

South Dakota does not require minimum sentences, so the judge's discretion ranges from no time behind bars and no fines up to a total of 10 years in prison for the manslaughter count, 14 months in jail for the lesser counts and $11,400 in fines. Judge Rodney Steele also could require restitution or community service or set other special conditions.

Whatever the sentence, the judge likely will rely heavily on a presentence report that includes facts on every aspect of Janklow's life, his driving record and comments from the Scott family.

Casino Deals Are Stalled by State, U.S. and Tribal Hurdles

MONTICELLO, N.Y. - New York State approved the construction of three Indian casinos for the old resort areas here in the Catskills more than two years ago, and people in the area practically began to count the money they expected to get from gamblers and construction projects and new jobs. But little has happened since then.

The Catskills casinos are bogged down in the same legal and cultural quagmire that has bedeviled the state's relations with Indian tribes for generations: land ownership, taxes and sovereignty. "There's been a lot of talk and a lot of hype, but no action," said William Darwak, the Ulster County administrator. "No money, either."

Plagued by Drugs, Tribes Revive Ancient Penalty

BELLINGHAM, Wash. — For generations the Noland family has led a troubled life on the Lummi Indian reservation here. The Nolands have struggled with alcohol, painkillers and, more recently, crack. Seven family members are now jailed, several for dealing drugs, on and off tribal land.

Their experience has been repeated hundreds of times on this sprawling, desperately poor reservation of 2,000 Lummi, where addiction and crime have become pervasive. It is the reason that the Lummi tribe has turned as a last resort to a severe and bygone punishment, seeking to banish five of the young men in jail and another recently released. It is also the reason for evicting Yevonne Noland, 48, the matriarch of the Noland clan, from her modest blue house on the reservation, because her son, a convicted drug dealer, was listed on the lease.

Water Pump Case Tests Federal Law

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Jan. 9 — For nearly half a century, a pumping station in South Florida has been pouring millions of gallons of storm runoff annually into the Everglades, keeping the farms and backyards of western Broward Country dry but filling the wetlands with water often tainted by pollutants, mainly from phosphorus-rich fertilizers.

The court, which will hear arguments on Wednesday in a lawsuit brought by a small Indian tribe,
the Miccosukee, against Florida water authorities, will decide whether, legally speaking, the pump is adding pollutants to the Everglades or is simply transferring them between bodies of water that belong to the same large national system of waterways. If the court decides the pump adds pollutants, S-9 and similar pumping equipment could become subject to a stringent system of permits and pollution controls required under the Clean Water Act.

Limbaugh and Novak under fire for Crossfire comment

Accuses South Dakota Indians of stealing election

PIERRE SD
Sam Lewin 1/9/2004

Democrats, Republicans, tribal leaders and political action groups have all attacked conservative commentator Robert Novak over remarks he made on CNN this week. Novak said on Crossfire Tuesday that Native Americans in South Dakota stuffed ballot boxes, helping Senator Tim Johnson win a close election in 2002 against challenger John Thune. Thune is now running against Senator Tom Daschle. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh defended Novak and challenged listeners to take him to task for accusing Indian tribes in South Dakota for stealing the 2002 Senate election.

“In 2002, Thune would have been elected to the state's other Senate seat, but the election was stolen by stuffing ballot boxes on the Indian reservations. Now Tom Daschle may have to pay for that theft,” Novak said.

Simon Ortiz- Reading into Native American writers

NEW YORK (AP) -- The words of Simon Ortiz mingle with the muffled sounds of city traffic that have drifted into an art studio where dozens have gathered to hear his poetry.

He closes his book and takes a deep breath. He scans his audience, searching for understanding and acceptance and is immediately greeted with warm, enthusiastic applause. People begin to cluster about him, eager to talk, eager to learn more about Indians in America.

Tribal Police Raid Okla. Headquarters

McLOUD, Okla. (AP) -- Kickapoo tribal police raided the tribe's headquarters and arrested three women who had barricaded themselves in the building demanding a change in leadership and a federal audit of the tribe's finances.

The women, the only ones in the building out of 10 who had been staging the demonstration since Dec. 16, were booked on trespassing complaints and released on $100 bail each.

Tribe Loses Suit on Tax-Free Tobacco

BOSTON, Dec. 29 — A federal judge ruled on Monday that Rhode Island acted legally when it raided a tax-free smoke shop run by the Narragansett Indians and that the state had the right to tax sales of cigarettes on tribal land.

In his ruling, Judge William E. Smith of Federal District Court said the July 14 raid, in which state troopers seeking sales records served a search warrant on the smoke shop in a trailer on the Narragansett reservation in Charlestown, did not violate tribal sovereignty.