http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/ Sumter Cheraw Indians en-us Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:51:36 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=272 By Anne Minard April 10, 2012 Navajo Nation tribal member Kelvin Long, 36, chuckles at the memory: He’d taken a year off from work, and a would-be co-worker lured him back by inviting him to a meeting in Flagstaff, Arizona—with the promise that there would be lots of beautiful women. “I went, and I fell in love. There were all these brilliant, beautiful, determined women. Unfortunately, it turned out they were all related to me through clan.” When babies are born in the Navajo tribe, they become members of their mother’s clans. Traditional Navajo people introduce themselves by identifying the clans on both their mother’s and father’s sides. This allows clan relations like brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles to recognize one another, even if they’ve never met. It also helps marriageable youth avoid partners who share the same clan as their own mother or father, a traditional safeguard against inbreeding. Long was born into the Bitterwater clan, which is one of the original four clans created by the Navajo matriarch White Shell Woman, or Changing Woman. It also happens that it’s one of the largest clans. As a result, “I’m related to everyone,” Long says, adding that he almost always assumes a love interest is out-of-bounds. “A lot of times I don’t even date Navajo women.” Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly has been expressing concerns lately about that very reality. He says the tribe’s clan system is on the verge of becoming too restrictive. By most counts there are now about 130 clans, largely because new clans have been created through marriages between tribal and nontribal members. Shelly says as the clans grow, it’s getting harder and harder to avoid running into—and marrying—relations. Shelly has been floating the idea that intertribal marriages should be encouraged, to widen the options for tribal members. He points out that leaders of smaller Indian tribes, where membership often hovers around 200 or 300 people, are in even more precarious positions than the Navajo Nation. “They also know that they are losing their membership and their full-blooded tribal members,” he says. “These smaller tribe leaders…instead of losing out to members of another nationality, are saying maybe we should open our doors to each other, our nation, our civilization, and welcome them Native to Native.” Shelly recognizes that intertribal marriages will also result in the loss of members for some tribes, because people must choose membership in a single tribe. He emphasizes that he’s not pushing people to leave the Navajo Nation—but he insists even that’s better than the alternative, when it comes to the bigger picture of Native people. “We want to stay in existence,” he says. “We don’t want to lose that.” Although Long and other traditionalists aren’t opposed to that approach, they are reluctant to abandon the clan system that is a foundational part of being Navajo. They’re advocating a path forward where the traditional clan system is restored to a place of honor in the tribe’s cultural identity, as it’s opened up to allow for marriages with people outside the tribe. Shelly favors intertribal marriages. Shelly worries that within the clan system confines, clan brothers and sisters will eventually have no choice but to marry. He points to sickness and weakness among the Nation’s youth, and suspects already that close intermarriages could be a cause. “We are mammals,” he says. And Navajo people know better than most how to keep mammalian offspring their healthiest: “The maximum you can use a bull is four years. That way, the cattle or sheep are healthy, bigger.” He worries the people aren’t applying that same standard to their own lives. “You see a lot of weakness in the young kids. They get sick more. Talk to some health-care people, they would tell you there’s an increase in a lot of the health problems,” he says. “In the past it never used to be that way. That concerns me.” There are no studies documenting genetic diversity or the effects of intermarriage on the Navajo Nation. In fact, those sorts of studies are forbidden, says Ronald Maldonado, program manager in the Cultural Resource Compliance Section of the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department. “There is a moratorium prohibiting genetic research on the Navajo Reservation,” he says. “This has been going on, to the best of my knowledge, for at least 10 years. The tests have not been done to my knowledge and would not be allowed under current rules.” Philmer Bluehouse, a Navajo peacemaker and traditionalist, says there’s an alarming and fundamental shift that underlies the worries about inbreeding—and it has more to do with disconnection from culture than any inherent limits in the clan system. He refers to unwritten rules governing Navajo people, also called Natural Law. “Our traditional practice to prevent genetic corruption was to determine, through our clan system, by asking our parents, who and which clans to marry,” he says. “This shows respect and understanding for self and others in these serious matters. In this contemporary world, it is sad to know that many cultures do not understand or appreciate how to interpret and apply these laws. I see many of us simply following what the greater society is practicing without consideration as to the real intent of why the unwritten laws were created.” He says most Navajo people understand the risks of inbreeding, given their experience as shepherds. And he’s not opposed to using modern methods to protect the tenets of natural law: “When I married my wife, I made certain—I had a genetic blood test.” At the same time, Bluehouse isn’t against the idea of encouraging marriages outside the Navajo tribe: “We have to allow that to happen to keep the blood clean,” he says. But he also hopes people will go about it in a reasoned way. “This is something that the Diné really need to open up and have some intelligent discussion on. We need to not be lazy.” Long thinks he has solution. He’s the executive director of the Flagstaff-based organization Educating Communities while Healing and Offering Environmental Support (ECHOES), and through that group he’s gathering funds for a series of conferences and a book, all under the title Ké Bíká. Ké is a Navajo word referring to an understanding or relationship, of interconnectedness. And bíká means a reasoning, or purpose. “When you put them together it’s like a journey, toward an understanding of how we’re connected—an understanding of our culture, ceremony, history,” he explains. He wants to gather experts on the Navajo clan system for the conferences; the book will document their knowledge. He wants to give it as a gift to his people. “We’re at a point where I feel like our culture is frozen,” he says, adding that social ills like alcoholism and diabetes are some of the results of that stagnation. “I feel like it’s because people are disconnected from their own identity. They’re not in control of their own lives.” Long says he went through a process, early in his 30s, where he had to overcome parts of his past in order to reconnect with his own identity. And he feels the same thing needs to happen on a societal scale. He laments that the most commonly held impressions of the Navajo were created by scholars and historians during one of the lowest points in the history of the tribe. “Histories record of a people traumatized, emotionally disconnected, starving. We were taught in boarding schools that’s what we are,” he says. But Long feels there’s no reason those views should be perpetuated—and it’s damaging for them to be ingrained in the tribal consciousness. He sees his book as an antidote. “It’s a toolkit,” he says. “It’s a historical gift to the people. People are hurting. By giving them this book, showing them who they are and where they came from, it’s a way to provide that map, if they choose to go down that road. It’s a way to heal.” No one’s claiming there will be a quick fix for the issues facing the Navajo clan system. Long’s conferences aren’t even set to begin until the middle of 2013. As for Shelly’s idea of opening the door to more intertribal marriages, even tribal law will have to change to accommodate those plans. For example, right now, tribal jurisdictions don’t cover nontribal in-laws living on the reservation, he says. “When I was running for this office,” he adds, “A lot of nontribal members came to me and said, ‘You need to change the law so we can vote in the elections and be citizens.’ We are looking into that.” Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:51:36 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=271 By Vincent Schilling April 12, 2012 On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a self-proclaimed neighborhood watch leader, as he returned from a nearby store where he had bought some snacks. Zimmerman, who says he shot Martin in self-defense, was arraigned on second-degree murder charges on April 12 in Sanford, Florida, after weeks of protest, leaks and speculation. Because Martin was a young, unarmed black male, many people believe he was the tragic victim of racial profiling by an over-zealous Zimmerman. George Zimmerman Racial profiling is a scourge for all minority communities, and this tragedy calls to mind the fatal altercation between a Seattle police officer and a Native woodcarver John T. Williams in 2010. In both cases, the victim was confronted and killed by a man with a gun who thought he was protecting his community. John T. Williams Dr. Arica Coleman, a professor of African American studies at the University of Delaware, is of both Native American and African American descent and knows well the constant threat posed by racial profiling. “Just being a woman of color makes me a target,” says Dr. Coleman, who then recounts a recent incident that—although it had a peaceful resolution—reinforces her point. “I was dressed in athletic wear, taking a walk through my nice, white suburban neighborhood with an exercise weight in each hand—I was not the only one walking with exercise weights—pumping my arms vigorously so as to get an optimal workout,” she says. “I turned my head and spotted a police cruiser slowly trailing me. When the officer flashed his lights I immediately stopped.” After Coleman gave the police officer the hand weights and her address, she says he expressed surprise that she was a resident of the community. “He blurted out, ‘Oh, you live in this neighborhood,’” she recalls. “With a wide smile I informed him that I had lived here for almost 20 years. His eyes widened when he heard that. I cracked a couple of jokes. We laughed, wished each other good day and I continued my walk, but I knew better than to believe that this was simply a case of curiosity; this was a case of Walking While Being a Person of Color in a pristine white neighborhood,” she says. Dr. Arica Coleman, a professor of African American studies at the University of Delaware, is of both Native American and African American descent. (Vincent Schilling) Dr. Coleman says racial profiling is something she and all people of color must live with and negotiate around nearly every day to avoid becoming a victim. “I am a woman of color and as such my very existence and value are defined in this society based on where I fit in the American racial hierarchy. Consequently, I am never viewed as a professor, but rather a black professor who thinks she’s Native American. As a female colleague from Trinidad once told me, ‘I did not know I was a Black woman until I came to the U.S.’” Walter Lamar knows racial profiling from both sides of the lens. He is the President and CEO of Lamar Associates, a company specializing in law enforcement, security and emergency preparedness. He is also a former FBI agent and served as the Deputy Director of the Indian Affairs Office of Law Enforcement. Lamar says that although shooting deaths of both Martin and Williams were tragic, they were very different scenarios. He says Williams may have been killed because the officer was doing racial profiling, but it’s also plausible that the officer would have shot anybody—black, white or Native—holding a knife on a city street that day. Walter Lamar He says the Trayvon Martin case, however, is a completely different situation, and racial profiling was clearly a factor. He hastens to point out, though, that Zimmerman was not a trained law-enforcement officer, nor even a registered Neighborhood Watch volunteer. “He was just a yahoo with a 9mm pistol,” Lamar says. “The most dangerous person out there is a fool with a gun who has a hero complex.” He adds that racial-profiling is a serious problem on border towns near reservations. “There are going to be border-town police who don’t like Indians and they are going to say ‘There is a carload of Indians—I bet somebody in that car is drunk and I’m going to pull them over.’” Lamar says that even though racial profiling is against the law, many people—cops and civilians—have prejudices, and those prejudices come into play every day. “What you have to do is have cultural awareness training and you have to acquaint officers with the Native way of life,” he says. Coleman says that in light of recent events, comparisons of racial profiling in African American and Native American communities can—and should—be drawn. “When it comes to people of color, we must justify our presence in the public arena when we are within our so-called designated spaces, i.e., segregated urban communities and reservations—which are over-policed. When African Americans and Native Americans dare venture outside of those spaces and into communities deemed to be off-limits, we are suspicious simply by virtue of our race and declared guilty of the crime of ‘Walking While Black’—Trayvon Martin—or ‘Holding a Knife While Indian’—Jonathan T. Williams. “While African Americans have always experienced forced exclusion from the American mainstream and been denied equality with whites, Native Americans have always experienced forced inclusion, wherein mainstream America demands that Indians give up their race and culture to become honorary white people. African Americans are profiled based on the assumption that they do not belong; Native Americans are profiled based on their refusal to go along.” Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:43:55 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=270 By Suzan Shown Harjo April 20, 2012 White privilege in America first stood for wealth advantage, the provenance of white men, no matter how amassed, deserved, shared or inbred. Among its prominent symbols are oil baron J.D. Rockefeller, Monopoly guy with a fistful of cash, television’s The Millionaire, film’s Gordon (“Greed is good”) Gekko and cartoonish tycoon Donald Trump. The Republican presidential primary has supplied 2012 models for white and privileged Americans: Newt Gingrich, with his fat-cat “historian” consulting fees and half-million-dollar Tiffany account; Rick Santorum, with his McMansion in the suburbs of the Washington, D.C. he despises but cannot bear to leave; and the presumptive GOP nominee, Mr. 1%, Mitt Romney, with his car elevators, Cayman Islands shelters and undisclosed tax returns. No one should have been surprised to learn that Romney has secret designs to gut the housing and education departments—two of the federal agencies most responsible for providing a leg up to the impoverished and disadvantaged—in order to help pay for his priority: tax breaks for billionaires. It was no stunner either that his “all moms are working moms” rule does not apply to mothers on welfare; he says their toddlers should go to day care so the moms can have the “dignity of work.” That rich white men are out of touch with the majority of poor people and single parents is no news flash, although the past months’ headlines suggest otherwise. What isn’t covered in the context of white privilege are such stories as the General Services Administration scandal over a 300-employee conference that cost $823,000 and continues to topple its top executives. The real scandal and a really good example of white privilege is the fact that the GSA officials who’ve resigned, been fired or remain under investigation were ever hired in responsible jobs and paid annual salaries at or near the quarter-million-dollar mark. Imagine so many non-white officials with such poor judgment (or even with good judgment) being hired in the first place. Now we come to the overtly racial aspects of white privilege. Notice I did not mention Herman Cain, former Republican presidential candidate and past CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, as a model of white privilege. That’s because I have questions: if a black man joins white men and takes on their prejudices and their privileges, is he part of white privilege and is there such a thing as black privilege? Similar questions could be asked about Justice Clarence Thomas, who is the second African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court and whose white wife is an ardent opponent of President Obama. When Thomas votes against Native American land rights actions, does he do so as one who enjoys the privileges of white privilege, or does he have a unique perspective as a black man or from a perch of black privilege? When he joins the high court’s Catholic majority in citing the Catholic Church’s 500-plus-years-old Doctrine of Discovery as the first legal justification for the wholesale theft of Native lands, is he voting from white European (inherited American) privilege or simply as a practitioner of Catholicism? Many white folks have privileged a certain history and narrative that whitewashes their ancestors’ actions and unclean hands, that justifies ongoing unjust or racist actions and that perpetuates their privilege. This is accomplished through legal, educational and social systems, where only certain privileged ones may dissect race and other races in “scholarly,” “scientific” or “objective” terms. An example of this is in American sports, where only the Native Peoples, to the exclusion of all others, are lampooned, dehumanized and slurred. When African American fans of the Washington, D.C. football team defend its disparaging name, are they acting out of white privilege or black privilege; and, if the latter, why? When Native American fans of teams with racist stereotypes defend them, are they just floating down the mainstream? Are they acting out of white privilege or Native privilege and, if the latter, what on earth would that be? All sorts of excuses are made for whites who harm non-whites, mainly that they act out of fear. No one really acknowledges what their fear is: That non-whites, once in charge of anything, will be as bad to the whites as they have been to us. George Zimmerman’s defense against murder will likely be “fear.” He was booked as “white” after he profiled, stalked, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old, who was walking home. With one parent who is white and the other from Peru, the shooter’s been reported as Hispanic, white Hispanic or white. Radio personality Rush Limbaugh, one of the most ostentatiously privileged of the white media, froths at the mouth when Zimmerman is called white or white Hispanic, or the killing of the teenager was a white-on-black crime. Too much white privilege; too few answers. Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne & Hodulgee Muscogee), an award-winning columnist and a poet, writer, curator and policy advocate, who has helped Native Peoples to protect sacred places and recover more than 1 million acres of land, is president of The Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C. Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:37:04 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=269 By SONNY SKYHAWK April 6, 2012 I canʼt stress enough the importance of retaining our tribal languages, when it comes to the core relevance or existence of our people. Our languages can teach us many things through daily use. Language can teach us respect, for ourselves and each other, our elders, women and most importantly, the things that allowed us to exist. Our children deserve nothing less than to have inherited their own language. You could argue that when a tribe loses its language, it loses a piece of its inner-most being, a part of its soul or spirit. That is how important and meaningful our languages are to us as the original inhabitants of this hemisphere. Historically, our ancestors relied on our language to communicate with each other and sister tribes, and when we met other tribes, we utilized sign as an alternative language to communicate. Symbols or icons were also a source of documenting our history on stone surfaces or skins, known as Winter Counts, but languages were our main source of communicating with each other. You could lay blame for the loss of some of our languages on the Boarding Schools, where we were severely punished for speaking them, but that seems a weak excuse. The truth is, it is our own fault and no one else’s. Today, most tribal nations continue to struggle to retain their native tongues due to attrition, assimilation and lack of use, and sadly, some have lost them forever. Our tribal colleges and schools are our only line of defense or hope, when it comes to saving our languages at this point, because we have for the most part, refrained from speaking our languages fluently at home or amongst each other. Immersion classes have sprung up in some of our communities—but is it too late ? We have no choice; we have to assume it is not too late, but it is an ongoing struggle to keep our languages alive. My personal hope is that our present efforts will set the template for tomorrow, and that we can save our languages for those present today and those yet to be born. We need to retain and pass our tribal languages on to the next generations if we are to remain relevant as a people. We can make the comparison of losing our language to an explorer having lost his compass—and we cannot afford to lose our cultural compass, that which so clearly defines us. Speak your language if you know it, or learn it if you can, but do not let it go due to neglect. That is not who we are, or what we do, as a people. Now is the crucial time to protect and embrace your mother(‘s) tongue. When it comes to native languages, the situation is simple: Use it or lose it. Aho. Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:34:15 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=268 By Julianne Jennings April 21, 2012 Stereotypes help market American merchandise for more than a century, and the history of their use and abuse offers a strange and telling story of race relations in this country. Starting with sugar, its long history is interwoven with that of the slave trade. As sugar consumption increased, the exercise of raw power by European colonials came to dominate non-Western societies to meet the demands of production. Africans were captured and tight packed on board European slave ships and sailed from Africa to the sugar Islands of the Caribbean to labor in cane fields; but only after Indians were nearly made extinct by the brutality. Slavery was no ancillary part of early colonial economy, but a driving force, and sugar was king. From this dark and exploitive past now comes a raspberry-flavored chewy confection called Redskins. Manufactured in Australia by Nestlé under the Willy Wonka brand, they have sold these racist candies for years. Why name a product Redskins? Because they are red and taste like raspberries (just like real Native Americans). The term redskin however, is associated with our country’s first president. In 1779, George Washington instructed Major General John Sullivan to attack Iroquois people. Washington stated, “Lay waste all the settlements around… that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed.” Following the defeat, troops would skin the bodies of Iroquois “from the hips downward to make boot tops or leggings.” Many American Indian activists are pushing to have the derogatory term removed from the football team for which it is named. The banning of Indian mascots is also receiving the same attention. Yet some white’s would argue this is a sign of respect, but would a white man wear blackface to a basketball game? In 1996, a complaint was made to the New Zealand Advertising Standards Complaints Board about a Redskins advertisement aired on New Zealand television. The advertisement featured comedian Mark Wright dressed in American Indian garb and assuming an “Indian” accent, with a mock drumbeat featured on the soundtrack. Despite protest from Nestlé New Zealand that the advertisement was inoffensive, the Board upheld the complaint (Kennedy, E. ‘Complaints board upholds ruling against sweets ad,’ The Dominion, 1 July 1996). Somehow these candies are still being sold today right along with Washington Redskins NFL Candy and ornament sets that can be purchased at RedskinsTeamstore.com. In his article Uncle Bens, CEO (?) David Segal explains in 1889, Aunt Jemima was created by Chris L. Rutt, who borrowed the name from a popular vaudeville song at a minstrel show. Looking for a way to sell a self-rising pancake mix, he conceived a jolly ex-slave, who lived on a Louisiana plantation making flapjacks in the days before the Civil War. The woman who first came to play the commercial expression of the legendary mammy was Nancy Green, born a slave, and rumored to be part Indian, in 1834. She impersonated Aunt Jemima until her death in 1923. The black mammy continued to be stereotyped, and in 1960, the Aunt Jemima was boycotted by the NAACP. Although her image has changed, she still remains one of America’s most beloved racist spoke-characters in ads all across the country. Aunt Jemima’s male counterpart was the Tom, a simple, cheerful, and ambition-free butler and cook. In the South, the mammy and the Tom reflected nostalgia during the days of slavery and later segregation. In the North, these characters were presented as the epitome of hospitality. According to one study of national magazines in the ‘20s—the beginning of the Tom’s heyday—it found that fully half of all ads that featured a black man depicted him as a servant. Like Ben, many were given the title “Uncle,” a word favored by Southerners who wanted to express respect in a society where calling a black man “Mister” was out of the question. While at the grocery store I noticed syrup bottles Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth also make clear this racist distinction. By the ‘60s racist products began to decline, because of changes brought on by the civil rights movement. This transformation is marked by the debut of Funny Face, Pillsbury’s answer to their competition, Kool-Aid. The brand was launched in 1964 and originally included the goofy-looking characters, Injun Orange and Chinese Cherry. There is no record of a public reaction, but a year later, the two were replaced for Choo-Choo Cherry and Jolly Olly Orange. Under repeated pressure by NAACP, the Aughinbaugh canning company of Biloxi Mississippi, changed the name of its oysters from “Nigger Head Brand” to “Negro Head Brand.” Negro means ‘black’ in Spanish and Portuguese linking the word to the international slave trade during colonial expeditions to Negroland, an invented European term for various West African inland states favored for slaves. Segal also writes, Crazy Horse malt liquor was introduced in 1992. The estate of Crazy Horse and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe were appalled; the brand seemed to reinforce the idea that Native Americans are prone to alcoholism. Once again the company stuck with the product only for as long as the upside of cash flow outweighed the downside of adverse publicity. Stroh Brewery sold the brand and in 2001 apologized at a ceremony at the Rosebud Reservation, handing over “culturally appropriate” damages, which included seven racehorses and 32 braids of sweet grass. With less fanfare, the brand’s second owners dropped Crazy Horse’s face from the bottle and renamed the beverage Crazy Stallion in 2004. Children’s author Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, did advertising for the Narragansett Brewery Company in Rhode Island during the ‘40s. The ad “Gangway for Gansett” featured a cartoon character of a Narragansett Indian Chief known as Chief Gansett, riding a skateboard while holding a glass of golden larger. The brewery opened in 1890, and closed in 1981; by then, Chief Gansett rolled away on his skateboard. The Brewery reopened again in 2005. The Land O’ Lakes maiden: Kneeling, subservient, butter-offering “Squaw” is patently offensive to the historical aware, and denies the heritage of Native American womanhood. The word “squaw” is an Algonquian word, meaning “woman.”Over time, however, the word has taken on negative connotations and has become a derogatory term used to describe an Indian woman’s vagina, perpetuating the subjugation of Indian women. Ice cream treats offer us the Eskimo Pie. In Canada and Greenland the term Eskimo, means “raw meat eater,” and is widely held to be pejorative; but racial superiority of Europeans is upheld in Just Whites, a dried egg product by Deb El. Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima survived courtesy of a series of timely makeovers, including the one in 1989 that turned her into a pearl-wearing, Betty Crocker-like grandmother. Repackaging erased all reminders of our country’s slave holding past, and the consumer never made to feel guilty into buying “what appeared to be” a different brand. Today, no company would be culturally insensitive to build a brand around minority figures, but the ones now in supermarkets have been grandfathered in, rendered innocuous by the passage of time. But what is worth remembering is the ease of racialization through advertising that has caused the historical amnesia of slavery and Jim Crow America by just a few sprinkles of sugar. Julianne Jennings, E. Pequot-Nottoway, is a Ph.D. student at Arizona State University. Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:30:03 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=267 16 March 2012 US DEPT OF LABOR Money to provide employment services to Indian and Native American communities WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Labor today announced the availability of nearly $60 million in grants for employment and training services through the Workforce Investment Act’s Section 166 – Indian and Native Programs. The purposes of the grants are to develop the academic, occupational and literacy skills of the individuals served, making them more competitive in the workforce, as well as to promote the economic and social development of Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian communities in accordance with their own goals and values. “Tribal communities have an important role to play in our improving economy,” said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis. “The programs funded by the grants announced today will provide vital training for workers and youth in order to enhance the economic development of these communities.” Today’s grant announcement reflects the Obama administration’s commitment to expanding the availability of employment and training programs to serve Indian tribes, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. Through these grants, tribal governments, tribal consortia and nonprofit organizations will be able to ensure that programs currently available through the workforce investment system reach individuals in some of the most geographically challenged areas in the United States. The Labor Department anticipates awarding a total of 178 grants, with approximately $47.5 million designated for adult programs and $12.4 million for youth programs. Section 166 of the Workforce Investment Act authorizes programs to serve the employment and training needs of Indian and Native American adults and youth through competitive two-year grant awards to Indian tribes, tribal organizations, Alaska Native entities, Indian-controlled organizations serving Indians and Native Hawaiian organizations. This grant is administered in a manner consistent with the principles of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, 25 U.S.C. 450 et seq., and the government-to-government relationship between the federal government and Indian tribal governments (WIA Section 166(a) (2)). The solicitation for grant applications will be published in the March 16 edition of the Federal Register. The solicitation and information on how to apply for a grant are available at http://www.doleta.gov/grants/find–grants.cfm. Interested parties are encouraged to review online resources made available by the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration for grant applicants – including “Grant Applications 101,” an interactive, self-paced tutorial – at http://www.workforce3one.org/page/grants–toolkit. Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:50:46 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=266 02 March 2012 MATT VOLZ, Associated Press HELENA, Mont. (AP) – The Fort Peck tribes have agreed to a $75 million settlement with the U.S. government over the government's mismanagement of their trust funds and trust resources. The agreement approved by the Tribal Executive Board Monday is separate from the $3.4 billion Cobell settlement over similar claims by individual Native Americans. It comes days after the Confederated Colville Tribes accepted a similar $193 million settlement. This agreement must still be approved by a federal judge before the tribes' lawsuit against the government is dismissed. The tribes, located on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana, sued in 2002 in attempt to receive an accounting of the Interior Department's management of the tribes' trust funds and to learn how much had been lost. Fort Peck Chairman Floyd Azure said in a statement that the agreement was finalized in a Feb. 16 meeting with federal negotiators. The settlement resolves all past tribal claims against the U.S. government over mismanagement of trust funds from land, natural resources and a tribal credit program. “The case we are resolving today addresses a series of wrongs committed by the federal government in the management of the Tribes' trust assets,” Azure said. He called the agreement a “treaty” between the tribes and the United States that will serve the tribes' best interests for years to come. A separate tribal statement says the executive board “is in the process of developing plans for the prudent use of these funds to meet the current and future needs of the Fort Peck people. This case deals only with tribal trust funds and not individual trust funds, which is addressed in the class-action settlement named after Elouise Cobell, the deceased Blackfeet advocate who sued the government in the mid-1990s over billions of royalties lost from the accounts of individual Indians. Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:47:47 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=265 PALA, Calif. (AP) – Disputes over bloodlines have led California tribes to cut off members in what some charge are moves to limit the number of people receiving lucrative payouts of casino profits and benefits. Citing estimates from the American Indian Movement, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday (http://lat.ms/zVwkCh ) that some two dozen tribes have removed more than 3,000 members from their rolls over the past 15 years. The Pala Band of Mission Indians in northern San Diego County is one of the latest to be embroiled in a tussle over ancestry that led to 162 descendants of a prominent tribal leader being cut off from their $7,500 monthly share of casino profits and other benefits. “Somewhere, as tribes have tried to reconstruct their sense of nationhood, particularly in tribes with casino money, they hit upon disenrollment as a way to settle disputes over personality issues and money,” David Wilkins, professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota, told the Times. The Pala dispute centers on whether a revered tribal elder, Margarita Owlinguish Britten, who died in 1925, had a white father. If she was half Indian, as the tribe has ruled, that means her descendants with less than 1/16th of Pala blood are not entitled to tribal membership. Tribe chairman Robert Smith said evidence – a tribal document that was changed in the 1950s – shows Britten was not a full-blooded Indian. “This is not about money, this is about what's right,” he said. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has ruled repeatedly that Britten's father was an Indian and has urged the tribe to reinstate the members, but has no power to enforce that decision. A bureau document listing Britten and her seven children as members of the Cupeno Indians who were relocated in 1903 to the San Luis Rey River area of San Diego County does not list any father for Britten, however. One of her descendants, King Freeman, a former tribe chairman, said the dispute centered on declining profits from the tribe's casino. The tribe's monthly payouts were reduced by $500 in January, he said. “This is all about greed,” Freeman told the Times. Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:44:57 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=264 Laurinburg, North Carolina (AP) March 2012 The Lumbee Tribal Council is continuing its fight with its chairman, again rejecting his choice for administrator. The Fayetteville Observer reported (http://bit.ly/wjqJNA) the council voted 11-10 not to consider a contract for Gervais Oxendine to become administrator because the paperwork was not submitted before the meeting and the item wasn’t on the agenda. It was the second time a vote went against Oxendine, who is Tribal Chairman Paul Brooks’ candidate for administrator. At a meeting March 6, the council tied on whether to hire Oxendine. The council also voted to tear down walls that Brooks ordered built for office space at the Elders Heritage Group. The council doesn’t want space taken away from the elders group. Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:38:21 GMT http://www.sumtercherawindians.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=263 By Mary Annette Pember March 12, 2012 In the winter of 2010, Jeremee Jon Kraskey called his mother to say, “Mom, you are no longer my family. I have a new family. I am part of the Native Mob now.” Crystal Goose, of the Leech Lake Ojibwe tribe, was shocked. “He made me cry,” she recalls. Less than a year later, on February 26, 2011, Kraskey’s body was found in an alley in South Minneapolis, with two bullet-holes in his hip and one in his forehead; it was an execution-style murder, and police have unofficially told her that his murder was related to his gang activity. He was 32. “He was such a bright, shining star,” Goose says. “People still tell me they miss him so much.” She adds that the thought of her only child dying alone in the snow has been the hardest part of losing him. The recent news of a federal indictment charging 24 alleged members of the Native Mob with conspiracy to participate in racketeering and other crimes comes as bittersweet news for Goose. The indictment means that these dangerous people may no longer plague her community, and she hopes that she and her family will see her son’s killer tried for his murder, although Jeanne Cooney, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis, says Kraskey’s murder is not officially part of the current indictment. Goose also grieves for the many mothers who have seen their sons killed or corrupted by the Native Mob, even those who were indicted. “Most of the men in the indictment are only in their 20s. Their lives have already been thrown away,” she notes, adding that she prays for them and the younger gang recruits who remain. “Some of the younger members are only 13,” Goose reports. The Native Mob is a regional gang of Native Americans that sprang up in Minneapolis during the early 1990s but has since grown to an estimated 200 members who engage in drug trafficking, assault, robbery and murder. Most members are recruited from communities with large Native American populations. According to the 47-count indictment, the Native Mob allegedly distributes illegal drugs, including crack, ecstasy and heroin, and protects its enterprise by committing acts of violence against competitors, victims and witnesses. It is also charged with hindering or obstructing officials from identifying or apprehending wanted individuals and allegedly providing monetary support to members including those who are in prison. The long and ugly list of crimes alleged in the court documents, however, fails to convey the everyday terror and pain that comes with living in close proximity to gangs and their actions. Goose can testify to that, and she is sharing her family’s experience in order to shine a light on the reality of the impact of gangs on her people. She also hopes that her story may help others who are struggling with this issue. “Learn from my story. Put yourself in Jeremee’s place, his children’s place or my place,” she says. “I want people to really think about this.” Goose has not come to this decision easily. Before Kraskey’s death, she says, she was like a frightened child, afraid of violence—gang-related or otherwise—and afraid of death. “I’m not afraid anymore. I am an elder now, and I need to do what is right,” she says. Buried by the mob: Nickaboine was beaten to death when he was 19. Goose observes that fear of gang retribution and family safety has kept many community members silent. “I understand that people are afraid, but we need to be more involved with our youth,” she says, pointing out that children are not born to be gang members. “Although these teenagers act tough, they are often like little boys on the inside who need help.” Goose says she sees that many young Native men have few role models and are searching for guidance and help. This makes them especially vulnerable to the influence of gangs. She understands that people prefer to deny unpleasant aspects of their lives, but denial is no longer an option for her. “Age and experience have brought me willingness,” she says. She says her son’s life was a roller-coaster ride. Periodically he would try to walk a good path, but the lure of quick and easy money would lead him astray. “He told me, ‘Mom, in your world I’m nothing, but in my world—the drug-dealing world—I’m a king, and I don’t have to start at the bottom. I can have money instantly in one day.’ ” Good-natured and well-liked, Kraskey was an avid fisherman and cook, a devoted father who loved his children. Although he began dealing drugs at an early age and was a convicted felon by the time he was 24, he got training as a machinist after he was released from prison and got a job in a machine shop on the nearby Red Lake reservation. “Things were going well for him. He had a house with bedrooms for his children.” But in the end, Goose says, her son couldn’t stay away from that other life he knew so well. He was laid off and found that his felony conviction made if difficult for him to get another job. Eventually he veered, once again, into the familiar work of selling drugs and joined the Native Mob. “I was mad at him for joining the Mob. I knew how dangerous they were. I knew he was subjecting his children to danger. We weren’t on very good terms when he died. He would only call occasionally.” The indictment depicts the Native Mob as a highly organized and extremely violent group with a powerful influence among its members in prison and on the streets. According to the document, one defendant in prison wrote a letter to another Native Mob member about the “need to hold people accountable, foes or our own. Discipline and [promoting] fear is the quickest way to progress in our case.” The language of the indictment is terse, but still manages to convey the vicious nature of the Native Mob and the reign of terror it has visited upon Native communities. Retribution for informing on the Native Mob or disobeying Native Mob law was swift and brutal. Information in the indictment describes how one of the accused in Cass Lake, on the Leech Lake Reservation, about 200 miles from Minneapolis, allegedly tried to kill someone for cooperating with law enforcement. The victim was shot three times as he held his 5-year-old daughter in his arms. There are also allegations of numerous beatings with baseball bats and guns, as well as shootings against members of rival gangs and potential witnesses, and drive-by shootings in several cities. In one example of retaliation, one of the accused threw a cup of boiling water into a woman’s face. There are also several allegations of murder and assault of other Native Mob members who failed to obey gang rules. One Native Mob member threatened to kill the Minneapolis police officers who arrested him. The indictment also describes the Native Mob’s ability to communicate about witnesses and police actions both inside and outside of prison. Indeed, officials were so concerned about tipping off the Native Mob as the indictment was handed down that they locked down the state’s prisons for 25 hours during the sweep of arrests. According to the federal indictment, the Native Mob makes concerted efforts to recruit young people and The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil: Goose and her son (above); McArthur, the alleged leader of the Native Mob, was arrested on February 1. juveniles. And all too often, gang violence involves those same young people. In a notorious case on the Mille Lacs reservation in 2010, 19-year-old William Nickaboine was beaten to death by members of the Native Mob. Members of a community search party, according to City Pages, a Minneapolis-based weekly newspaper, found his decaying body, Goose was outraged to see members of the Native Mob at Kraskey’s funeral. They told his two teenage children that since their father had been a member of the Native Mob, they too were members of the “family.” The Native Mob, they said, would take care of them now. “They even had the nerve to shower my granddaughter with gifts at her 14th birthday party.” Since details of the indictment have emerged, however, Goose says her grandchildren are seeing the Native Mob for what it is. “The Mob is manipulative and smooth, but they are dangerous,” she tells them. According to Mille Lacs tribal elder Irene Benjamin, gang activity has become rampant among many youth on the reservation. “Gangs are everywhere,” she says. She agrees that youth have too few good role models. “They need to feel like they belong to someone.” Justin Churchill, deputy chief of Mille Lacs tribal police department, says the Native Mob has taken a strong hold on the Mille Lacs reservation. “We have been battling them for some years,” he says, adding that the close proximity to the Twin Cities and a major highway, as well as large numbers of tribal members with relatives in the Twin Cities has made the Mille Lacs reservation especially attractive to the Native Mob. “Gang members have been taking advantage of the Native community, frequently jumping from reservation to reservation to escape prosecution,” he says. Community leaders and law enforcement officials doubt the indictment will put an end to gang activity but are hopeful it will help by taking down the leaders of the Native Mob. They know that gang culture is too woven into the fabric of many communities for a few arrests to disband gangs altogether. “We are making headway, I hope it is only the beginning of bigger things to come,” Churchill says. The reported leader of the Native Mob, Wakinyan Wakan McArthur, 33, of Bemidji was arrested recently in northeast Minneapolis. So far, 23 of the defendants named in the indictment have been arrested. Only Eric Bower is still at-large. Meanwhile, Goose prepares for her son’s memorial feast. She prays each day, burning sage and offering tobacco. Most of all, she remembers to honor the life that the Creator has given her. Extensive therapy and reading books on dealing with grief and her Native spirituality have sustained her this past year. “I have grown so much from all of this. My heart is starting to open back up.” As she talks about her son’s life and death, Goose stops frequently to reflect quietly. After one of these pauses, she tells a story about what it’s like to live in a community overrun by gangs. “I was looking out the window at work and I recognized a young man who I know is a member of the Native Mob. He was with a real young, pretty girl. He put a red and black [Native Mob colors] hat on her head and twisted it to the side the way that they do. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could tell he was mad. He was gesturing, and the girl was kind of cowering. I thought, That poor girl is young and beautiful; she has her whole life ahead of her, but she is allowing this lost little boy to control her.” She pauses for a long time, then says, “I strive to remain in the present. It’s called the present because it’s a gift given to us each day. Jeremee left seven beautiful children. I am taking care of myself so that I can be there for them.” Tue, 13 Mar 2012 19:50:37 GMT