The Young Ladies’ Society sounds like a tea-and-cookies sort of group. It’s anything but.

A group of girls at Arapahoe Charter High School on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming formed the group after three teenage girls were found dead on the reservation in 2008. Another young teenage girl was killed in April, and girls also tell of sexual assaults during drinking parties.

As Kristy Gray of the Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune writes, here, the Young Ladies’ Society see their job as to say “enough.” They proclaim themselves as “Taking Back the Rez.” Gray writes:

The society they formed is geared toward 11- to 18-year-old girls. The five founding members signed sobriety vows. They hope to be role models and to expand the society to a community-wide effort for girls of any background, tribe or race. They want to have monthly workshops on all kinds of topics, free for young women.

[This week was] their first public event, a workshop called STOP — Survival Thinking, Observation and Planning. It stresses prevention first, then fighting back.

The best thing about the group is that it’s a grass-roots effort, not something imposed from above.

Let’s hope the young women stick with it, and that other young women take notice – and that men and boys do, too.

Gwen Florio

Child death in foster care causes First Nations outcry
Twice in six months, children from the Sturgeon Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan have died in foster care under suspicious circumstances. The most recent case, that of a 22-month-old child, has prompted calls for a public inquiry, according to this CBC report. The little boy, Evander Lee Daniels, drowned in a bathtub and also had been scalded, according to this earlier CBC piece. watch a video, here.

Some Wind River Reservation residents told to seek high ground during floods
Even though floodwaters are receding in central Wyoming, residents in the Wind River Indian Reservation community of Sharp Nose are being told to seek higher ground because of rain and snow last night. With snow falling at about an inch an hour, authorities feared more flooding along the Wind River, according to the Casper (Wyo.) Star Tribune, here.

New dorm goes up at Crazy Horse Memorial
The nearly-completed Crazy Horse Student Living and Learning Center was open to the public yesterday. The $2.5 million dorm will house the Summer University Program at Crazy Horse Memorial, sanctioned by the University of South Dakota’s Department of American Indian Studies, according to this Rapid City (S.D.) Journal story by Tyler Jerke.

Cape Wind opponents see parallels with gulf oil catastrophe
Indian Country Today’s Gale Courey Toensing wrote here last week about the massive wind-power project off the coast of Massachusetts, which is vehemently opposed by the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag nations. Opponents say the mitigation opposed for the Cape Wind project is akin to the safety measures that so badly failed on the BP rig now spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Fort Niagara adds Native American interpreters for truer history lesson
Every summer, Fort Niagara in New York hires history lovers and actors from Niagara University to portray characters who might have populated the region, and to explain its history to tourists. This year, those history interpreters include Jordan Smith, a Niagara Falls Native American educator, in the role of a Mohawk Indian, and Brenda Patterson, who is Tuscaroran and plays the role of a Seneca woman. The Mohawk and Seneca tribes are part of the Iroquois Confederacy. Read more here in the Niagara Gazette.

Gwen Florio

Tetona Dunlap is a graduate student in journalism at the University of Montana. She is an enrolled member of the Eastern Shoshone tribe from the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.

Fremont County in Wyoming, which includes the Wind River Indian Reservation, has been declared a disaster area by the state due to flooding.

Melting mountain snowpack and rain are responsible for record water levels. Washakie Reservoir on the Wind River Reservation near Fort Washakie is at capacity and access has been closed. The dam sits on the South Fork of the Little Wind River.

The Little Wind River was measured at 11.96 feet on Wednesday, well above the flood stage of 8 feet. The previous record was 10.85 feet set in 1963.

About 200 members of the Wyoming National Guard have been deployed to help evacuate people and sandbag homes.

Wind River Reservation residents have been advised not to use 17-Mile Road bridge that crosses the Little Wind River west of Arapahoe due to damage caused from floodwaters.

The water treatment plan in Ethete was also compromised earlier on Wednesday, but according to the Fremont County Public Health the water was testing clean and is back up and running.

The flooding in Fremont County is forcing the Wyoming National Guard to make its biggest in-state activation since 2000.

The flooding is affecting a 22-square-mile area of Fremont County with about 2,100 homes flooded or threatened by flooding.

Currently there are no accurate count of homes with actual water damage or the number of people displaced.

Tetona Dunlap is a graduate student in journalism at the University of Montana. She is an enrolled member of the Eastern Shoshone tribe from the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Earlier this year, she wrote here about the successes on and off the track of Wyoming Indian High School’s Caleb Her Many Horses. Today, she brings us an update:

Caleb Her Many Horses, a senior at Wyoming Indian High School on the Wind River Reservation, won four events, at the recent Wyoming High School Class 2A Track and Field Championships in Casper, Wyoming.

Her Many Horses set a new class record with a time of 9 minutes and 38.85 seconds when he ran the anchor leg for the winning 3,200-meter relay team, which included teammates Alvin Spoonhunter, Marlin Medicine Horse and Slade Spoonhunter.

Her Many Horses won also won the 1600, 3200 and the 800-meter run with a state best meet time of 1:58:34. Teammate Slade Spoonhunter came in third in the 3200 and second in the 800-meter races.

Slade also placed third in the 400-meter dash and Lorenzo Underwood took eighth. Alvin Spoonhunter took sixth in the 1600-meter and Medicine Horse placed eighth in the 3200-meter run.

Combined the Wyoming Indian men’s track and field team rallied 70 points and placed third at the state meet.

County commission candidates won’t be on the primary election ballot in Fremont County, Wyo., this August.

That’s because of a ruling earlier this week by U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson of Cheyenne. He found that the practice in Fremont County – one-third of which comprises the Wind River Indian Reservation – of holding at-large elections for commissioners diluted the American Indian vote.

That’s a violation of the Voting Rights Act, Johnson found, and ordered a new district voting system. As the Casper, Wyo., Star Tribune reports here:

County Clerk Julie A. Freese said Thursday there’s no way the county could follow Johnson’s order – which calls for him to approve a district voting plan on Aug. 13 – and have commissioners on the ballot just a few days later.

Freese said her office won’t accept commissioner candidate filings until districts are established. State law specifies that commission candidates may file with the county clerk from May 13-28.

“The state statute is out the window at this point,” Freese said. “We’d be dealing with the ruling, and we’d be dealing with whatever we might come up with for a plan as required in the ruling.”

The judge ordered a new plan by June 30, and says the American Civil Liberties Union must respond to that plan before Aug. 13. The ACLU represents the five American Indians who challenged the county’s at-large system.

The Wind River Reservation is home to the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes.

Gwen Florio

Report – Indigenous languages at serious risk on Canada’s Pacific Coast
Only a few people still speak the indigenous languages of the First Nations on the Pacific Coast of Canada. As detailed in this story, and the video above, a report by The First Peoples’ Heritage, Language and Culture Council says eight of the 32 languages of British Columbia are endangered and 22 nearly extinct. Only about 5 percent of the indigenous population is considered fluent, and most of those people are older than 65.

Federal judge rules Wyoming county voting system hurts Indians
A federal judge in Wyoming has ruled that the system of electing county commissioners in Fremont County dilutes American Indian votes and must be changed. This Casper (Wyo.) Star Tribune reports says U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson gave the county until June 30 to submit a new plan. The county is home to the Wind River Indian Reservation, with its Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes. The Star Tribune praises the ruling in this editorial, which says that Johnson’s strongly worded ruling should lead to fairer representation for voters on the Wind River Indian Reservation.

Tucson Symphony Orchestra performs at Tohono O’odham Nation

The strains of Dvorák’s String Quartet wafted through the Archie Hendricks skilled Nursing Facility on the Tohono O’odham Nation yesterday, thank to members of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. The group traveled there to perform for the center’s two dozen elders, a performance that nearly brought Gordon Francisco to tears.

It was the first time he and the majority of those attending the recital – the first of three the TSO performed on the nation Saturday – had ever seen an orchestra concert, the Greg Bryan of the Arizona Daily Star writes here.

“As far as the adults, it feels like their lives are just (about) working, and they never seek it out,” said Allison Francisco, the Tohono O’odham Nation Cultural Center & Museum artist liaison. She was responsible for bringing the TSO to the nation for three concerts.

Denver Art Museum to renovate historic American Indian, Northwest Coast galleries
The Denver Art Museum opened in 1925, becoming the first American museum to collect Native American objects as art rather than artifact. This summer, the museum reports here, it’s renovating and reinstalling its American Indian and Northwest Coast art galleries. They’ll be open to the public through June 13, then will close until early 2011, when they’ll reopen in a 23,000-square-foot gallery that includes new interactive, artist-centric displays.

New book contrasts Sitting Bull and Custer
Just when you think nothing new can possibly be written about the Little Bighorn, along comes “The Last Stand,” by Nathaniel Philbrick. The Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger says of it, here, that “the latest retelling of the iconic confrontation between whites and Native Americans is written not so much for battle buffs as it is for a more general audience interested in learning about clashing cultures and warring ways of life.” And, he says, it contrasts the “womanizing, publicity-seeking George Armstrong Custer against Sitting Bull, the stoic and contemplative leader of the Hunkpapa Lakota.”

Navajo heroine Ellen Tsosie returns in new book aimed at young readers
Arizona author Seth Muller has written a new book featuring a young Navajo girl, Ellie Tsosie, who made her debut in “The Mockingbird’s Manual,” a 2009 novel about how she learns to talk to birds. Now, according to this Arizona Daily Sun report, Ellie Tsosie is back in “The Day of Storms.” It’s all part of the “Keepers of the Windclaw Chronicles” series aimed at readers ages 8 to 12.

Tetona Dunlap is a graduate student in journalism at the University of Montana. She is an enrolled member of the Eastern Shoshone tribe from the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.

It came down to milliseconds this year in the Wyoming Class 2A boys basketball championship.

The Wyoming Indian Chiefs players, coaches and fans held their breath as they watched senior guard Colby Sturgeon of the Southeast Cyclones put up the ball. Sturgeon’s shot bounced off the backboard and into the basket, but it was too late, as the final buzzer sounded a repeat championship for the Chiefs.

The final score was 52-51. Both teams entered the state tournament with almost perfect seasons of 25 wins and one loss.

Senior Caleb Her Many Horses told the Casper Star Tribune, “It went down to the end, all the way down to the end,”

Senior Slade Spoonhunter and junior Brian Willow Jr. were selected for the All-State team. Spoonhunter was also selected as Player of the Year and Coach Craig Ferris was honored as Coach of the Year for the Southwest Conference. Spoonhunter, Her Many Horses, Willow and junior Lorenzo Underwood all received All-Conference honors as well.

The Wyoming Indian Lady Chiefs also made it to the state tournament. They placed fourth after losing 46-55 to Lovell. Junior Ranell Oldman received All-State and was the player of the year for the Southwest conference. Oldman was also selected for the all-conference team and was joined by fellow players junior Ambrosia Brugh, senior Kristen Washakie and senior Kirsti O’Neal.

The University of Nevada-Reno women’s basketball team goes up against New Mexico State tonight in a game expected to be well-attended because of the extra festivities.

As Jim Krajewski of the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal reports here, local tribes got flyers that allow each person with one to bring four other people to the game for free. And, he writes:

Also, the Pyramid Lake Junior/Senior High School dance group will hold a pregame honor ceremony for Pack guard Tahnee Robinson. The drum group Red Hoop will sing and the Pyramid Lake High dance group and Numu Tookwaus color guard will join Robinson for the honor song and dance.

“The idea is to honor Native Americans and do a Native American Awareness day. It was their idea to honor Tahnee,” [coach Jane] Albright said. “They feel like, for their culture, she’s kind of raised the bar on awareness.”

Robinson is a Native American (Eastern Shoshone, Pawnee, Cheyenne and Sioux) from Lander, Wyo., on the edge of the Wind River reservation. She’s the Pack’s leading scorer at 15.4 points per game.

See Tetona Dunlap’s blog post about Robinson, here.

Gwen Florio

Tetona Dunlap is a graduate student in journalism at the University of Montana. She is an enrolled member of the Eastern Shoshone tribe from the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.

One of the reasons why I came to graduate school at the University of Montana was to write stories concerning Native American issues. I must admit it is strange learning alongside my peers about issues and problems that I have learned to accept on some levels.

I have recently found myself consumed with the negative. It is disheartening to learn about all the problems facing Native country, even though I have been quite of aware of them for a while.

But after one class period of discussing issues of suicide, alcoholism, teenage pregnancy and drug abuse; I was for a moment uplifted after reading a story in my hometown’s newspaper about Caleb Her Many Horses, a senior at Wyoming Indian High School on the Wind River Reservation.

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