Participants in American Indian regalia line up at a Pawnee homecoming in 2009. (Courtesy of Les D. Riding In)

The University of Texas at Arlington Native American Students Association is hoping to give an education to anyone who attends its “This Is Not a Costume” program.

The Star-Telegram reports that the event will showcase the personal, historical and important significance of regalia. Both male and female dancers will show off American Indian dress and the group hopes attendees realize every piece has a history.

“When someone puts on regalia, it’s something,” said Les Riding In, a UTA Honors College adviser whose parents are members of the Osage and Pawnee tribes. “What I like is hearing the family histories. It’s a chance to learn more.”

Riding In said that although the campus group only has 15 to 20 members, North Texas has a good-size American Indian community.

“This is going to be an open forum” with a time for questions, said Riding In, whose last name is Pawnee. “All ages are welcome. It’s definitely a chance to see something that they may have heard of.”

Jenna Cederberg

The map above is titled “Sleeping on the Couch,” and that says it all.

It’s part of a recent report by the Conference Board of Canada on housing overcrowding in Canada’s North.

“Almost all social and health problems increase dramatically when combined with overcrowded housing,” Gilles Rhéaume, the conference board’s vice-president for public policy, tells Nunatsiaq News. “Crowded housing is an issue that clearly demonstrates a north-south divide in Canada.”

According to the report:

In Statistics Canada’s Keewatin census division, which covers the Kivalliq region in Nunavut, 25 per cent of homes have six or more people living in them— the highest percentage of overcrowding in Canada.

Close behind are regions in five provinces which also have census divisions showing that 10 per cent or more of the homes are overcrowded.

These census divisions are:

* Northern Manitoba (Division No. 23 Churchill) – 20 per cent
* Northern Saskatchewan (Division No. 18, including La Ronge) – 18 per cent
* Northern Newfoundland and Labrador (Division No. 11 Nunatsiavut area) – 14 per cent
* Northern Quebec (Nunavik) – 14 per cent
* Northwestern Alberta (Division No. 17) – 10 per cent

“Sleeping on the Couch” is the fifth map in a series from the Conference Board of Canada’s Centre for the North.

Gwen Florio

Indian reservations are in desperate need of affordable, safe housing, officials from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation testified during a U.S. Senate field hearing in Rapid City, S.D., this week.

Kevin Woster of the Rapid City Journal was there and wrote the following:

Housing shortages mix with gang activities and violence to damage the fabric of society on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in ways that demand more federal funding and reasoned cooperation from Washington, D.C., Paul Iron Cloud of the Oglala housing program said during a joint hearing of the Senate committees on Indian Affairs and Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Housing programs struggle not just because of financial pressures but also because of increasing problems with gangs, suicide and violence that make housing shortfalls even worse, he said.

Iron Cloud testified that “The growing prevalence of this violence is really attacking and destroying the social structure of our reservations, creating unacceptable injuries, death and fear in our communities and undercutting our ability to protect our units and tenants. It is in many ways a reservation-wide situation, but Oglala Sioux (Lakota) Housing, as the primary landlord on the reservation, is uniquely impacted.”

The hearing was called by Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and attended by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, who also stopped Tuesday at the Rosebud Sioux Reservation.

Gwen Florio

DIRK LAMMERS Dave and Regina Kills In Water, left, talk about housing problems on the Rosebud Indian Reservation with Rosebud Sioux Tribal President Rodney Bordeaux, far right, and U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan yesterday in Soldier Creek, S.D. The couple's trailer has no running water or sewer service. (AP/Dirk Lammers)

ROSEBUD – The Rosebud Sioux Tribe is tackling its reservation housing shortage by becoming its own builder.

Tribal officials on Tuesday showcased the new 33,600-square-foot Ojinjintka Housing Development Corporation plant to U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and Sen. Tim. Johnson, D-S.D., as part of a tour of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation.

The tribal-owned corporation will employee up to 26 residents with the capacity to build up to 48 affordable homes a year for low-income families.

This, from the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal:

MISSION — The secretary for Housing and Urban Development is scheduled to tour the Rosebud Sioux Reservation on Tuesday to see projects operating with the help of HUD money and the dire housing conditions faced by members of the tribe.

Shaun Donovan will tour the area with Sen. Tim. Johnson, D-S.D.

On Wednesday, Donovan is scheduled to give testimony in Rapid City during a joint field hearing of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

Next week’s scheduled visit to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation by U.S. Senator and former funnyman Al Frank has nothing to do Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin’s re-election campaign.

At least, so says Herseth Shandlin, who spoke with Kevin Woster of the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal:

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D. (Rapid City Journal)

Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., said she invited Franken, D-Minn., who sits on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, to meet with officials of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in Pine Ridge on Aug. 7 because he is knowledgeable and influential on Native American issues and is in a position to help Native people.

Housing is one of the key issues Franken will discuss with officials while at Pine Ridge, Herseth Sandlin said.

Herseth Sandlin tells Woster that “I’m worried about my constituents. And I have constituents in Indian Country who are on waiting lists as far as the eye can see for quality, safe housing.” She tells him she hasn’t given a thought as to whether the visit could help her campaign.

But Betty Smith, a professor of political science at University of South Dakota in Vermillion, tells Woster that Franken’s visit could help shore up Herseth Sandlin’s standing among liberal constituents angered by her vote against health care reform.

And, as Smith reminds us, “the Native American vote in this state can be very important in a close election.”

National attention focused on Pine Ridge in 2002, when the votes from Shannon County, where the reservation is located, decided the U.S. Senate race in favor of Democrat Tim Johnson over Republican John Thune. Thune went on to defeat Democrat Tom Daschle two years later.

Gwen Florio

Here’s the story from the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal:

Al Franken (AP photo)

Franken is a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and also sits on the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which has authority over tribal housing programs. Herseth Sandlin issued the invitation to Franken for the Pine Ridge visit after the two discussed Native American housing issues.

Herseth Sandlin also will host a field hearing of the House Natural Resources Committee on Aug. 6 in Eagle Butte. Tribal leaders will testify at the hearing, which will focus on education, school facilities, Native languages and other issues.

Franken will not be able to attend that meeting, Herseth Sandlin’s staffers said.

Carl Boneshirt Jr. works on the transmission of his broken-down van parked at his home in Kyle. The house, hit by a storm, has been condemned, and the Pine Ridge Reservation's housing shortage means there's no new home for Boneshirt. (Kristina Barker/Rapid City Journal)

Today comes this piece by Rob Capriccioso of Indian Country Today, on an Obama administration plan to reduce homelessness among Native people:

Billed as “the nation’s first comprehensive strategy to prevent and end homelessness,” the plan is called Opening Doors. It was launched June 22 under the leadership of several federal agencies, including the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness.

The aim is to put the country on a path to end veterans and chronic homelessness by 2015, and to end homelessness among children, families, and youth by 2020. Strategies emphasized include increasing leadership, collaboration, and civic engagement; increasing access to stable and affordable housing; increasing economic security; improving health and stability; and retooling the homeless response system.

Research currently indicates that Native American communities face disproportionately high rates of homelessness, something that federal officials said they want to account for under the plan. According to 2009 Annual Homeless Assessment Report from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, American Indians make up eight percent of the country’s homeless population.

“Native homelessness is an issue that’s near and dear to my heart,” says Karen Diver, chairwoman of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Minnesota. That tribe recently opened 24 supportive housing units for struggling families by partially using Department of Housing and Urban Development funding, Capriccioso reports.

Read more about the plan at www.usich.gov.

Gwen Florio

Youth programs on Montana reservations will benefit from an infusion of nearly $1.4 million in federal grants.

The grants, which will go to YouthBuild programs on the Blackfeet and Rocky Boy reservations and in Havre, were announced today by Montana’s U.S. Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester.

The money will be awarded to the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council and the Montana State University-Northern College of Technical Science for YouthBuild programs.

YouthBuild uses at-risk teens to build affordable housing for low-income or homeless families in their own neighborhoods. They split their time between work and the classroom, earning their GEDs, high school diplomas or college credits.

On the Blackfeet Reservation, the program will enroll 60 youth in the Southern Pikanii Lodge Builders Project, partnering with the Blackfeet Manpower program. And 80 teens enrolled in the North Central Montana YouthBuild Construction Trades Program will build energy-efficient modular homes that will then be moved to the Rocky Boy Reservation after the school year ends.

Nationwide, 76,000 YouthBuild students have built or rehabilitated 17,000 units of affordable housing since 1994, according to the Library of Congress.

Gwen Florio