First Nations vow to block Nanaimo terminal
The Snuneymuxw First Nation says it will turn to the courts in its flight to block construction of a $22-million cruise ship terminal at Nanaimo, near Vancouver. Chief Doug White tells the Vancouver Sun he will go to mediation because the Nanaimo Port Authority is not taking seriously his people’s concerns over the protection of the Nanaimo River Estuary.

Navajo Supreme Court suspends college president
Dine College president Ferlin Clark has been ordered to suspend work until Sept. 21, under a Navajo Supreme Court ruling last week. The Navajo Times reports that the court also released a has released the 172-page investigate report on Clark’s conduct that confirms allegations of “pervasive harassment” and favoritism.

Program helps Native American engineers
North and South Dakota are taking part in a five-year program that aims to recruit American Indian students to become engineers are hoping some of them will return home to help their communities, according to the Rapid City Journal in South Dakota. A $4.8 million National Science Foundation grant funds the program to link four-year engineering schools with community colleges.

Play based on Louise Erdrich novel debuts
Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater last night debuted “The Master Butchers Singing Club,” a play based on the novel of the same name by heralded Anishinaabe author Louise Erdrich. As the Associated Press writes, “the stage adaptation of Erdrich’s novel is by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright Marsha Norman. It follows the lives of numerous residents of a small North Dakota town between the first and second World Wars.” Read more at Playbill.com.

Not making this up – Whale rescue film touted as romantic comedy
From the Anchorage Daily News’ rural blog, The Village, comes a delicious tidbit about how Universal Pictures is promoting its whale-rescue movie that will feature several Alaska Natives Seems like the movie will more true to Hollywood than true to life.

Gwen Florio

It wasn’t the 500 canoes organizers had hoped for, but the Native American and First Nations people from Canada and the United States who showed up yesterday to cross the Detroit River by canoe made their point.

About a half-dozen canoes and some kayaks made the trip between the United States and Canada to emphasize that tribal members are sovereign people and have a right to cross the border on their own terms.

As the Detroit Free Press reported:

Dennis Banks, co-founder of the American Indian Movement, said such crossings are guaranteed by the Jay Treaty of 1796.

“I come here to support an idea that this territory that we are standing on and the territory across the river are one and the same,” said Banks, a longtime activist. “I have sons and daughters on this shore and that shore.” …
He said activists have tried for 20 years to persuade U.S. and Canadian authorities to allow them to use a sticker for easy passage between the two countries. Banks, who carries an identification card of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota, said “our brothers and sisters” are often harassed by border officials and have to carry pounds of documents. He said carrying a U.S. or Canadian passport “assaults our sovereign status.”

Gwen Florio

What do Elvis and an Objibwe man have to do with a 13-year-old non-Native youth in Ontario?

Stew Magnuson ties it all together in his most recent entry on his A View from a Washichu blog. When Magnuson was a boy, he learned of The King’s death from a man he knew only as “Sam the Indian.” But that wasn’t all he learned.

Magnuson, whose book “The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder” is about the most painful sorts of cross-cultural experiences, got an early insight to the fact that dealings between Natives and non-Natives aren’t always rosy – for either side. And two men he’d looked up to turned out to have feet of clay.

As Magnuson said, “Your heroes die hard when you’re 13.”

Here‘s a heartwarming story about Four Rivers Drum, and their experiences when they were asked to be the drop-in drum at the Virginia Beach Parks and Recreation Powwow, which attracts about 10,000 people.

Vince Schilling, Indian Country Today correspondent, explains the group thusly:

Four Rivers Native American Drum started in the mid 1990s with just four drummers and singers and has grown to 19 members. The group played without a name at their first five powwows and locals referred to them as the “no-name drum.” They eventually named themselves Four Rivers because of their location on the Virginia Peninsula. In order for members to perform at an event, they must cross one of the four rivers that surround them.

Michael Cloud-Butler, Ojibwe, second singer and drummer, says the powwow has been held since the 1990s and has helped Virginia Beach understand Native culture.

“When the city started, they knew very little about Native American culture – it takes several years to learn everything,” he says.

But with the most recent powwow, he says, “It was a comfortable feeling today – and to have visited several times as a drum group – it is like a hometown powwow because we live here.”

Here‘s a good story from Minnesota Public Radio about sovereignty and fishing.

It concerns claims by the Leech Lake and White Earth bands of Ojibwe that 19th-century treaties guarantee their hunting and fishing rights. To prove their point, they say they’ll fish “illegally” one day on Lake Bemidji before the walleye season opens May 15. The two bands have about 30,000 members.

It’s not the first time this has happened. Other Ojibwe bands have staged similar actions, and there’s been violence as a result. These bands are announcing their intentions ahead of time in hopes of avoiding that.

The Ojibwe have legal precedent for their claim. A decade ago, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe won a similar – and highly controversial – claim in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case when they asserted their rights to spear walleye in northern Wisconsin, MPR reports.

“We don’t want to end up like it was in Wisconsin. We don’t want to do it at night. We don’t want to be sneaking around,” Leech Lake tribal attorney Frank Bibeau tells Minnesota Public Radio News. “We don’t want the police out there with riot gear. We don’t want drunk people with beer cans, and having a whole bunch of people getting all mad about things. And we don’t want to have to waste a bunch of time and money fighting about that. That’s nonproductive for anybody.”

The bands plan to state their intentions in a letter to Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

“The letter that’s going to be going out here is — I want to say this politely. We’re not asking for their permission,” says Dale Green, who works for the Leech Lake band’s legal office. “We’re going to re-exert our rights.”

Gwen Florio

Before the last few months, Irene Folstrom of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota was better known as a Native American activist and candidate for state Legislature.

But with the publication of this piece last week in Sports Illustrated, it seems that nearly all the Internet searches of Folstrom’s name now link her with Woods.

The headline pretty much sums up the entire article: “Tiger and I dated in college, and he’s not the guy you’ve been reading about.”

Folstrom only dated Woods for a year and a half, a long time ago. She describes meals at Chinese restaurants, trips to the beach and outings with his parents – and also Woods’ drive not only to succeed at golf, but to make a larger contribution to society.

They broke up when he turned pro after his sophomore year. “Becoming the first person in my family to earn a college degree was so important to me that I wasn’t willing to give up my studies to follow him,” she writes.

And, she writes:

Like everyone else, I was shocked by the revelations about his infidelities. The Tiger I knew was loyal, devoted and self-controlled. I’m not naive, but I can say with certainty that he was faithful during the time we dated.

Folstrom concludes that Woods should be given a second chance. “He’s a good person with a caring heart,” she writes.

In the midst of this whole sordid mess, it’s a rare moment of class.

Gwen Florio

Eroding Alaskan village to pursue climate change case
The fast-eroding village of Kivalina, Alaska, is trying to revive its lawsuit claiming greenhouses gases from oil, power and coal companies are causing the climate change that endangers the community. The suit was dismissed in federal court last year but Kivalina is appealing, with the opening brief due next month, according to the Associated Press, here.

First Nations chiefs likely to light Olympic torch?
So says Charlie Smith, of the Straight.com Olympics blog from Vancouver, here. Betting is hot and heavy – and the lobbying for favorites even more so (think Wayne Gretzky) – over who will light the torch, but Smith’s virtual money is on all four chiefs of the Four Host First Nations. We’ll know this week!

New Louise Erdrich novel both familiar and very different
Louise Erdrich’s new book “Shadow Tag” is unlike any of her others, the New York Times Book Review declares, here. Native themes permeate, but the novel focuses on a couple who works closely together, and about the dissolution of their marriage, and has parallels to Erdrich’s marriage to Michael Dorris.

S.D. tribes part of Justice Department session on Indian Country crime
Representatives of tribes living in South Dakota have been invited to the first of several listening sessions the U.S. Justice Department intends to hold on crime in Indian Country, Wayne Ortman of the Associated Press writes here. It’s part of an Obama administration push to deal with the problem, particularly as it pertains to violence against women and children.

Gwen Florio

Dorene Wiese, president of the American Indian Association of Illinois, grew up hearing her grandparents’ stories and those of other Ojibwe tribal elders. But she realized, as she grew older, that crucial meaning was getting lost in translation, according to this Chicago Tribune column by Dawn Turner Trice.

Dorene Wiese

“But language is the thread that keeps culture together,” said Wiese. “Language is woven into our brains and psyches and memories. Today when we say the word “medicine” in English, we think Walgreens. But in Ojibwe, the word is “midewin” (pronounced ma-DAY-win), meaning ‘from the earth.’ It’s the healing that takes place directly from mother earth.

“That seems like a minor detail, a definition of a word, but when you look at how it means that medicine isn’t just something from a pill or a bottle but from a cornucopia of plants from the Creator, it makes a difference in the way you see it, feel it and remember it.”

Wiese is also part of a group that is trying to bring an American Indian Charter School to the Chicago pubic schools, that would also feature language instruction.

As she tells Trice. “I wanted to learn how to pray in Ojibwe. I wanted to learn how to tell our stories in Ojibwe. That’s the only way we can be whole again as a native people.”

Gwen Florio

First Nations vow that pride will be their Olympics legacy
Although there has been a lot of controversy regarding First Nations and the Vancouver Oympics, Justin George, chief of the Tsleil-Waututh, says the ultimate legacy will be pride, Canadian Press reports here. “The level of participation hands down is going to be the legacy in that it’s given us the opportunity to educate the world (about) who we are,” says George. The Tsleil-Waututh are one of the four bands on whose original territories the games are being held.

Deadline for Cobell settlement resolution is pushed back
TGTBT, as the shorthand goes. Too good to be true. The deadline for the necessary congressional approval of the multi-billion-dollar settlement in the landmark Cobell case over mismanaged Indian trust money has been pushed back to Feb. 28, according to this Indian Country Today story. After decades of mismanagement and squandered funds, another few weeks probably doesn’t matter. But still.

Interior secretary calls summit with tribes over Cape Cod wind project
U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has scheduled a meeting for Wednesday in Washington with proponents of a wind power project off Cape Cod, the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette reports here. Opponents of the project also will be there, including members of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe. Last week, a ruling found that the project would interfere with the park’s traditional religious use of the site.

University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire to save Council Oaks Tree
The historic Council Oaks Tree at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire won’t have to be chopped down to make way for a new student union after all. The tree is on the school seal, and the original – the present one is a replacement – is believed to be the site of peace talks between the Dakota Sioux and Ojibwe tribes, the AP reports here.

A little haggis with your fry bread?
We can’t top this BBC lede, so we’ll just repeat it verbatim: An extraordinary link between Scotland and a Native American Indian tribe is set to take centre stage at an International Clan gathering. Get the story here.

Gwen Florio