http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/ Sumter Cheraw Indians en-us Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:23:46 GMT 1440 CPG-Nuke Dragonfly The Sumter Cheraw Indians News http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/images/logo.png http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/ http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=233 The portrayal of American Indian stereotypes: When is it all going to stop? I begin my rant on what “we as Native people” face in terms of stereotypes in media, films and even little plastic toys found in the bargain bins at thrift stores. I have enjoyed for many years working with Indian Country Today Media Network and have written a number of arts and entertainment pieces about the history and portrayal of American Indians in film. I have watched with bitter frustration as John Wayne kicked his Indian guides and shot them in the eyes, Indian corpses laid to rest. I have watched countless cartoons where Indians howl like banshees and attack the forts of soldiers, and Bugs Bunny himself called one perpetrator he shot, a half-breed. I have to give early filmmakers credit – as they truly did try to capitalize on the idea of a romantic Indian, but these films flopped financially. It wasn’t until the Indians whipped the soldiers and pioneers with tree branches and spit on them before lighting them on fire that the audiences turned out in droves. The westerns were murder to watch for most Native people, within a few years we were reduced to nothing more than bloodthirsty, stupid, ugg-ing arrow shooters or comic reliefs. Take a look at some of the movies showing now on channels like American Movie Classics which recently played Son of Paleface starring Bob Hope and Iron Eyes Cody. Cody by the way, although he truly did seem to cherish the Native way, was of Italian descent. When Kevin Costner came out with Dances with Wolves, the attempt at political correctness with the portrayal of Indians was at least regarded and refreshing. But we are in 2012 now, and I don’t feel like we have much progressed. Unless you consider Indians are now at least as cool as the werewolves portrayed in the Twilight movies. So over the course of one week – I decide to pay very close attention to the stimulus that entered my brain regarding the definition of an American Indian person. I don’t know if it was coincidence – much like if you have ever ridden in a VW bug and you suddenly notice all of the other VW Bugs on the freeway – but I was absolutely amazed at what I experienced from all visceral fronts. It started with television, of course. I was watching an episode of Storage Wars, when the auctioneer is talking with the other guy that has purchased a unit of Native American artifacts. I was frustrated that ancestral property was being sold for a few hundred bucks but then fuel was added to the fire; unsurprisingly within 30 seconds the comments about scalping started. And so began a telling week. In my car driving all over Hampton Roads in Virginia, the NFL team adopted by the region is the Washington Redskins. Bumper stickers, T-shirts, jackets, sweatpants, window decals all made their way into my brain for what seemed a hundred times a day. I have been tempted many times to hire a graphic artist to create a giant decal of other “skin-color”-Skins characters alongside the Redskins logo – but then I fear coming across as racist. Truth be told I don’t want to offend another ethnicity – but why is it okay that we are still portrayed this way? The week continued, I went to a local thrift store – admittedly a guilty pleasure of my wife Delores and myself – and once again I was surprised at the amount of American Indian “education.” In the first glass case sat a large plastic Indian chief next to Mickey Mouse and Santa Claus and a few aisles over was a cheap dream catcher in a plastic bag with a 99 cent tag. I also saw a lunch bag with Indian markings and found in a stack of comic books daffy duck with an Indian headdress standing next to a tipi on the front cover. We seek answers to this. And it is in our Youth. We need you. We need more filmmakers like Chris Eyre, Georgina Lightning and Neil Diamond. We need more native actors like Eric Schweig, Gary Farmer, Tantoo Cardinal and others. We need you to launch your social media campaigns against content that you feel does not represent the way you are actually. Native people have been portrayed as savages and evil doers since contact. But, it’s a new era. We’re entering an age where people are beginning to listen in wonderful ways – just look at the growth of Indian Country Today Media Network. We need you kids; we need your energies, your ideas and your passion. We are making it happen. And although I had a week full of loud stereotypical voices yelling at my face the incorrect definition of what an Indian is – these days I can sleep at night – because I feel assured that in time, they will continue to dim into non-existence. Vincent Schilling is a correspondent for ICTMN and the Executive Vice-President of Schilling Media, Inc. He is also an award-winning author of the Native Trailblazer series of books (NativeVoicesBooks.com) and the host of the APCMA nominated BlogTalkRadio program Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:23:46 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=232 This past week, I had the distinction of becoming one of a select list of authors banned by the Tucson United School District. Now this is no small feat. It turns out that the Tucson United School District (a city adjoining both the U.S./Mexico border and that of the Tohono O’odham, Yaqui and several other tribal nations) does not want to discuss Native American or Mexican American history—at least, as told by Native American and Chicano or Mexican American authors. Hence, the decision to ban books in a 4 to 1 vote on Tuesday, January 10 by the school-district board. This is part of a larger state mandate banning Mexican American Studies. An estimated 50 books are being banned. This morning, I am looking at one of the banned books, Rethinking Columbus: the Next 500 Years. The book, originally published in 1991 by Milwaukee-based Rethinking Schools, is intended to provide educators with tools to re-evaluate “the social and ecological consequences of the Europeans’ arrival in 1492” and was written in time for the quincentenary. That was the event the Chicago Tribune had promised would be the “most stupendous international celebration in the history of notable celebrations.” Perhaps a bit optimistic in retrospect. In the book, the question was asked, What were the consequences- both positive and negative of this “discovery,” or, in actuality, the blind luck of some poor navigation skills. Apparently this book is the pinnacle of what should not be read. Rethinking contains writings of many noted and national award-winning Native works, including Buffy Sainte-Marie’s My Country, ‘Tis of Thy People You’re Dying, Joseph Bruchac‘s A Friend of the Indians, Cornel Pewewardy’s A Barbie-Doll Pocahontas, M. Scott Momaday’s The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee, and others. As a side note, Sainte-Marie won an Academy Award, and Momaday won a Pulitzer Prize. My essay “To the Women of the World: Our Future, Our Responsibility” was also included in the book. Interestingly enough, if I were going to ban one of my essays from a public school, this would probably not be the one. The essay is the transcript of my opening plenary address to the United Nations Conference on the Status of Women in 1995, held in Bejing, China. Other books and writings banned include those by famed Brazilian educator Paulo Friere and, in a multiracial censorship move, Shakespeare’s The Tempest was also banned. Book-banning has a distasteful history. Catholic priests burned Mayan books in 1562, Nazi Germany banned 4,100 or so books from 193 to 1939. Various books have been banned at many times across the world, including in the U.S. The American Library Association actually sponsors a Banned Books Week (upcoming this September 30 to October 6) as an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. According to the American Library Association, “Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week.” Now those are some radical folks, those librarians. Back to Tucson: Roberto Rodriguez, professor at University of Arizona, is among the nation’s top Chicano and Mexican American scholars. Rodriguez says, “The attacks in Arizona are mind-boggling. To ban the teaching of a discipline is draconian in and of itself.” My response to the ban? Well, I’m traveling to Arizona next week. Probably going to distribute some new books and toast the First Amendment over coffee with some nuns, Natives and lawyers. And I am going to think about how special Arizona is. Take for instance the federal holiday of Martin Luther King Day: Arizona resisted celebrating the holiday until 1992, nine years after it was recognized by President Reagan. As well, Arizona also has some of the most controversial anti-immigration laws and search-and-seizure practices by law enforcement. Arizona is, in short, a leader of special thinking. Last time I was in Arizona, someone commented, “If states are the laboratory for democracy, Arizona is a meth lab.” I am going to drink that coffee, and then I’m going to keep my eye on a piece of legislation that is the Internet equivalent to the banning of books by the Tucson School District: the legislation currently being debated in Congress, the SOPA and PIPA bills. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate companion, the Protect IP Act (PIPA) would strengthen protections against copyright infringement and intellectual property theft, but Internet advocates say they would stifle expression on the World Wide Web. House Bill 3261 would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods,” according to Wikipedia—the online encyclopedia that is opposed to the bill. While I, among others, am opposed to intellectual pirates (having been attacked by such pirates this winter), I am also a proponent of free speech and intellectual freedom. The proposed bill would have some potential severe impacts on whistle-blowers and free speech. The bill will come up for debate in February. In the meantime, Abenaki writer Joseph Bruchac, whose children’s stories are a family favorite in the LaDuke household (and on White Earth KKWE Niijii radio 89.9 FM), ponders the Arizona decision: “ It made me wonder what the Tucson School Board would ban next—perhaps the Emancipation Proclamation? A school board and a community that cannot face sharing the truth of history with their children is one that is penalizing the very kids they may think they are protecting.” I am a proponent of an independent mind, and that First Amendment is worth fighting for—I am sure of it. Many minds bring together great thoughts, which is how civilizations prosper. I think that Chief Sitting Bull’s quote, which graces the opening page of Rethinking Columbus may be the best comment yet: “Let us put our heads together and see what life we will make for our children.” That is, indeed, good counsel. Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg who lives and works on the White Earth Reservations, and is the mother of three children. She is also the Executive Director of Honor the Earth, where she works on a national level to advocate, raise public support, and create funding for frontline native environmental groups. Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:20:30 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=231 The forerunner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was created by the U.S. federal government in 1824 to handle all matters relating to American Indians. From its inception, the ultimate goal of what ultimately became the BIA was not to protect Indians, but to assimilate them into white society. One major tool of that assimilation was education. Secretary of War John C. Calhoun created the Office of Indian Affairs under the guidance of the Department of War. By 1829, the Office of Indian Affairs was sanctioned by Congress and by 1947 it officially became known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Since there was little oversight of the BIA in its early years, greed, corruption and politics shaped federal policy in favor of the encroaching white immigrants and to the detriment of Natives trying to preserve their lands and culture. The early mandate of the BIA was to handle treaties for the government, but in reality BIA representatives acted more as agents for the whites by negotiating treaties that were harmful for Natives. A leading exemplar of this exploitation was Andrew Jackson. Prior to his election to the presidency in 1828, Jackson was a strong political force in the southeastern United States. Utilizing his connections in the federal government, he was able to get vital information about Indian lands from the General Land Office, which worked with the Office of Indian Affairs. By working with family members who were given government jobs, Jackson bought up Indian lands cheaply. According to the author Anthony F. C. Wallace in The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and The Indians, “At the suggestion of his Uncle Andrew, it is said, [John] Coffee made an agreement with the Land Office clerks to receive half of any bribes they took for giving information about land or aiding in its acquisition.” Once he was elected president of the United States, Jackson continued to ruthlessly harass and exploit Natives. In 1830, President Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act and began a process that systematically robbed Natives of their land. Many tribes were exterminated; others were forced to move as far west as Oklahoma. Wallace wrote, “[It] was a disaster that never really ended. The government thereafter pursued the same policy of buying Native lands and relocating Native tribes as the nation moved westward. The Indian territory (as did other reservations) became a vast, poverty-stricken concentration camp for dispossessed Natives, administered by a federal bureaucracy—the Office of Indian Affairs—that largely controlled the local economy, the local police and local schools.” A major policy shift by the BIA occurred at the end of the Civil War. When that conflict drew to a close in 1865, Congress was tired of war and dismayed by the lack of unity within the country, so it decided Natives would be forced to assimilate to white society and, more important, become good citizens of the United States. That could not happen if the government allowed Natives to retain their lands, their culture and their sovereignty. A few of the subsequent U.S. presidents—including Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant, who took office in 1869—wanted to improve conditions for Indians, but like Jackson, most continued the policy of forcefully removing Natives from their lands. According to the Miller Center of Public Affairs, which specializes in the presidency, policy and U.S. political history, “This approach attempted to move Indians closer to white civilization and ultimately U.S. citizenship by housing them on reservations and helping them become farmers.” This policy not only failed, it created a worse situation for Indians, because most reservation land was not fit for farming. The education of Natives became a major area of concern for Congress at this time. It set up the first true federal funding for the so-called benefit of Natives. These funds were given to churches that had missionaries teaching and living among Natives, as well as for emerging Indian schools like Carlisle Indian Industrial School and Hampton Institute. This increase in funding was due in part to Congress passing the Indian General Allotment Act of 1887—or Dawes Act, as it is commonly known—which was intended to improve the conditions of Natives and their children. In reality, though, the act took away more Indian lands and took many children from their families. According to Jon Reyhner and Jeanne Eder in their book, American Indian Education: The History, “After tribal members received their allotments, the federal government bought the ‘surplus’ land and resold it to whites, with tribal profits used for ‘education and civilization.’ Over the next four decades the Dawes Act reduced tribal holdings from about 140 million to 50 million acres.” Prior to 1851, most Indian schools were run by missionaries, and many of the teachers taught in both English and the native language of their pupils. As with most missionaries, the goal was more religious than educational, and while education was a by-product of the process, the complete conversion of a race was the main goal. According to M.T. Garrett and E.F. Pichette, authors of “Red as an Apple: Native American Acculturation and Counseling With or Without Reservation,” published in the Journal of Counseling & Development in 2000, “The federal government wanted to ‘civilize’ Indians, and the churches wanted to ‘Christianize’ them. In short, churches became an instrument for the government.… Whites turned to the power of education to civilize Indian children early in life. Most treaty agreements included provisions for the education of Native youth by establishing church-affiliated schools.” This process wiped out generations of tradition among Natives. While many missionaries reported much success in these schools, BIA officials were not pleased with the methods being used in them—it was not unusual for missionaries to allow Natives to speak in their native tongues. That practice was soon discontinued, and an English-only policy was mandated. In 1879, Carlisle Indian Industrial School was created in Carlisle, Pennsylvania under the direction of Richard Henry Pratt, a former Army officer. In a 1977 American Indian Law Review article, “The Evolution of the Termination Policy,” Charles Wilkinson and Eric Biggs give a brief insight into Pratt’s opinion on Indians; they recount that he once stated that “‘a great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man.’ ” Pratt’s strategy was straightforward: take children away from their parents and reprogram them under the auspices of the government. Natives who attended this type of school endured daily punishment for speaking, writing or even acting in an Indian fashion. The typical day for a boarding school student was spent learning in the morning and the second half of the day was doing manual labor, which would help them once they finished school. The goal of schools like Carlisle, Hampton Institute and the Phoenix Indian School was to make Natives dress, speak and act like whites. According to Peter Farb in his book, Man’s Rise to Civilization: The Cultural Ascent of the Indians of North America, “The children usually were kept at boarding school for eight years, during which time they were not permitted to see their parents, relatives, or friends. Anything Indian­—dress, language, religious practices, even outlook on life…was uncompromisingly prohibited.” Carlisle’s Indian school became a model for government boarding school across the country, and while some of its practices would never be used in public schools, the BIA endorsed the model. According to the Archaeological Institute of America, “A multitude of rules controlled every aspect of daily life. Military discipline was imposed, with boys and girls organized into army-like units and drilled in elaborate marching routines [a practice that continued into the 1930s].” The goal of the military structure was to strip down the Native to his or her core. The boarding schools had to completely erase everything Native children had learned. The schools had to assimilate them completely in American culture. In “Archaeology of the Phoenix Indian School,” Owen Lindauer writes that Harwood Hall, the head of the Phoenix Indian School, was enthusiastic about this model for educating Natives. In 1897, Hall wrote to the commissioner of Indian Affairs, “Too much praise can not be given to the merits of military organization, drill and routine in connection with the discipline of the school; every good end is obtained thereby. It teaches patriotism, obedience, courage, courtesy, promptness and consistency; besides, in my opinion, it outranks any other plan or system in producing and developing every good moral, mental, and physical quality of the pupil.” This wasn’t just the attitude of one boarding school superintendent—it was a concept supported at multiple schools and by the BIA itself. After the success of the military-style education practiced at Carlisle, Congress expanded the model and funded 23 more schools. Again, the goal was assimilation, not education. In this system, Natives could never become equals with their white counterparts and schooling was just another way the government could control the Indians. According to one source, “Over the 24 years of Pratt’s direction, Carlisle graduated only 158 students.” From the 1890s to 1900, more schools were built, but now they were closer to reservations and parents had to agree to send their children to these schools. By 1900, there were approximately 25 federally funded off-reservation boarding schools in the United States. David Wallace Adams, in “Fundamental Considerations: The Deep Meaning of Native American Schooling” for the Harvard Educational Review in 1988, wrote that the BIA was ordered to withhold food, clothing and other resources to pressure parents into sending their children to school. “[Between] 1880 and 1900 the number of Indian children enrolled in school more than quadrupled, from 4,651 to 21,568, the latter figure representing over one half of all Indian children of school age,” wrote Adams. The education of Natives opened the door for the federal government to take from the Indians the one thing they had that the government wanted and needed: land. In 1887, the Indian General Allotment Act passed Congress and overnight the Natives watched their lands disappear. The overall goal was to make sure Natives received an allotment of land, became farmers and sent their children to school. However, instead of a boarding school or reservation school, they would attend a public school. Reyhner and Eder report that “contracts required Indian students to be educated alongside white students and to be treated the same way, but this was not always done.… Indian students were often too poor to buy clothes for school and did not speak English well enough to do the required class work.” The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 gave Natives full rights as citizens of the United States, although the right to vote would not be fully protected until almost 25 years later. However, even as Natives were given citizenship, many of their children were still kept in the Carlisle-type boarding schools. But change was sweeping through Congress and through the general public concerning the treatment of Natives. In 1928, a report by the Institute for Government Research for the Secretary of the Interior presented some shocking details on the status of Natives. The report, called The Problem of Indian Administration, is more commonly known as the Meriam Report, a reference to its lead investigator, Lewis Meriam. The report painted a bull’s-eye on the BIA and its shameful policies. Reyhner and Eder summed up some of the major issues: “…a persistent problem of BIA schools remained discipline. While the type and severity of discipline varied from school to school, depending on its superintendent, flogging and other severe forms of punishment continued at some schools.” In addition, many Native students were forced to perform manual labor at their boarding schools. Some administrators at these schools had little training in education and many were former military officers, in part because the BIA felt military rules were best-suited for the task at hand. The Meriam Report uncovered many abuses—many students died while attending the schools, and many more were mistreated. Some of those deaths were related from overcrowding, in other cases it was lack of food. According to the report, “The boarding schools are crowded materially beyond their capacity.… The toilet facilities have in many cases not been increased proportionately to the increase in pupils, and they are fairly frequently not properly maintained or conveniently located.” Even though the Meriam Report was commissioned by the Secretary of the Interior, the BIA ignored its findings.And providing a useful education was never the goal. According to K. Tsianina Lomawaima and Teresa L. McCarty in To Remain an Indian: Lessons in Democracy From a Century of Native American Education, “Indian school industrial training was designed to prevent Native economic competition in the American workforce, just as low-level academic training precluded aspirations to professional schools or careers.” They quote from an Office of Indian Affairs Education Division publication at the turn of the 20th century, which stressed that “higher education in the sense ordinarily used has no place in the curriculum of Indian schools.” Higher education meant work beyond the sixth grade. In 1933, John Collier, the new commissioner of Indian Affairs, finally addressed many of the issues flagged in the Meriam Report. One of his major accomplishments was getting the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (IRA) brought before Congress. This repealed the Indian General Allotment Act and restored tribal self-government. Reyhner and Eder wrote, “In his testimony to Congress on the IRA, Collier emphasized removing the bureaucratic stranglehold of the BIA from Indian communities and the lack of Indian employees in the Bureau.” Collier pushed for Natives to be allowed to have their culture, religion and language included in the classroom. Randolph C. Downes writes in “A Crusade for Indian Reforms, 1922–1934,” an article published in The Mississippi Valley Historical Review in 1945, that Collier declared, “No interference with Indian religious life or expression will hereby be tolerated. The cultural history of Indians is in all respects to be considered equal to that of any non-Indian group. And it is desirable that Indians be bilingual.… The Indian arts and crafts are to be prized, nourished and honored.” Based on what they’d learned from the Meriam Report, many members of Congress concluded that the BIA was holding Natives back. The Indian Termination Act of 1953 stripped Natives of their sovereignty and land, terminated all treaties, ended government funding and decreed them full citizens of the United States with the same rights as white Americans. Many members of Congress, the BIA and even the Department of the Interior believed this act would help Natives. The education of Natives was now the responsibility of the states. Natives were forced into public schools and attendance decreased and Native children suffered, since many could not speak English. The BIA during this period decided to close many boarding schools; forced assimilation continued. It wasn’t until the early 1970s that the Termination Act of 1953 and its dolorous effects on Natives were reversed. Natives had been demanding control of their own destiny since the first white settlers started moving onto their lands. When Richard Nixon became president in 1969, they finally had a powerful ally in government. In 1970, Nixon delivered a message to Congress in which he highlighted the government’s poor record of dealing fairly with Natives, and called for significant change. “The time has come to break decisively with the past and to create the conditions for a new era in which the Indian future is determined by Indian acts and Indian decisions,” he said. He had already appointed a Mohawk/Sioux, Louis Rooks Bruce, as the new Commissioner of Indian Affairs. The Indian Education Act of 1972 passed by Congress provided additional funding for public schools with Indian students. Reyhner and Eder cite a 1975 Civil Rights Commission report, which stated: “All public schools with 10 or more Indian students were eligible to receive funding for supplemental programs designed to meet the special needs of Indian students, including the use of culturally relevant and bilingual curriculum materials.” The Office of Indian Education was also created and placed within the Department of Education, and for the first time, parents and tribal elders were giving input on language, materials taught and even who was teaching their children—in 1973, only 188 of 2,800 teachers on the Navajo Reservation were Navajo. The Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 was the legislation that forever changed how Natives interacted with the federal government. It promoted self-governance by tribes and allowed them to contract with federal agencies—such as the BIA and Indian Health Service—to control and operate programs and services formerly administered by those agencies. There is one more bill that had a huge and positive impact on Indian sovereignty and the quality of education for young Natives, but its impact was indirect. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was very important for Natives because it ended segregation of public schools. While most Natives were granted full civil rights in 1924 and Natives had already been admitted to white schools, it was the political turmoil of the 1960s that had lasting effects. More and more Natives wanted to make sure they were heard in the political debate. Just as blacks were becoming more militant, Natives believed great activism would help them, and in 1972 activists briefly occupied the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the BIA. This era was the starting point for new tactics that helped end Indian termination policy. In 1984, a Presidential Commission on Indian Reservation Economies was critical of the BIA for “incompetent” management of trust assets; excessive regulations and “red tape”; “incompetent” technical assistance to tribes; and “deficient” performance of activities such as credit, finance, contracting and procurement. The commission recommended the abolition of the BIA and its replacement with a new agency to be called the Indian Trust Services Administration, which would have granted funds to tribes to contract for their own services. At hearings in 1989, a Special Committee on Investigations of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs probed the allegations against the BIA. The special committee’s investigation led Senator Dennis DeConcini, its chairman, to conclude that “[many] of the federal Indian programs are fraught with corruption and fraud. Most of the others are marred by mismanagement and some by incompetence.” While tribes have taken on much more responsibility in the educating of their youth, they still have to deal with the BIA for funding and grant requests. It has only been in the past 40 years that the focus has shifted from what the government wants to what the Native community wants and needs. Since the role of the BIA continues to be a major factor regardless of mismanagement and corruption issues, Natives will have to work with them until true self-determination is achieved Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:17:25 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=230 By Jennifer Dobner Salt Lake City, Utah (AP) January 2012 The Navajo Nation filed a federal lawsuit against San Juan County, claiming its three established voting districts violate the constitutional rights of tribal members living in Utah. The lawsuit filed in Salt Lake City’s U.S. District Court asks a federal judge for an injunction that would force county commission district boundaries to be redrawn ahead of the November election. No hearings have been scheduled in the case. Deputy County Attorney Walter Bird didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment on the lawsuit. In court papers, attorneys for the tribe and six of its Utah members contend the current boundaries allow non-Indian voters to hold majorities in two of three districts. The complaint also says boundary lines have not been redrawn since 1984 and that county commissioners have failed to address changes in population, despite U.S. Census data from 1990, 2000 and 2010. Population figures included in the court filing show that residents in two of three districts represent about 29 percent of the total population. In the third district, Navajos represent nearly 93 percent of the populous. Two districts have similar populations of roughly 4,600 people, but one has more than 5,300. Court papers say that based on census data from 2010, each district should have about 4,900 residents. “Because the populations in the three districts are not equal, the votes of residents are not equal in weight,” court paper state. Navajos make up just over 50 percent of San Juan County’s population of 14,746 residents, court papers say. Leonard Gorman, executive director of the Navajo Nation’s Human Rights Commission, said he has attended several county commission meetings to urge redistricting but sees no indication that commissioners want to redraw the boundaries. “What I understand is that every citizen in the union would be balanced. One man, one vote. That is a guarantee that is iterated in the U.S. Constitution,” Gorman said in a telephone interview. “That is not being made available to citizens in San Juan County.” The county and commissioners Bruce Adams, Phil Lyman and Kenneth Maryboy are named as defendants in the lawsuit, along with Norman L. Johnson, the county’s clerk/auditor. Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:09:32 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=229 By Zach White Havre Daily News January 2012 The following is an extended version of the article that ran in the Dec. 29 issue of the Havre Daily News, including more information we didn't have room for, an additional section that ran separately on Dec. 30 and supplemental materials. Standing near the back of his corrugated steel workshop on a cold December morning on his family’s ranch, just outside the thick woods around the town of Landusky, Harold Heppner recalls his childhood in the Little Rockies, before the cyanide heap leach mines came and went, when there were still brooke trout in the streams coming down the mountains. As he looks down at the headlight he was working on, he also recalls when Pegasus Gold, which ran the mine until it went bankrupt and left the area in 1997, started shipping bottled water in to the Landusky Community Hall, which used to be the school when enough children still lived there to warrant one, after a cyanide spill. It was cheaper than testing everyone’s well water for possible contamination. On the other side of the mountains, the residents of the town of Zortman are also nostalgic. Clayton Wallace, the owner of the Miner’s Club Bar and Cafe, talks over coffee in his empty restaurant about when he and about 350 other people were employed by the mine and the town was not mostly filled with retirees like himself. Two hours later, toward the end of the cafe’s bi-weekly community lunch, four of the women of Zortman finish their pie and reminisced about a time when the children in town still had a school and didn’t have to make a 100-mile round-trip bus ride to Malta every morning. The parts of the past that each long for may be different, but Heppner and the people of Zortman can agree that the present, with nearly $2.5 million being spent on cleaning the former mine in 2010 alone, and both towns slipping away into history, is not what they want. How did this happen? The history of Zortman, Landusky and the mountains that surround them begins, geographically, millions of years ago, when magma bubbled up through the earth and cooled into the peaks that make up the Little Rockies, and the rest of Montana’s island mountain ranges, trapping inside deposits of certain minerals that humans would eventually decide were precious. Far more recently than that, within the past few thousand years, those mountains in their unusual location became an important place for the native peoples of this region in the North American plains, including the White Clay people, also known as the Gros Ventres, and the Assiniboine, or Nakoda. People of both tribes currently live on Fort Belknap Indian Reservation which neighbors the mine. Morris “Davy” Belgard is one of the founding members of the White Clay Society which works to preserve the ceremonies, language and traditions of the White Clay nation, a name he prefers to the more common “Gros Ventres.” And who can blame him? Most people wouldn’t like it if some Frenchman called them, their families and friends “fat bellies,” which Gros Ventres means, but the name stuck for centuries. According the Belgard, the oldest known name for the Little Rockies is the Wolf Mountains, and they were a holy place, a safe place, a gathering place. His ancestors saw the peaks throughout the plains they roamed as massive lodges that served as dwellings for great spirits. In fact, the main peak that was shaved and blown apart for the Zortman and Landusky mines has been called Spirit Mountain by the reservation residents. The people would climb the peaks, build or settle into a stone, U-shaped, three-foot tall fasting nest and pray, fast and communicate with the spirits for around four days. Belgard said his grandmother used to climb a peak near his family’s home in Hays, where she would fast and collect a medicinal plant used to stop bleeding after child birth. Robe Walker, a fellow member of the White Clay nation and White Clay Society, recalls a more recent name for the range, the Fur Cap Mountains, or as pronounced in the language of the White Clay people “bay thub.” Walker said the massive old pine trees that once topped the mountains reminded his ancestors of a hat made of fur. The mountains were used not only for spiritual fasting, but also for burials, for the storage of valuables or as the starting point for new families. “They always said that area up there where the powwow grounds are, where they have the sundance, that would be a spot where a couple would get together to, I can’t say this, consummate a marriage,” Belgard said. “They’d come out of the mountains and when they’d get back to the camp there’d already be a new lodge set up with all the furnishings inside and everybody knew they were married,” like a wedding reception and housewarming party in one, after the honeymoon. Here Comes The Man As settlers and homesteaders began pouring into the area in late 1800s, the tribes that once had wandered across state and national borders were increasing split up and confined to the new reservations. Fort Belknap Indian Reservation was established in 1888, seven years after what Belgard said was probably the last good bison hunt before they were nearly exterminated. At least the residents of the new reservation could still have access to their holy mountains which were still included in the reservation boundaries. Unfortunately some of the settlers in the area also found a use for the Little Rockies, or “bay thub,” that was less spiritual. By the time the reservation was established, prospectors had already found gold and were climbing into the mountains to mine the metal in creek bed placer mines. These early pioneers were satisfied with panning for gold on the south side of the range for about a decade until the real treasure was discovered in the 1890s — gold deposits deep inside the mountains. When underground gold deposits were discovered on land the U.S. government had just promised the residents of Fort Belknap only a few years before, they realized their mistake and, with the help of William C. Pollock, George Bird Grinnell and Walter M. Clements, quickly set about fixing it. The Grinnell Treaty was signed on Oct. 9, 1895, and the golden chunk along the southern edge of the reservation was removed for $360,000 to be given to the tribe over four years in the form of supplies for farming, setting up and staffing schools, the agency and other buildings for the tribes and “in such other ways as may best promote their civilization and improvement.” The agreement, which was signed by the three U.S. agents and 334 men from the reservation states that the residents who had one generation before roamed the plains and hunted buffalo would receive agricultural supplies and clothing and “preference shall be given to endeavour by honest hard labor to support themselves, and especially to those who in good faith undertake the cultivation of the soil and engage in pastoral pursuits as a means of obtaining a livelihood.” Except the very next section begins with, “As the scarcity of water on this reservation renders the pursuit of agriculture difficult and uncertain, and since the reservation is well adapted to stock raising, and it seems probable that the main reliance of these Indians for self-support is to be found in cattle-raising.” The treaty also says near its end that the terms of the agreement were “fully interpreted to said Indians and they made to understand the same.” According to King, the agreement of the tribes was based less on believing the price was fair and more on misunderstandings and fears the tribes had for their health and that of their children after the decimation of bison populations. “Back then, the tribes didn’t know English, so the interpreters interpreted that and the starvation tactic was used,” King said. “The tribes were coerced into signing the land back.” In the discussion that Belgard shared, an Assiniboine or Nakoda man named The Male told the government officials that “I have not had anything to eat since this morning, and I am getting empty now and I feel like I would like to see the council over soon now, and I wonder how these young men would like to starve. “I would like to exchange that mineral land over there for food that we may live.” Many of the men in the talks argued unsuccessfully for a 10-year treaty, basically a lease, rather than a one-time purchase. In the end, the land was sold to the government and opened to mining claims, while the tribes began their half-hearted (at most) move toward their mandated way of life. As people moved into the southern Little Rockies and converted the mountains into a labyrinthine search for wealth, they formed two new towns, Zortman and Landusky. Out with the old mines and in with the new According to Wayne Jepson, a Department of Environmental Quality hydrologist, the underground mining operations that first burrowed into the earth in the 1890s started to die out in the 1950s. It wasn’t until the development of a new technology, cyanide heap leach mining, in the late 1960s that interest in Zortman Landusky was reignited. The cyanide heap leach process starts with blasting sections of a mountain into rubble. This rubble is then placed in a leach pad where it is soaked in a solution of cyanide, a highly toxic compound of carbon and nitrogen, that would sap the gold particles out of the rubble. The cyanide solution was then sucked from the pad and taken to a processing plant where the gold was taken out at high purity. Then the solution was sent back to the pads for more gold. In 1979 Pegasus Gold filed an Environmental Impact Statement with DEQ proposing to place these new leach pads on top of the old holy mountain. As the project was approved, Zortman Landusky became one of dozens of similarly styled mines popping up all over Montana after a spike in gold prices in 1980, though none would ever match the sheer size what would eventually become Zortman Landusky’s nearly 1,200 acres of pad space. Through the ‘80s and early ‘90s Pegasus constructed more than a dozen pads named for their year of construction in the Zortman Landusky area. The biggest were the 87 and 91 leach pads, covering about 250 acres of the now bald Goldbug Mountain, or Spirit Mountain. The pine fur cap became a poisonous, yet profitable, yarmulke. For a few years, everything seemed to be working out great. Millions of dollars in gold were coming off the mountain. Some of those dollars were even making their way into the pockets of hundreds of employees coming to the mine from Lewistown, Havre and Malta. But as the mid-90s neared, Pegasus made the first few faltering steps toward failure. Then come the problems Wayne Jepson started work for DEQ in 1991. The following year he started working on the Zortman Landusky mine. Within two years he and his colleagues found the mine was not meeting water quality standards and the state of Montana sued Pegasus Gold. The 1994 lawsuit was joined by the Bureau of Land Management, the Fort Belknap reservation and eventually the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. After some back and forth, the case was settled in a consent decree “which required the company to take a number of actions to post additional bonds, to build water treatment facilities, to pay some fines as well as few other things,” according to Jepson. The new bonds required Pegasus, or its insurers, to guarantee $800,000 a year for water treatment and set up a trust fund for the state of close to $15 million for further treatment. “Zortman was the second mine for which the state held a bond for long-term water treatment, the first one being Golden Sunlight (a cyanide vat leaching mine that still operates east of Butte) and at that time that was a very small bond for water treatment, long term,” Jepson said. “I think it was predicted that it would need to treat 15 gallons a minute of water pumped out of the Golden Sunlight pit forever. ”The situation at Zortman was much more extensive, with water quality problems in a number of locations and water needing to be pumped to water treatment plants from a number of different mine facilities that each had a different chemistry of water in them,” Jepson added. Jepson started looking into posssible new costs, but wasn’t able to finish while Pegasus still existed. Pegasus began constructing water treatment plants on both the Zortman and Landusky sides of the mountain as a part of the decree. Pegasus also started working on a new plan to expand Zortman Landusky mine, extensively. The new mining plan would have also included additional, more comprehensive, bonding to cover water treatment. But the new plan was held up by appeals to the consent decree that lasted longer than the company did. Rich Adams, a field manager for BLM based out of Malta, said he sees the humor in the poor timing. “I always joke with the minerals guys that maybe we should have let them keep mining and not get away,” Adams said. Despite their legal troubles, Pegasus shutting down the mine was its own decision, according to Clayton Wallace, who, before his retirement, worked for the mine for about a decade starting in 1996. “When they first shut down, they weren’t broke,” Wallace said. “They didn’t go broke for a year to a year and a half. They had $400 million in the black while they waited for permits." But that money was burning a hole in Pegasus’ pockets. Jepson said that Pegasus had gone all-in on a new venture around that time. “They invested heavily, a few hundred million dollars on a project in Australia,” Jepson said. Much of that investment they had borrowed in advance Jepson said. “They overextended themselves.” Price of gold plummeted. The price that had hovered between $350 and $400 an ounce for almost a decade, dropped by 30 percent from 1996 to its 2001 low of $271.04, the lowest price paid for gold in 23 years. In the past decade, however, that price has increased nearly five-fold. With prices so low, Pegasus lost everything. The Australia project fell through. The company had shut down several sites in several states already, but now, just months after completing their water treatment plant at Landusky and with a substantial expansion in the works, Pegasus was forced to close the crown jewel of Montana gold mining and declare bankruptcy. Governments gets in way When Pegasus shut down and took Zortman Landusky mine with it, DEQ was forced to step in and clean up the mess. Reclamation work started in 1999. “Our focus had always been on treatment for cyanide, to clean up all the cyanide at closure,” Jepson said. “The plan was basically to rinse these big leach pads with water and irrigate the water in what is called a land application disposal area. We had bonded for that.” What DEQ and their cleanup contractor Spectrum Engineering didn't prepare for was a surprisingly rapid rise in acidity. Bill Maehl, project manager for Spectrum Engineering, noticed the acidity after his firm got started at the mine in June 1999. “The initial projections on the leach pads was that they would probably go more and more acidic in a 10- to 20-year time frame,” Maehl said. “And yet we saw them go acidic in about 6 to 9 months.” The acidity came from sulfur-rich compounds called sulfides, primarily iron sulfide or “fool’s gold,” in the mountain. While blowing the mountain apart for the leach pads, and even digging into it 100 years ago, these sulfides were exposed to water and oxygen they had never seen before. This exposure caused a chemical reaction that turned the water into sulfuric acid, which in turn started leaching other metals out of the surrounding rocks, like cadmium, selenium, copper, zinc, aluminum and large amount of iron from a massive 10,000-year-old ferricrete deposit, which was also exposed by the century of mining. Luckily for the teams, they soon found their new unexpected problem solved the one they had expected: the acidity broke down the cyanide into other compounds, Jepson said, including carbon dioxide that joined the atmosphere and nitrogen compounds called nitrates that stayed in the water. Just two years after Pegasus had walked away from the mess, it was already growing beyond anyone’s expectations. Luckily Pegasus’ bonds and trust fund were still there after the bankruptcy to help take care of the problems. Even though they had only paid for 75 percent of the trust fund before they went under, the state of Montana filled in some of the gaps. Maehl said the situation would have been a lot worse with those funds. “When they first bonded the site they envisioned … they were planning on just puncturing the liners and just letting the water go,” Maehl said. The process they ended up doing involved filling in the open pit that the ore on the leach pads came from. In fact some of the leach pad rocks were put back in the pit. The rest of the leach pads were covered with top soil and tall grasses, making mountain meadows. Then the focus of the project was just to keep all of the water, with its acidity and various metals, from getting off the mountain without being cleaned at least once. One hiccup with this plan was the nitrates left in the water that could not be eliminated with the treatment plants left by Pegasus. According to the EPA, high levels of nitrates are dangerous for infants who can suffer from "blue-baby syndrome" and possibly die if they drink it. So Spectrum built a third treatment plant filled with bacteria that eat the nitrates in the water when fed a molasses-like food. But the high acidity was killing the bacteria. So they started treating the water with lime to cancel the acidity, then mixed in the bacteria to handle the nitrates, then treated it with lime again. That worked for a while. “When we started in ‘99 we had some fairly high levels up there,” Maehl said. “For about a six- or seven-year period, it was going down at about a 45 degree angle, a nice straight line heading down and then all of a sudden it almost levelled off, and we have seen very little decrease in nitrate levels since then.” Maehl said he thought maybe it was all the rock-shifting from reclamation keeping nitrate levels up. “Imagine if you poured water on an ant hill,” Maehl explained. “It’d find certain paths to follow and then every time water ran on the anthill it would follow those same paths. Well if you regrade the top of the ant pile, the water will find new paths to go through the ant pile. So a lot of it I think had to do with opening it up as we regraded it, opened new ways to get water through the pads.” Changing water levels, as the ponds by rain and pumped out for treatment, could explain it, as each cycle gives the rock "a nice fresh rinse", as Maehl put it. As if that weren’t enough, another new problem popped up a few years ago in the northward creek called Swift Gulch that runs onto the reservation, right by the tribal powwow and sundance grounds and then through the town of Hays. The water was filled with rust, and, according the Maehl, has an acidity or pH level of about 3.5, the same as orange juice. A treatment plant was built on the stream in 2008, then upgraded last year. ”If we weren’t treating water, I think it would never effect domestic wells in the town of Hays, but you’d see some pollution in the surface water that far up and certainly further up in the powwow grounds area," Jepson said. Many on the reservation already have concerns about the water coming onto their land. King said he hears concerns from people frequently and believes the pollution could be the cause of many health problems suffered by residents of southern Fort Belknap. “There’s a lot of cancer down south,” King said. “Just about every day of the week there are three to five people going to Havre for radiation.” A spokesperson for Northern Montana Hospital said they did not want to comment on the situation that they felt was too controversial. Another spokesperson for the Fort Belknap hospital said they were not aware of any specific instances of health problems from the water. Ward Van Wichen, administrator for the hospital in Malta, said that he had not heard of anyone coming in with pollution-related health problems in his time there recently, or when he worked as a nurse at the hospital from 1992 to 1994, while the mine was running. Part of King’s concern stems from his belief that not as much is being done to clean water heading north onto the reservation as there is for water heading to Zortman or Landusky. Maehl, Adams and Jepson all denied his claims. While acknowledging that the Zortman and Landusky water treatment plants are in fact larger, they all explained that the Swift Gulch facility, which King refers to as the “porta-potty” because of it’s smaller size and his perception of its quality, was made more recently, with greater understanding of the needs to fulfill, and uses newer, better, more efficent technology, where machines mix lime while spinning rather than sitting in the older massive settling tanks. “It actually has the capacity to treat 1,000 gallons a minute, which is identical in size to both the Zortman and Landusky water treatment plants,” Maehl said. The new housing for the Swift Gulch plant was one of a few projects that were built in the past year with money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, appropriately. Others include about 30 million gallons in holding ponds on top of the reclaimed 87 and 91 leach pads and a wind turbine to be built next summer to help cover some of the massive and growing energy costs of running the many operations on the mountain. The holding ponds were built to help store excess water until the plants can get around to cleaning it. But even those new ponds were not enough for the unusually high amount of water that has fallen in the past two years. This past year is nearing 38 inches of precipitation, “which would be double what we’ve had, ever,” Maehl said. The lime trucks that normally go through Roundup had to take back roads while that town was underwater this spring. Wayne Jepson said that one of the holding ponds on the Zortman side overflowed this spring when a landslide fell into it and blocked the pump. As the water flowed down the mountain, through the town of Zortman and out onto the plains toward Highway 191, Jepson said tests showed signs of contamination and acidity past Zortman, though it quickly dissipated once out of the mountains. Gerald Martin is a Gros Ventre, or White Clay, resident of Hays and one of Spectrum’s seven-member team that runs the plants every day but Christmas. During a particularly bad day this spring, Martin saw Swift Gulch running high in Hays and hurried to the brand new treatment plant. When he arrived both an excavator and the treatment plant were about to wash away. The overflowing creek had already washed away a portion of dirt from under the treatment plant’s foundation. Martin hopped in the excavator, moved it to safety and dug a new path for the water, away from the water plant. The area has since been restructured to prevent it from happening again. Even now, the plants are running longer than they have before as the staff try to catch up on filtering all of this year’s water to be ready to handle another possible wave this upcoming spring without further incident. Please sir can we have some more? No one in Zortman is concerned about the situation. Their water is fine. “Our wells are all out on the Ruby Gulch,” Wallace said. “I never have been worried about it. The water samples say we’re 1 percent purer than Lewistown and Lewistown is supposed to have the purest water in the state.” In fact Wallace thinks there is plenty of opportunity to start up the mine again, if the environmentalists and reservation officials didn’t get in the way. “In the meeting we had here in the last spring, they said the study shows there’s still $30 billion left back there and that’s just here, just this small area compared to what’s involved All over the Little Rockies, it’s all been core drilled and sampled. They know where it is.” There’s so many things they could do. They don’t even need to use arsenic or cyanide to leach gold. But there’s so many bad feelings on the reservation, I don’t think it’ll fly. And the environmentalists, regardless of where you are, they’re against it. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, if you’re lumbering or you’re mining, anything that’s productive. They’re even against farming.” The fight against cyanide-related mining made major headway in 1998, when, around the time that Pegasus declared bankruptcy, cyanide open pit mining was made illegal by a ballot initiative. Jepson said he thought the public seeing the situation developing at Zortman Landusky played a major role. Ironically, had they just kept going they would have been grandfathered in to continue operation past the ban. Two mines did get grandfathered in, and the only one that is still active is Golden Sunlight in Jefferson County. In an effort to help out a business in his own district, State Sen. Terry Murphy R-Cardwell, sponsored SB 306, which would have allowed other mining companies to bring ore to facilities that were still processing it with cyanide, the only one in existence being in his backyard. The bill passed both houses after fierce debate but was eventually vetoed by Gov. Brian Schweitzer during his now famous capitol-steps branding veto, but not before an impassioned speech about preventing the poisoning of Montana water. “It seems to me that the opposition is basically opposed to mining, but basically pretending to be opposed to cyanide because it’s a more emotional issue,” Murphy said. “I was a little surprised that the governor vetoed it because it’s just a way to possibly open up more good-paying mining jobs without environmental risk.” The ladies of Zortman, back at the Miner’s Club, would agree with Murphy. Zortman Postmaster Donna McIntosh said that environmentalists act like anyone who wants to mine also wants polluted water and air, and that’s not true. “The people who live here love Montana,” McIntosh said. Ward Van Wichen may not have heard of health effects of the former mine, but living in the area while the mine was going and then returning after it shut down, he said he had definitely seen the economic effects, with fewer families in the area to either use the hospitals services or staff the facility to provide those services. Sen. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, whose district includes Fort Belknap, vehemently opposed the bill. By his estimation, the people of Montana had already said they didn’t want to encourage cyanide-related mining in 1998, and the issue should be settled. The governor was of a similar mind following a visit to the mine earlier this year. “The citizens of Montana were asked twice by initiative whether they thought it was appropriate to put hundreds of tons of cyanide on top of a mountain and leach it through a pile with the expectation and hope that that cyanide wouldn’t end up in the water system,” Schweitzer said. “And twice the people of Montana voted no. In fact the second time they voted no, the gold mining companies outspent the opposition five to one to try to convince Montana ‘Oh it’s all right. A little cyanide in your water isn’t so bad.’ But the citizens of Montana rejected it. “So I don’t think a legislature and a governor in a 90 day session ought to say ‘We know better than the people of Montana.’ One thing I know for sure is the people of Montana usually know best. This is the land of common sense. You should listen to the people of Montana. They usually get it right.” Havre’s representatives, Wendy Warburton and Kris Hansen, both voted for the bill because they thought it would be a way to possibly create some jobs, with minimal environmental risk. “I did get a few calls and emails from constituents that were concerned that we were repealing the ban but with the price of gold being so extraordinarily high right now, and with Montana having so much of it in the ground, I thought that bill was a reasonable solution,” Hansen said. “It wouldn’t allow any more heap pits or leach vats anywhere in the state and to me that was the intent of the voters.” As the son of a miner from the western part of Montana, Rich Adams said he sees both sides of the debate, through the jobs created and Montanans supported by mining to wanting to avoid situations like Zortman Landusky or the Berkeley Pit former copper mine and current superfund site in Butte becoming “a big old toxic soup that today’s generation is dealing with, that yesterday’s generation reaped the benefits of.” “That’s what put me through school, put clothes on my back,” Adams said. “So I’m literally stuck in the middle of that dichotomy. The law says we can develop it but how can we develop it and not leave a negative legacy for our grandkids or our great grandkids down the road.” What happens in Zortman Landusky, Stays in Zortman Landusky‘s water source for eternity The intent of the voters, according to Jepson’s belief about the 1998 voter initiative and its tie to the Pegasus implosion, was to avoid another catastrophe like the one at Zortman Landusky. The water there, according to all existing plans, will need to be cleaned “in perpetuity”, which means different things to different people involved. Though with the twists and turns of the past 15 years of water cleaning, all of their answers contain a lot of uncertainty. Bill Maehl has the most positive estimate for the project. “Things will obviously get better,” Maehl said. “The leach pads have a finite amount of contaminants in them.” At some point the leach pads are going to clean themselves up. I don’t know whether that’s 10 years or 50 years at this point. There’s only so much in those pads. They’re not making anything new. at some point everything is going to be rinsed off and been treated.” Wayne Jepson believes it will take a little longer than 50 years. “These areas would have to continue to be treated with money from this trust fund, for, we say, perpetuity,” Jepson said. “Which means anything from 100 years, 1,000 years or forever. We don’t know how long, but treatments going to be necessary for a long amount of time.” While Rich Adams is more in line with Jepson’s longer view. “I think forever and forever, until there’s another process developed that we haven’t thought of, we’re going to be in the water treatment business on both sides of that hill,” Adams said. “I think we’re going to have to have water treatment for the next hundred years, at least. It’s something we’re going to have to deal with for along time.” On the flip side we could say we’ll just walk away from it, but I don’t think we want to deal with those environmental consequences.” There is substantial worry among all of those concerned about finances. After all, it is pretty difficult to pay for a program designed to run for eternity. Jepson said that when the reclamation began, the $800,000 from Pegasus’ bond was mostly able to cover costs, but after all of the surprises they have found and the new challenges popping up all the time, the cost for 2010 had nearly tripled to $2.3 million. This year promises to be even more, with all of the flood damage. Most of that overflow was handled by BLM’s abandoned mine fund, with some help from DEQ. But with prices where they are, and where they appear to be heading, by the time the $800,000 stops in 2017, the project will need it all the more. At that time they will receive the $15 million in Pegasus’ trust fund, as well as an additional $19 million trust fund that Windy Boy helped set up a few years ago. So what happens when the total $34 million runs out, probably about a decade into the project 1,000-year timeline? Jepson said it will be the taxpayers footing the bill for the mess made by Pegasus, whose executives Jepson said were “getting their golden parachutes through bankruptcy court and allowed to take millions in profits, while we get stuck with the short end of the deal.” While he may not have the resources to take on the problem, Harold Heppner, the middle of 10 kids by the son of a homesteader, standing in boots on a dark dirty floor, wearing coveralls and a mustache, has an idea. “They should find a way to restore it,” Heppner said. “That’d put people to work. Christ, it took them 15 years to do that much damage. It’d take another 15 to put it back. Maybe that’s another way to turn around and put people back to work, is to restore these areas in the whole state of Montana where damage has been done for money. Find ways to replace it, put it back, undo what damage that’s done. “But nobody sees any profit in that.” Havre Daily News/Zach White Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:05:44 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=228 It is with great pride that both factions are merging for the betterment of our people under the leadership of Chief Ralph Justice Oxendine. WE hope to get together very soon and talk to all members about this decision and how it came about. We would like to hear from all members and potential members; just keep it clean please. We have tried very hard to stick to that in the past. This will be the real test as to who has their heart in what we are doing. We have exciting plans and ideas that we need to talk to everyone about and ALOT of mending to do; so we are trying to come up with a date soon, very informal; to sit around in the circle and pray for guidance and wisdom. Please let us know by email at oxendineralph@yahoo.com to let us know if you have a particular date that would be good for you. As we are working on our website; please keep checking on the calendar for upcoming events. Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:31:02 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=227 WASHINGTON – The U.S. Census Bureau has released data indicating that almost half of people who identify as Native American report being more than one race. The research, based on 2010 data, was released January 25. It shows that approximately 44 percent of the Native population – 2.3 million people – reported being American Indian and Alaska Native in combination with one or more other races. According to Census numbers, this multiracial group grew by 39 percent from 2000 to 2010. “The multiple-race American Indian and Alaska Native population increased by more than 50 percent in 18 states,” according to the report. “North Carolina, Delaware and South Dakota experienced the most rapid growth in this population at more than 70 percent. In all but three states, the multiple-race proportion of the American Indian and Alaska Native alone-or-in-combination population increased from 2000 to 2010.” In total, 5.2 million people, or 1.7 percent of the United States’ population, identified as American Indian and Alaska Native, either alone or in combination with one or more races. That equated to a growth in the Native population of 27 percent from 2000 to 2010. 2.9 million residents reported being American Indian and Alaska Native alone, an increase of 18 percent from 2000 to 2010. The total U.S. population increased by 9.7 percent from 2000 to 2010, so Native growth significantly outpaced it, but the overall percentage of Natives compared to the overall population remained the same from 2000. There had been a major push by Native organizations to have more American Indians counted in 2010, in order to make up for what were thought to be past shortfalls in counting and methodology. Another major finding was that more than three-fourths (78 percent) of the Native population lived outside of tribal areas. “At the same time, most counties with relatively higher proportions of American Indians and Alaska Natives tended to be in close proximity to reservations, trust lands or Oklahoma tribal statistical areas,” the Census reported. The ten states with the largest number of American Indian and Alaska Native population in 2010 were California, Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas, New York, New Mexico, Washington, North Carolina, Florida and Michigan. “Among these states, Texas, North Carolina and Florida experienced substantial rates of growth in this population at 46 percent, 40 percent and 38 percent, respectively,” the Census reported. In terms of tribal citizenship, the largest number of people who identified with an American Indian tribal grouping, either alone or in combination, identified as Cherokee (819,000), according to the report. Navajo had the largest number of individuals who identified with one tribal grouping and no other race (287,000). Blackfeet had the highest proportion of individuals reporting more than one tribal grouping or race with 74 percent. The largest Alaska Native tribal grouping was Yup’ik (34,000), followed by Inupiat (33,000). Yup’ik also had the largest number of people who identified with one tribal grouping and no other race (29,000). Among all Alaska Native tribal groupings, Tlingit-Haida had the highest proportion (42 percent) who reported more than one tribal grouping or race. Throughout the decade, the Census Bureau plans to release additional information on the American Indian and Alaska Native population, including characteristics such as age, sex, and family type, which is expected to provide greater insights to the demographic characteristics of this population at various geographic levels. The U.S. government uses information on race to implement and evaluate programs or enforce laws, such as the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Fair Housing Act, Equal Employment Opportunity Act, and the 2010 Census Redistricting Data Program. Public and private organizations use race information to find areas where groups may need special services and to plan and implement education, housing, health, and other programs that address these needs. According to the report, Census information also helps identify areas where residents might need services of particular importance to certain racial groups, such as screening for hypertension or diabetes. More information on specific race groups in the United States is located at www.census.gov under the “Minority Links” section. This site includes further information about the 2010 Census and provides links to reports based on past censuses and surveys focusing on the social and economic characteristics of the Black or African American, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander populations. Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:45:10 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=226 Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard made an early exit along with opposition leader Tony Abbott from an awards ceremony being held on Australia’s National Day Thursday as protestors from a nearby indigenous rights event arrived and began banging on windows of the Canberra restaurant Gillard and Abbott were in according to an Associated Press article. Around 200 protestors chanted “shame” and “racist” outside the restaurant, directing the words at Abbott, as police escorted the political leaders away. Australia Day, or Invasion Day to aborigines, marks the arrival of the first fleet of British colonists. The day marks the land settlement without treaty. According to AP, Abbott had angered the protestors earlier, as they were celebrating 40 years of its tent embassy, saying it was time the embassy “moved on.” While many mainstream indigenous leaders have condemned the activists who mobbed the restaurant, those responsible accused Abbott of inciting racial tensions accorting to an article in The Australian. Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:41:58 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=225 WASHINGTON – The state of Indian nations is “strong,” but in order to be stronger, they need the federal government to be flexible in order to maximize economic growth, according to a speech delivered by Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indians. Keel, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, hammered the point home in his 2012 State of Indian Nations address held January 26 at the Newseum on Capitol Hill. “Tribal nations have proven our capacity. We don’t need the government involved in all our business decisions, we need flexibility,” Keel said to an in-person audience of almost 200 composed of tribal leaders, federal officials, and tribal citizens. “And by creating it, we will remove the barriers that cost us jobs and opportunity. This is a goal I think we can all agree on, across the political spectrum, and it is something we can achieve with a change in policy, not an increase in spending.” A flexible federal government would “put decision-making power back in the hands of the people who live in Indian country – the people who know best because these are our homelands, these are our people,” Keel said. Tribal leaders assembled for the speech, and watching and listening to it on the radio and online throughout the nation, have long said that the federal government needs to do a better job at focusing its resources on Indian country. Some see ways that current programs could be adjusted to better serve tribes, such as bonding authority first granted under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009. Tribal leaders are also well aware of the current budget crunch in Washington, so they hope that instead of cutting Indian-focused programs, legislators will look at ways to spend the money more effectively. “That is the kind of solution Washington is crying out for, and we in Indian country are eager to answer the call,” Keel said on the matter. “This message comes directly from tribal leaders,” the NCAI leader added. “We need freedom at the local level to best use our limited resources. We know what’s best because we live in Indian country. We know where the needs are, and we know what works for our people. No one understands Indian life better than the Indian nations themselves. Give us flexibility.” Keel offered the example of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, which opened a 65,000 square foot health facility in 2007 and was able to utilize the bond financing incentives offered under the Recovery Act in 2009. “Tribes were denied full access to this source of financing until the Recovery Act created a limited bond offering,” Keel explained. “Based on that experience, the Treasury released a report in December recommending they have the same access to bond financing available to our governmental peers. This will bring huge economic benefits to tribes and surrounding regional economies.” “With a little added flexibility, our programs will be more efficient,” Jaqueline Pata, executive director of the NCAI, said in a question-and-answer session after the speech. She said that NCAI officials have already shared thoughts with the Obama administration on specific areas that could be fine-tuned. Whether the current Congress and the Obama administration can rearrange the formula to the liking of 566 federally recognized tribes remains to be seen, especially in a political climate that has stalled many bipartisan compromises on non-Indian issues. Rep. Tom Cole, R-OK, touched on the reality of the American political situation in his congressional response to Keel’s address. “Let’s be real,” Cole, also a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, said in his speech. “If we wait simply for the federal government to take care of our problems, we will be waiting for a real long time.” Beyond flexibility, Keel made several calls for action to Obama and the U.S. Congress. Recalling President Richard Nixon’s 1970 message to Congress that ushered in the tribal self-determination era, he called on Obama to send a special message to Congress on the importance of the nation-to-nation relationship. He also called on Obama to fully implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which the president signaled support for in 2010. “We specifically call for a review of all existing federal law to ensure they are in alignment with the Declaration,” Keel said. Keel next called for an annual nation-to-nation summit between tribes and the federal government, as well as ongoing high-level meetings. “This would institutionalize the current [White House] Tribal Nations Summit, a meaningful commitment to our nation-to-nation relationship that must be upheld by all future presidents,” he said. Keel asked, too, that Native people be elevated in the federal government, including appointments to the federal bench, as well as for the creation of an office for Native American programs at Office of Management Budget. In this way, a federal commitment to Indian affairs would be institutionalized. Keel also addressed the individuals currently running for President of the United States, inviting each candidate to visit Indian country to outline their policy positions. “We also urge the campaigns to make sure tribal nations are part of the discussion at the presidential debates,” he added. Beyond his recommendations to the president, Keel pointed to opportunities for immediate congressional action on Native affairs, specifically on a Carcieri fix, the HEARTH Act, the Native CLASS Act, public safety legislation, and the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, as well as the SAVE Native Women Act. Keel then highlighted NCAI’s suggested budget for Indian country. “It will create reliable, safe domestic energy; it will build a 21st century education system; it will modernize our infrastructure; and, it will fund implementation of critical legislation like the Tribal Law & Order Act and the Indian Health Care Improvement Act,” he summarized. Keel noted the importance of the Indian budget in context of the current Budget Control Act, which requires Congress to cap discretionary spending for the next 10 years. “Much of the funding that fulfills the federal trust responsibility is categorized – wrongly, in our view – as domestic discretionary spending,” Keel reflected. “The trust responsibility is not a discretionary choice. It is not a line item. It is a solemn agreement that has been sustained over hundreds of years. “Unless Congress acts to hold tribal programs harmless, then starting in 2013 we are facing 10 to 15 percent cuts across the board for the next decade – cuts that will threaten essential services and affect millions of Native citizens throughout vast regions of rural America,” he said. On consultation, Keel said the federal government must advance, “legally enforceable consultation.” “Without the power of legislation and accountability, ‘free, prior, and informed consent,’ are just some nice words on a page,” he said in referencing the UNDRIP and the commitment called for therein to Indigenous Peoples. “Enforceable consultation means we must talk about another idea – tribal consent,” Keel added. “There would be a public outcry if the federal government tried to impose policy on a state without its consent. But the concerns of tribal nations are routinely overlooked, even when more than a dozen tribes are larger than some northeastern states. This must not stand.” In return for the action Keel requested from the president and Congress, he said that Indians will do their part to be good American citizens, noting that Native get-out-the-vote programs are gearing up for this year’s elections. “Our America is a place where all candidates know that we matter, and America sees it at the ballot box,” he said. “It’s a place where each and every president honors our unique nation-to-nation relationship, where Indian country is always at the table – not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s the smart thing to do. Our America is home to a Congress that works across party lines to free our economies. Our America is a place where governments keep their promises.” Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:37:24 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=224 First Nations Bank of Canada had a banner year in 2011, increasing net income by 33.4 percent and expanding the branch that it had opened in Iqaluit, Nunavut, in June 2010, the institution announced on Tuesday. “For the fourteenth straight year, our total assets have grown, this year topping $300 million,” Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Keith Martell said in a statement on January 17. “Growth is coming from both our long-standing and our newly established branches, including our newest branch in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Our branch in Iqaluit has displayed in its first full year of operations the kind of growth that we expected from that market.” The fiscal year ending October 31, 2011, saw net income increase by $320,000, to $1.27 million, the bank said. Net interest and other income rose $1.3 million, to $11.5 million, or nearly 13 percent, over the previous year. Non-interest expense associated with business growth and the new operations in Iqaluit rose by $904,000. Loan volumes grew to $216.1 million, an increase of nearly 11 percent, and total assets grew by 8.2 percent to $312 million, the institution said. Total deposits increased by $39 million, reaching $278.8 million, or 16.2 percent higher than the previous fiscal year. Such results were stellar given that last year’s also represented double-digit percent increases. First Nations Bank of Canada, headquartered in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, is Canada’s only bank that’s majority-owned by aboriginals. With branches in Saskatchewan, Ontario, Manitoba, Yukon, Nunavut and Quebec, the bank focuses on aboriginal clientele for its personal and business banking services. It was founded in 1996 as a joint venture with TD Bank. About 80 percent of the bank is owned by aboriginal groups in Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Yukon, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec who together own 80 percent of the bank. “Our aboriginal shareholders are progressive like-minded organizations, culturally and linguistically diverse and are all respected leaders in their regional economies,” the bank said. Read more:http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/01/17/first-nations-bank-of-canada-thriving-73031 http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/01/17/first-nations-bank-of-canada-thriving-73031#ixzz1jrh7q3wm Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:54:18 GMT