ND House: UND must keep Fighting Sioux name
Early this week the House of the North Dakota Legislature passed a bill that would require the University of North Dakota keeps its controversial Fighting Sioux name, the AP reported.

The only problem is, a lawsuit settled between UND and the NCAA says the school needs to drop the abusive and hostile name.

Supporters of the measure argued that North Dakota’s Board of Higher Education, in deciding to discard the nickname and logo, ignored strong public sentiment in favor of both. Opponents of the nickname and logo say they are racist and demeaning.

“Overwhelmingly, Native Americans and regular North Dakota citizens … they said, we don’t want the name to go away,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Al Carlson, R-Fargo, the House majority leader. “Are we supposed to ignore it, and say, we don’t have the authority to do that?”

Separately, representatives voted down two related bills that required UND to keep the nickname unless the members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe voted to revoke permission for using it. Neither bill got more than eight votes in favor.

Navajo is new Native link at White House

Navajo County has a new representative in the White House. Phoenix native Charlie Galbraith started his job an associate director of the Office of Public Engagement and deputy associate director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs this week, Navajo Times reports.

His jobs are wide-reaching.

(Galbraith) understands that each of the 565 federally recognized tribes has different issues and is looking forward to learning about their cultures.

“They’re going to keep me busy,” he said of his mission to keep the president current on their issues.

Galbraith is taking over the position from Jodi Gillette, Standing Rock Sioux, who is now deputy assistant secretary for policy and economic development at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Tulsa women turns idea into booming business

Jenna Cederberg

Its’ not a new problem, but it remains a challenge: Securing a full, bright tomorrow for the traditions and motivations of tribes across the nation means channeling the talents of the youth who make up the Native populations in the fast approaching future.

How to do that – inspire and secure the youth on paths to education and leadership – has been a goal of former Navajo Nation President Peterson Zah, as the Arizona Republic reports.

Now is a time when the tribal governments across the nation are pushing for more sovereignty, the AR points out, but Zah is worried that the tough realities on most reservations continue to keep promising leaders on paths away from leadership.

The youth need role models, Zah said.

Youth leadership mentor McClellan ‘Mac’ Hall gave his take as well.

McClellan “Mac” Hall, director and founder of the New Mexico-based National Indian Youth Leadership Project, said indigenous teens are confronted by a legacy of subjugation, a shortage of mentors and a minefield of socio-economic barriers.

“You can stay stuck in that historical trauma, or you can move on,” Hall said. “We’re trying to look past that and make a more positive future.”

Hall, a Cherokee married to a Navajo, worked for years as a high-school teacher and principal in Gallup, watching students get sucked into a vortex of failure. Finally, he quit to create a program that blends team building, civic responsibility and personal development.

“I think people are looking for fresh ideas and motivated youth,” Hall said.

Jenna Cederberg

Navajo tribal election officials are holding to their count that Lynda Lovejoy lost a November bid to become the tribe’s first woman leader.

Lovejoy officially conceded the race last week by giving up her call for a recount of votes, Kate Saltzstein of Native Sun News reported on Indianz.com.

Among reasons for the loss, Lovejoy said the “woman factor” played a part. Leadership roles are not a part of the traditional role of Navajo women. The choice of Earl Tulley as the vice president candidate was also criticized, Saltzstein reports.

Lovejoy, a New Mexico state senator, said that during the election, people called her from across the reservation complaining that polling places ran out of ballots preventing them from voting. She also charged that there was fraud in the election.

However, the director of Office of Election Administration responded that there was no fraud in the election and that representatives from his office visited people who could not vote on Election Day to record their votes.

It would have cost Lovejoy more than $5,000 to pay for a recount.

Lovejoy will now go back to her duties as a state senator and plans to write a book about her life.

Jenna Cederberg

Before she was dubbed “Champion Fry Bread Maker” at the Flowing Water Navajo Casino in New Mexico, Helen Moore, 70, was a postal worker, a teacher and worked from the Bureau of Indian Education. She was a bilingual teacher and worked seasonally at an agricultural products business.

Now her days are spent carefully crafting the traditional favorite in the most authentic of ways, as the Deseret News reports. She is one of two chefs that are on full-time fry bread duty at the new casino.

Moore learned the craft as a child and now will help Flowing Waters fill its more than 400 orders for the treat each day. She can measure the recipe by sight and knows just how well the fry bread goes with mutton stew, another favorite at the casino. It’s something she made for her sister and brothers, then taught her children the recipe so they could keep the tradition alive.

Moore holds this process close to her heart.

The process of making fry bread is deeper than clocking in for work every morning, however, Moore said.

“A lot of it is your mood,” she said while stretching a ball of dough in preparation of dropping it into the deep fryer. “If you’re angry or upset, the dough will not cooperate. If you come to work frustrated, the dough won’t come out good. It’s best if you’re in a good mood. The dough will be soft.”

Though working hand-in-hand to produce jobs and revenue in Hogback, casinos and fry bread share an unappetizing history.

The Navajo people began making fry bread when they were forced off their sacred land in the Four Corners in 1863 and were rationed government supplies of flour, salt, baking powder, lard and water.

Jenna Cederberg

Navajo Times staff report:

On Dec. 31, 1945, Jean Whitehorse’s father, the late Edmund Henry Sr., was paid a $147 stipend by the Marines and provided a one-way bus ticket from Camp Pendleton, Calif., to Gallup.

As a member of a small band of warriors now known as the Navajo Code Talkers, Henry arrived home to little fanfare.

On Wednesday, his daughter said he would have been proud to know that a portion of State Route 264 now honors their memory.

In a ceremony that took place on the eve of Veterans Day, President Joe Shirley Jr., New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and officials of the New Mexico Department of Transportation were on hand for the dedication of Navajo Code Talkers Highway, which stretches from Yah-Ta-Hey to Window Rock.

“What we are doing is a small token of appreciation to the brave men who answered the call to service,” said Jackson Gibson, New Mexico state highway commissioner. “If it wasn’t for the code talkers, I don’t know what language we would be speaking today.”

Gibson said when the men were called to service they were not even eligible to vote and most lied about their ages so they could enlist.

“They volunteered so that we could practice the freedom we have today,” he said. “In fact, we practiced it the other day when we went to the polls to vote.”

The effort to designate a Navajo Code Talkers Highway began in 1998 when Navajo Nation Council Delegate Ronald Gishey (Lower Greasewood) presented the request to the State Highway Commission, but the commission did not act.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the Associated Press’ latest election night story from Arizona:

Navajos elect tribe’s vice president to top post

By FELICIA FONSECA
Associated Press

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Navajos have chosen the tribe’s vice president as their next leader.

Ben Shelly defeated New Mexico Sen. Lynda Lovejoy in Tuesday’s election, becoming the first vice president elected to the tribal presidency. Shelly had 32,910 votes to Lovejoy’s 29,535 votes with just two precincts outstanding.

Shelly and his running mate, Rex Lee Jim, won despite criminal charges they face in an investigation of slush funds that were revealed just ahead of the election. Shelly has pleaded not guilty to fraud, conspiracy and theft.

Shelly says his 16 years as a tribal lawmaker and four as vice president will ensure stability in the tribal government that has been mired in political conflict. He plans to focus on government accountability, creating jobs and education.

Lovejoy has said that Navajos needed a leader with fresh ideas, not a career tribal politician.

Jenna Cederberg

Getting sense of who may become the first woman leader of the Navajo Nation (the world’s largest Indian reservation) is easy in this Associated Press story.
Lynda Lovejoy is running, and gaining speed against her male opponent, for president. As the story points out, it’s not an easy campaign trail she’s been hikiing. It’s not hard to find the “gender angle” in articles all over the Internet. And some people still believe “Women belong in the kitchen,” as is quoted in the story.
But it’s always more complicated than that, isn’t it? Lovejoy doesn’t always wear traditional dress, is Catholic and is married to a non-Navajo.
We’ll all have to wait and is if she, too, becomes a president. The election is Nov. 2.

Men long have been the leaders of Navajo people and traditionally consulted with women in the communities as equals. Navajos see each person as having female and
male aspects that create balance.
Philmer Bluehouse, a traditional peacekeeper, said those who believe women can’t be president likely are looking to a Navajo tale of a female who was given a leadership post but became angry and controlling.
But some fail to look beyond that story to one in which the deity White Shell Woman gives birth to the Twin Warriors, who rid the world of monsters such as greed, poverty and hate, Bluhouse said. According to Navajo lore, all Navajos can trace their ancestry back to her, and she’s considered to be the ideal woman.
Both Lovejoy and Shelly know the story but are quick to note they’re no experts in tradition. They are familiar, though, with “monsters” that come in the form of a more than 50 percent unemployment rate, the abuse of women and children, infighting in tribal government and neglected elderly.

Flathead Indian Reservation sees centennial of white settlement
This year marks the centennial of homesteading on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana, a painful time that saw much of the reservation’s Indian land sold off to non-Natives. In today’s Missoulian, Vince Devlin has a pair of stories told from both the perspective of the Salish, Kootenai and Pend d’Oreille tribes who watched their lands vanish, and from that of the whites who moved there, often not knowing how those lands were obtained. “They were certainly brave souls,” Joe McDonald says of the homesteaders. “Most came in and didn’t know the politics” behind the opening of the reservation to non-Indians. McDonald’s own father sold off two of the family’s tribal allotments to pay for a casket for his little brother. The situation led to the tribes becoming minorities on their own lands.

Voting site set for Shannon County, S.D., and Pine Ridge Reservation residents
It looks as though a plan has been worked out for voting in Shannon County, S.D., home to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The Rapid City Journal reports that beginning Tuesday, Shannon County voters can cast ballots for the upcoming general election at the county’s Lakota Language Program office in the old hospital at Pine Ridge.

Advocate for Native American art dies
The New York Times says Ralph T. Coe, “played a central role in the revival of interest in Native American art, from the ancient to the modern.” Coe – known as Ted — headed the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., from 1977 until 1982. He was 81 when he died Sept. 14 at his home in Santa Fe, N.M.

First Nations chiefs protest deplorable school conditions
The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs helped lead a demonstration in Winnipeg Friday to protest problems at schools in First Nations communities. The group said that schools in three Manitoba First Nations are closed, while others are overcrowded, and that the buildings are moldy and deteriorating, according to the Vancouver Sun.

Second Navajo Nation casino to open Oct. 13
The Navajo Nation Gaming Enterprise has announced that the Flowing Waters Navajo Casino will open Oct. 13. Gaming there will be more limited than at the Fire Rock Navajo Casino, according to the Navajo Times. There will be no card games and slot machine players compete against each other instead of against the house, the story says.

Gwen Florio

New regulation takes aim at fake Native American arts and crafts
“Falsely suggesting goods are Indian- or Alaska Native-made could be harder to get away with now that Congress has approved changes to the 1990 Indian Arts and Crafts Act,” Associated Press reporter Sue Major Homes writes. The revisions are part of the Tribal Law and Order Act, and expand the number of agencies that can investigate suspected violations.

First Nations leaders heading for Washington, D.C., to protest tar sands development
Tomorrow, a number of First Nations leaders from Canada will meet with officials in Washington, D.C., “to persuade officials to reject a pipeline project they say would pump more ‘dirty oil’ from Alberta into the United States,” the Canadian Press reports. “Francois Paulette, of the Smith’s Landing Treaty 8 First Nation, says he wants to talk to U.S. politicians about pollutants from the oilsands.”

One of original Navajo Code Talkers dies
Indian Country today has an Associated Press story reporting the death of Allen Dale June, one of the 29 original Navajo code talkers who confounded the Japanese during World War II by transmitting messages in their native language, has died. He was 91, and died of natural causes at a veterans hospital on Sept. 8, according to the story.

Thousands take part in annual Trail of Tears Motorcycle Ride
Actually, make that tens of thousands, according to Trevor Stokes of the Times Daily in Alabama’s Tennessee Valley. The ride memorializes the forced, deadly relocation of Cherokee people who lived east of the Mississippi River in 1838.

Early voting on Pine Ridge Reservation faces roadblocks
The issue actually involves Shannon County, S.D., but of course that’s where the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is located. The Rapid City Journal reports that voters cannot cast an early ballot without traveling to Hot Springs in Fall River County or applying by mail for an absentee ballot. Voting in Shannon County has been the focus of controversy in recent years, especially after 2002, when Democrat Tim Johnson wrestled a Senate race away from Republican John Thune by just over 500 votes – with Shannon County votes being the last counted, prompting allegations of fraud.

Gwen Florio