From Rob Capriccioso, Indian Country Today staff:

WASHINGTON – With Republican U.S. House of Representatives settling in to their leadership, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, has been chosen to chair a newly formed subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs.

Washington state Rep. Doc Hastings, the new chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, officially announced Young’s appointment at the end of December. Hastings said the subcommittee will focus on many tribal issues, including strengthening economies. He added that Young has been a strong advocate for Alaska Native issues during his now 20 terms in office.

The subcommittee is expected to oversee a variety of tribal issues, including gaming, Interior Department oversight, Indian claims against the government, and tribal resource management.

Marie Howard, former Democratic staff director of the Office of Indian Affairs of the House Committee on Natural Resources, said it was “good news for Indian country” that Young will be in charge as chairman of the Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs during the 112th Congress.

“Chairman Young is a strong advocate for Native issues, and he knows how to work on these important issues in a bi-partisan manner,” Howard said. “I am proud of the accomplishments made working with Mr. Young and his staff over the years.”

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Really nice piece on what it takes to get “real people” portrayals or depictions of Natives in movies from the Alaska Public Radio Network: Listen to interview/audio by Shane Iverson here. Well- known actors such as Drew Barrymore star in the film, which was shot in Alaska.

The movie production “Everybody loves Whales” has received a lot of attention in Alaska for actually being shot in Alaska. The film is based off an incident in 1988 when three gray whales became trapped in sea ice near Barrow. When Alaskans go see the movie one thing they’ll be watching for is how they’re portrayed.

Iverson, from KYUK in Bethel, spoke to the Alaskan actors in the film to see what it was like be part of the production and to find out what they think it could mean for the State’s first peoples.

Jenna Cederberg

Exactly what role Alaska Native corporations will play during events like the upcoming White House summit with President Barack Obama, and interactions with federal government entities in the future, will in part be determined by tribes in the state, a Department of Interior official said.

The Tundra Drums reported this week that as the process to solidify a national tribal government/federal government consultation policy, which is set up to help the nation’s tribes have a say in how governmental actions affect them, moves forward the tribes, not corporations, will be in the driver’s seat.

The Department of the Interior is working to create consistent consultations with tribes after a memorandum by Obama last year recommended that the process to set a consultation policy (first ordered in the mid-1990s by President Bill Clinton) be restarted.

Mike Smith, a deputy director at the BIA, said that although the original order to create consultation did include Native corporations, the tribes will be given priority in developing the consultation rules, the Tundra Drums story reported.

Corporations are not considered tribal governments.

“It’s a government-to-government relationship that we’re trying to promote and encourage,” said Smith.

A reported asked: If tribes and corporations are on a level playing field in Clinton’s order, wouldn’t putting corporations in the back seat require new language?

It might require a technical amendment or something similar to an executive order, Smith said.

“This is something we’ve wrestled with in the tribal consultation committee,” Smith said. “We only have two representatives from Alaska, so we’ll probably defer to the two representatives and we’ll take a look at all the comments and recommendations we get from the Alaska Natives themselves to make sure that we address this properly.”

Smith spoke at the Bureau of Indian Affairs Tribal Providers Conference in Anchorage last week, the Tundra Drums reported.

Jenna Cederberg

The National Indian Health Board recently recognized the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium’s Division of Environmental Health and Engineering with the Area/Regional Impact Award for its work with the Alaska village clinic construction program.

The honor is bestowed each year upon an individual or group displaying positive difference in health care quality and availability for Alaska Natives and American Indians.

The Dutch Harbor Fisherman reports that 114 clinics were built after careful planning and collaboration between DEHE, the Denali Commission and several other groups.

Those off the road system aren’t off the charts anymore – the clinics are state-of-the-art and designed to be as efficient as possible in Alaska’s often isolated villages.

The Harbor Fisherman pieces notes that the new clinics off care and – mighty important in this economy – jobs.

The commitment to use local force account labor for clinic construction where possible means Alaska’s rural residents have seen new job opportunities and developed a sense of ownership in local health care facilities from the ground up. Once the clinics are ready for use, they provide long-term local jobs in health care and facility maintenance in addition to state-of-the-art health care.

Jenna Cederberg

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

Dave Olinger and Mark Jaffe of the Denver Post bring us this story from Point Hope, Alaska, a community of 700 Inupiat people who’ve spent years fighting plans for offshore drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

As Olinger and Jaffe report:

Shell Exploration and Production Co. was set to start exploratory drilling this summer — until the gulf spill and a U.S. Department of the Interior drilling moratorium.

“We recognize there are issues in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, which is why we canceled drilling this summer,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in an interview.

Shell, which has spent $2.2 billion for Arctic leases, is pressing to start drilling next summer.

Alaska has the nation’s largest offshore oil reserves after the Gulf, but there’s been far less drilling there. The BP spill in the Gulf raises questions about whether it should proceed at all.

“That spill in the gulf, it could have been our ocean,” Point Hope Mayor Daisy Sharp tells the Post. “It’s sad to say, but in a way I’m glad it happened. Maybe now people will take a closer look at offshore oil drilling.”

The story comes with a great audio slideshow by Post photographer Andy Cross. Check it out.

Gwen Florio

Dollmaker focuses on portraits of Alaska Native people
Alaska’s Mary Ellen Frank is in Sitka this weekend for the 2010 International Conference on Russian America. Frank’s contribution? She’s a dollmaker, whose work, along with that of other dollmakers on both sides of the Pacific, is featured at the Sitka Historical Museum. As the Anchorage Daily News writes, Frank walks a fine line because she is not Native, but her internationally renowned dolls are portraits of Alaska Native people. It’s important, she says, to get permission from both individuals and tribes before making each doll. See more of her work on the Juneau Artists website.

New bill address Missouri River dams that flooded Indian Reservations
A half-century ago, something called the Pick-Sloan Program built a number of dams along the Missouri River, flooding lands of seven Indian reservations, destroying homes, farmland and hunting areas. Rob Capriccioso of Indian Country Today writes that “It is estimated that Lakota, Dakota and Nakota tribes lost 202,000 acres overall, which means the dams destroyed more Native American land than any other public works project in the history of the nation.” Now Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., has introduced a bill that hopes to resolve the problems caused to those tribes.

Hopi Nation, other tribes, fight fake snow on sacred Arizona peaks
The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the ongoing fight by the Hopi Nation and other tribes against snowmaking on the San Francisco Peaks at the Snowbowl ski resort outside Flagstaff, Ariz. The Navajo, Hopi and 11 other tribes view the peaks as sacred and that any moisture there should occur naturally. The Flagstaff City Council will address the issue tomorrow, according to the Daily Sun newspaper in Flagstaff, which has a full report.

Red Spirit Fashion Show part of cross-cultural effort at Central States Fair
It was the first Unity Day at the 2010 Central States Fair in South Dakota, but it won’t be the last, the Rapid City Journal writes. Among the offerings at the event designed to promote cross-cultural understanding was the Red Spirit Fashion Show featuring contemporary clothing by Native American designers. Native Sun News publisher Tim Giago says Unity Day will be a part of next year’s fair. Giago helped organize South Dakota’s year of Reconciliation 20 years ago in an effort to improve troubled relations between the state’s Native and non-Native people. Now, as then, says Carmen Yellow Horse, it’s important that “we start a conversation.”

Gwen Florio

The U.S Justice Department won’t prosecute former Veco chief Bill Allen, now imprisoned in a federal bribery and tax evasion case, on charges of sex with minors, Richard Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News reports.

Police in Anchorage who began an investigation on those charges in 2004 tell Mauer they’re unhappy.

And Paula Roberds, who is from a Yup’ik village and who said she was 15 when Veco began paying her thousands of dollars for sex, described the decision as “devastating.”

“Guys with money, they can do anything,” she told police in 2008.

As Mauer reports:

Until 2006, when the FBI caught Allen on videotape bribing Alaska legislators and overheard him on the telephone trying to cover up his renovations of the late Ted Stevens’ home in Girdwood, Allen was one of Alaska’s richest and most powerful figures. Allen palled around with Stevens and his friends. He played golf, hosted fundraisers and bought expensive gifts for U.S. Rep. Don Young. And he and other officials of Veco Corp. were some the most important sources of campaign contributions for the Alaska Republican Party and its candidates. He was the final publisher of The Anchorage Times.

He’s due to be released in 2012.

Gwen Florio

“The totem pole didn’t work,” says this Fox News story, which criticizes efforts to increase participation by Alaska Natives in this year’s Census.

The totem pole was part of a $20,000 project commissioned by the Census Bureau and carved by Alaskan artist Tommy Joseph.

It was part of a campaign to get people in Alaska’s tiny and far-flung villages to participate in larger numbers in the Census. But, as Fox reports:

Data provided by the Census Bureau shows that Alaska’s mail-in response rate actually was lower this year than in 2000. Sixty-two percent of Alaska residents mailed back their census forms in 2010, compared with 64 percent in 2000.

Not only that, but despite a tripling of the bureau’s ad budget to about $340 million, the mail-in response rate nationwide clocked in at 72 percent — same as a decade ago.

The story quotes Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California, who terms the totem pole “the latest example of a mismanaged agency spending taxpayers’ money like it grows on trees – or totem poles.”

Gwen Florio