Oregonians seem split when it comes to supporting or opposing a proposed ban on the use of Native mascots and nicknames in high schools there.

As the Gazette Times of Corvallis, Ore., reports, there are arguments coming from both sides:

SALEM — Kiante Davis is well aware of controversy over the use of Native American symbols and team names. That’s partly why he chose to wear a headdress to Wednesday’s girls basketball state tournament game.

Davis, 15, is a Lebanon High School sophomore, and said he’s proud of his native heritage, which includes Cherokee and Montauk. Both the headdress and Lebanon’s team name, the Warriors, reflect that pride, he said.

“Mainly I did it because of school spirit,” he said. “I don’t take it (as) offensive.”

But an opposite viewpoint was also expressed last week, when the Oregon State Board of Education heard the first reading of a recommendation to ban Native American nicknames or mascots at more than a dozen Oregon high schools.

Sam Sachs of Portland, a 1986 graduate of South Albany High School, was one of three speakers Thursday who disagreed.

Sachs said he carried a giant Confederate flag, then a symbol of the South Albany Rebels, when he ran around the football field as a high school junior to celebrate his winning touchdown over West Albany. That symbol was wrong, Sachs said, and so are Indian symbols.

“To me, people aren’t mascots. Let me just say to you: African American mascot. Latino mascot. Jewish mascot. Lincoln High Jews?” Sachs asked. “Does that sound right to you?”

A decision is expected sometime in May.

Jenna Cederberg

As Missoulian reporter Chelsi Moy explains, Native Americans makes up the largest student minority at the University of Montana. And graduation rate of Native students lags far behind that of non-minorities.

That’s just one area of concern.

A new study released by university council at UM lays out all the work the institution has to do when it comes to diversity.

Native students on campus say more should be done to provide diversity classes for students. Also they say, the university should follow up with drop outs so it can better understand the problems.

Here’s Moy’s story:

Walking across campus, the University of Montana may not appear all that diverse.

However, a new report compiled by the President’s Diversity Advisory Council tells a different story. The report is a compilation of all the diversity efforts by individual schools and departments on campus. It’s a baseline study that the university plans to use to gauge its progress.

“I was impressed on how many different units are doing really incredible work on all aspects of diversity,” said Lucy France, director of UM’s Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Office.

Some statistics, however, show there’s much that still needs to be done. Thirty-four percent of UM’s tenured faculty are female, 1 percent are American Indian and 7 percent are black, Hispanic or Asian. The university recently hired a diversity retention and recruitment coordinator to address the under-representation of females and minority faculty and staff, France said.
White students make up 86 percent of the undergraduate population.

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Gyasi Rossi has a point. One that’s pretty well made in the photo above.

When March rolls around, it brings with it basketball tourneys across the country. Basketball tourney time, as Rossi says, is special thing in the eyes of many in Indian Country. Missoulian photographer Kurt Wilson took this shot on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northern Montana.

In a sign of the season in and around several rural Montana towns, the local high school basketball team is given a hometown boost during this weekend’s slate of state basketball championship tournaments. This one was put up outside Browning on the route the team bus took to the state tournament in Butte.

Here’s a little more from Rossi’s ICTMN column on “March madness”:

The basketball teams in many of our reservation towns are some of the crowning jewels of our people. We literally pile in—convoy—60, 70 cars in a row to go to the larger cities, armed with good medicine, some Shasta pop and a ring of red and a loaf of bread. We go to watch these beautiful Native kids—some with braids tucked into the backs of their jerseys, most with shaved heads and closed-cropped haircuts—and see a glimpse into the future that they can have, with hard work, dedication and prayer.

Indian boys and girls can go to state and can compete and even beat the larger white/black/Latino schools if they work hard as a team. They can accomplish anything if they really want to—Indian men and women competing in spite of racism, in spite of historical trauma, in spite of a history of genocide, alcoholism, and abuse.

Jenna Cederberg

The producer and director of an acclaimed documentary about three teenage Mohawk girls growing up on a reserve in Canada is taking the concept to the next level.

Candadian blog TV, EH? posted a press release from Aboriginal Peoples Television Network announcing that Tracey Deer will executive produce a new television show about “four sexy twenty-somethings trying to figure out what it means to be a modern day Mohawk woman.”

The pilot for Mohawk Girls, shot in 2010, was selected during the 2010 Cannes Film Festival to be a finalist in the first-ever International Pilots Competition at the Banff World Television Festival. It is the second acclaimed comedy from Rezolution Pictures, which won the 2008 CFTPA Indie Award for Best Comedy Series for Moose TV, starring Adam Beach, Nathaniel Arcand, Jennifer Podemski, and directed by Tim Southam.

Mohawk Girls was inspired by Tracey Deer’s 2005 feature-length documentary of the same name, about the trials and tribulations of three teenage girls growing up on the Mohawk reserve of Kahnawake. This Rezolution Pictures/NFB co-produced film received the Alanis Obomsawin Best Documentary Award at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. Honours for Tracey Deer also include the Gemini Award for best writing and the Canada Award for her 2008 Rezolution Pictures/NFB documentary Club Native.

No word on when the project will begin shooting for the first season, but the release did mention that the cast has been selected.

The website Women Make Movies has more about the original Mohawk Girl documentary.

Jenna Cederberg

The number of high school graduates to take the Advanced Placement tests has increased in the past decade, but as a Huffington Post Education post points out, talented Native America students with the most “potential” aren’t taking the tests as much as they should.

“AP potential” as defined by the College Board is a 70 percent or greater likelihood that a student will score a 3 (out of 5) or higher on an AP exam. The “potential” is calculated based on more than 2 million public school PSAT/NMSQT takers in the class of 2011.

But 74 percent of the “qualified” Native students didn’t take the tests. Huffington Post also noted that the College Board report finds that like Native students, most of the groups students not taking the tests are members of minorities.

The debate surrounding AP courses and exams is divided. Students who take and perform well on AP exams often benefit in the college arena: high scores show admissions officers that a student has the ability to master college-level work. Many colleges also use AP exam scores as ways of placing students in advanced classes, placing them out of introductory courses or simply in exchange for college credit by placing students out of course and graduation requirements altogether.

Do you think the AP tests matter? Tell the Huffington Post through its quick poll.

Jenna Cederberg

High school students in a South Dakota town are helping to bring bison back, thanks to a program that encourages consumption of the sacred animal through cooking and other classes.

As Kristi Eaton of the Associated Press reports, the program is also inspiring a reconnection to culture.

The program was started by Flandreau Santee Sioux tribe and South Dakota State University researchers at Flandreau Indian School.

The school began preparing school meals with fresh bison meat last year as part of the pilot project.

Nearly 20 professors across five departments at SDSU are involved in the project, which they hope will be used as a model among other tribes trying to revive the demand for bison.

Although bison tastes a bit different — some think it has a sweeter, richer flavor than beef — Flandreau Indian School senior Dillon Blackbird said he prefers school meals served with bison because it’s “real meat.”

One of more than 30 students from the Flandreau Indian School to take part in cooking workshops with bison as the main ingredient, Blackbird said he now knows how to whip up his own dishes with bison, which has less fat and fewer calories than beef.

“I make basic stuff: tacos, enchiladas, spaghetti, lasagna,” Blackbird said.

SDSU researchers want other teenagers to follow Blackbird’s lead, creating a market within the tribe for the next 40 to 50 years and changing the way members think about the animal.

Jenna Cederberg

Montana State University grad William Mendoza has been named by President Barack Obama the head of the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education.

Mendoza earned a master’s degree in educational leadership from MSU in 2010, a press release from MSU said, and will be the first leader of the new federal initiative to increase and improve educational opportunities for Indian Country.

One focus of the initiative will be to help drop-outs find ways back into the education system.

“We’re working hard to reduce the American Indian and Alaska Native student dropout rate and making sure students who stay in high school are ready to start their career by the time they complete college,” Mendoza said.

Previously, Mendoza was acting director of the White House Initiative on Tribal Colleges and Universities, or WHITCU. The office works to ensure that the nation’s tribal colleges and universities are more fully recognized, better informed and given full access to federal programs.

Mendoza, who is an enrolled Oglala Sioux and has deep Sicangu Sioux roots, grew up on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservations in South Dakota.

Jenna Cederberg

An important meeting took place last week on the campus at the University of Montana. Missoulian reporter Chelsi Moy has the story:

For years, the University of Montana has worked to recruit higher numbers of American Indian students, but Montana’s tribal college presidents suggested a different approach during a visit to campus Friday.

Recruit Native American professors, staff and researchers first.

“If you can see people who look like you in the classroom and have had the same experiences, the classroom is more acceptable,” said Richard Littlebear, president of Chief Dull Knife College located on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern Montana.

Nearly all of the tribal college presidents from Montana’s seven Indian reservations attended the daylong meeting.

UM President Royce Engstrom invited his fellow presidents to Missoula so he could develop relationships with other higher education leaders in the state, learn more about tribal colleges and look for areas where UM and tribal colleges can collaborate, he said.

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Buffalo Post has to say it too: Congrats to all the grads! Here’s a few festive stories for your Sunday Brunch:

Centuries of interruption and a history rejoined
It was 1665 when Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, Wampanoag, received his degree from Harvard. As Brian McGory of the Boston Globe explains, it wasn’t until 346 years later that another Wampanoag Native would walk Harvard’s halls: Tiffany Smalley is the first (and third overall) Wampanoag in centuries to attend Harvard.

There is, however, a key distinction: Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck and Joel Iacommes hark from the 1600s, while Tiffany, sipping a Frappuccino and rushing off to an internship, is every bit of the modern world.

Come May 26, the bond between Smalley and both her ancestors will come full circle. That is the day she will stride across the stage to accept a diploma and become the first Wampanoag to graduate from Harvard College since Caleb received his degree in 1665.

“The connection, recognizing those roots, is really important to feeling at home here,’’ Smalley said. “And I’ve felt really at home, knowing Caleb did this. It gives you perspective. He was just thrown into it, and for him, it was a whole different world.’’

Wagner High School students celebrate more than graduation
In Wagner, S.D., the high school ceremonies were different this year. This time, it was a celebration of all and everyone, KSFY reports.

In previous years, it seems like graduation at the Wagner High School has been divided: one tradition for Native-American students, another tradition for everyone else. This weekend, that will change.

“To see a state school do this is very respectful and awesome. Bringing those ancient ways back. We don’t want them to change,” USD professor Jerome Kills Small said.

Display of song and dance, native to the Yankton Sioux Tribe, and tradition this school is now happy to embrace. For the first time, Wagner High School is celebrating their seniors as one. For Jerome Kills Small, all of this brings a smile.

Watch the video here.

Jenna Cederberg