A few stories this weekend on the issues of Native women’s safety around the world:

Canada’s Missing Women Inquiry faces renewed community boycott

Calling the British Columbian government’s Missing Women Commission of Inquiry a sham, human rights and women’s advocates groups in Canada are making continued calls for government-led efforts that will bring real change.

David P. Ball of ICTMN has the story:

Citing the province’s refusal to fund legal representation or extend the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry’s June deadline, 15 organizations rejected pleas to rejoin the hearings.

“We get one shot at a public inquiry, and the way it’s being conducted right now, it’s turning out to be a sham,” women’s advocate Marlene George told a press conference on April 9 on behalf of the Women’s Memorial March Committee, which organizes an annual rally to honour Canada’s 600 missing or murdered aboriginal women, among them victims of convicted serial killer Robert Pickton.

. . .

The inquiry “continues to lose relevance and credibility,” groups stated, vowing to support a United Nations investigation announced last December.

“It has become painfully clear over the course of the inquiry’s proceedings that this inquiry is not a meaningful and inclusive process,” the groups wrote. “The commission appears woefully out of touch with how it may be replicating the exact exclusion and discrimination that led to this inquiry being called in the first place. The commission has lost all credibility among aboriginal, sex work, human rights and women’s organizations.”

Here’s an earlier story from ICTMN on the Assembly of First Nations has officially pulled out of the British Columbia Missing Women of Inquiry Commission’s hearing procedures.

Tribal health centers offer self-defense classes in oil boom areas
The recent violent death of a longtime teacher in northeast Montana has many women worried about the effects of the oil boom there will have on their safety. As more and more oil field workers are moving into the Fork Peck Reservation area, health agencies are coming together to offer self-defense classes for women, the Great Falls Tribune reports.

GFT reporter Richard Peterson has the story:

The Fort Peck Tribal Health Department will hold self-defense courses Wednesday and Thursday in Brockton, and April 25 – 26 in Fort Kipp.

Adrian Spotted Bird, injury prevention coordinator for the Tribal Health Department, said the workshops were organized after numerous women from the reservation communities of Brockton and Fort Kipp started asking for more police patrols in the area because of increased oilfield traffic. In the past five months, the tribes have started drilling for oil near both communities. More than a dozen more oil rigs are expected to go up there this summer.

“People are noticing more and more new faces, and they’re getting concerned,” Spotted Bird said. Some oil industry workers, who have been blackballed at bars in Williston, come to area bars to drink, he said. That’s also cause for concern among local residents.

The classes are kept small, about 10 people each, and offer attendees a battle of mace and a whistle, Peterson’s story said.

Jenna Cederberg

Sixty four genetically pure bison arrived on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation this week, the Montana Associated Press reports.

Restoring the animal to the area was heralded by tribal members there, which long fought to move some of the herd from Yellowstone National Park.

The move didn’t come without contention. Ranchers in the area have long protested the move due to brucellosis and rangeland damage concerns.

But the Fort Peck Tribes and state government officials reach an agreement late last week to move the bison and wasted no time in transporting them Monday to the northeastern corner of the state.

Fort Peck Chairman Floyd Azure responded Monday night by saying that the state has no jurisdiction now that the bison are on the reservation.

“Now that they’re here, they are here to stay,” Azure said.
For the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of Fort Peck, tribal leaders said the relocation offers a chance to revive their connection with an animal that historically provided food, clothing and shelter for their ancestors.

The trip from Yellowstone was capped by a welcoming caravan of tribal members who fell into line behind the trailers that carried the bison across the Missouri River and onto the reservation.

A drum group gathered to sing a traditional song of welcome as the bison were unloaded in a field 25 miles north of Poplar.

“This has deep spiritual meaning for us. They are the sole survivors from our ancestors,” said Leland Spotted Bird, a Dakota tribal elder and spiritual leader.

Associated Press reporter Matt Volz has the full story.

Jenna Cederberg

Dalton Gourneau, 17, took his own life last November. He wasn’t the only child of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation who fell to the desperate act of suicide.

It was called an epidemic there, on the impoverished reservation in eastern Montana, after almost nine kids committed suicide. Now, Dalton’s mother, Roxanne Gourneau, has filed a lawsuit claiming the school district and the state are responsible for his death, the Associated Press reports.

Matt Volz with the Montana Associated Press wrote his story of the Fork Peck suicide epidemic in March.

Here’s the story on Roxanne’s lawsuit:

By Matt Volz, of the Associated Press:

HELENA – The mother of a teenager who shot himself last year during a rash of child suicides on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana has filed a lawsuit claiming the school district and the state are responsible for his death.

Dalton Gourneau’s death in Wolf Point in November followed five suicides and 20 attempts at a middle school in Poplar, about 20 miles east on the reservation, leading tribal officials to declare an emergency. Federal health officials were sent in for several months last year to provide counseling and come up with a strategy.

Indian Health Service officials said in February they believed the crisis had passed. But family members and tribal and spiritual leaders say suicide is still the top problem among children and teens at Fort Peck, with at least one more teenager dying this year.

Roxanne Gourneau, a judge in Fort Peck’s tribal family court, said Wednesday the suicide epidemic was well-known across the Fort Peck reservation at the time of her 17-year-old son’s death. The school and state should have taken precautions to hire and train staff to deal with students and anticipate the need for extra care in that atmosphere, she said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Charles Cook, superintendent of Poplar Public Schools and James Melbourne, Tribal health director, Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes, signed this letter in response the Associated Press’ Matt Volz’ piece on the suicide epidemic on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.

The pair argue that Volz missed many “positive” points of action the community, which has seen at least five suicides and dozen of attempts by middle school students in recent years, has taken to solve the horrific problem. The piece has been run in various newspapers, including several in the state of Montana.

Here’s Cook’s guest column:

Youth suicide is difficult to talk about. A recent newspaper article from the Montana Associated Press about suicides in our Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes and Poplar K-12 Schools was hurtful, misleading and unprofessional. How we talk about suicide can leave a deep impact.

Everyone is fragile after such tragedies. Experts agree – and our experience confirms – grieving periods leave some vulnerable, including those who knew the victim or who may be likely to attempt. When reporting on suicide, photos of grieving families, detailed descriptions of death and provocative quotes represent irresponsible journalism. It is exploitive and offensive. The reporter’s decision to write this story, despite requests not to, and his decision to overlook many positive actions in our community also shows a lack of respect.

Here are some points the story missed. Our tribe is implementing many recommendations from a 2010 Indian Health Service Report issued after the suicides. For example, the report noted youth requesting more recreation activities. Our Fort Peck Youth Activity Committee is expanding such programming. We applied for grants from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the U.S. Department of Education. Community suicide prevention walks have occurred. We also conducted prevention trainings such as Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) and Native HOPE (Helping Our People Endure).

Read the rest of this entry »

From Matt Volz, Montana Associated Press:

POPLAR – Chelle Rose Follette fashioned a noose with her pajamas, tying one end to a closet rod and the other around her neck. When her mother entered the bedroom to put away laundry, she found the 13-year-old hanging.

Ida Follette screamed for her husband, Darrell.

He lifted his child’s body, rushed her to the bed and tried to bring her back.

“She was so light, she was so light. And I put her down. I said, ‘No, Chelle!’ ”

But the time had passed for CPR, he said, his voice fading with still raw grief. His wife sat next to him on the couch, sobbing at the retelling.

Here on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, a spasm of youth suicides had caused alarm and confusion even before Chelle’s death. The Follettes had talked with her about other local children who had killed themselves. She had assured her parents that they need not worry about her.

“She always promised that,” said Ida as the half-light of the winter afternoon created shadows in the sparsely furnished home. “She said, ‘What’s going on with these kids, are they stupid or what?’ ”
Read the rest of this entry »

We in the news business are being deluged these days by reports of the imminent death of “paper” newspapers and the concurrent rush go digital in every format possible.

In the midst of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth is the Native Sun News in Rapid City, S.D., which debuted a year and a half ago as a defiantly paper newspaper and has stayed that way ever since. As publisher Tim Giago wrote about that decision:

You won’t find us on the Internet. So many of my Indian readers do not have computers or do not even have access to them. Native Sun News will go back to the traditional way of providing news for Indian country. The paper will have serious news, but we will never abandon that Indian sense of humor that so many non-Indians accuse us of not having. You will be able to hold our newspaper in your hands, sip on a hot cup of coffee, and read the news you used to love to read in The Lakota Times and Indian Country Today.

The paper is especially tough on cases of alleged corruption.

Native Sun News is often the only news outlet to publicize cases like the one involving Donita King, whose story was featured in the July 21 issue. King, an enrolled member of the Assiniboine Sioux on the Fort Peck Reservation in northeastern Montana, says that she and her family have been fighting for years for the money due from her oil-rich allotments.

People are widely familiar with the issue of Native Americans being cheated out of royalties on their land allotments, thanks to the massive Cobell v. Salazar class-action suit against the Interior Department.

But as King tells Native Sun News managing editor Randall Howell, it’s not the U.S. government, but tribal officials, who have been cheating her family. King, who is legally blind, says the money due her family has instead been directed to fake accounts set up by powerful people in the tribe.

As Howell reports, “What started out as a ‘simple probate search’ more than two decades ago, after King’s father had died, has resulted in nearly 50 grand-jury indictments over allotment fraud.”

King, who is a descendant of Hunkpapa Sioux Chief Sitting Bull and who says the long fight has resulted in death threats to her and her family, calls the whole mess a “path of shame.”

And the only place you can read about it is the Native Sun News “The only Indian newspaper that cowboys can read, too!”). You can look at a reproduction of each week’s front page and read a column by Giago online every week at www.nsweekly.com/. And, even though reading the entire newspaper defiantly remains a tactile experience, you can follow Native Sun News, and discussions about its stories, on both Facebook and Twitter.

Gwen Florio

Here’s the entire story from the Associated Press:

POCATELLO, Idaho (AP) — On the anniversary of his slaying, the family and friends of an American Indian man killed outside a bar remain hopeful that his killer will be found.

Lorne Red Elk, 56, was found with massive head trauma in the parking lot of Duffy’s Tavern on June 14, 2009. Doctors removed him from life support three days later.

Jeani Walesch, his girlfriend, told the Idaho State Journal that she wants to make sure Red Elk — a gentle giant of a man, in her words — doesn’t become another cold case, fading and forgotten as the years stretch on.

She said Red Elk’s death shocked her so profoundly, she has little memory of events for about a month after his death.

“When you lose somebody to something like this, it’s like a big, black cloud behind you at all times,” she said. “It’s never gone.”

Read the rest of this entry »

This story is the first in a two-part series by Lorna Thackeray of the Billings (Mont.) Gazette. It points out the shameful fact that the worst-performing high schools in Montana are on Indian reservations. And it talks about what’s being done to change that:

There is no glory for the five high schools on the bottom of Montana’s academic ladder — except perhaps on the basketball court.

It won’t come as a shock to most that the lowest-ranking schools in the state are in isolated communities on Indian reservations, that the students are among the most economically disadvantaged or that the schools have been failing students for years.

What may be a surprise is that they are all in Eastern Montana. From the bottom up, according to proficiency scores reported by the Montana Office of Public Instruction (OPI), they are Hays-Lodge Pole with 13.2 percent of its students at or above proficient levels; Lodge Grass High School, with 14.4 percent; Frazer High School with 15 percent; Plenty Coups High School in Pryor at 15.5 percent; and Lame Deer High School at 17.8 percent.

For comparison, Wolf Point High School was at 45.9 percent; Harlem High School was at 48 percent; Hardin High School was at 54.6 percent; and Billings Senior was at 71 percent. (Like the lowest-ranking schools, all are Title 1 schools.)

Graduation rates are equally abysmal. In 2009, the rate at Frazer was 61.5 percent. It was 60 percent at Hays-Lodge Pole; 39 percent at Lame Deer; 52.1 percent at Lodge Grass; and 74.1 percent at Plenty Coups.

Each school struggles in its own way, but there is one constant, said Denise Juneau, Montana superintendent of schools. Poverty.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

If well-behaved women seldom make history, this explains why two influential women who passed away this past week will never be forgotten.

On April 6, Wilma Mankiller died after battling pancreatic cancer. Three days later Minnie Two Shoes died after her own struggle with cancer. I had the chance to meet both of these inspiring Native American women through journalism.

Mankiller came to speak to my class when I participated in the American Indian Journalism Institute in South Dakota in 2003. Mankiller was the first woman to serve the Cherokee people as principal chief. She was an advocate for Native American and women’s rights. She has also written two books. One is an autobiography titled, “Mankiller: A Chief and Her People” and “Every Day Is a Good Day: Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women.” As a result of her activism, she was received several awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. She was also inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame in New York City in 1994.

Read the rest of this entry »