Here‘s the entire story from the Associated Press:

HELENA, Mont. – Montana’s attorney general has declined a request by the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council to investigate the death of an inmate at the Hill County Detention Center in Havre.

Steve Bullock called the Nov. 23, 2009 death of 18-year-old A.J. Long Soldier a tragedy, but said the findings of the coroner’s inquest were fairly presented and nothing suggested that Long Soldier died of criminal means.

Officials have said Long Soldier died of acute alcohol withdrawal and council chairman James Steele Jr. questioned whether Long Soldier received inadequate medical care because of his race.

Bullock’s May 28 letter to Steele noted that Long Soldier’s mother has filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission regarding the circumstances of her son’s death.

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.

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Here’s the entire story from the Associated Press:

HAVRE, Mont. (AP) — A group of tribal leaders is asking the state of Montana investigate the death of a teenager who died at the Hill County jail.
In a letter sent earlier this month, the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council questions whether A.J. Long Soldier Jr.’s race was a factor in his treatment. The 18-year-old died Nov. 23 of what a coroner found to be acute alcohol withdrawal.
Long Soldier had been arrested on a misdemeanor warrant four days before his death at Northern Montana Hospital. A coroner’s jury ruled in March that detention officers were not criminally liable in Long Soldier’s death.
“Will anyone be held accountable for the obviously incorrect assessment of A.J.’s serious medical condition that directly led to his death,” said the letter, written by council chairman James Steel Jr.
A spokesman for Attorney General Steve Bullock said the office was reviewing the letter, which was received May 12.
Long Soldier, a star athlete who led Hays-Lodgepole to a Class C state basketball championship as a sophomore in 2007, had been enrolled at Haskell University in Lawrence, Kan. He was arrested while he was home attending his grandfather’s funeral.

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A lot was going on yesterday at the Montana Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council meeting.

The group heard from Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indians, who made a rare visit to Montana.

And, it asked Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock to look into the circumstances surrounding the death of 18-year-old basketball star A.J. Longsoldier, who died shortly after he was taken from a northern Montana jail to a nearby hospital.

Susan Olp of the Billings Gazette has the story here:

Keel, who is Chickasaw, spoke about the Indian Health Care Improvement Act; the problem of inadequate and deteriorating reservation housing, and the overwhelming issue of under-funding for Indian Country issues in general.

Tribal Leaders Council James Steele Jr. of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, talked about the difficulty of maintaining reservation roads with federal funding.

But perhaps the most emotional issue was the approval of the resolution calling for action surrounding the death of Longsoldier, from the Fort Belknap Reservation and a former basketball standout at Hays-Lodgepole High School. He was jailed on an alleged probation violation. During his two days in jail, he complained of feeling ill, and was twice taken to the hospital and died the second time:

While in jail, he appeared to be hallucinating, was talking to himself and pulled out some of his hair. An autopsy determined that LongSoldier died from acute alcohol withdrawal. A coroner’s inquest in March found that the detention officers were not criminally liable in the death.

Tracy King, president of the Fort Belknap Tribal Council, who attended the inquest, raised the issue at the meeting. King said more should have been done for LongSoldier to help save his life.

He called the handling of the youth in jail “a civil rights violation.”

“I see too many of our youth being railroaded by systems that don’t work in their favor,” King said.

Dr. Kathleen Masis, who works for the Tribal Leaders Council, calls his death a warning.

“It means we need to make sure what is represented as happening never happens again, to an Indian or non-Indian.”

Gwen Florio

(Thanks to colleague Joe Nickell, who first posted this here on his Nickell’s Bag blog. An earlier casting call in Missoula drew hundreds of people. “Winter in the Blood,” by Blackfeet and Gros Ventre author James Welch, is set largely on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana):

The directors of the upcoming film, “Winter in the Blood” [see previous post, here] are holding another open casting call for Native American actors, this time in Great Falls.

Here’s info straight from the source:

Casting Director Rene Haynes (Twilight Saga: New Moon) and Directors Andrew and Alex Smith (The Slaughter Rule) will be conducting an Open Casting Call April 10th & 11th, at the Great Falls Civic Center, 2 Park Drive South Great Falls, MT 59401, from 11:00am-3:00pm

Seeking: Native American BOYS (ages 10-17) for PRINCIPAL LEAD speaking roles. No acting experience necessary. Native American MEN & WOMEN (mid 20’s through mid 50’s) for both speaking and non-speaking roles. If you have attended another Winter in the Blood Casting Call, you need not audition again.

For more information and audition materials, click here.

As the catalogue to this new exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts points out, the artistry of the peoples of the Great Plains had to be functional, given their semi-nomadic nature.
So they created beauty for everyday use, on their clothing, their homes, and their implements, according to this story by Eric Newhouse.

The exhibit “breaks new ground,” associate curator Joe Horse Capture writes in the catalogue. “This is probably the first time a major art museum has held an exhibition devoted to a specific Native American tribe and curated by members of that same tribe. Tribal members also wrote the catalog.”

The catalog is dedicated to Horse Capture’s dad, George Horse Capture, who moved back to Great Falls from Washington, D.C., after retiring as senior curator of the National Museum of the American Indian. The elder Horse Capture also
contributed a historical and cultural narrative to the catalog, as did tribal artist and teacher Sean Chandler.

“Our tribe has always been a small one, and we lived in Canada for hundreds of years, so compared to other, larger tribes we are little known,” he wrote. “But many of us have earned college degrees and with the help of our elders over the years have located and gathered information from the four corners of the earth to provide this glimpse of our history and aspects of our culture.”

The exhibition includes a century-old hide war shield made that had belonged to Bull Lodge, a warrior and holy man, and am A’aninin shirt made from an animal hide and decorated with strips of beadwork down the chest and back and along the arms, Newhouse writes.

Many of the items were donated by Richard Pohrt Sr.

“Later in life, Pohrt gave objects that were sacred to the A’aninin back to the tribe,” Horse Capture says. He had considered himself as a caretaker of these powerful objects and felt compelled to return them. Such a close and personal relationship with a tribe is rare among collectors.”

Gwen Florio

Here’s the full announcement on the meetings:

Information on how Native Americans in Montana may be able to share in a recently announced $3.4 billion settlement of Indian Trust claims will be discussed at meetings Friday and next week.

On Friday Elouise Cobell of Browning, lead plaintiff in the case, will be meeting with Blackfeet Tribal Members at the New Eagle Shield Center in Browning from 11:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.

On Monday she and David Smith, a member of the plaintiffs’ litigation team that helped negotiate the settlement, will begin visiting other three Indian communities to share information about the agreement.

They will visit the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes Monday at the Salish Kootenai College Victor Charlo/Johnny Arlee Theater in Pablo from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

On Tuesday they will visit the Fort Belknap Tribes at the Little River Learning Lodge in the Bee Gawn Hey and Si Si Rooms at Fort Belknap College from 1 p.m to 5 p.m. and on Wednesday they will visit Fort Peck Tribes at the Silver Wolf Casino, Highway 25 East, Wolf Point, from 1 to 5 p.m.

Native Americans whose families have individual Indian money trust accounts or who own individual Indian trust land are welcome to attend the meeting and ask questions about the settlement.

The Obama administration announced the proposed agreement to resolve a 14-year-old class action lawsuit Ms. Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, and other Native Americans filed against the government in 1996. The lawsuit claims that the federal government mismanaged individual Indians’ trust accounts.

Congress and the courts must approve the settlement.

Under the proposed terms, the federal government will create a $1.4 billion Accounting/Trust Administration Fund and a $2 billion Trust Land Consolidation Fund. The settlement also creates an Indian Education Scholarship fund of up to $60 million to improve access to higher education for Indians.

Cobell also answers questions about the settlement online in her weekly Ask Elouise column, here.

Here’s the companion piece by the Missoulian’s Jamie Kelly to our previous post about the casting call for the movie adaptation of James Welch’s “Winter in the Blood.”

Once upon a time, James Welch dreamed of seeing his words become pictures.

That was 26 years ago when Welch was first approached about turning his debut novel, “Winter in the Blood,” into a movie.

“My diary from that night says, ‘We went to bed giggling,’ and then we fell asleep giggling,” said Lois Welch, a retired University of Montana literature professor and widow of James, one of the most celebrated Indian novelists and poets in history.

James Welch, who was Blackfeet and Gros Ventre, and also Irish, died of a heart attack at the age of 62 in 2003. His work was lauded by critics the world over as deeply resonant not only of the Indian culture about which he wrote, but of all people.

“Winter in the Blood,” released in 1974, got its highest praise from the New York Times Book Review, easily the standard-bearer of literary criticism in the country.

Shortly afterward, the novel was “optioned” by a film agency that sought to turn it into a motion picture.

Trouble is, it never happened.

But it has a second chance now.
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The January issue of Smithsonian magazine features this story on what it calls a “breathtaking” collection of 88 quilts stitched by members of Northern Plains tribes.

The National Museum of the American Indian is home to one of the largest such collections, and the article focuses on those acquired from a collector named Florence Pulford.

Pulford, a San Francisco Bay area homemaker, first got interested in quilts of the Plains tribes in the 1960s. According to NMAI curator Ann McMullen, these quilts—many bearing a central octagonal star—functioned as both ritual and practical replacements for Plains Indians buffalo robes. Bison hides had grown scarce as herds were hunted nearly to extinction in a campaign to subdue the Plains tribes during the late 1800s. Missionary wives taught quilting techniques to Indian women, who soon made the medium their own. Many of the patterns and motifs, McMullen says, “have a look very similar to [designs painted on] buffalo robes.”

The collection began with an invitation to the Pulford family from Frank Arrow, a Gros Ventre man who worked for them, to visit him on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. There, according to the story by Owen Edwards, Pulford was given a quilt as a gift. She was so struck by the work – and the way the quilts were made from scraps – that she began supplying quilting materials to women on the reservation.
Pulford would then sell the quilts, and return profits to the women.

More than a quarter of the quilts in the collection are by Almira Buffalo Bone Jackson, a member of the Red Bottom band of Assiniboine on the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana. Jackson died in 2004 at age 87.

Gwen Florio