No matter what happens to President Obama’s health care reforms after the November elections, the disjointed, costly American health care system must find ways to slow the rate of spending while delivering quality care. There is widespread pessimism that anything much can be achieved quickly, but innovative solutions are emerging in unexpected places. A health care system owned and managed by Alaska’s native people has achieved astonishing results in improving the health of its enrollees while cutting the costs of treating them.
At a recent conference for health leaders from the United States and abroad at the native-owned Southcentral Foundation in Anchorage, the Alaskans described techniques that could be adopted by almost any health care organization willing to transform its culture. Such a transformation would require upfront financing for training, data processing and the like, but the investment should rapidly pay off in reduced costs.
The foundation, established in 1982, provides primary outpatient care to Alaska natives and American Indians who had previously been the responsibility of the federal government’s Indian Health Service. It serves 45,000 enrollees in the Anchorage area and 10,000 more scattered in remote villages, most reachable only by air, on an annual budget of $200 million. It also jointly owns and manages (with a consortium of native tribes) a small hospital, and has built a modern campus of outpatient clinics with the help of loans, grants, bonds and retained earnings.
About 45 percent of its revenue comes in what amounts to an annual block grant from the Indian Health Service, a source unavailable to most health systems; another 45 percent comes from Medicaid, Medicare and private insurers, and the rest from philanthropy and grants.
As the Commerce Department noted when it gave Southcentral a national quality award in 2011, known as the Malcolm Baldrige award, the foundation has achieved startling efficiencies: emergency room use has been reduced by 50 percent, hospital admissions by 53 percent, specialty care visits by 65 percent and visits to primary care doctors by 36 percent. These efficiencies, in turn, have clearly saved money. Between 2004 and 2009, Southcentral’s annual per-capita spending on hospital services grew by a tiny 7 percent and its spending on primary care, which picked up the slack, by 30 percent, still well below the 40 percent increase posted in a national index issued by the Medical Group Management Association.
Patients have not been shortchanged; in fact, care and access to services have improved greatly. Patients are virtually guaranteed a doctor’s appointment on the day they request it, and their calls are answered quickly, usually within 30 seconds. The percentage of children receiving high-quality care for asthma has soared from 35 percent to 85 percent, the percentage of infants receiving needed immunizations by age 2 has risen above 90 percent, the percentage of diabetics with blood sugar under control ranks in the top 10 percentile of a standard national benchmark, and customer and employee satisfaction rates top 90 percent.
The staff is trained to treat patients courteously, not with the disdain often reserved for the poor or ethnic minorities. The atmosphere is so welcoming that natives routinely congregate in waiting areas to swap stories and meet old friends even when they do not need medical care.
Although Southcentral has unique attributes (it even refers cases to traditional tribal healers if doctors agree), here are some of its techniques that almost any health care system can adopt:
¶Assigning small teams — consisting of a doctor, a nurse, and various medical, behavioral and administrative assistants — to be responsible for groups of 1,400 or so patients. The team members sit in the same small work area and communicate easily. When a patient calls, the nurse decides whether a face-to-face visit with a doctor or other health care provider is required or whether counseling by phone is sufficient. The doctors are left free to deal with only the most complicated cases. They have no private offices and the nurses have no nursing stations to which they can retreat.
¶Integrating a wide range of data to measure medical and financial performance. Southcentral’s “data mall” coughs up easily understood graphics showing how well doctors and the teams they lead are doing to improve health outcomes and cut costs compared with their colleagues, their past performance and national benchmarks, and it provides them with action lists of what they can do to improve and mentors to guide them. That almost always spurs the laggards. One doctor whose team ranked well behind 10 others in scheduling annual eye exams for diabetics jumped to first place within two months once she became aware of how poorly her team was performing.
¶Focusing on the needs and convenience of the patients rather than of the institution or the providers. The facilities feature rooms where providers and families can chat as equals on comfortable chairs, in sharp contrast to examination rooms where a doctor looms over a patient. Every patient visit is carefully planned so the patient can get in and out quickly without being delayed because, say, a needed lab test result is not available.
¶Building trust and long-term relationships between the patients and providers.
¶Changing from a reactive system in which a sick patient seeks medical care to a proactive system that reaches out to patients through special events, written and broadcast communications, and telephone calls to keep them healthy or at least out of the hospital and clinics.
Visionary health care systems elsewhere are already adopting Southcentral’s techniques, usually after visits to Anchorage to observe them in action.
CareOregon, a small Medicaid managed-care plan in Portland, sent not only its own people but also delegations from the clinics that serve its patients. It then paid the clinics a subsidy to get started and found that, within two years, Southcentral’s tactics greatly reduced the use of costly emergency departments and hospital admissions while improving health outcomes. Dr. David Labby, CareOregon’s medical director, said in an e-mail that the example set by Southcentral was “hugely inspirational” and “remains the model that guides us.”
Similarly, Maxine Jones, the service manager of a primary care practice in the county of Fife, Scotland, is supervising a pilot study for the National Health Service using techniques adapted from Southcentral that almost immediately produced a sharp decline in visits to the practice because many problems could be handled by an integrated team of doctors and nurses by phone. “I can see that this model has the potential to transform the face of primary care in Scotland,” she said in an interview at the conference.
Many other health care organizations in the United States and elsewhere have consulted with Southcentral on how to make their delivery of care more efficient and less costly while maintaining or improving quality. If enough of them summon the energy to transform their operations, their combined impact could help slow the rising curve of health care costs, or even bend it downward.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Earliest Americans Arrived in 3 Waves, Not 1, DNA Study Finds - NYTimes.com
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: July 11, 2012
North and South America were first populated by three waves of migrants from Siberia rather than just a single migration, say researchers who have studied the whole genomes of Native Americans in South America and Canada.
Some scientists assert that the Americas were peopled in one large migration from Siberia that happened about 15,000 years ago, but the new genetic research shows that this central episode was followed by at least two smaller migrations from Siberia, one by people who became the ancestors of today’s Eskimos and Aleutians and another by people speaking Na-Dene, whose descendants are confined to North America. The research was published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The finding vindicates a proposal first made on linguistic grounds by Joseph Greenberg, the great classifier of the world’s languages. He asserted in 1987 that most languages spoken in North and South America were derived from the single mother tongue of the first settlers from Siberia, which he called Amerind. Two later waves, he surmised, brought speakers of Eskimo-Aleut and of Na-Dene, the language family spoken by the Apache and Navajo.
But many linguists who specialize in American languages derided Dr. Greenberg’s proposal, saying they saw no evidence for any single ancestral language like Amerind. “American linguists made up their minds 25 year ago that they wouldn’t support Greenberg, and they haven’t changed their mind one whit,” said Merritt Ruhlen, a colleague of Dr. Greenberg, who died in 2001.
The new DNA study is based on gene chips that sample the entire genome and presents a fuller picture than earlier studies, which were based on small regions of the genome like the Y chromosome or mitochondrial DNA. Several of the mitochondrial DNA studies had pointed to a single migration.
A team headed by David Reich of the Harvard Medical School and Dr. Andres Ruiz-Linares of University College London report that there was a main migration that populated the entire Americas. They cannot date the migration from their genomic data but accept the estimate by others that the migration occurred around 15,000 years ago. This was in the window of time that occurred after the melting of great glaciers that blocked passage from Siberia to Alaska, and before the rising waters at the end of the last ice age submerged Beringia, the land bridge between them.
They also find evidence for two further waves of migration, one among Na-Dene speakers and the other among Eskimo-Aleut, again as Dr. Greenberg predicted. But whereas Dr. Greenberg’s proposal suggested that three discrete groups of people were packed into the Americas, the new genome study finds that the second and third waves mixed in with the first. Eskimos inherit about half of their DNA from the people of the first migration and half from a second migration. The Chipewyans of Canada, who speak a Na-Dene language, have 90 percent of their genes from the first migration and some 10 percent from a third.
It is not clear why the Chipewyans and others speak a Na-Dene language if most of their DNA is from Amerind speakers. Dr. Ruiz-Linares said a minority language can often dominate others in the case of conquest; an example of this is the ubiquity of Spanish in Latin America.
If the genetics of the early migrations to the Americas can be defined well enough, it should in principle be possible to match them with their source populations in Asia. Dr. Greenberg had argued on linguistic grounds that the Na-Dene language family was derived from Ket, spoken by the Ket people in the Yenisei valley of Siberia. But Dr. Reich said there was not yet enough genomic data from Asia or the Americas to make these links. His samples of Na-Dene and Ket DNA did not match, but the few Ket samples he had may have become mixed with DNA from people of other ethnicities, so the test, in his view, was inconclusive.
The team’s samples of Native American genomes were drawn mostly from South America, with a handful from Canada. Samples from tribes in the United States could not be used because the existing ones had been collected for medical reasons and the donors had not given consent for population genetics studies, Dr. Ruiz-Linares said. Native Americans in the United States have been reluctant to participate in inquiries into their origins. The Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society wrote recently to all federally recognized tribes in the United States asking for samples, but only two agreed to give them, said Spencer Wells, the project director.
Interracial marriage — or admixture, as geneticists call it — may have distorted earlier efforts to trace ancestry because subjects assumed to be American may have had European or other DNA admixed in their genomes. Dr. Reich and his colleagues have developed a method to define the racial origin of each segment of DNA and have found that on average 8.5 percent of Native American DNA belongs to other races. They then screened these admixed sections out of their analysis.
Archaeologists who study Native American history are glad to have the genetic data but also have reservations, given that several of the geneticists’ conclusions have changed over time. “This is a really important step forward but not the last word,” said David Meltzer of Southern Methodist University, noting that many migrations may not yet have shown up in the genetic samples. Michael H. Crawford, an anthropologist at the University of Kansas, said the paucity of samples from North America and from coastal regions made it hard to claim a complete picture of early migrations has been attained.
“Sometimes the statisticians make wonderful interpretations, but you have to be very guarded,” he said.
The geneticists’ finding of a single main migration of people who presumably spoke a single language at the time confirms Dr. Greenberg’s central idea that most American languages are descended from a single root, even though the genetic data cannot confirm the specific language relationships he described.
“Many linguists put down Greenberg as rubbish and don’t believe his publications,” Dr. Ruiz-Linares said. But he considers his study a substantial vindication of Dr. Greenberg. “It’s striking that we have this correspondence between the genetics and the linguistics,” he said.
Published: July 11, 2012
North and South America were first populated by three waves of migrants from Siberia rather than just a single migration, say researchers who have studied the whole genomes of Native Americans in South America and Canada.
Some scientists assert that the Americas were peopled in one large migration from Siberia that happened about 15,000 years ago, but the new genetic research shows that this central episode was followed by at least two smaller migrations from Siberia, one by people who became the ancestors of today’s Eskimos and Aleutians and another by people speaking Na-Dene, whose descendants are confined to North America. The research was published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The finding vindicates a proposal first made on linguistic grounds by Joseph Greenberg, the great classifier of the world’s languages. He asserted in 1987 that most languages spoken in North and South America were derived from the single mother tongue of the first settlers from Siberia, which he called Amerind. Two later waves, he surmised, brought speakers of Eskimo-Aleut and of Na-Dene, the language family spoken by the Apache and Navajo.
But many linguists who specialize in American languages derided Dr. Greenberg’s proposal, saying they saw no evidence for any single ancestral language like Amerind. “American linguists made up their minds 25 year ago that they wouldn’t support Greenberg, and they haven’t changed their mind one whit,” said Merritt Ruhlen, a colleague of Dr. Greenberg, who died in 2001.
The new DNA study is based on gene chips that sample the entire genome and presents a fuller picture than earlier studies, which were based on small regions of the genome like the Y chromosome or mitochondrial DNA. Several of the mitochondrial DNA studies had pointed to a single migration.
A team headed by David Reich of the Harvard Medical School and Dr. Andres Ruiz-Linares of University College London report that there was a main migration that populated the entire Americas. They cannot date the migration from their genomic data but accept the estimate by others that the migration occurred around 15,000 years ago. This was in the window of time that occurred after the melting of great glaciers that blocked passage from Siberia to Alaska, and before the rising waters at the end of the last ice age submerged Beringia, the land bridge between them.
They also find evidence for two further waves of migration, one among Na-Dene speakers and the other among Eskimo-Aleut, again as Dr. Greenberg predicted. But whereas Dr. Greenberg’s proposal suggested that three discrete groups of people were packed into the Americas, the new genome study finds that the second and third waves mixed in with the first. Eskimos inherit about half of their DNA from the people of the first migration and half from a second migration. The Chipewyans of Canada, who speak a Na-Dene language, have 90 percent of their genes from the first migration and some 10 percent from a third.
It is not clear why the Chipewyans and others speak a Na-Dene language if most of their DNA is from Amerind speakers. Dr. Ruiz-Linares said a minority language can often dominate others in the case of conquest; an example of this is the ubiquity of Spanish in Latin America.
If the genetics of the early migrations to the Americas can be defined well enough, it should in principle be possible to match them with their source populations in Asia. Dr. Greenberg had argued on linguistic grounds that the Na-Dene language family was derived from Ket, spoken by the Ket people in the Yenisei valley of Siberia. But Dr. Reich said there was not yet enough genomic data from Asia or the Americas to make these links. His samples of Na-Dene and Ket DNA did not match, but the few Ket samples he had may have become mixed with DNA from people of other ethnicities, so the test, in his view, was inconclusive.
The team’s samples of Native American genomes were drawn mostly from South America, with a handful from Canada. Samples from tribes in the United States could not be used because the existing ones had been collected for medical reasons and the donors had not given consent for population genetics studies, Dr. Ruiz-Linares said. Native Americans in the United States have been reluctant to participate in inquiries into their origins. The Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society wrote recently to all federally recognized tribes in the United States asking for samples, but only two agreed to give them, said Spencer Wells, the project director.
Interracial marriage — or admixture, as geneticists call it — may have distorted earlier efforts to trace ancestry because subjects assumed to be American may have had European or other DNA admixed in their genomes. Dr. Reich and his colleagues have developed a method to define the racial origin of each segment of DNA and have found that on average 8.5 percent of Native American DNA belongs to other races. They then screened these admixed sections out of their analysis.
Archaeologists who study Native American history are glad to have the genetic data but also have reservations, given that several of the geneticists’ conclusions have changed over time. “This is a really important step forward but not the last word,” said David Meltzer of Southern Methodist University, noting that many migrations may not yet have shown up in the genetic samples. Michael H. Crawford, an anthropologist at the University of Kansas, said the paucity of samples from North America and from coastal regions made it hard to claim a complete picture of early migrations has been attained.
“Sometimes the statisticians make wonderful interpretations, but you have to be very guarded,” he said.
The geneticists’ finding of a single main migration of people who presumably spoke a single language at the time confirms Dr. Greenberg’s central idea that most American languages are descended from a single root, even though the genetic data cannot confirm the specific language relationships he described.
“Many linguists put down Greenberg as rubbish and don’t believe his publications,” Dr. Ruiz-Linares said. But he considers his study a substantial vindication of Dr. Greenberg. “It’s striking that we have this correspondence between the genetics and the linguistics,” he said.
Saturday, July 07, 2012
Child Welfare Dangers Seen on Spirit Lake Reservation - NYTimes.com
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: July 7, 2012
Federal and state officials say they have documented glaring flaws in the child welfare system at the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation in North Dakota, contending that while child abuse there is at epidemic levels, the tribe has sought to conceal it.
The problems uncovered by medical and social services administrators include foster children on the reservation who have been sent to homes where registered sex offenders live and a teenage female sexual-abuse victim who was placed in a tribal home and subsequently raped.
The tribe, according to federal officials, also hired a children’s case worker who had been convicted of felony child abuse and employed another social worker who discovered a 1-year-old child covered with 100 wood ticks but did not take the child to a hospital.
The conditions led the State of North Dakota to take the unusual step this year of suspending financing for 31 tribal children in foster care.
Concerns about the children of Spirit Lake, which is in a remote area of northeastern North Dakota, extend to minors outside the social services system as well. In May 2011, a 9-year-old girl and her 6-year-old brother were found dead, raped and sodomized, inside their father’s home on the reservation, a federal official said. By the time their bodies were discovered beneath a mattress, the children may have been dead for as long as three days.
The tribe, according to federal and state administrators, has not conducted required background checks before placing foster children, failed to make mandated monthly visits to children in foster care and illegally removed foster children from homes and placed them elsewhere without determining that the new homes would be safe.
Unease about the tribe’s ability to adequately safeguard children has escalated in the past several weeks after two scathing, detailed e-mails were sent by federal officials to their superiors at the Department of Health and Human Services, alleging misconduct by reservation officials.
In a June 14 e-mail sent to his managers in Washington, Thomas F. Sullivan, the regional administrator for the Administration for Children and Families for six states, called on the government to declare a state of emergency at Spirit Lake, cut off the reservation’s federal financing and charge the tribe’s leader with child endangerment to combat what he described as “daunting” child abuse being covered up by the tribe.
The Spirit Lake reservation, like many Indian reservations across the country, has for years suffered from disproportionately high rates of child abuse and neglect, paired with accusations that abuse is underreported and minimized by tribes and infrequently prosecuted by federal authorities.
American Indians make up 9 percent of North Dakota’s population, but Indian children constitute nearly 30 percent of the state’s child abuse victims, a 2009 study by the Department of Health and Human Services found.
While statistics related to abuse at Spirit Lake are not public information, federal officials believe that the reservation has an even more significant child abuse problem than others in Indian Country. As one indication, the reservation is home to 38 registered sex offenders out of a population of 4,500, according to Justice Department figures — a far higher proportion than in most cities and towns in the United States.
The recent e-mails from two highly respected government officials to the health department’s Washington headquarters present a picture of a reservation hierarchy more intent on masking rampant child abuse than on ensuring the safety of children.
“The leadership of the Spirit Lake Nation as well as those who are responsible for delivering services on that reservation, by their actions as well as their inactions, have failed in their most basic responsibility to protect children,” Mr. Sullivan wrote. “They have hung signs at the borders of the Spirit Lake Nation, ‘Pedophiles Welcome.’ They have made these signs operational by firing professionally qualified staff, directing their replacements to ignore reports of abuse and neglect, refusing to prosecute the most egregious cases of abuse.”
While the tribe’s leaders have not actually placed such signs on Spirit Lake, a clearly exasperated Mr. Sullivan also called for Roger Yankton Sr., the tribe’s president, to be charged with a federal crime, saying Mr. Yankton has allowed children to continue to be harmed without addressing the problem.
The second e-mail, written in April by Michael R. Tilus, the director of behavioral health at the federally financed Spirit Lake Health Center, came below a subject line that read “Letter of Grave Concern.” Dr. Tilus said that child abuse on the reservation was “epidemic” and that he had “no confidence” in tribal leadership “to provide safe, responsible, legal, ethical and moral services to the abused and neglected children of the Spirit Lake Tribe.”
Tribal officials did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Mark Weber, a Health and Human Services Department spokesman, said the agency was working with the tribe and other agencies “to address concerns regarding the Spirit Lake Tribe’s Social Service Department.”
Nedra Darling, a spokeswoman with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, said the agency, which oversees some of the tribal programs, “has made it a top priority to address deficiencies with the Spirit Lake Sioux Tribal social services program” and plans to “take immediate actions to meet the needs of children on the reservation.”
The agency, Ms. Darling said, is “conducting a comprehensive review” of tribal social services and plans to send a social worker to provide oversight and technical assistance.
Scott Davis, executive director of the North Dakota Indian Affairs Commission, said he had recently met with tribal leaders and believed that many of the tribe’s problems were related to the departure of an employee who had been responsible for filing cases.
“I assume things are on track now,” Mr. Davis said.
Timothy Q. Purdon, the United States attorney for North Dakota and one of the recipients of the e-mails, said he had insisted on holding a meeting with Bureau of Indian Affairs officials within the next few weeks.
Mr. Purdon said his office had prosecuted only a handful of child abuse cases from the reservation in the past year, but acknowledged that others might not have reached the attention of law enforcement if the tribe did not report the crimes.
“This certainly raises concerns for us about the social service function on Spirit Lake,” he said. “I want to meet with B.I.A., agency to agency, and say, ‘What are you doing to make sure we’re responding to this appropriately?’ ”
Published: July 7, 2012
Federal and state officials say they have documented glaring flaws in the child welfare system at the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation in North Dakota, contending that while child abuse there is at epidemic levels, the tribe has sought to conceal it.
The problems uncovered by medical and social services administrators include foster children on the reservation who have been sent to homes where registered sex offenders live and a teenage female sexual-abuse victim who was placed in a tribal home and subsequently raped.
The tribe, according to federal officials, also hired a children’s case worker who had been convicted of felony child abuse and employed another social worker who discovered a 1-year-old child covered with 100 wood ticks but did not take the child to a hospital.
The conditions led the State of North Dakota to take the unusual step this year of suspending financing for 31 tribal children in foster care.
Concerns about the children of Spirit Lake, which is in a remote area of northeastern North Dakota, extend to minors outside the social services system as well. In May 2011, a 9-year-old girl and her 6-year-old brother were found dead, raped and sodomized, inside their father’s home on the reservation, a federal official said. By the time their bodies were discovered beneath a mattress, the children may have been dead for as long as three days.
The tribe, according to federal and state administrators, has not conducted required background checks before placing foster children, failed to make mandated monthly visits to children in foster care and illegally removed foster children from homes and placed them elsewhere without determining that the new homes would be safe.
Unease about the tribe’s ability to adequately safeguard children has escalated in the past several weeks after two scathing, detailed e-mails were sent by federal officials to their superiors at the Department of Health and Human Services, alleging misconduct by reservation officials.
In a June 14 e-mail sent to his managers in Washington, Thomas F. Sullivan, the regional administrator for the Administration for Children and Families for six states, called on the government to declare a state of emergency at Spirit Lake, cut off the reservation’s federal financing and charge the tribe’s leader with child endangerment to combat what he described as “daunting” child abuse being covered up by the tribe.
The Spirit Lake reservation, like many Indian reservations across the country, has for years suffered from disproportionately high rates of child abuse and neglect, paired with accusations that abuse is underreported and minimized by tribes and infrequently prosecuted by federal authorities.
American Indians make up 9 percent of North Dakota’s population, but Indian children constitute nearly 30 percent of the state’s child abuse victims, a 2009 study by the Department of Health and Human Services found.
While statistics related to abuse at Spirit Lake are not public information, federal officials believe that the reservation has an even more significant child abuse problem than others in Indian Country. As one indication, the reservation is home to 38 registered sex offenders out of a population of 4,500, according to Justice Department figures — a far higher proportion than in most cities and towns in the United States.
The recent e-mails from two highly respected government officials to the health department’s Washington headquarters present a picture of a reservation hierarchy more intent on masking rampant child abuse than on ensuring the safety of children.
“The leadership of the Spirit Lake Nation as well as those who are responsible for delivering services on that reservation, by their actions as well as their inactions, have failed in their most basic responsibility to protect children,” Mr. Sullivan wrote. “They have hung signs at the borders of the Spirit Lake Nation, ‘Pedophiles Welcome.’ They have made these signs operational by firing professionally qualified staff, directing their replacements to ignore reports of abuse and neglect, refusing to prosecute the most egregious cases of abuse.”
While the tribe’s leaders have not actually placed such signs on Spirit Lake, a clearly exasperated Mr. Sullivan also called for Roger Yankton Sr., the tribe’s president, to be charged with a federal crime, saying Mr. Yankton has allowed children to continue to be harmed without addressing the problem.
The second e-mail, written in April by Michael R. Tilus, the director of behavioral health at the federally financed Spirit Lake Health Center, came below a subject line that read “Letter of Grave Concern.” Dr. Tilus said that child abuse on the reservation was “epidemic” and that he had “no confidence” in tribal leadership “to provide safe, responsible, legal, ethical and moral services to the abused and neglected children of the Spirit Lake Tribe.”
Tribal officials did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Mark Weber, a Health and Human Services Department spokesman, said the agency was working with the tribe and other agencies “to address concerns regarding the Spirit Lake Tribe’s Social Service Department.”
Nedra Darling, a spokeswoman with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, said the agency, which oversees some of the tribal programs, “has made it a top priority to address deficiencies with the Spirit Lake Sioux Tribal social services program” and plans to “take immediate actions to meet the needs of children on the reservation.”
The agency, Ms. Darling said, is “conducting a comprehensive review” of tribal social services and plans to send a social worker to provide oversight and technical assistance.
Scott Davis, executive director of the North Dakota Indian Affairs Commission, said he had recently met with tribal leaders and believed that many of the tribe’s problems were related to the departure of an employee who had been responsible for filing cases.
“I assume things are on track now,” Mr. Davis said.
Timothy Q. Purdon, the United States attorney for North Dakota and one of the recipients of the e-mails, said he had insisted on holding a meeting with Bureau of Indian Affairs officials within the next few weeks.
Mr. Purdon said his office had prosecuted only a handful of child abuse cases from the reservation in the past year, but acknowledged that others might not have reached the attention of law enforcement if the tribe did not report the crimes.
“This certainly raises concerns for us about the social service function on Spirit Lake,” he said. “I want to meet with B.I.A., agency to agency, and say, ‘What are you doing to make sure we’re responding to this appropriately?’ ”
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Native Americans Struggle With High Rate of Rape - NYTimes.com
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: May 22, 2012
EMMONAK, Alaska — She was 19, a young Alaska Native woman in this icebound fishing village of 800 in the Yukon River delta, when an intruder broke into her home and raped her. The man left. Shaking, the woman called the tribal police, a force of three. It was late at night. No one answered. She left a message on the department’s voice mail system. Her call was never returned. She was left to recover on her own.
One in three American Indian women have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape, according to the Justice Department. Their rate of sexual assault is more than twice the national average. And no place, women’s advocates say, is more dangerous than Alaska’s isolated villages, where there are no roads in or out, and where people are further cut off by undependable telephone, electrical and Internet service.
The issue of sexual assaults on American Indian women has become one of the major sources of discord in the current debate between the White House and the House of Representatives over the latest reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
A Senate version, passed with broad bipartisan support, would grant new powers to tribal courts to prosecute non-Indians suspected of sexually assaulting their Indian spouses or domestic partners. But House Republicans, and some Senate Republicans, oppose the provision as a dangerous expansion of the tribal courts’ authority, and it was excluded from the version that the House passed last Wednesday. The House and Senate are seeking to negotiate a compromise.
Here in Emmonak, the overmatched police have failed to keep statistics related to rape. A national study mandated by Congress in 2004 to examine the extent of sexual violence on tribal lands remains unfinished because, the Justice Department says, the $2 million allocation is insufficient.
But according a survey by the Alaska Federation of Natives, the rate of sexual violence in rural villages like Emmonak is as much as 12 times the national rate. And interviews with Native American women here and across the nation’s tribal reservations suggest an even grimmer reality: They say few, if any, female relatives or close friends have escaped sexual violence.
“We should never have a woman come into the office saying, ‘I need to learn more about Plan B for when my daughter gets raped,’ ” said Charon Asetoyer, a women’s health advocate on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, referring to the morning-after pill. “That’s what’s so frightening — that it’s more expected than unexpected. It has become a norm for young women.”
The difficulties facing American Indian women who have been raped are myriad, and include a shortage of sexual assault kits at Indian Health Service hospitals, where there is also a lack of access to birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing. There are also too few nurses trained to perform rape examinations, which are generally necessary to bring cases to trial.
Women say the tribal police often discourage them from reporting sexual assaults, and Indian Health Service hospitals complain they lack cameras to document injuries.
Police and prosecutors, overwhelmed by the crime that buffets most reservations, acknowledge that they are often able to offer only tepid responses to what tribal leaders say has become a crisis.
Reasons for the high rate of sexual assaults among American Indians are poorly understood, but explanations include a breakdown in the family structure, a lack of discussion about sexual violence and alcohol abuse.
Rape, according to Indian women, has been distressingly common for generations, and they say tribal officials and the federal and state authorities have done little to help halt it, leading to its being significantly underreported.
In the Navajo Nation, which encompasses parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, 329 rape cases were reported in 2007 among a population of about 180,000. Five years later, there have been only 17 arrests. Women’s advocates on the reservation say only about 10 percent of sexual assaults are reported.
The young woman who was raped in Emmonak, now 22, asked that her name not be used because she fears retaliation from her attacker, whom she still sees in the village. She said she knew of five other women he had raped, though she is the only one who reported the crime.
Nationwide, an arrest is made in just 13 percent of the sexual assaults reported by American Indian women, according to the Justice Department, compared with 35 percent for black women and 32 percent for whites.
In South Dakota, Indians make up 10 percent of the population, but account for 40 percent of the victims of sexual assault. Alaska Natives are 15 percent of that state’s population, but constitute 61 percent of its victims of sexual assault.
The Justice Department did not prosecute 65 percent of the rape cases on Indian reservations in 2011. And though the department said it had mandated extra training for prosecutors and directed each field office to develop its own plan to help reduce violence against women, some advocates for Native American women said they no longer pressed victims to report rapes.
“I feel bad saying that,” said Sarah Deer, a law professor at William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota and an authority on violent crime on reservations. “But it compounds the trauma if you are willing to stand up and testify and they can’t help you.”
Despite the low rates of arrests and prosecutions, convicted sexual offenders are abundant on tribal lands. The Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, with about 25,000 people, is home to 99 Class 3 sex offenders, those deemed most likely to commit sex crimes after their release from prison. The Tohono O’odham tribe’s reservation in Arizona, where about 15,000 people live, has 184, according to the Justice Department.
By comparison, Boston, with a population of 618,000, has 252 Class 3 offenders. Minneapolis, with a population of 383,000, has 101, according to the local police.
The agencies responsible for aiding the victims of sexual assault among American Indians are often ill prepared.
The Indian Health Service, for instance, provides exams for rape victims at only 27 of the 45 hospitals it finances and, according to a federal report in 2011, did not keep adequate track of the number of sexual assault victims its facilities treat and lacked an overall policy for treating rape victims. Additionally, the health service has just 73 trained sexual assault examiners.
The Justice Department, which has increased the number of F.B.I. agents and United States attorneys on Indian reservations and is seeking to help the Indian Health Service train more nurses, said combating sexual violence was a priority.
“There’s no quick fix. There’s no one thing that will fix the system,” said Virginia Davis, deputy director for policy development in the department’s Office on Violence Against Women. “We’re taking a systematic approach to this — thinking about different ways to solve the problem.”
In the meantime, the problem persists. Lisa Marie Iyotte, 43, who was raped on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, said prosecutors had never told her why they did not charge the man arrested in that crime. He was later convicted of another rape, and when he was released from prison in 2008 and moved back to the reservation, no one told her, she said. She has not seen him yet.
“When I think about it, I say, ‘What am I going to do?’ ” she said. “I don’t know.”
Nine hundred miles away, in the Navajo Nation, Caroline Antone, 50, an advocate for the reservation’s victims of sexual violence who has herself been raped, said sexual assault was virtually routine in her community.
“I know only a couple of people who have not been raped,” she said. “Out of hundreds.”
Published: May 22, 2012
EMMONAK, Alaska — She was 19, a young Alaska Native woman in this icebound fishing village of 800 in the Yukon River delta, when an intruder broke into her home and raped her. The man left. Shaking, the woman called the tribal police, a force of three. It was late at night. No one answered. She left a message on the department’s voice mail system. Her call was never returned. She was left to recover on her own.
One in three American Indian women have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape, according to the Justice Department. Their rate of sexual assault is more than twice the national average. And no place, women’s advocates say, is more dangerous than Alaska’s isolated villages, where there are no roads in or out, and where people are further cut off by undependable telephone, electrical and Internet service.
The issue of sexual assaults on American Indian women has become one of the major sources of discord in the current debate between the White House and the House of Representatives over the latest reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
A Senate version, passed with broad bipartisan support, would grant new powers to tribal courts to prosecute non-Indians suspected of sexually assaulting their Indian spouses or domestic partners. But House Republicans, and some Senate Republicans, oppose the provision as a dangerous expansion of the tribal courts’ authority, and it was excluded from the version that the House passed last Wednesday. The House and Senate are seeking to negotiate a compromise.
Here in Emmonak, the overmatched police have failed to keep statistics related to rape. A national study mandated by Congress in 2004 to examine the extent of sexual violence on tribal lands remains unfinished because, the Justice Department says, the $2 million allocation is insufficient.
But according a survey by the Alaska Federation of Natives, the rate of sexual violence in rural villages like Emmonak is as much as 12 times the national rate. And interviews with Native American women here and across the nation’s tribal reservations suggest an even grimmer reality: They say few, if any, female relatives or close friends have escaped sexual violence.
“We should never have a woman come into the office saying, ‘I need to learn more about Plan B for when my daughter gets raped,’ ” said Charon Asetoyer, a women’s health advocate on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, referring to the morning-after pill. “That’s what’s so frightening — that it’s more expected than unexpected. It has become a norm for young women.”
The difficulties facing American Indian women who have been raped are myriad, and include a shortage of sexual assault kits at Indian Health Service hospitals, where there is also a lack of access to birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing. There are also too few nurses trained to perform rape examinations, which are generally necessary to bring cases to trial.
Women say the tribal police often discourage them from reporting sexual assaults, and Indian Health Service hospitals complain they lack cameras to document injuries.
Police and prosecutors, overwhelmed by the crime that buffets most reservations, acknowledge that they are often able to offer only tepid responses to what tribal leaders say has become a crisis.
Reasons for the high rate of sexual assaults among American Indians are poorly understood, but explanations include a breakdown in the family structure, a lack of discussion about sexual violence and alcohol abuse.
Rape, according to Indian women, has been distressingly common for generations, and they say tribal officials and the federal and state authorities have done little to help halt it, leading to its being significantly underreported.
In the Navajo Nation, which encompasses parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, 329 rape cases were reported in 2007 among a population of about 180,000. Five years later, there have been only 17 arrests. Women’s advocates on the reservation say only about 10 percent of sexual assaults are reported.
The young woman who was raped in Emmonak, now 22, asked that her name not be used because she fears retaliation from her attacker, whom she still sees in the village. She said she knew of five other women he had raped, though she is the only one who reported the crime.
Nationwide, an arrest is made in just 13 percent of the sexual assaults reported by American Indian women, according to the Justice Department, compared with 35 percent for black women and 32 percent for whites.
In South Dakota, Indians make up 10 percent of the population, but account for 40 percent of the victims of sexual assault. Alaska Natives are 15 percent of that state’s population, but constitute 61 percent of its victims of sexual assault.
The Justice Department did not prosecute 65 percent of the rape cases on Indian reservations in 2011. And though the department said it had mandated extra training for prosecutors and directed each field office to develop its own plan to help reduce violence against women, some advocates for Native American women said they no longer pressed victims to report rapes.
“I feel bad saying that,” said Sarah Deer, a law professor at William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota and an authority on violent crime on reservations. “But it compounds the trauma if you are willing to stand up and testify and they can’t help you.”
Despite the low rates of arrests and prosecutions, convicted sexual offenders are abundant on tribal lands. The Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, with about 25,000 people, is home to 99 Class 3 sex offenders, those deemed most likely to commit sex crimes after their release from prison. The Tohono O’odham tribe’s reservation in Arizona, where about 15,000 people live, has 184, according to the Justice Department.
By comparison, Boston, with a population of 618,000, has 252 Class 3 offenders. Minneapolis, with a population of 383,000, has 101, according to the local police.
The agencies responsible for aiding the victims of sexual assault among American Indians are often ill prepared.
The Indian Health Service, for instance, provides exams for rape victims at only 27 of the 45 hospitals it finances and, according to a federal report in 2011, did not keep adequate track of the number of sexual assault victims its facilities treat and lacked an overall policy for treating rape victims. Additionally, the health service has just 73 trained sexual assault examiners.
The Justice Department, which has increased the number of F.B.I. agents and United States attorneys on Indian reservations and is seeking to help the Indian Health Service train more nurses, said combating sexual violence was a priority.
“There’s no quick fix. There’s no one thing that will fix the system,” said Virginia Davis, deputy director for policy development in the department’s Office on Violence Against Women. “We’re taking a systematic approach to this — thinking about different ways to solve the problem.”
In the meantime, the problem persists. Lisa Marie Iyotte, 43, who was raped on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, said prosecutors had never told her why they did not charge the man arrested in that crime. He was later convicted of another rape, and when he was released from prison in 2008 and moved back to the reservation, no one told her, she said. She has not seen him yet.
“When I think about it, I say, ‘What am I going to do?’ ” she said. “I don’t know.”
Nine hundred miles away, in the Navajo Nation, Caroline Antone, 50, an advocate for the reservation’s victims of sexual violence who has herself been raped, said sexual assault was virtually routine in her community.
“I know only a couple of people who have not been raped,” she said. “Out of hundreds.”
Saturday, May 05, 2012
A Repository for Eagles Finds Itself In Demand - NYTimes.com
By DAN FROSCH
Published: May 4, 2012
Miles from downtown Denver, in a small warehouse on the city’s edge, Bernadette Atencio watched as two men methodically bundled piles of dead eagles into boxes, careful to include enough frozen gel packs so the remains would not thaw.
“This one’s going to Prescott, Ariz.,” Ms. Atencio said, nodding toward one bird tightly parceled in plastic. “That one’s going to Pendleton, Ore.”
Despite appearances, this was not some surreptitious animal-smuggling ring. It was a typical Wednesday at the National Eagle Repository, the only place where American Indians can legally obtain bald and golden eagles from the federal government for traditional ceremonies.
Through a series of federal acts dating to the 1940s, bald and golden eagles have been fiercely protected. It is illegal to hunt the birds and also to collect feathers or eagle parts without the proper permit.
And so, for more than 30 years, this United States Fish and Wildlife Service program has been shipping thousands of eagle carcasses and parts to American Indians, who view the animals as sacred.
But a growing backlog of applications, and a slew of recent court battles over when American Indians can lawfully obtain eagles on their own, has raised questions about whether the repository is sufficient.
Currently, tribal members seeking an immature golden eagle, the most coveted bird, must wait about four and a half years. Wait times for a bald eagle are two years. Despite the efforts by the Wildlife Service to ship animals as swiftly as possible, the waiting list has swelled to more than 6,000 applications.
“More and more of our young people are going back to our spiritual way of life, and we can’t do our ceremonies without the eagles,” said Lee Plenty Wolf, a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe who lives in Fort Collins, Colo., and received a bald eagle on April 26 after waiting almost three years.
Federal law, however, forbids anyone without a specialized permit who finds a dead eagle or eagle feathers from taking them. Each week on average, the repository receives dozens of dead eagles or parts sent from across the country by state and federal wildlife officers. Some have died naturally; others were roadkill or electrocuted by power lines.
But with 4,500 requests coming in each year, the repository simply does not have enough eagles, said Ms. Atencio, who supervises the warehouse, in an old Army maintenance building.
“It’s a supply and demand issue, and we need more supply,” she said. “It’s a double-edged sword. To fill all the requests in a timely manner means we need more dead birds.”
Having to wait so long to use eagles in religious ceremonies has become a source of frustration for many tribes.
“Eagles are sacred to us, so of course we are interested in eagle protection,” said Melissa Holds the Enemy, a lawyer for the Crow tribe in Montana. “But there is a huge disconnect that is not being addressed. Protecting eagles and accommodating Indian religious freedoms do not need to conflict with one another.”
Driven by the delays, the Crow have been fashioning a plan to present to Fish and Wildlife officials that would allow tribal members with permits to keep dead eagles found on tribal land, Ms. Holds the Enemy said.
Daniel M. Ashe, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in an e-mail that the agency was especially sensitive to American Indians’ religious needs and recently streamlined the application process to reduce wait times.
Mr. Ashe also cited a special program that has, in recent years, allowed five tribes to keep injured eagles that could not be released in the wild. The tribes are permitted to distribute naturally molted feathers for ceremonial use, but cannot kill the birds.
“We understand the importance of eagles to the religious beliefs of tribal members, and we are committed to doing everything we can, within the boundaries of federal law and our mandate to ensure healthy eagle populations in the wild, to improve tribes’ access to eagles for religious purposes,” he said.
Debate over the issue has also played out in courtrooms of late. In 2005, a Northern Arapaho man, Winslow Friday, was prosecuted for killing a bald eagle on tribal land. Mr. Friday’s lawyer, John Carlson, argued that the repository’s wait time was intolerably long and that when birds were sent to tribe members, they were often too badly burned or decomposed for use.
A federal judge in Wyoming, William F. Downes, dismissed the charge against Mr. Friday. But the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, overturned the ruling. Mr. Friday eventually pleaded guilty in tribal court and paid a $2,500 fine.
In March, the Fish and Wildlife Service granted the Northern Arapaho a permit to “take,” or kill, two bald eagles for religious purposes. The tribe, which initially applied for the permit more than two years ago, had filed a federal lawsuit in 2011 saying the process was taking too long. Applications for such permits are rare.
On March 30, a lawyer for the Northern Arapaho filed an amended complaint in federal court in Cheyenne, Wyo., calling the permit “a sham” because it forced the tribe to obtain the eagles off its reservation, which left tribal members subject to prosecution under state law.
According to Jerome Ford, assistant director of the Wildlife Service’s migratory bird program, a joint tribal statute between the Eastern Shoshone tribe and the Northern Arapaho, who share the Wind River Reservation, prohibits the taking of eagles on the actual reservation.
The permit was “the only option that did not create a conflict” between the two tribes, he said.
As that case continues, Fish and Wildlife officials planned to meet this summer with tribal governments to figure out ways to speed the process for receiving eagle feathers.
“This is an issue across all tribal nations,” said Myron Pourier, who sits on the executive board for the Oglala Sioux tribe in South Dakota, which hopes to build its own eagle repository. “All of them are going through the same federal red tape when they shouldn’t be. Especially when this is a part of our way of life.”
Published: May 4, 2012
Miles from downtown Denver, in a small warehouse on the city’s edge, Bernadette Atencio watched as two men methodically bundled piles of dead eagles into boxes, careful to include enough frozen gel packs so the remains would not thaw.
“This one’s going to Prescott, Ariz.,” Ms. Atencio said, nodding toward one bird tightly parceled in plastic. “That one’s going to Pendleton, Ore.”
Despite appearances, this was not some surreptitious animal-smuggling ring. It was a typical Wednesday at the National Eagle Repository, the only place where American Indians can legally obtain bald and golden eagles from the federal government for traditional ceremonies.
Through a series of federal acts dating to the 1940s, bald and golden eagles have been fiercely protected. It is illegal to hunt the birds and also to collect feathers or eagle parts without the proper permit.
And so, for more than 30 years, this United States Fish and Wildlife Service program has been shipping thousands of eagle carcasses and parts to American Indians, who view the animals as sacred.
But a growing backlog of applications, and a slew of recent court battles over when American Indians can lawfully obtain eagles on their own, has raised questions about whether the repository is sufficient.
Currently, tribal members seeking an immature golden eagle, the most coveted bird, must wait about four and a half years. Wait times for a bald eagle are two years. Despite the efforts by the Wildlife Service to ship animals as swiftly as possible, the waiting list has swelled to more than 6,000 applications.
“More and more of our young people are going back to our spiritual way of life, and we can’t do our ceremonies without the eagles,” said Lee Plenty Wolf, a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe who lives in Fort Collins, Colo., and received a bald eagle on April 26 after waiting almost three years.
Federal law, however, forbids anyone without a specialized permit who finds a dead eagle or eagle feathers from taking them. Each week on average, the repository receives dozens of dead eagles or parts sent from across the country by state and federal wildlife officers. Some have died naturally; others were roadkill or electrocuted by power lines.
But with 4,500 requests coming in each year, the repository simply does not have enough eagles, said Ms. Atencio, who supervises the warehouse, in an old Army maintenance building.
“It’s a supply and demand issue, and we need more supply,” she said. “It’s a double-edged sword. To fill all the requests in a timely manner means we need more dead birds.”
Having to wait so long to use eagles in religious ceremonies has become a source of frustration for many tribes.
“Eagles are sacred to us, so of course we are interested in eagle protection,” said Melissa Holds the Enemy, a lawyer for the Crow tribe in Montana. “But there is a huge disconnect that is not being addressed. Protecting eagles and accommodating Indian religious freedoms do not need to conflict with one another.”
Driven by the delays, the Crow have been fashioning a plan to present to Fish and Wildlife officials that would allow tribal members with permits to keep dead eagles found on tribal land, Ms. Holds the Enemy said.
Daniel M. Ashe, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in an e-mail that the agency was especially sensitive to American Indians’ religious needs and recently streamlined the application process to reduce wait times.
Mr. Ashe also cited a special program that has, in recent years, allowed five tribes to keep injured eagles that could not be released in the wild. The tribes are permitted to distribute naturally molted feathers for ceremonial use, but cannot kill the birds.
“We understand the importance of eagles to the religious beliefs of tribal members, and we are committed to doing everything we can, within the boundaries of federal law and our mandate to ensure healthy eagle populations in the wild, to improve tribes’ access to eagles for religious purposes,” he said.
Debate over the issue has also played out in courtrooms of late. In 2005, a Northern Arapaho man, Winslow Friday, was prosecuted for killing a bald eagle on tribal land. Mr. Friday’s lawyer, John Carlson, argued that the repository’s wait time was intolerably long and that when birds were sent to tribe members, they were often too badly burned or decomposed for use.
A federal judge in Wyoming, William F. Downes, dismissed the charge against Mr. Friday. But the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, overturned the ruling. Mr. Friday eventually pleaded guilty in tribal court and paid a $2,500 fine.
In March, the Fish and Wildlife Service granted the Northern Arapaho a permit to “take,” or kill, two bald eagles for religious purposes. The tribe, which initially applied for the permit more than two years ago, had filed a federal lawsuit in 2011 saying the process was taking too long. Applications for such permits are rare.
On March 30, a lawyer for the Northern Arapaho filed an amended complaint in federal court in Cheyenne, Wyo., calling the permit “a sham” because it forced the tribe to obtain the eagles off its reservation, which left tribal members subject to prosecution under state law.
According to Jerome Ford, assistant director of the Wildlife Service’s migratory bird program, a joint tribal statute between the Eastern Shoshone tribe and the Northern Arapaho, who share the Wind River Reservation, prohibits the taking of eagles on the actual reservation.
The permit was “the only option that did not create a conflict” between the two tribes, he said.
As that case continues, Fish and Wildlife officials planned to meet this summer with tribal governments to figure out ways to speed the process for receiving eagle feathers.
“This is an issue across all tribal nations,” said Myron Pourier, who sits on the executive board for the Oglala Sioux tribe in South Dakota, which hopes to build its own eagle repository. “All of them are going through the same federal red tape when they shouldn’t be. Especially when this is a part of our way of life.”
Friday, April 27, 2012
Bison Return to Montana Prairie - NYTimes.com
By NATE SCHWEBER
Published: April 26, 2012
WOLF POINT, Mont. — Sioux and Assiniboine tribe members wailed a welcome song last month as around 60 bison from Yellowstone National Park stormed onto a prairie pasture that had not felt a bison’s hoof for almost 140 years.
That historic homecoming came just 11 days after 71 pureblood bison, descended from one of Montana’s last wild herds, were released nearby onto untilled grassland owned by a charity with a vision of building a haven for prairie wildlife. Some hunters and conservationists are now calling for bison to be reintroduced to a million-acre wildlife refuge spanning this remote region.
“Populations of all native Montana wildlife have been allowed to rebound except bison; it’s time to take care of them like they once took care of us,” said Robert Magnan, 58, director of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation’s Fish and Game Department, who will oversee the transplanted Yellowstone bison program.
But with several groups now navigating a complex and contentious path to return bison to these plains, agribusiness is fighting back. Many farmers and ranchers fear that bison, particularly those from Yellowstone, might be mismanaged and damage private property, and worry that they would compete for grass with their own herds.
“Bison are a romantic notion, but they don’t belong today,” said Curt McCann, 46, a Chinook rancher who this month drove four hours to a public meeting in Jordan to speak against bison reintroduction.
When the explorer Meriwether Lewis followed the Missouri River through this region in 1805, he came across bison herds he described as “innumerable.” Just eight decades later, a young Theodore Roosevelt noted that all that remained were “countless” bleached skulls covering the Montana badlands.
Scientists estimate that tens of millions of bison once roamed America, but by 1902 there were only 23 known survivors in the wild, all hiding from poachers in a remote Yellowstone valley. For decades, attempts to transplant bison from the rebounding Yellowstone herd were thwarted, despite requests from tribes to steward some of the animals.
“I call them my brothers and sisters because they are a genetic link to the same ones my ancestors hunted,” said Tote Gray Hawk, 54, a Sioux who has brought the Fort Peck bison hay and water each day since their arrival. Their meat, lower in cholesterol than beef, will feed elderly tribe members and their skulls will be used in traditional sun dance ceremonies, he said.
The last hunt for indigenous bison on the Fort Peck reservation happened in 1873. In the 1880s, hundreds of tribe members starved to death on the barren land. Around them homesteaders from Europe began wresting an agricultural living from this windswept expanse of rolling amber in northeast Montana. Most of the neighboring farmers and ranchers today are descendants of those pioneers, and they safeguard their traditions with generational grit.
“Bison is a big issue that could really impact our livelihood,” said Brett Dailey, 52, who ranches near Jordan.
Today there are three million cattle in Montana and agribusiness is the state’s biggest industry, but not a single bison roams free. A 2011 survey commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation showed that a majority of state residents support reintroducing huntable bison to the vast Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, similar to a Utah herd created in 1941 from the last few bison allowed out of Yellowstone.
“Within this sea of agriculture there is room for small islands of conservation,” said Sean Gerrity, president of the American Prairie Reserve, the charity that brought the group of genetically pure bison back to a pasture just north of the refuge.
The arrival of Yellowstone bison was welcome news around the troubled Fort Peck reservation. When the first calf was born on Sunday, a rust-colored baby bull, tribal flags still hung at half-staff for a teenage boy who had committed suicide days earlier. Rates of poverty, unemployment, disease and addiction hover stubbornly above national averages here.
Census data shows that around northeast Montana, a prairie expanse almost the size of Indiana, most county populations peaked in the early 1900s and have since dropped by almost half.
The region’s fastest growing economic engine, oil production, is proving a mixed blessing. In 2010 the Environmental Protection Agency reported that toxic chemicals from nearby drilling contaminated drinking water supplies for Poplar, a reservation town of around 3,000. This year a schoolteacher from Sidney, near the North Dakota border, was kidnapped during her morning jog and murdered. The suspects are two Colorado roughnecks.
“These bison represent healing,” said Iris Greybull, 62, of Poplar.
The bison debate has dredged up old tensions between tribes and their neighbors. Before Ms. Greybull, a Sioux, spoke in favor of the animals last fall at a fractious meeting in Glasgow, dozens of farmers and ranchers walked out in protest.
She and other tribe members say they see an ugly double standard in the fact that there are more than 130 private bison ranches in the state, including one belonging to the mogul Ted Turner housing dozens of controversial Yellowstone bison, and yet only the Fort Peck herd has been visited by protesters.
But some say the bison on the ranches do not pose the threat that the wild ones do.
“Unless they have the German wall and a moat with a bunch of crocodiles and piranhas, they’re not going to contain those woolly tanks,” said State Senator John Brenden of nearby Scobey, who has long done battle on the bison issue in the state Legislature.
Around a century ago some Yellowstone bison contracted disease from domestic livestock and in recent decades thousands have been slaughtered in an effort to protect ranchers’ herds. At the direction of Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana, a few of these bison were quarantined for years and certified healthy. Some may soon go to the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, about 170 miles west of Fort Peck, pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by opponents.
“I took a lot of arrows for this, but it was the right thing to do,” Mr. Schweitzer said. “If you want to get into a fistfight in Montana, go into a bar and share your opinion about bison or wolves.”
Published: April 26, 2012
WOLF POINT, Mont. — Sioux and Assiniboine tribe members wailed a welcome song last month as around 60 bison from Yellowstone National Park stormed onto a prairie pasture that had not felt a bison’s hoof for almost 140 years.
That historic homecoming came just 11 days after 71 pureblood bison, descended from one of Montana’s last wild herds, were released nearby onto untilled grassland owned by a charity with a vision of building a haven for prairie wildlife. Some hunters and conservationists are now calling for bison to be reintroduced to a million-acre wildlife refuge spanning this remote region.
“Populations of all native Montana wildlife have been allowed to rebound except bison; it’s time to take care of them like they once took care of us,” said Robert Magnan, 58, director of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation’s Fish and Game Department, who will oversee the transplanted Yellowstone bison program.
But with several groups now navigating a complex and contentious path to return bison to these plains, agribusiness is fighting back. Many farmers and ranchers fear that bison, particularly those from Yellowstone, might be mismanaged and damage private property, and worry that they would compete for grass with their own herds.
“Bison are a romantic notion, but they don’t belong today,” said Curt McCann, 46, a Chinook rancher who this month drove four hours to a public meeting in Jordan to speak against bison reintroduction.
When the explorer Meriwether Lewis followed the Missouri River through this region in 1805, he came across bison herds he described as “innumerable.” Just eight decades later, a young Theodore Roosevelt noted that all that remained were “countless” bleached skulls covering the Montana badlands.
Scientists estimate that tens of millions of bison once roamed America, but by 1902 there were only 23 known survivors in the wild, all hiding from poachers in a remote Yellowstone valley. For decades, attempts to transplant bison from the rebounding Yellowstone herd were thwarted, despite requests from tribes to steward some of the animals.
“I call them my brothers and sisters because they are a genetic link to the same ones my ancestors hunted,” said Tote Gray Hawk, 54, a Sioux who has brought the Fort Peck bison hay and water each day since their arrival. Their meat, lower in cholesterol than beef, will feed elderly tribe members and their skulls will be used in traditional sun dance ceremonies, he said.
The last hunt for indigenous bison on the Fort Peck reservation happened in 1873. In the 1880s, hundreds of tribe members starved to death on the barren land. Around them homesteaders from Europe began wresting an agricultural living from this windswept expanse of rolling amber in northeast Montana. Most of the neighboring farmers and ranchers today are descendants of those pioneers, and they safeguard their traditions with generational grit.
“Bison is a big issue that could really impact our livelihood,” said Brett Dailey, 52, who ranches near Jordan.
Today there are three million cattle in Montana and agribusiness is the state’s biggest industry, but not a single bison roams free. A 2011 survey commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation showed that a majority of state residents support reintroducing huntable bison to the vast Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, similar to a Utah herd created in 1941 from the last few bison allowed out of Yellowstone.
“Within this sea of agriculture there is room for small islands of conservation,” said Sean Gerrity, president of the American Prairie Reserve, the charity that brought the group of genetically pure bison back to a pasture just north of the refuge.
The arrival of Yellowstone bison was welcome news around the troubled Fort Peck reservation. When the first calf was born on Sunday, a rust-colored baby bull, tribal flags still hung at half-staff for a teenage boy who had committed suicide days earlier. Rates of poverty, unemployment, disease and addiction hover stubbornly above national averages here.
Census data shows that around northeast Montana, a prairie expanse almost the size of Indiana, most county populations peaked in the early 1900s and have since dropped by almost half.
The region’s fastest growing economic engine, oil production, is proving a mixed blessing. In 2010 the Environmental Protection Agency reported that toxic chemicals from nearby drilling contaminated drinking water supplies for Poplar, a reservation town of around 3,000. This year a schoolteacher from Sidney, near the North Dakota border, was kidnapped during her morning jog and murdered. The suspects are two Colorado roughnecks.
“These bison represent healing,” said Iris Greybull, 62, of Poplar.
The bison debate has dredged up old tensions between tribes and their neighbors. Before Ms. Greybull, a Sioux, spoke in favor of the animals last fall at a fractious meeting in Glasgow, dozens of farmers and ranchers walked out in protest.
She and other tribe members say they see an ugly double standard in the fact that there are more than 130 private bison ranches in the state, including one belonging to the mogul Ted Turner housing dozens of controversial Yellowstone bison, and yet only the Fort Peck herd has been visited by protesters.
But some say the bison on the ranches do not pose the threat that the wild ones do.
“Unless they have the German wall and a moat with a bunch of crocodiles and piranhas, they’re not going to contain those woolly tanks,” said State Senator John Brenden of nearby Scobey, who has long done battle on the bison issue in the state Legislature.
Around a century ago some Yellowstone bison contracted disease from domestic livestock and in recent decades thousands have been slaughtered in an effort to protect ranchers’ herds. At the direction of Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana, a few of these bison were quarantined for years and certified healthy. Some may soon go to the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, about 170 miles west of Fort Peck, pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by opponents.
“I took a lot of arrows for this, but it was the right thing to do,” Mr. Schweitzer said. “If you want to get into a fistfight in Montana, go into a bar and share your opinion about bison or wolves.”
Friday, April 13, 2012
U.S. to Pay $1 Billion Settlement to Indian Tribes - NYTimes.com
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: April 13, 2012
Published: April 13, 2012
In one of the largest financial settlements made to American Indian tribes, the federal government said this week that it had ended dozens of lawsuits by agreeing to pay tribes more than $1 billion for the mismanagement of funds and natural resources that the government holds in trust.
The Justice Department announced on Wednesday that it had agreed to pay 41 tribes — many in the Western United States — a total of about $1.023 billion because the Interior and Treasury Departments had failed to adequately oversee concessions on Indian lands from companies that exploit a wide variety of resources, including minerals, timber, oil and gas, dating back more than 100 years in some cases.
The Interior Department, which manages about 56 million acres for Indian tribes and oversees more than 100,000 leases on those lands, has long been accused by tribes of doing a poor job of keeping track of the tribal funds it maintains and of not being diligent in collecting fees from companies that hold leases on reservations and elsewhere in Indian country. In addition to administering the land leases, the Interior Department manages about 2,500 trust accounts for more than 250 tribes.
“These settlements fairly and honorably resolve historical grievances over the accounting and management of tribal trust funds, trust lands and other nonmonetary trust resources that, for far too long, have been a source of conflict between Indian tribes and the United States,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement.
The Interior Department says it has developed better accounting systems to avoid future problems.
About 60 other similar lawsuits by tribes against the United States have not been settled, the government said.
The amount each tribe will receive is based on a formula that takes into account how much land and money the government held in trust, and the value of the concessions. Tribes holding oil and gas concessions, which are usually of far greater value, generally will receive the most from the settlement.
The Osage tribe of Oklahoma, for example — because of its extensive oil and gas reserves — will get $380 million. The tribe has about 16,000 members.
Among the other 41 tribes receiving money are the Minnesota Chippewa tribe, which has about 40,000 members and will get about $2 million; the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington State, which has about 10,000 members and will get $193 million; and the Nez Perce tribe, which has 4,000 members on its Idaho reservation, and will receive $34 million.
Many tribes say they have not decided how to spend the money. In most cases, tribal councils — the elected governing bodies — will have the ultimate authority. Tribes are variously considering making monthly payments to members, establishing loan programs, financing social service groups, improving infrastructure on reservations and undertaking environmental initiatives.
Heather Keen, a spokeswoman for the Coeur d’Alene tribe in Idaho, said that while the tribe was doing well economically — it generates $309 million annually in economic activity, including at a casino resort — the $18 million the 2,000-member tribe will receive represents an important boost.
Large swaths of the tribe’s land, she said, were damaged by clear-cutting in the 1970s and 1980s.
Some tribes will get the money as early as next week, arriving at a time when many reservations rank among the nation’s poorest places. About half of the people on the Mescalero Apache reservation in New Mexico, for example, live in poverty. In the 1990s, the tribe considered storing nuclear waste on the reservation because members would have earned about $250 million in payments over 40 years. Now the tribe, which has about 4,000 members, will get $33 million from the settlement.
Chief James Allan, chairman of the Coeur d’Alene tribe, said that despite longstanding tensions between tribes and the federal government, the settlement represented the fairness with which the Obama administration had treated American Indians.
“They have kept their promise to Native Americans to ensure we are heard in Washington,” Mr. Allan said. “He has not made treaties with us, but he gave us his word. And his word has been golden.”
President Obama signed legislation in December 2010 authorizing payment for a similar, though far larger, settlement for Indians. That money, totaling $3.4 billion, has not been distributed because of several pending lawsuits.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Street artist Jetsonorama tries a new kind of healing in Navajoland — High Country News
By Sarah Gilman
In 1991, a young doctor delivered a baby Navajo girl in his backseat. A man had pounded on his door earlier that evening, his girlfriend in labor and his truck too slow for the 50-mile trip to the Tuba City, Ariz., hospital. The doctor loaded the woman into his own car, thinking they could make it. The baby, whom we'll call Emily, had other ideas.
Sixteen years later, Emily was in treatment for meth abuse. In 2009, the doctor visited the girl in jail, where she was serving time for drunk driving. Her drinking had worsened after her mother's death, she told him. But she looked hopeful: In nine days she'd be out. Then, she promised, she'd stay clean.
The doctor was at a turning point of his own. He told the girl that he had started moonlighting as a street artist under the pseudonym Jetsonorama, which he prefers we use in print. It was a different sort of healing project.
"(Emily's) story is very typical here on the Rez," Jetsonorama says now from his home in Inscription House, in northeastern Arizona, where he's the only permanent physician at the Indian Health Service's clinic. "The recidivism rate is quite high, the teen pregnancy rate is quite high. There's an epidemic of methamphetamine use. In some ways, there's not a lot of hope. I'm trying to present especially positive images of the Navajo on the reservation -- to inject an element of beauty, an element of surprise and an element, hopefully, of pride."
He draws photos from his portfolio, enlarges them in two-by-two-foot sections at a print shop, cuts them out on his kitchen floor, and uses wheatpaste -- a mixture of Bluebird flour (favored by Navajo grandmas), sugar and water -- to attach them, piece by piece, to ruined buildings, roadside jewelry kiosks, market walls, water tanks. Any surface will do, as long as it's big enough for his subjects to stand out against the vast stretch of desert between Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon, where tourists race through at 70 miles per hour. The images are monolithic, visually arresting and biodegradable -- echoes of human life on the landscape, almost as fleeting in the wind and weather as the moments captured in the photos themselves.
A black man originally from Raleigh, N.C., Jetsonorama sports a trim, frosty beard and often a jaunty fedora and sunglasses, looking unassailably hip for his 55 years. He traces his artistic inclinations back to a seventh-grade stint at a progressive, hippie-run Quaker school. Later, during his family practice residency, he dabbled in graffiti and hip-hop.
Jetsonorama settled permanently on the Rez in 1987. There, a neighbor helped him assemble a darkroom, and he began documenting Navajo life. In the early '90s, he took to posting small prints around Flagstaff. That idea evolved into the wheatpasting project after a 2009 sabbatical to Brazil, where he spent time with a community of street artists and dug more deeply into that world -- finding particular inspiration in the pasting work of the renowned street artist JR. The doctor's own handle is a mashup of his initials, the name of a family dog, an email address, and the 1960s-era space-age cartoon.
The response to Jetsonorama's "hits" -- both sanctioned and unsanctioned -- over the last two and a half years has been largely positive. The pieces spark a sort of spontaneous community-building: Passersby stop to investigate, trade stories about the people pictured, share thoughts about the images with others later. Last fall, Jetsonorama decided to push these off-the-cuff conversations to a new level with more provocative pieces, such as an image of a baby underneath a large chunk of coal -- a metaphorical black cloud referencing the tribe's complex relationship with the fuel.
The work can be tricky. Last year, he learned to be more careful after some tribal members read a lurking coyote in one of his pieces as a skinwalker -- a Navajo witch. He tries to be respectful, saving his edgier and more magical-realist proclivities for his urban pieces. "Who am I as an outsider to use images from the culture and give them back to the people?" he observes. "But I think it's important that I'm here. I'm trying to facilitate understanding and growth and exchange."
"He's earned that right, especially in his capacity as a medical doctor," says longtime friend Shonto Begay, a Navajo artist. "What he's done with the people -- it's really special. He's like a latter-day medicine man."
It's fitting that Jetsonorama calls many of his pastings "Love Letters to the Navajo Nation," for they seem to celebrate the grace, strength, and myriad ephemeral beauties that arise even in the most difficult places. Just six hours after Emily's birth back in 1991, Jetsonorama attended a healing ceremony for another patient -- a toddler who had suffered febrile seizures. A healer and his daughter spent all night composing a meticulous, multicolored sand painting, then sang a prayer and placed the child at its center to swirl her hands and feet as she wished. "The painting ... was being erased as (she) began her journey to wholeness," Jetsonorama later recounted on his blog. Wheatpasting is like that, too, the images fading once their purpose is served. "The healing," he wrote, "is in the letting go."
In 1991, a young doctor delivered a baby Navajo girl in his backseat. A man had pounded on his door earlier that evening, his girlfriend in labor and his truck too slow for the 50-mile trip to the Tuba City, Ariz., hospital. The doctor loaded the woman into his own car, thinking they could make it. The baby, whom we'll call Emily, had other ideas.
Sixteen years later, Emily was in treatment for meth abuse. In 2009, the doctor visited the girl in jail, where she was serving time for drunk driving. Her drinking had worsened after her mother's death, she told him. But she looked hopeful: In nine days she'd be out. Then, she promised, she'd stay clean.
The doctor was at a turning point of his own. He told the girl that he had started moonlighting as a street artist under the pseudonym Jetsonorama, which he prefers we use in print. It was a different sort of healing project.
"(Emily's) story is very typical here on the Rez," Jetsonorama says now from his home in Inscription House, in northeastern Arizona, where he's the only permanent physician at the Indian Health Service's clinic. "The recidivism rate is quite high, the teen pregnancy rate is quite high. There's an epidemic of methamphetamine use. In some ways, there's not a lot of hope. I'm trying to present especially positive images of the Navajo on the reservation -- to inject an element of beauty, an element of surprise and an element, hopefully, of pride."
He draws photos from his portfolio, enlarges them in two-by-two-foot sections at a print shop, cuts them out on his kitchen floor, and uses wheatpaste -- a mixture of Bluebird flour (favored by Navajo grandmas), sugar and water -- to attach them, piece by piece, to ruined buildings, roadside jewelry kiosks, market walls, water tanks. Any surface will do, as long as it's big enough for his subjects to stand out against the vast stretch of desert between Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon, where tourists race through at 70 miles per hour. The images are monolithic, visually arresting and biodegradable -- echoes of human life on the landscape, almost as fleeting in the wind and weather as the moments captured in the photos themselves.
A black man originally from Raleigh, N.C., Jetsonorama sports a trim, frosty beard and often a jaunty fedora and sunglasses, looking unassailably hip for his 55 years. He traces his artistic inclinations back to a seventh-grade stint at a progressive, hippie-run Quaker school. Later, during his family practice residency, he dabbled in graffiti and hip-hop.
Jetsonorama settled permanently on the Rez in 1987. There, a neighbor helped him assemble a darkroom, and he began documenting Navajo life. In the early '90s, he took to posting small prints around Flagstaff. That idea evolved into the wheatpasting project after a 2009 sabbatical to Brazil, where he spent time with a community of street artists and dug more deeply into that world -- finding particular inspiration in the pasting work of the renowned street artist JR. The doctor's own handle is a mashup of his initials, the name of a family dog, an email address, and the 1960s-era space-age cartoon.
The response to Jetsonorama's "hits" -- both sanctioned and unsanctioned -- over the last two and a half years has been largely positive. The pieces spark a sort of spontaneous community-building: Passersby stop to investigate, trade stories about the people pictured, share thoughts about the images with others later. Last fall, Jetsonorama decided to push these off-the-cuff conversations to a new level with more provocative pieces, such as an image of a baby underneath a large chunk of coal -- a metaphorical black cloud referencing the tribe's complex relationship with the fuel.
The work can be tricky. Last year, he learned to be more careful after some tribal members read a lurking coyote in one of his pieces as a skinwalker -- a Navajo witch. He tries to be respectful, saving his edgier and more magical-realist proclivities for his urban pieces. "Who am I as an outsider to use images from the culture and give them back to the people?" he observes. "But I think it's important that I'm here. I'm trying to facilitate understanding and growth and exchange."
"He's earned that right, especially in his capacity as a medical doctor," says longtime friend Shonto Begay, a Navajo artist. "What he's done with the people -- it's really special. He's like a latter-day medicine man."
It's fitting that Jetsonorama calls many of his pastings "Love Letters to the Navajo Nation," for they seem to celebrate the grace, strength, and myriad ephemeral beauties that arise even in the most difficult places. Just six hours after Emily's birth back in 1991, Jetsonorama attended a healing ceremony for another patient -- a toddler who had suffered febrile seizures. A healer and his daughter spent all night composing a meticulous, multicolored sand painting, then sang a prayer and placed the child at its center to swirl her hands and feet as she wished. "The painting ... was being erased as (she) began her journey to wholeness," Jetsonorama later recounted on his blog. Wheatpasting is like that, too, the images fading once their purpose is served. "The healing," he wrote, "is in the letting go."
Monday, March 19, 2012
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Next to Tribe With Alcohol Ban, a Hub of Beer - NYTimes.com
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: March 5, 2012
WHITECLAY, Neb. — Four rickety metal shacks that line the main road in this town of maybe 10 people sell an average of 13,000 cans of beer and malt liquor a day. The nearest sizable city is two hours north. But just 240 yards north — across the state line in South Dakota — is the sprawling Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where alcohol has been banned since the 1970s.
Nearly all the alcohol bought in Whiteclay winds up on Pine Ridge or is consumed by its residents, tribal officials say. Pine Ridge is home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe and is one of the poorest places in the country, according to 2010 census data.
In February, the Oglala Sioux filed a federal lawsuit against the stores, and Anheuser-Busch and several other large American brewing companies, accusing them of encouraging the illegal purchase, possession, transport and consumption of alcohol on the reservation. Fetal alcohol syndrome, fatal drunken driving accidents and beer-fueled murders have cast a pall over Pine Ridge for decades.
After the lawsuit was filed, Whiteclay’s two-lane road, Highway 87, bustled with traffic driving to and from the beer stores. Dozens of people in various states of inebriation wandered along the road. Other men and women were passed out in front of abandoned buildings. A Hank Williams Jr. 45, “I’d Rather Be Gone,” was among the detritus along the road, as well as empty liquor bottles, a copy of “Tabernacle Hymns No. 3,” soiled clothing and a dead puppy.
Thomas M. White, the Omaha lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the tribe, describes Whiteclay as “Sodom and Gomorrah.” There is a lawless feeling in the town.
The Sheridan County sheriff’s office, responsible for patrolling Whiteclay, is 19 miles away and has only five deputies. The department says it lacks the resources to properly patrol the town. The tribal police department, which has 38 officers — down from 101 six years ago — lacks jurisdiction.
John Yellow Bird Steele, the tribal president, said 90 percent of criminal cases in the court system and a similar number of reservation illnesses were caused by alcohol — the vast majority of which, he said, was brought illegally from Whiteclay.
“We believe we can’t get ahead, or function, without Whiteclay being addressed,” he said.
On Pine Ridge, which is roughly the size of Connecticut but has a population of about only 45,000, the tribal police last year made 20,000 alcohol-related arrests. As an indication of the depth of the problem, Thomas Poor Bear, a tribal vice president who has been a leader in calling for change in Whiteclay, was arrested and jailed last month and charged with obstructing government function and having consumed alcohol. Mr. Poor Bear has denied the charges, saying he had taken cold medicine. But his lawyer, Tom Clifford, said that his client drank “a couple of beers” before his arrest.
The lawsuit seeks $500 million for costs incurred by the tribe for health care, law enforcement and social services related to chronic drinking, and to limit the amount of beer Whiteclay shops can sell. The legal argument is that the brewers and the stores know that they are selling alcohol to people who have no permissible place to consume it, and who are smuggling it onto the reservation for illegal use and resale. Any sign of alcohol — the smell of beer, walking funny, slurred speech — can get a person arrested in Pine Ridge.
The suit was filed in federal court because the federal authorities oversee Indian reservations and are the ultimate arbiters on alcohol issues. Anheuser-Busch and the other alcohol companies named in the lawsuit declined to comment or did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment.
Excessive alcohol consumption is the leading cause of preventable death among American Indians, and they are affected at about twice the rate of the national average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The lawsuit comes amid a growing debate on Pine Ridge and other reservations about the wisdom of alcohol prohibition.
About a third of the nation’s 310 reservations ban alcohol, but Pine Ridge is the only remaining dry reservation in South Dakota. It abuts the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, which allows alcohol.
Proponents of repealing prohibition say legalizing alcohol would enable tribes to enact tighter controls and to use new revenue for treatment programs.
“Not to disrespect our elders and ancestors, but we’ve gone through several generations,” said Milton Bians, a tribal police captain, who was raised by grandparents because his parents drank.
Though the reservation is dry, nearly every aspect of life there is affected by alcohol. Tribal leaders say four in five families on the reservation have someone with a drinking problem, and one in four babies are born with fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Rates of diabetes, teenage suicide, crime and unemployment are in some cases exponentially higher than national averages, according to federal and tribal data and officials.
The beer store owners declined to comment, citing the lawsuit. Whiteclay’s other businesses, which include two groceries and an auto body shop, say they feel little responsibility.
Victor Clarke, who has lived in Whiteclay 19 years and owns Arrowhead Foods, a grocery that does not sell alcohol, said there would be dozens of places within an hour’s drive where alcohol could be bought if the town’s annual sale of 4.9 million cans of beer and malt liquor was halted.
He said the widespread fear that Whiteclay’s troublesome customers would then move elsewhere virtually guarantees the town’s survival.
“People don’t want Whiteclay to go away,” he said. “The state of Nebraska doesn’t want Whiteclay to go away because it allows problems to be isolated in this one little place. You hear people in the towns around here, saying, ‘We don’t want these guys in our town.’ ”
Each side blames the other for the drunken assaults, robberies and murders that are part of Whiteclay’s ebb and flow.
“A lot of times, there’s a problem that boils up in South Dakota and ends up in Whiteclay,” said Sheriff Terry Robbins of Sheridan County. About the prospect of more patrols, he said, “With the economy the way it is, I don’t see us doing anything that we’re not trying now.” Deputies patrol the town two to three times a day.
The Arrowhead Inn, one of Whiteclay’s four beer stores, has a sign posted saying, “Cash your income tax check here.” The store takes a 3 percent commission. Pine Ridge has no banks, so the liquor stores serve that purpose.
The shop sells a 30-pack of Budweiser cans for $27.25 — a price higher than in New York City, and nearly twice as high as elsewhere in the country. But the drink of choice in Whiteclay is Hurricane High Gravity Lager, a malt liquor brewed by Anheuser-Busch. A 16-ounce can costs $1.50 at the Arrowhead Inn. Its alcohol content is 8.1 percent; regular beer has an alcohol content of about 5 percent.
Daryl Walking, 46, a former Marine who said he has been drinking since he was a boy, said he spends three nights a week in jail for public intoxication and the other four in the cold.
“I’ll curl up against the wall and I’ll wake up half frozen, but I’ll still be O.K.,” he said.
His friend James Whiteface, 43, was recently released from the tribal jail. It was his birthday, and he showed the date of birth on his arrest form to prove it.
“I came here right after I got out,” he said, referring to Whiteclay. “This is where everybody meets.” he said. Mr. Whiteface, a slight man, said he could drink six 16-ounce cans of Hurricane in one sitting.
A Nebraska State Patrol officer drove past. Someone shouted an obscenity. The trooper slammed on the brakes and shouted obscenities back, threatening to call in the sheriff to “clear this town.”
An hour later, there was no sheriff, and the crowds of drinkers had grown thicker
Published with photographs in the New York Times 3/06/12
Published: March 5, 2012
WHITECLAY, Neb. — Four rickety metal shacks that line the main road in this town of maybe 10 people sell an average of 13,000 cans of beer and malt liquor a day. The nearest sizable city is two hours north. But just 240 yards north — across the state line in South Dakota — is the sprawling Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where alcohol has been banned since the 1970s.
Nearly all the alcohol bought in Whiteclay winds up on Pine Ridge or is consumed by its residents, tribal officials say. Pine Ridge is home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe and is one of the poorest places in the country, according to 2010 census data.
In February, the Oglala Sioux filed a federal lawsuit against the stores, and Anheuser-Busch and several other large American brewing companies, accusing them of encouraging the illegal purchase, possession, transport and consumption of alcohol on the reservation. Fetal alcohol syndrome, fatal drunken driving accidents and beer-fueled murders have cast a pall over Pine Ridge for decades.
After the lawsuit was filed, Whiteclay’s two-lane road, Highway 87, bustled with traffic driving to and from the beer stores. Dozens of people in various states of inebriation wandered along the road. Other men and women were passed out in front of abandoned buildings. A Hank Williams Jr. 45, “I’d Rather Be Gone,” was among the detritus along the road, as well as empty liquor bottles, a copy of “Tabernacle Hymns No. 3,” soiled clothing and a dead puppy.
Thomas M. White, the Omaha lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the tribe, describes Whiteclay as “Sodom and Gomorrah.” There is a lawless feeling in the town.
The Sheridan County sheriff’s office, responsible for patrolling Whiteclay, is 19 miles away and has only five deputies. The department says it lacks the resources to properly patrol the town. The tribal police department, which has 38 officers — down from 101 six years ago — lacks jurisdiction.
John Yellow Bird Steele, the tribal president, said 90 percent of criminal cases in the court system and a similar number of reservation illnesses were caused by alcohol — the vast majority of which, he said, was brought illegally from Whiteclay.
“We believe we can’t get ahead, or function, without Whiteclay being addressed,” he said.
On Pine Ridge, which is roughly the size of Connecticut but has a population of about only 45,000, the tribal police last year made 20,000 alcohol-related arrests. As an indication of the depth of the problem, Thomas Poor Bear, a tribal vice president who has been a leader in calling for change in Whiteclay, was arrested and jailed last month and charged with obstructing government function and having consumed alcohol. Mr. Poor Bear has denied the charges, saying he had taken cold medicine. But his lawyer, Tom Clifford, said that his client drank “a couple of beers” before his arrest.
The lawsuit seeks $500 million for costs incurred by the tribe for health care, law enforcement and social services related to chronic drinking, and to limit the amount of beer Whiteclay shops can sell. The legal argument is that the brewers and the stores know that they are selling alcohol to people who have no permissible place to consume it, and who are smuggling it onto the reservation for illegal use and resale. Any sign of alcohol — the smell of beer, walking funny, slurred speech — can get a person arrested in Pine Ridge.
The suit was filed in federal court because the federal authorities oversee Indian reservations and are the ultimate arbiters on alcohol issues. Anheuser-Busch and the other alcohol companies named in the lawsuit declined to comment or did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment.
Excessive alcohol consumption is the leading cause of preventable death among American Indians, and they are affected at about twice the rate of the national average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The lawsuit comes amid a growing debate on Pine Ridge and other reservations about the wisdom of alcohol prohibition.
About a third of the nation’s 310 reservations ban alcohol, but Pine Ridge is the only remaining dry reservation in South Dakota. It abuts the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, which allows alcohol.
Proponents of repealing prohibition say legalizing alcohol would enable tribes to enact tighter controls and to use new revenue for treatment programs.
“Not to disrespect our elders and ancestors, but we’ve gone through several generations,” said Milton Bians, a tribal police captain, who was raised by grandparents because his parents drank.
Though the reservation is dry, nearly every aspect of life there is affected by alcohol. Tribal leaders say four in five families on the reservation have someone with a drinking problem, and one in four babies are born with fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Rates of diabetes, teenage suicide, crime and unemployment are in some cases exponentially higher than national averages, according to federal and tribal data and officials.
The beer store owners declined to comment, citing the lawsuit. Whiteclay’s other businesses, which include two groceries and an auto body shop, say they feel little responsibility.
Victor Clarke, who has lived in Whiteclay 19 years and owns Arrowhead Foods, a grocery that does not sell alcohol, said there would be dozens of places within an hour’s drive where alcohol could be bought if the town’s annual sale of 4.9 million cans of beer and malt liquor was halted.
He said the widespread fear that Whiteclay’s troublesome customers would then move elsewhere virtually guarantees the town’s survival.
“People don’t want Whiteclay to go away,” he said. “The state of Nebraska doesn’t want Whiteclay to go away because it allows problems to be isolated in this one little place. You hear people in the towns around here, saying, ‘We don’t want these guys in our town.’ ”
Each side blames the other for the drunken assaults, robberies and murders that are part of Whiteclay’s ebb and flow.
“A lot of times, there’s a problem that boils up in South Dakota and ends up in Whiteclay,” said Sheriff Terry Robbins of Sheridan County. About the prospect of more patrols, he said, “With the economy the way it is, I don’t see us doing anything that we’re not trying now.” Deputies patrol the town two to three times a day.
The Arrowhead Inn, one of Whiteclay’s four beer stores, has a sign posted saying, “Cash your income tax check here.” The store takes a 3 percent commission. Pine Ridge has no banks, so the liquor stores serve that purpose.
The shop sells a 30-pack of Budweiser cans for $27.25 — a price higher than in New York City, and nearly twice as high as elsewhere in the country. But the drink of choice in Whiteclay is Hurricane High Gravity Lager, a malt liquor brewed by Anheuser-Busch. A 16-ounce can costs $1.50 at the Arrowhead Inn. Its alcohol content is 8.1 percent; regular beer has an alcohol content of about 5 percent.
Daryl Walking, 46, a former Marine who said he has been drinking since he was a boy, said he spends three nights a week in jail for public intoxication and the other four in the cold.
“I’ll curl up against the wall and I’ll wake up half frozen, but I’ll still be O.K.,” he said.
His friend James Whiteface, 43, was recently released from the tribal jail. It was his birthday, and he showed the date of birth on his arrest form to prove it.
“I came here right after I got out,” he said, referring to Whiteclay. “This is where everybody meets.” he said. Mr. Whiteface, a slight man, said he could drink six 16-ounce cans of Hurricane in one sitting.
A Nebraska State Patrol officer drove past. Someone shouted an obscenity. The trooper slammed on the brakes and shouted obscenities back, threatening to call in the sheriff to “clear this town.”
An hour later, there was no sheriff, and the crowds of drinkers had grown thicker
Published with photographs in the New York Times 3/06/12
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Wind River Indian Reservation, Where Brutality Is Banal - NYTimes.com
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: February 2, 2012
WIND RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION, Wyo. — At a boy’s basketball game here last month, Wyoming Indian High School, a perennial state power, was trading baskets with a local rival. The players, long-limbed and athletic, are among the area’s undisputed stars, and their games one of its few diversions. On this night, more than 2,500 cheering, stomping people came to watch.
Outside the gym, in a glass trophy case, are photographs of players from recent championship teams. Someone peered in and, moving his finger along the line of smiling faces, delivered a cruel counterpoint: killed in a car accident at 19 while intoxicated; murdered in his 20s; struck in the head with an ax not long after graduation.
The Obama administration, which has made reducing crime a priority in its attempt to improve the quality of life at dozens of Indian reservations plagued by violence, recently ended a two-year crime-fighting initiative at Wind River and three other reservations deemed to be among the country’s most dangerous.
Nicknamed “the surge,” it was modeled after the military’s Iraq war strategy, circa 2007, which helped change the course of the conflict. Hundreds of officers from the National Park Service and other federal agencies swarmed the reservations, and crime was reduced at three of the four reservations, — including a 68 percent decline at Mescalero Apache in New Mexico, officials said. Wind River, as has been true for much of its turbulent history, bucked the trend: violent crime there increased by 7 percent during the surge, according to the Department of Justice.
Despite its bucolic name, the reservation, nestled among snowcapped peaks and rivers filled with trout, is a place where brutal acts have become banal. A rambling stretch of scrub in central Wyoming the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined, Wind River has a crime rate five to seven times the national average and a long history of ghastly homicides.
During the initiative, which increased the number of officers on the reservation to 37 from 6, crimes included the murder of a 13-year-old girl who had been missing for four days and whose partly clothed body was found under a tree, and the killing of a 25-year-old man, who the police say had been beaten with a child’s car seat and a dumbbell by two friends after a sexual encounter.
“This place has always had the gloom here,” Kim Lambert, a tribal advocate on the reservation, said as she drove by a line of small houses people refer to as “murderer’s row.” “There has always been the horrendous murder. There has always been the white-Indian tention. It’s always been something.”
Crime may be Wind River’s most pressing problem, but it has plenty of company. Life, even by the grim standards of the typical American Indian reservation, is as bleak and punishing as that of any developing country. On average, residents can expect to live 49 years, 20 years fewer than in Iraq. Unemployment, estimated to be higher than 80 percent, is on a par with Zimbabwe’s, and is approaching the proportionate inverse of Wyoming’s 6 percent jobless rate.
The reservation’s high school dropout rate of 40 percent is more than twice the state average. Teenagers and young adults are twice as likely to kill themselves as their peers elsewhere in Wyoming. Child abuse, teen pregnancy, sexual assault and domestic violence are endemic, and alcoholism and drug abuse are so common that residents say positive urinalysis results on drug tests are what bar many from working at the state’s booming oil fields.
On one section of the reservation, people must boil drinking water because chemicals, possibly the result of the oil and natural gas drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, have contaminated the water supply. And fearing the chemicals might explode in a home, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered residents to run fans and otherwise ensure ventilation while bathing or washing clothes.
The difficulties among Wind River’s population of about 14,000 have become so daunting that many believe the reservation, shared by the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone Tribes, is haunted — the ghosts of the innocent killed in an 1864 massacre.
“Anywhere, there are good spirits and bad spirits around,” said Ivan Posey, a member of the Eastern Shoshone Business Council. “But when people are struggling in their lives, those bad spirits come around more often. It’s kind of a yin and yang.”
Why the other reservations were able to curb crime while Wind River was not has been a matter of grave speculation. Some blame Wind River’s geographic isolation and a general apathy on the reservation, while others point to the numerous troubled children being raised by grandparents unable to keep track of them.
During a recent Friday night patrol on the reservation, Michael Shockley, a Wind River police officer whose department lacks even the basic ability to track crimes, said he was surprised to learn that the surge had not reduced violent crime.
Even with 10 fewer officers than it had during the surge, Officer Shockley said, the Police Department responds to all calls, not just the most serious ones. Crime, he said, has appeared to ebb, especially when compared with what he referred to as the bad old days, when on a single night about a year ago, he drove a total of 400 miles, logged 42 calls and arrested 19 people.
Still, signs of disillusionment are ubiquitous: Piles of empty Black Velvet whisky and vodka bottles; discarded prescription bottles for painkillers; gang graffiti; burnt-out homes.
As far as criminality, this is the pinnacle,” Officer Shockley said. “You see everything here.”
The Bureau of Indian Affairs, which oversees the Wind River Police Department, says the rise in violent crime was a result of people reporting offenses they might have ignored before — which suggests that the reservation’s crime rate is even higher than previously thought. In fact, the bureau says, crime has fallen since the surge ended in October, although it did not provide statistics.
Joseph Brooks III, the Wind River police chief, said that one resident, shocked that the police response had gone from hours to minutes, told him, “Chief, if I knew you were going to come immediately, I would have called you later.”
One crime the surge was unable to prevent was the death of Marisa Spoonhunter, an eighth grader at Wyoming Indian Middle School who was killed in April 2010. Her parents recognized her body by the coat they had recently bought for her in Denver.
Marisa’s 21-year-old brother and 19-year-old stepcousin were arrested and convicted. The three had been drinking in a trailer home when Robert Spoonhunter said he blacked out and awoke to find his sister and cousin having sex. An enraged Mr. Spoonhunter said he choked his sister for about 20 seconds before flinging her away. Marisa’s head hit a weight lifting bench.
The men fastened a rope to her ankles and dragged her under a tree. Before resuming drinking, they put her clothes in a burn barrel.
At the sentencing, Vern Spoonhunter, the father of Marissa and Robert, said Marissa had been in the third generation of Spoonhunters to be murdered at Wind River — meeting the same end as his father and brother.
“Now we have two rooms in our home that are empty,” he said, referring to his children. “And that’s what we have to deal with.”
Published: February 2, 2012
WIND RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION, Wyo. — At a boy’s basketball game here last month, Wyoming Indian High School, a perennial state power, was trading baskets with a local rival. The players, long-limbed and athletic, are among the area’s undisputed stars, and their games one of its few diversions. On this night, more than 2,500 cheering, stomping people came to watch.
Outside the gym, in a glass trophy case, are photographs of players from recent championship teams. Someone peered in and, moving his finger along the line of smiling faces, delivered a cruel counterpoint: killed in a car accident at 19 while intoxicated; murdered in his 20s; struck in the head with an ax not long after graduation.
The Obama administration, which has made reducing crime a priority in its attempt to improve the quality of life at dozens of Indian reservations plagued by violence, recently ended a two-year crime-fighting initiative at Wind River and three other reservations deemed to be among the country’s most dangerous.
Nicknamed “the surge,” it was modeled after the military’s Iraq war strategy, circa 2007, which helped change the course of the conflict. Hundreds of officers from the National Park Service and other federal agencies swarmed the reservations, and crime was reduced at three of the four reservations, — including a 68 percent decline at Mescalero Apache in New Mexico, officials said. Wind River, as has been true for much of its turbulent history, bucked the trend: violent crime there increased by 7 percent during the surge, according to the Department of Justice.
Despite its bucolic name, the reservation, nestled among snowcapped peaks and rivers filled with trout, is a place where brutal acts have become banal. A rambling stretch of scrub in central Wyoming the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined, Wind River has a crime rate five to seven times the national average and a long history of ghastly homicides.
During the initiative, which increased the number of officers on the reservation to 37 from 6, crimes included the murder of a 13-year-old girl who had been missing for four days and whose partly clothed body was found under a tree, and the killing of a 25-year-old man, who the police say had been beaten with a child’s car seat and a dumbbell by two friends after a sexual encounter.
“This place has always had the gloom here,” Kim Lambert, a tribal advocate on the reservation, said as she drove by a line of small houses people refer to as “murderer’s row.” “There has always been the horrendous murder. There has always been the white-Indian tention. It’s always been something.”
Crime may be Wind River’s most pressing problem, but it has plenty of company. Life, even by the grim standards of the typical American Indian reservation, is as bleak and punishing as that of any developing country. On average, residents can expect to live 49 years, 20 years fewer than in Iraq. Unemployment, estimated to be higher than 80 percent, is on a par with Zimbabwe’s, and is approaching the proportionate inverse of Wyoming’s 6 percent jobless rate.
The reservation’s high school dropout rate of 40 percent is more than twice the state average. Teenagers and young adults are twice as likely to kill themselves as their peers elsewhere in Wyoming. Child abuse, teen pregnancy, sexual assault and domestic violence are endemic, and alcoholism and drug abuse are so common that residents say positive urinalysis results on drug tests are what bar many from working at the state’s booming oil fields.
On one section of the reservation, people must boil drinking water because chemicals, possibly the result of the oil and natural gas drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, have contaminated the water supply. And fearing the chemicals might explode in a home, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered residents to run fans and otherwise ensure ventilation while bathing or washing clothes.
The difficulties among Wind River’s population of about 14,000 have become so daunting that many believe the reservation, shared by the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone Tribes, is haunted — the ghosts of the innocent killed in an 1864 massacre.
“Anywhere, there are good spirits and bad spirits around,” said Ivan Posey, a member of the Eastern Shoshone Business Council. “But when people are struggling in their lives, those bad spirits come around more often. It’s kind of a yin and yang.”
Why the other reservations were able to curb crime while Wind River was not has been a matter of grave speculation. Some blame Wind River’s geographic isolation and a general apathy on the reservation, while others point to the numerous troubled children being raised by grandparents unable to keep track of them.
During a recent Friday night patrol on the reservation, Michael Shockley, a Wind River police officer whose department lacks even the basic ability to track crimes, said he was surprised to learn that the surge had not reduced violent crime.
Even with 10 fewer officers than it had during the surge, Officer Shockley said, the Police Department responds to all calls, not just the most serious ones. Crime, he said, has appeared to ebb, especially when compared with what he referred to as the bad old days, when on a single night about a year ago, he drove a total of 400 miles, logged 42 calls and arrested 19 people.
Still, signs of disillusionment are ubiquitous: Piles of empty Black Velvet whisky and vodka bottles; discarded prescription bottles for painkillers; gang graffiti; burnt-out homes.
As far as criminality, this is the pinnacle,” Officer Shockley said. “You see everything here.”
The Bureau of Indian Affairs, which oversees the Wind River Police Department, says the rise in violent crime was a result of people reporting offenses they might have ignored before — which suggests that the reservation’s crime rate is even higher than previously thought. In fact, the bureau says, crime has fallen since the surge ended in October, although it did not provide statistics.
Joseph Brooks III, the Wind River police chief, said that one resident, shocked that the police response had gone from hours to minutes, told him, “Chief, if I knew you were going to come immediately, I would have called you later.”
One crime the surge was unable to prevent was the death of Marisa Spoonhunter, an eighth grader at Wyoming Indian Middle School who was killed in April 2010. Her parents recognized her body by the coat they had recently bought for her in Denver.
Marisa’s 21-year-old brother and 19-year-old stepcousin were arrested and convicted. The three had been drinking in a trailer home when Robert Spoonhunter said he blacked out and awoke to find his sister and cousin having sex. An enraged Mr. Spoonhunter said he choked his sister for about 20 seconds before flinging her away. Marisa’s head hit a weight lifting bench.
The men fastened a rope to her ankles and dragged her under a tree. Before resuming drinking, they put her clothes in a burn barrel.
At the sentencing, Vern Spoonhunter, the father of Marissa and Robert, said Marissa had been in the third generation of Spoonhunters to be murdered at Wind River — meeting the same end as his father and brother.
“Now we have two rooms in our home that are empty,” he said, referring to his children. “And that’s what we have to deal with.”
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
For Indian Tribes, Blood Shouldn’t Be Everything - NYTimes.com
AMERICA’S first blood quantum law was passed in Virginia in 1705 in order to determine who had a high enough degree of Indian blood to be classified an Indian — and whose rights could be restricted as a result. You’d think, after all these years, we’d finally manage to kick the concept. But recently, casino-rich Indian tribes in California have been using it themselves to cast out members whose tribal bloodlines, they say, are not pure enough to share in the profits.
What is surprising is not that more than 2,500 tribal members have been disenfranchised for apparently base reasons. (It’s human — and American — nature to want to concentrate wealth in as few hands as possible.) What is surprising is the extent to which Indian communities have continued using a system of blood membership that was imposed upon us in a violation of our sovereignty.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States government entered into treaties with Indian nations that reserved tracts of land for tribal ownership and use and guaranteed annuities in the form of money, goods or medical care. Understandably, tribes and the government needed a way to make sure this material ended up in the right hands. Blood quantum, and sometimes lineal descent, was a handy way of solving that problem. For instance, if one of your grandparents was included on the tribal rolls and you possessed a certain blood quantum — say, you were one-fourth Navajo — the government counted you as Navajo as well.
But it had another benefit, for the government at least, which believed that within a few generations intermarriage and intermixing would eliminate Indian communities, and the government would be off the hook. “As long as grass grows or water runs” — a phrase that was often used in treaties with American Indians — is a relatively permanent term for a contract. “As long as the blood flows” seemed measurably shorter.
Indians themselves knew how artificial this category of tribal membership was, and could use it to their own advantage. Before my tribe, the Ojibwe, established the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota in 1867, Chief Bagone-giizhig lobbied to exclude mixed-bloods from the rolls — not because they weren’t Indians but because, most likely, they formed a competing trader class. Bagone-giizhig swore they would rob White Earth blind. That he was right is a bit beside the point — he probably wanted to rob it blind himself.
Something similar happened after the passage and subsequent amendment of the Dawes Act of 1887, which established a process of allotment under which vast lands held in common were divided into smaller plots for individual Indians. Although excess land could be sold off, full-blood Indians were forbidden to sell. But whites wanted the land, and sent in a genetic investigator. In short order, the number of registered full-bloods at White Earth Reservation went from more than 5,000 to 126.
After Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, effectively ending the allotment of land, the provisions of blood quantum remained ingrained in Indian communities. They determined if you could vote or run for office, where you could live, if you’d receive annuities or assistance, and, today, if you get a cut of the casino profits.
Blood quantum has always been about “the stuff,” and it has always been about exclusion. I know full-blooded Indians who have lived their entire lives on reservations but can’t be enrolled because they have blood from many different tribes, and I know of non-Indians who have been enrolled by accident or stealth just because they’ll get something out of it.
Things were different once. All tribes had their own ways of figuring out who was a member — usually based on language, residence and culture. In the case of the Ojibwe, it was a matter of choosing a side. Especially when we were at war in the early 19th century, with the Dakota — our neighbors (many of whom were our blood relatives) — who you were was largely a matter of whom you killed. Personally, I think this is a more elegant way than many to figure out where you belong.
Who is and who isn’t an Indian is a complicated question, but there are many ways to answer it beyond genetics alone. Tribal enrollees could be required to possess some level of fluency in their native language or pass a basic civics test. On my reservation, no schoolchild is asked to read the treaties that shaped our community or required to know about the branches of tribal government or the role of courts and councils. Or tribal membership could be based, in part, on residency, on some period of naturalization inside the original treaty area (some tribes do consider this). Many nations require military service — tribes don’t have armies, but they could require a year of community service.
Other nations take these things into account, and in doing so they reinforce something we, with our fixation on blood, have forgotten: bending to a common purpose is more important than arising from a common place.
Of course, just remaining alive and Indian for the last 150 years has been one of the hardest things imaginable. A respect for blood is a respect for the integrity of that survival, and lineage should remain a metric for tribal enrollment. But not the only one. Having survived this long and come this far, we must think harder about who we want to be in the future, and do something more than just measure out our teaspoons of blood.
David Treuer, an Ojibwe Indian, is the author of the forthcoming “Rez Life.”
What is surprising is not that more than 2,500 tribal members have been disenfranchised for apparently base reasons. (It’s human — and American — nature to want to concentrate wealth in as few hands as possible.) What is surprising is the extent to which Indian communities have continued using a system of blood membership that was imposed upon us in a violation of our sovereignty.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States government entered into treaties with Indian nations that reserved tracts of land for tribal ownership and use and guaranteed annuities in the form of money, goods or medical care. Understandably, tribes and the government needed a way to make sure this material ended up in the right hands. Blood quantum, and sometimes lineal descent, was a handy way of solving that problem. For instance, if one of your grandparents was included on the tribal rolls and you possessed a certain blood quantum — say, you were one-fourth Navajo — the government counted you as Navajo as well.
But it had another benefit, for the government at least, which believed that within a few generations intermarriage and intermixing would eliminate Indian communities, and the government would be off the hook. “As long as grass grows or water runs” — a phrase that was often used in treaties with American Indians — is a relatively permanent term for a contract. “As long as the blood flows” seemed measurably shorter.
Indians themselves knew how artificial this category of tribal membership was, and could use it to their own advantage. Before my tribe, the Ojibwe, established the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota in 1867, Chief Bagone-giizhig lobbied to exclude mixed-bloods from the rolls — not because they weren’t Indians but because, most likely, they formed a competing trader class. Bagone-giizhig swore they would rob White Earth blind. That he was right is a bit beside the point — he probably wanted to rob it blind himself.
Something similar happened after the passage and subsequent amendment of the Dawes Act of 1887, which established a process of allotment under which vast lands held in common were divided into smaller plots for individual Indians. Although excess land could be sold off, full-blood Indians were forbidden to sell. But whites wanted the land, and sent in a genetic investigator. In short order, the number of registered full-bloods at White Earth Reservation went from more than 5,000 to 126.
After Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, effectively ending the allotment of land, the provisions of blood quantum remained ingrained in Indian communities. They determined if you could vote or run for office, where you could live, if you’d receive annuities or assistance, and, today, if you get a cut of the casino profits.
Blood quantum has always been about “the stuff,” and it has always been about exclusion. I know full-blooded Indians who have lived their entire lives on reservations but can’t be enrolled because they have blood from many different tribes, and I know of non-Indians who have been enrolled by accident or stealth just because they’ll get something out of it.
Things were different once. All tribes had their own ways of figuring out who was a member — usually based on language, residence and culture. In the case of the Ojibwe, it was a matter of choosing a side. Especially when we were at war in the early 19th century, with the Dakota — our neighbors (many of whom were our blood relatives) — who you were was largely a matter of whom you killed. Personally, I think this is a more elegant way than many to figure out where you belong.
Who is and who isn’t an Indian is a complicated question, but there are many ways to answer it beyond genetics alone. Tribal enrollees could be required to possess some level of fluency in their native language or pass a basic civics test. On my reservation, no schoolchild is asked to read the treaties that shaped our community or required to know about the branches of tribal government or the role of courts and councils. Or tribal membership could be based, in part, on residency, on some period of naturalization inside the original treaty area (some tribes do consider this). Many nations require military service — tribes don’t have armies, but they could require a year of community service.
Other nations take these things into account, and in doing so they reinforce something we, with our fixation on blood, have forgotten: bending to a common purpose is more important than arising from a common place.
Of course, just remaining alive and Indian for the last 150 years has been one of the hardest things imaginable. A respect for blood is a respect for the integrity of that survival, and lineage should remain a metric for tribal enrollment. But not the only one. Having survived this long and come this far, we must think harder about who we want to be in the future, and do something more than just measure out our teaspoons of blood.
David Treuer, an Ojibwe Indian, is the author of the forthcoming “Rez Life.”
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
California Indian Tribes Eject Thousands of Members - NYTimes.com
By JAMES DAO
Published: December 12, 2011
COARSEGOLD, Calif. — The six-page, single-spaced letter that Nancy Dondero and about 50 of her relatives received last month was generously salted with legal citations and footnotes. But its meaning was brutally simple. “It is the decision by a majority of the Tribal Council,” the letter said, “that you are hereby disenrolled.”
And with that, Ms. Dondero’s official membership in the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians, the cultural identity card she had carried all her life, summarily ended.
“That’s it,” Ms. Dondero, 58, said. “We’re tribeless.”
Ms. Dondero and her clan have joined thousands of Indians in California who have been kicked out of their tribes in recent years for the crime of not being of the proper bloodline.
For centuries, American Indian tribes have banished people as punishment for serious offenses. But only in recent years, experts say, have they begun routinely disenrolling Indians deemed inauthentic members of a group. And California, with dozens of tiny tribes that were decimated, scattered and then reconstituted, often out of ethnically mixed Indians, is the national hotbed of the trend.
Clan rivalries and political squabbles are often triggers for disenrollment, but critics say one factor above all has driven the trend: casino gambling. The state has more than 60 Indian casinos that took in nearly $7 billion last year, the most of any state, according to the Indian Gaming Commission.
For Indians who lose membership in a tribe, the financial impact can be huge. Some small tribes with casinos pay members monthly checks of $15,000 or more out of gambling profits. Many provide housing allowances and college scholarships. Children who are disenrolled can lose access to tribal schools.
The money and the immense power it has conferred on tribes that had endured grinding poverty for decades have enticed many tribal governments to consolidate control over their gambling enterprises by trimming membership rolls, critics and independent analysts say.
“Sometimes it is political vendettas or family feuds that have gotten out of hand,” said David Wilkins, a Lumbee Indian and professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota who has studied disenrollment across the country. “But in California, it seems more often than not that gaming revenue is the precipitating factor.”
At least 2,500 Indians have been disenrolled by at least two dozen California tribes in the past decade, according to estimates by Indian advocates and academics. In almost all of those cases, tribal governments — exercising authority granted by the federal government — have determined that the ousted Indians did not have the proper ancestry. According to 2010 census figures, more than 362,000 Indians live in California.
Tribal governments universally deny that greed or power is motivating disenrollment, saying they are simply upholding membership rules established in their constitutions. To that end, they often say they are removing people with little connection to their tribe, who joined mainly for services, scholarships and monthly checks financed by casino profits.
“You have people who want to be tribal members, where no one knows who they are or where they came from,” said Reggie Lewis, chairman of the Chukchansi Tribal Council. “We are sworn to uphold the Constitution. And basically that’s what we try to do.”
The tribe has disenrolled more than 400 members in the past five years, and scores more are facing disenrollment hearings. Some members estimate that the tribe’s membership is now below 1,000.
Sometimes, disenrolled Indians are forced to leave tribal land — though in California, many Indians do not live on the small reservations, which are also known as rancherias.
The Chukchansi tribe, whose 2,000-slot-machine casino is nestled in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Yosemite National Park, gives members a monthly stipend of under $300 per person. But it also pays for utilities, food bills and tuition — and Nikah Dondero, Nancy Dondero’s 32-year-old daughter, had to turn down a master’s degree program after she was disenrolled last month, because she lost her scholarship.
“It’s like I’m now a white girl with Okie kids,” said Ms. Dondero, a mother of two.
Beyond benefits, critics of disenrollment say it can be psychologically devastating. “It destroys their connection to their ancestors, their cultural heritage, their tradition,” said Laura Wass, Central California director for the American Indian Movement, an opponent of disenrollment. “You have to go to iron gates and beg for entrance to your own land.”
The fights over enrollment have bred a cottage industry for ancestry research. Many tribal governments now retain lawyers or researchers who comb through government archives for evidence of an individual’s tribal authenticity. Companies that test Indian DNA have sprouted up around the country. The Chukchansi hired a former Bureau of Indian Affairs official with expertise in federal records to review the bloodline of every member.
Published: December 12, 2011
COARSEGOLD, Calif. — The six-page, single-spaced letter that Nancy Dondero and about 50 of her relatives received last month was generously salted with legal citations and footnotes. But its meaning was brutally simple. “It is the decision by a majority of the Tribal Council,” the letter said, “that you are hereby disenrolled.”
And with that, Ms. Dondero’s official membership in the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians, the cultural identity card she had carried all her life, summarily ended.
“That’s it,” Ms. Dondero, 58, said. “We’re tribeless.”
Ms. Dondero and her clan have joined thousands of Indians in California who have been kicked out of their tribes in recent years for the crime of not being of the proper bloodline.
For centuries, American Indian tribes have banished people as punishment for serious offenses. But only in recent years, experts say, have they begun routinely disenrolling Indians deemed inauthentic members of a group. And California, with dozens of tiny tribes that were decimated, scattered and then reconstituted, often out of ethnically mixed Indians, is the national hotbed of the trend.
Clan rivalries and political squabbles are often triggers for disenrollment, but critics say one factor above all has driven the trend: casino gambling. The state has more than 60 Indian casinos that took in nearly $7 billion last year, the most of any state, according to the Indian Gaming Commission.
For Indians who lose membership in a tribe, the financial impact can be huge. Some small tribes with casinos pay members monthly checks of $15,000 or more out of gambling profits. Many provide housing allowances and college scholarships. Children who are disenrolled can lose access to tribal schools.
The money and the immense power it has conferred on tribes that had endured grinding poverty for decades have enticed many tribal governments to consolidate control over their gambling enterprises by trimming membership rolls, critics and independent analysts say.
“Sometimes it is political vendettas or family feuds that have gotten out of hand,” said David Wilkins, a Lumbee Indian and professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota who has studied disenrollment across the country. “But in California, it seems more often than not that gaming revenue is the precipitating factor.”
At least 2,500 Indians have been disenrolled by at least two dozen California tribes in the past decade, according to estimates by Indian advocates and academics. In almost all of those cases, tribal governments — exercising authority granted by the federal government — have determined that the ousted Indians did not have the proper ancestry. According to 2010 census figures, more than 362,000 Indians live in California.
Tribal governments universally deny that greed or power is motivating disenrollment, saying they are simply upholding membership rules established in their constitutions. To that end, they often say they are removing people with little connection to their tribe, who joined mainly for services, scholarships and monthly checks financed by casino profits.
“You have people who want to be tribal members, where no one knows who they are or where they came from,” said Reggie Lewis, chairman of the Chukchansi Tribal Council. “We are sworn to uphold the Constitution. And basically that’s what we try to do.”
The tribe has disenrolled more than 400 members in the past five years, and scores more are facing disenrollment hearings. Some members estimate that the tribe’s membership is now below 1,000.
Sometimes, disenrolled Indians are forced to leave tribal land — though in California, many Indians do not live on the small reservations, which are also known as rancherias.
The Chukchansi tribe, whose 2,000-slot-machine casino is nestled in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Yosemite National Park, gives members a monthly stipend of under $300 per person. But it also pays for utilities, food bills and tuition — and Nikah Dondero, Nancy Dondero’s 32-year-old daughter, had to turn down a master’s degree program after she was disenrolled last month, because she lost her scholarship.
“It’s like I’m now a white girl with Okie kids,” said Ms. Dondero, a mother of two.
Beyond benefits, critics of disenrollment say it can be psychologically devastating. “It destroys their connection to their ancestors, their cultural heritage, their tradition,” said Laura Wass, Central California director for the American Indian Movement, an opponent of disenrollment. “You have to go to iron gates and beg for entrance to your own land.”
The fights over enrollment have bred a cottage industry for ancestry research. Many tribal governments now retain lawyers or researchers who comb through government archives for evidence of an individual’s tribal authenticity. Companies that test Indian DNA have sprouted up around the country. The Chukchansi hired a former Bureau of Indian Affairs official with expertise in federal records to review the bloodline of every member.
Friday, December 02, 2011
Obama: Relations with tribes at turning point
SUZANNE GAMBOA | December 2, 2011 06:25 PM EST |
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama met for the third time with Native American tribal leaders on Friday, signing an executive order on tribal colleges and assuring them "you have a president that's got your back."
Obama has won plaudits among Native Americans by breaking through a logjam of inaction on tribal issues and for giving a voice to their issues with the annual gatherings in Washington. At Friday's conference, Obama announced he had signed an executive order establishing a White House initiative on American Indian and Alaska native education. The initiative will be overseen by an executive director appointed by the interior and education secretaries.
"You have an administration that understands the challenges that you face and most importantly you have a president that's got your back," Obama said, drawing cheers.
Obama reminded the leaders from the 565 federally recognized Native American tribes and representing Alaska natives that he had promised "a true government-to-government relationship" that recognizes "our sometimes painful" history and respects Native American heritage.
"I believe that one day we're going to be able to look back on these years and say that was the turning point ... the moment when we stopped repeating the mistakes of the past and started building a better future," Obama said.
Obama shared the stage briefly with Hartford and Mary Black Eagle, his Crow nation "parents" who "adopted" him during the 2008 campaign. He joked that his "parents" were grateful for not having to experience his "terrible 2s" or "terrible teens."
"They got me after I was a little more polished," Obama said.
Several leaders at the Tribal Nations Conference said Obama had kept his promises to them.
Bill John Baker, principal chief of the largest Indian tribe, the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, said before the conference that American Indians have been both "well-served" and "hurt" by other administrations, but Obama has "backed up his words with actions that have made a positive impact on the lives of Native people."
"Obama has done better for tribes than the others, except for the Nixon administration," said Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a former Republican senator from Colorado. President Richard Nixon advocated tribal self-determination as official U.S. policy.
With the accomplishments come greater expectations from a people whose rates of unemployment, violent crime, youth suicides, poverty and high school dropouts are significantly higher than in the rest of the country.
"It's two steps forward, one step backward," Campbell said. "No matter what we do, we have to find a way for Indians to be self-sufficient and not dependent on the federal government, except for those services required by treaty in the old days."
The administration still must implement laws Obama signed and fund lawsuit settlements. Also, tribes want to see the administration push legislation through Congress to get around a 2009 Supreme Court decision limiting the interior secretary's authority to accept land into federal trust on behalf of Indian tribes. The decision has held up economic development for tribes.
Salazar told the leaders Friday the court's decision was a "wrong decision" and needs to be fixed.
"We still need improvements in roads, bridges, schools, hospitals as well as addressing the digital, electrical and clean water disparities that hamper development and quality of life issues for our people," Baker said.
Still, Obama has assembled a respectable bragging list. He has:
_ Signed the Tribal Law and Order Act to improve law enforcement and public safety in tribal communities.
_ Renewed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act and made it permanent.
_ Settled the class-action Cobell lawsuit over federal government mismanagement of royalties for oil, gas, timber and grazing leases and an American Indian farmers discrimination lawsuit.
_ Nominated Arvo Mikkanen to be a federal judge in Oklahoma. His nomination is awaiting Senate confirmation.
_ Launched a test crime-fighting program on four reservations that early results show has led to drops in violent crime in the first year.
"We should be proud of what we've done together, but of course that should sharpen our resolve to do even more because as long as Native Americans face unemployment and poverty rates that are far higher than the national average we are going to have more work to do," Obama said. He said his jobs bill would help.
Jacqueline Johnson Pata, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians and an Alaska native, said native peoples' enthusiasm for Obama goes deeper.
Obama has embraced Native American tribal sovereignty preserved in the Constitution, court decisions and treaty agreements and made that the foundation for his administration's dealings with tribes, Pata said.
Like former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama appointed a Native American to his Intergovernmental Affairs staff. But he also appointed Kimberly Teehee, a member of the Cherokee Nation, as senior policy adviser for Native American Affairs.
In addition, Obama reminded executive department heads and agencies in a November 2009 memo of their obligation to regularly consult and collaborate with tribal officials on policies that impact Native Americans.
"I think we have made strides under the Obama administration the likes of which tribes have not seen for 30 years," said Stacy Bohlen, executive director of the National Indian Health Board. Bohlen is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Michigan.
Several agencies have yet to draft policies, according to the National Congress of American Indians.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama met for the third time with Native American tribal leaders on Friday, signing an executive order on tribal colleges and assuring them "you have a president that's got your back."
Obama has won plaudits among Native Americans by breaking through a logjam of inaction on tribal issues and for giving a voice to their issues with the annual gatherings in Washington. At Friday's conference, Obama announced he had signed an executive order establishing a White House initiative on American Indian and Alaska native education. The initiative will be overseen by an executive director appointed by the interior and education secretaries.
"You have an administration that understands the challenges that you face and most importantly you have a president that's got your back," Obama said, drawing cheers.
Obama reminded the leaders from the 565 federally recognized Native American tribes and representing Alaska natives that he had promised "a true government-to-government relationship" that recognizes "our sometimes painful" history and respects Native American heritage.
"I believe that one day we're going to be able to look back on these years and say that was the turning point ... the moment when we stopped repeating the mistakes of the past and started building a better future," Obama said.
Obama shared the stage briefly with Hartford and Mary Black Eagle, his Crow nation "parents" who "adopted" him during the 2008 campaign. He joked that his "parents" were grateful for not having to experience his "terrible 2s" or "terrible teens."
"They got me after I was a little more polished," Obama said.
Several leaders at the Tribal Nations Conference said Obama had kept his promises to them.
Bill John Baker, principal chief of the largest Indian tribe, the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, said before the conference that American Indians have been both "well-served" and "hurt" by other administrations, but Obama has "backed up his words with actions that have made a positive impact on the lives of Native people."
"Obama has done better for tribes than the others, except for the Nixon administration," said Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a former Republican senator from Colorado. President Richard Nixon advocated tribal self-determination as official U.S. policy.
With the accomplishments come greater expectations from a people whose rates of unemployment, violent crime, youth suicides, poverty and high school dropouts are significantly higher than in the rest of the country.
"It's two steps forward, one step backward," Campbell said. "No matter what we do, we have to find a way for Indians to be self-sufficient and not dependent on the federal government, except for those services required by treaty in the old days."
The administration still must implement laws Obama signed and fund lawsuit settlements. Also, tribes want to see the administration push legislation through Congress to get around a 2009 Supreme Court decision limiting the interior secretary's authority to accept land into federal trust on behalf of Indian tribes. The decision has held up economic development for tribes.
Salazar told the leaders Friday the court's decision was a "wrong decision" and needs to be fixed.
"We still need improvements in roads, bridges, schools, hospitals as well as addressing the digital, electrical and clean water disparities that hamper development and quality of life issues for our people," Baker said.
Still, Obama has assembled a respectable bragging list. He has:
_ Signed the Tribal Law and Order Act to improve law enforcement and public safety in tribal communities.
_ Renewed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act and made it permanent.
_ Settled the class-action Cobell lawsuit over federal government mismanagement of royalties for oil, gas, timber and grazing leases and an American Indian farmers discrimination lawsuit.
_ Nominated Arvo Mikkanen to be a federal judge in Oklahoma. His nomination is awaiting Senate confirmation.
_ Launched a test crime-fighting program on four reservations that early results show has led to drops in violent crime in the first year.
"We should be proud of what we've done together, but of course that should sharpen our resolve to do even more because as long as Native Americans face unemployment and poverty rates that are far higher than the national average we are going to have more work to do," Obama said. He said his jobs bill would help.
Jacqueline Johnson Pata, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians and an Alaska native, said native peoples' enthusiasm for Obama goes deeper.
Obama has embraced Native American tribal sovereignty preserved in the Constitution, court decisions and treaty agreements and made that the foundation for his administration's dealings with tribes, Pata said.
Like former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama appointed a Native American to his Intergovernmental Affairs staff. But he also appointed Kimberly Teehee, a member of the Cherokee Nation, as senior policy adviser for Native American Affairs.
In addition, Obama reminded executive department heads and agencies in a November 2009 memo of their obligation to regularly consult and collaborate with tribal officials on policies that impact Native Americans.
"I think we have made strides under the Obama administration the likes of which tribes have not seen for 30 years," said Stacy Bohlen, executive director of the National Indian Health Board. Bohlen is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Michigan.
Several agencies have yet to draft policies, according to the National Congress of American Indians.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Tribal Sovereignty vs. Racial Justice - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com
Introduction
When the Cherokee were relocated from the South to present-day Oklahoma in the 1830s, their black slaves were moved with them. Though an 1866 treaty gave the descendants of the slaves full rights as tribal citizens, regardless of ancestry, the Cherokee Nation has tried to expel them because they lack "Indian blood."
The battle has been long fought. A recent ruling by the Cherokee Supreme Court upheld the tribe's right to oust 2,800 Freedmen, as they are known, and cut off their health care, food stipends and other aid in the process.
But federal officials told the tribe that they would not recognize the results of a tribal election later this month if the citizenship of the black members was not restored. Faced with a cutoff of federal aid, a tribal commission this week offered the Freedmen provisional ballots, a half-step denounced by the black members.
Is the effort to expel of people of African descent from Indian tribes an exercise of tribal sovereignty, as tribal leaders claim, or a reversion to Jim Crow, as the Freedmen argue? Kevin Noble Maillard, a professor of law at Syracuse University and a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, organized this discussion of the issue.
Follow the link to read the discussion between:
Kevin Noble Maillard is a law professor at Syracuse University and a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma
Cara Cowan-Watts is acting speaker of the Cherokee Nation Tribal Council and a board member of the National Congress of American Indians.
Matthew L.M. Fletcher is a professor of law at Michigan State University, and editor of Turtle Talk, a law blog about American Indian law and policy.
Rose Cuison Villazor is an associate professor at Hofstra University Law School and the author of "Blood Quantum Land Laws and the Race Versus Political Identity Dilemma," published in the California Law Review.
Heather Williams, a Cherokee citizen and Freedman descendent, works for the Cherokee Nation Entertainment Cultural Tourism department.
Carla D. Pratt is a professor of law and associate dean of academic affairs at Penn State University’s Dickinson School of Law.
Tiya Miles is chairwoman of the department of Afro-American and African Studies, and professor of history and Native American studies at the University of Michigan.
Joanne Barker (Lenape) is associate professor of American Indian studies at San Francisco State University.
When the Cherokee were relocated from the South to present-day Oklahoma in the 1830s, their black slaves were moved with them. Though an 1866 treaty gave the descendants of the slaves full rights as tribal citizens, regardless of ancestry, the Cherokee Nation has tried to expel them because they lack "Indian blood."
The battle has been long fought. A recent ruling by the Cherokee Supreme Court upheld the tribe's right to oust 2,800 Freedmen, as they are known, and cut off their health care, food stipends and other aid in the process.
But federal officials told the tribe that they would not recognize the results of a tribal election later this month if the citizenship of the black members was not restored. Faced with a cutoff of federal aid, a tribal commission this week offered the Freedmen provisional ballots, a half-step denounced by the black members.
Is the effort to expel of people of African descent from Indian tribes an exercise of tribal sovereignty, as tribal leaders claim, or a reversion to Jim Crow, as the Freedmen argue? Kevin Noble Maillard, a professor of law at Syracuse University and a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, organized this discussion of the issue.
Follow the link to read the discussion between:
Kevin Noble Maillard is a law professor at Syracuse University and a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma
Cara Cowan-Watts is acting speaker of the Cherokee Nation Tribal Council and a board member of the National Congress of American Indians.
Matthew L.M. Fletcher is a professor of law at Michigan State University, and editor of Turtle Talk, a law blog about American Indian law and policy.
Rose Cuison Villazor is an associate professor at Hofstra University Law School and the author of "Blood Quantum Land Laws and the Race Versus Political Identity Dilemma," published in the California Law Review.
Heather Williams, a Cherokee citizen and Freedman descendent, works for the Cherokee Nation Entertainment Cultural Tourism department.
Carla D. Pratt is a professor of law and associate dean of academic affairs at Penn State University’s Dickinson School of Law.
Tiya Miles is chairwoman of the department of Afro-American and African Studies, and professor of history and Native American studies at the University of Michigan.
Joanne Barker (Lenape) is associate professor of American Indian studies at San Francisco State University.
Monday, September 12, 2011
In Montana, Relics Unearthed of Crow Tribe’s Eviction - NYTimes.com
By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: September 10, 2011
ABSAROKEE, Mont. — The bitter tale of Indian-white conflict that unfolded at this spot more than a century ago was told not in blood and battle, but in the legalese and fine print of a contract.
Now an archaeologist hired by the Montana Department of Transportation to plan for a road rebuilding project has found the physical evidence, in stones and building fragments that were until recently buried beneath shimmering waves of alfalfa just off State Highway 78.
“An Indian tribe faced the end of its traditional way of life, and it happened right here,” the archaeologist, Stephen Aaberg, said as co-workers sifted dirt through mesh screens on a recent afternoon.
For the Crow tribe, the events of March 1880, on which Mr. Aaberg has focused his research, proved devastating. That was when a draft agreement from Washington was read aloud to tribal leaders for the first time here, at a compound that served as the arm of the federal government on the reservation.
The document ultimately forced the tribe, which once dominated a vast swath of Montana, onto a smaller reservation. It echoed a theme that scarred the West again and again as white settlers coveted lands that Indians had been promised but did not seem to be using: new document, new constriction of space.
What made the story even worse for the Crow is that they had allied with Gen. George Armstrong Custer against the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne only four years earlier at the Battle of the Little Bighorn — 100 miles east of here — and might have expected a reward, Mr. Aaberg said, or at least fairer treatment. The compound was abandoned in 1883 after the agreement was signed, because this spot, about 50 miles southwest of Billings, was no longer on the reservation.
“If we agree to be farmers, will you stop taking our land?” one Crow leader asked the government officials, in comments written down that day as the draft agreement was read.
The Crow tribe is now considering how the ruins should be remembered. The tribe’s archaeologist, Tim McCleary, a professor of anthropology at Bighorn Community College, located on the Crow reservation, said that the events of March 1880 were huge historical markers for the tribe, but that many families with mixed Crow and white heritage also trace their ancestry to marriages that began as contact grew between the tribe and federal administrators, making memories complicated.
“It’s obviously an important site,” he said. “But feelings are mixed.”
Because a federal worker in the 1880s drew up a detailed blueprint of the site, now on display in a local museum, Mr. Aaberg said, he was able to identify many specific areas inside the compound, including the doctor’s quarters.
Among the poignant pieces found in the local rubbish pit was the arm of a doll. In a compound where most of the children were mixed race or Indian, and darker skinned in any event, the arm was made of porcelain, still gleaming white after all those years underground.
Published: September 10, 2011
ABSAROKEE, Mont. — The bitter tale of Indian-white conflict that unfolded at this spot more than a century ago was told not in blood and battle, but in the legalese and fine print of a contract.
Now an archaeologist hired by the Montana Department of Transportation to plan for a road rebuilding project has found the physical evidence, in stones and building fragments that were until recently buried beneath shimmering waves of alfalfa just off State Highway 78.
“An Indian tribe faced the end of its traditional way of life, and it happened right here,” the archaeologist, Stephen Aaberg, said as co-workers sifted dirt through mesh screens on a recent afternoon.
For the Crow tribe, the events of March 1880, on which Mr. Aaberg has focused his research, proved devastating. That was when a draft agreement from Washington was read aloud to tribal leaders for the first time here, at a compound that served as the arm of the federal government on the reservation.
The document ultimately forced the tribe, which once dominated a vast swath of Montana, onto a smaller reservation. It echoed a theme that scarred the West again and again as white settlers coveted lands that Indians had been promised but did not seem to be using: new document, new constriction of space.
What made the story even worse for the Crow is that they had allied with Gen. George Armstrong Custer against the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne only four years earlier at the Battle of the Little Bighorn — 100 miles east of here — and might have expected a reward, Mr. Aaberg said, or at least fairer treatment. The compound was abandoned in 1883 after the agreement was signed, because this spot, about 50 miles southwest of Billings, was no longer on the reservation.
“If we agree to be farmers, will you stop taking our land?” one Crow leader asked the government officials, in comments written down that day as the draft agreement was read.
The Crow tribe is now considering how the ruins should be remembered. The tribe’s archaeologist, Tim McCleary, a professor of anthropology at Bighorn Community College, located on the Crow reservation, said that the events of March 1880 were huge historical markers for the tribe, but that many families with mixed Crow and white heritage also trace their ancestry to marriages that began as contact grew between the tribe and federal administrators, making memories complicated.
“It’s obviously an important site,” he said. “But feelings are mixed.”
Because a federal worker in the 1880s drew up a detailed blueprint of the site, now on display in a local museum, Mr. Aaberg said, he was able to identify many specific areas inside the compound, including the doctor’s quarters.
Among the poignant pieces found in the local rubbish pit was the arm of a doll. In a compound where most of the children were mixed race or Indian, and darker skinned in any event, the arm was made of porcelain, still gleaming white after all those years underground.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Northwest Journey to Reconnect With American Indian Ways - NYTimes.com
PORT GAMBLE S’KLALLAM RESERVATION, Wash. — The canoe journeys are a new tradition for a very old people, but they already have one rigid rule that everyone knows not to break.
That thing you are paddling is called a canoe. Do not call it something else.
“If you call it a boat,” said Mariah Francis, 16, of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, “you’re either supposed to jump in the water or you’ll get thrown in.”
And as paddlers are reminded each year, the water here is cold.
For the 23rd summer in a row, a growing number of American Indians from tribes scattered across coastal regions of Washington State and British Columbia have climbed into traditionally designed cedar canoes and paddled as many as 40 miles a day, sometimes more, over two or three weeks, camping at a series of reservations until they converge at the home of a host tribe. There, several thousand people welcome them for a week of traditional dancing, singing and celebration.
They come from remote outposts like La Push, on the Pacific Ocean, and from wealthier tribes whose casinos rise above Interstate 5 north of Seattle, all in a deliberate effort to recapture cultural, linguistic and intertribal connections they said they had nearly lost as Indian ways of life were overwhelmed, first by European settlers and more recently by substance abuse and suicide.
“The first time we landed, the feeling was just unexplainable,” said Charlie Trevathan, a tribal member here in Port Gamble whose family first joined the journey in 2000. “I cannot put it into words. Ever since then, we’ve gone back every year.”
Now his extended family, like many, has became a “canoe family,” with its own cedar craft, family-themed red sweatshirts and flag. Mr. Trevathan, a commercial fisherman, makes a point every summer of putting the canoe journey before work, a deliberate reminder to himself that priorities once were very different among Northwest natives.
“There’s a shrimp opener soon and the price is supposed to be way up,” Mr. Trevathan said, referring to a brief coming fishing season. “My wife says, ‘Are you going shrimping?’ I said, ‘My commitment is to the canoe.’ The money would be good but it’s tribal journeys time.”
While some paddlers begin at reservations on the ocean, all eventually touch some portion of what the federal government in 2009 renamed the Salish Sea, the body of water that includes the Strait of Georgia in Canada, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound. The sea is the ancestral home of the Coast Salish people, who were not bound by the international border now at the 49th parallel. Before settlers arrived and built roads, the sea was how most people traveled and traded, wearing hats made from cedar and relying on paddles and canoes carved by hand.
“It was the highway, the network that connected people throughout the region,” said Sasha Harmon, an associate professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. “It was complicated after non-Indian families settled here, but it never went away. People had a really strong sense of the water connecting to them as a major force.”
Dr. Harmon said that as many Indian tribes across the country have worked to preserve their cultures in recent decades, the canoe journeys have been notable for restoring and strengthening “this intertribal communication, and that was a really important part of Northwest culture.”
When paddlers arrive at their destination each afternoon, they are greeted by members of the local tribe who paddle out to meet them. Tribes have revived rituals, what they now call “protocol,” to signal that they are visiting in peace.
“There’s a certain way they have to do it in order to show that they’re here in respect, not for war or destruction,” said Aurelia Washington, the coordinator of the event for this year’s host, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. “They’re saying, ‘We come here to spend this week with you in celebration.’ ”
Starting Monday, more than 100 canoes will spend the next week at the reservation, celebrating around three new pavilions designed to resemble giant traditional cedar hats. The tribes will sing and dance directly across the Swinomish Channel from the little town of La Conner, a quaint Northwest port where retirees arrive in very different kinds of boats to dine on freshly caught fish and drink locally made beer and wine. The cultural divisions in the region are apparent in the street that crosses the channel: at one end it is called Pioneer Parkway, on the other Reservation Road.
But perhaps the most striking thing about the 2011 Paddle to Swinomish is that it is not a new beginning or a special anniversary. Instead, it reflects what so many of its participants say they had ached for before it existed: constancy and reconnection. Often the main paddlers are teenagers and young men and women, with their parents and elders taking turns as well, transferring every few hours from support boats. The entire event is intended to be free of alcohol and drugs.
“That is something that our elders have been praying for,” Ms. Washington said, “that our children would have a path forward without drugs and alcohol because we have battled so much.”
Among the paddlers who traveled the farthest this year was Cleve Jackson, the 16-year-old son of Shakey Jackson, the chief of the Quinault Tribe on the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula. Shakey Jackson was among several tribal members who worked to revive the canoe tradition years ago, studying seagoing canoes in museum exhibits and even those on display in a Seattle restaurant, because none were left in their village.
Now in his 40s, Mr. Jackson lets his son do most of the paddling.
“I’m trying to wean myself from the boat,” Mr. Jackson said shortly after Cleve, who plays tight end and linebacker for Taholah High School, led his crew to shore.
No one suggested that the chief should go for a swim.
That thing you are paddling is called a canoe. Do not call it something else.
“If you call it a boat,” said Mariah Francis, 16, of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, “you’re either supposed to jump in the water or you’ll get thrown in.”
And as paddlers are reminded each year, the water here is cold.
For the 23rd summer in a row, a growing number of American Indians from tribes scattered across coastal regions of Washington State and British Columbia have climbed into traditionally designed cedar canoes and paddled as many as 40 miles a day, sometimes more, over two or three weeks, camping at a series of reservations until they converge at the home of a host tribe. There, several thousand people welcome them for a week of traditional dancing, singing and celebration.
They come from remote outposts like La Push, on the Pacific Ocean, and from wealthier tribes whose casinos rise above Interstate 5 north of Seattle, all in a deliberate effort to recapture cultural, linguistic and intertribal connections they said they had nearly lost as Indian ways of life were overwhelmed, first by European settlers and more recently by substance abuse and suicide.
“The first time we landed, the feeling was just unexplainable,” said Charlie Trevathan, a tribal member here in Port Gamble whose family first joined the journey in 2000. “I cannot put it into words. Ever since then, we’ve gone back every year.”
Now his extended family, like many, has became a “canoe family,” with its own cedar craft, family-themed red sweatshirts and flag. Mr. Trevathan, a commercial fisherman, makes a point every summer of putting the canoe journey before work, a deliberate reminder to himself that priorities once were very different among Northwest natives.
“There’s a shrimp opener soon and the price is supposed to be way up,” Mr. Trevathan said, referring to a brief coming fishing season. “My wife says, ‘Are you going shrimping?’ I said, ‘My commitment is to the canoe.’ The money would be good but it’s tribal journeys time.”
While some paddlers begin at reservations on the ocean, all eventually touch some portion of what the federal government in 2009 renamed the Salish Sea, the body of water that includes the Strait of Georgia in Canada, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound. The sea is the ancestral home of the Coast Salish people, who were not bound by the international border now at the 49th parallel. Before settlers arrived and built roads, the sea was how most people traveled and traded, wearing hats made from cedar and relying on paddles and canoes carved by hand.
“It was the highway, the network that connected people throughout the region,” said Sasha Harmon, an associate professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. “It was complicated after non-Indian families settled here, but it never went away. People had a really strong sense of the water connecting to them as a major force.”
Dr. Harmon said that as many Indian tribes across the country have worked to preserve their cultures in recent decades, the canoe journeys have been notable for restoring and strengthening “this intertribal communication, and that was a really important part of Northwest culture.”
When paddlers arrive at their destination each afternoon, they are greeted by members of the local tribe who paddle out to meet them. Tribes have revived rituals, what they now call “protocol,” to signal that they are visiting in peace.
“There’s a certain way they have to do it in order to show that they’re here in respect, not for war or destruction,” said Aurelia Washington, the coordinator of the event for this year’s host, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. “They’re saying, ‘We come here to spend this week with you in celebration.’ ”
Starting Monday, more than 100 canoes will spend the next week at the reservation, celebrating around three new pavilions designed to resemble giant traditional cedar hats. The tribes will sing and dance directly across the Swinomish Channel from the little town of La Conner, a quaint Northwest port where retirees arrive in very different kinds of boats to dine on freshly caught fish and drink locally made beer and wine. The cultural divisions in the region are apparent in the street that crosses the channel: at one end it is called Pioneer Parkway, on the other Reservation Road.
But perhaps the most striking thing about the 2011 Paddle to Swinomish is that it is not a new beginning or a special anniversary. Instead, it reflects what so many of its participants say they had ached for before it existed: constancy and reconnection. Often the main paddlers are teenagers and young men and women, with their parents and elders taking turns as well, transferring every few hours from support boats. The entire event is intended to be free of alcohol and drugs.
“That is something that our elders have been praying for,” Ms. Washington said, “that our children would have a path forward without drugs and alcohol because we have battled so much.”
Among the paddlers who traveled the farthest this year was Cleve Jackson, the 16-year-old son of Shakey Jackson, the chief of the Quinault Tribe on the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula. Shakey Jackson was among several tribal members who worked to revive the canoe tradition years ago, studying seagoing canoes in museum exhibits and even those on display in a Seattle restaurant, because none were left in their village.
Now in his 40s, Mr. Jackson lets his son do most of the paddling.
“I’m trying to wean myself from the boat,” Mr. Jackson said shortly after Cleve, who plays tight end and linebacker for Taholah High School, led his crew to shore.
No one suggested that the chief should go for a swim.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Seeing Trends, Coalition Works to Help a River Adapt - NYTimes.com
NISQUALLY NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Wash. — For 10,000 years the Nisqually Indians have relied on chinook salmon for their very existence, but soon those roles are expected to reverse.
Based on current warming trends, climate scientists anticipate that in the next 100 years the Nisqually River will become shallower and much warmer. Annual snowpack will decline on average by half. The glacier that feeds the river, already shrunken considerably, will continue to recede.
Play the scene forward and picture a natural system run amok as retreating ice loosens rock that will clog the river, worsening flooding in winter, and a decline in snow and ice drastically diminishes the summer runoff that helps keep the river under a salmon-friendly 60 degrees.
To prepare for these and other potentially devastating changes, an unusual coalition of tribal government leaders, private partners and federal and local agencies are working to help the watershed and its inhabitants adapt. They are reserving land farther in from wetlands so that when the sea rises, the marsh will have room to move as well; they are promoting hundreds of rain gardens to absorb artificially warmed runoff from paved spaces and keep it away from the river; and they are installing logjams intended to cause the river to hollow out its own bottom and create cooler pools for fish.
Jeanette Dorner, the director of the salmon recovery program for the Nisqually Tribe Natural Resources Department, grew up wading along a creek that feeds the river, hunting freshwater mussels. Even though protecting the rivershed requires herculean feats of coordination among various authorities and has cost roughly $35 million over the last decade, she said, “it is urgent we do not just walk away.”
Many scientists and policy analysts believe the best course of action is to do what conservationists have long tried to do — return ecosystems to their strongest natural health and then stay out of the way. This approach is known as resiliency.
But as humans come to be adversely affected by the stepped-up pace of ecological change, they also increasingly look to help Mother Nature out in more active ways.
In North Carolina, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has teamed up with The Nature Conservancy to buy parcels just behind Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge to allow the swamp to roll inland as the sea rises from glacial melt and to help black bears and red foxes migrate to inland refuges. In Montana the Wildlife Conservation Society is working with land trusts and others to secure corridors just outside Glacier National Park for wide-ranging cold-sensitive species like wolverines.
Such projects are on the rise, in part, because an executive order signed in 2009 by President Obama has led to a mandate that federal agencies integrate adaptation to climate change into all of their planning. But they often remain, like Nisqually, complex collaborations spurred more by imminent local ecological catastrophes.
Warm Water Fish
The Nisqually begins as a fast chute off Mount Rainier, rushes through shattered rock carved from the glacier above and then plunges through thick pine forests for 78 miles until it broadens into a rich estuary connecting with Puget Sound.
It remains a relatively healthy watershed because in 1989 — long before “global” and “warming” were inextricably linked — the Washington State Legislature, in the face of local protests and a court battle over Indian fishing rights, created the Nisqually River Council, the first watershed-wide protection council west of the Mississippi.
The council provided a framework for parties along the river to discuss their needs and goals. Financing came through many sources: via lawsuits brought to protect native endangered species like the chinook and the spotted owl, state and federal grants, the Park Service in Mount Rainier, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Nisqually Tribe, which has prospered since the legalization of gaming on Indian lands.
For its first 20 years the council concentrated on undoing manmade damage, pursuing efforts like persuading the operator of the hydroelectric dam on the river to add salmon gates. Last year, as the council was updating its management plan, it began looking at the river “through the lens of climate change,” said David Troutt, its chairman. Suddenly restoration was not going to be enough.
Amy K. Snover, a director of the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington, said that computer modeling showed that as early as 2020 there would be “significant” increases in rain in the Nisqually Basin in November and December. Sixty years beyond that there would 50 percent less snowpack at the end of winter, according to the average-climate projection. Warmer air and less snowmelt would mean a much warmer river and depleted soil moisture in summer, which would stress forest vegetation.
Ducks Unlimited, a conservation group founded by hunters, predicts that the entire low-lying wetlands at the river’s mouth, a prime fish nursery, will be inundated by the sea in the next 50 years, meaning that the species the council was working to save would be imperiled all over again.
Based on current warming trends, climate scientists anticipate that in the next 100 years the Nisqually River will become shallower and much warmer. Annual snowpack will decline on average by half. The glacier that feeds the river, already shrunken considerably, will continue to recede.
Play the scene forward and picture a natural system run amok as retreating ice loosens rock that will clog the river, worsening flooding in winter, and a decline in snow and ice drastically diminishes the summer runoff that helps keep the river under a salmon-friendly 60 degrees.
To prepare for these and other potentially devastating changes, an unusual coalition of tribal government leaders, private partners and federal and local agencies are working to help the watershed and its inhabitants adapt. They are reserving land farther in from wetlands so that when the sea rises, the marsh will have room to move as well; they are promoting hundreds of rain gardens to absorb artificially warmed runoff from paved spaces and keep it away from the river; and they are installing logjams intended to cause the river to hollow out its own bottom and create cooler pools for fish.
Jeanette Dorner, the director of the salmon recovery program for the Nisqually Tribe Natural Resources Department, grew up wading along a creek that feeds the river, hunting freshwater mussels. Even though protecting the rivershed requires herculean feats of coordination among various authorities and has cost roughly $35 million over the last decade, she said, “it is urgent we do not just walk away.”
Many scientists and policy analysts believe the best course of action is to do what conservationists have long tried to do — return ecosystems to their strongest natural health and then stay out of the way. This approach is known as resiliency.
But as humans come to be adversely affected by the stepped-up pace of ecological change, they also increasingly look to help Mother Nature out in more active ways.
In North Carolina, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has teamed up with The Nature Conservancy to buy parcels just behind Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge to allow the swamp to roll inland as the sea rises from glacial melt and to help black bears and red foxes migrate to inland refuges. In Montana the Wildlife Conservation Society is working with land trusts and others to secure corridors just outside Glacier National Park for wide-ranging cold-sensitive species like wolverines.
Such projects are on the rise, in part, because an executive order signed in 2009 by President Obama has led to a mandate that federal agencies integrate adaptation to climate change into all of their planning. But they often remain, like Nisqually, complex collaborations spurred more by imminent local ecological catastrophes.
Warm Water Fish
The Nisqually begins as a fast chute off Mount Rainier, rushes through shattered rock carved from the glacier above and then plunges through thick pine forests for 78 miles until it broadens into a rich estuary connecting with Puget Sound.
It remains a relatively healthy watershed because in 1989 — long before “global” and “warming” were inextricably linked — the Washington State Legislature, in the face of local protests and a court battle over Indian fishing rights, created the Nisqually River Council, the first watershed-wide protection council west of the Mississippi.
The council provided a framework for parties along the river to discuss their needs and goals. Financing came through many sources: via lawsuits brought to protect native endangered species like the chinook and the spotted owl, state and federal grants, the Park Service in Mount Rainier, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Nisqually Tribe, which has prospered since the legalization of gaming on Indian lands.
For its first 20 years the council concentrated on undoing manmade damage, pursuing efforts like persuading the operator of the hydroelectric dam on the river to add salmon gates. Last year, as the council was updating its management plan, it began looking at the river “through the lens of climate change,” said David Troutt, its chairman. Suddenly restoration was not going to be enough.
Amy K. Snover, a director of the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington, said that computer modeling showed that as early as 2020 there would be “significant” increases in rain in the Nisqually Basin in November and December. Sixty years beyond that there would 50 percent less snowpack at the end of winter, according to the average-climate projection. Warmer air and less snowmelt would mean a much warmer river and depleted soil moisture in summer, which would stress forest vegetation.
Ducks Unlimited, a conservation group founded by hunters, predicts that the entire low-lying wetlands at the river’s mouth, a prime fish nursery, will be inundated by the sea in the next 50 years, meaning that the species the council was working to save would be imperiled all over again.
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