Here’s the entire story from Kevin Woster of the Rapid City, S.D., Journal:

Former Mount Rushmore National Memorial superintendent Gerard Baker has retired from the National Park Service, less than three months after he was named assistant park service director for Native American relations.

Hugh Dougher, acting superintendent at Mount Rushmore, said Tuesday that Baker retired effective July 3 because of lingering health concerns. Baker suffered a stroke in November but returned to his job as Mount Rushmore superintendent in January. At that time, he said during an interview with the Journal that he was “more fired up than ever” and hoped to stay at Rushmore until he retired in 2016.

But Baker left the superintendent’s job in April to take the assistant director’s job. He had planned on splitting his time between Washington, D.C., and an office in the Black Hills. But Baker’s health concerns increased under the workload of his new job, Dougher said. He said Baker was wise to put his health first.

“I think he made the right decision,” he said.

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Gerard Baker, whose tenure as superintendent at Mount Rushmore National Memorial has sometimes been marked by controversy, will be assistant director for American Indian Relations at the National Park Service.

“The National Park Service faces important cultural and natural resource issues with First Americans,” National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said in making yesterday’s announcement.

“I’ve asked Gerard to represent me and the National Park Service with tribes across our country to work on issues I believe will further the goals of the National Park Service and goals of First Americans.”

Baker, who is Mandan-Hidatsa from the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota, Baker was the first Native American appointed superintendent of Mount Rushmore, the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal reports here. Throughout his time in the Park Service, he’s worked to include Native American perspectives.

“This is really a natural next step in my career, and it’s what I’ve been doing all my life: learning about people, our history and culture, talking to others and sharing stories and learning to appreciate other perspectives. It’s an opportunity we in the National Park Service can’t miss,” Baker says.

As the Journal reports, Baker went through a rocky patch recently in his 30-year career with the Park Service:

Baker drew fire from his critics last July when Greenpeace demonstrators scaled the monument to unfurl a protest banner. Baker stepped in front of cameras and microphones the next day to assure everyone that the monument’s security systems had worked as designed. A Park Service investigation revealed that parts of the security system were either inoperable or not functioning properly.

Retired South Dakota Highway Patrol officer Terry Mayes of Rapid City said he holds Baker personally responsible for the security breach. Mayes was on a committee that recommended security changes after an earlier demonstration at the memorial. The committee made suggestions that led to the spending of several million dollars for security improvements that were not operating properly last July, he said.

Baker had a stroke last year and took medical leave. He returned to work in Mount Rushmore in January.

Gwen Florio

The head of Montana’s Office of Public Instruction traveled to Washington, D.C., this week to stand up for rural schools, especially schools on reservations.

Rural districts face challenges in complying with the methods set for improving results in their lowest-performing schools – action required as a condition for receiving billions of dollars in federal aid, Education Week’s Lesli Maxwell writes here.

But rural means something very different on the East Coast than it does in the far-flung reaches of the West, Juneau told the annual legislative conference of the Council of Chief State School Officers.

“The frontier is really where we are,” she says. “We are more rural than rural.”

Maxwell reports that:

Ms. Juneau emphasized that even the so-called transformation model, which is less drastic than the three other turnaround models that the U.S. Department of Education has said are acceptable, won’t work in her state because the approach requires the principals to be replaced. The five schools that Montana has identified as the lowest-performing are all located on isolated American Indian reservations she said.

Even if those districts could find strong principals to replace the existing ones, Ms. Juneau said, there are more fundamental challenges, such as where they would stay.

“We lack housing,” she told the secretary. “If we want to get a turnaround specialist in these places, we may not even be able to buy a double-wide trailer for them.”

Juneau, who is Mandan and Hidatsa, is the first Native woman elected to statewide office in Montana.

Gwen Florio

Here’s the full story from the Associated Press:

WHITE SHIELD, N.D. (AP) — The Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota says one of the remaining few elders who could teach the Arikara language has died.

Maude Starr, whose American Indian name meant Yellow Calf Woman, died Jan. 20 at the age of 71. Her funeral was held Wednesday in the Fort Berthold Reservation community of White Shield.

Starr held a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of North Dakota. The tribe, which has members of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, says she was one of only a handful of educators with the skills to teach the Sahnish, or Arikara, language.

Starr taught the language and culture to young people through school programs.

Gwen Florio

Mount Rushmore National Memorial Superintendent Gerard Baker, who is Mandan and Hidatsa, has been on leave since having a stroke last year. His past Park Service experience includes tenure at the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana and the Knife River Indian Villages in North Dakota. Baker is well-known – and sometimes controversial – for his insistence upon including presentations of Native history and culture at his various postings. Here’s the whole story from Steve Miller in today‘s Rapid City Journal:

Mount Rushmore National Memorial Superintendent Gerard Baker said Wednesday that he is fully recovered from a stroke he suffered in November and has felt great since he returned to work full time last week.

“I’m back and I’m more fired up than ever, in a positive sense,” he said.

Baker, 56, is a 31-year National Park Service veteran and said he plans to make Mount Rushmore his last career stop.

“I have no intention of going any other place,” Baker said. “I came here five years ago with the intention that this is my last national park site.”

Baker wants to remain at Rushmore until 2016, the 100th birthday of the National Park Service.

“What better time to retire than that birthday year.”

Gerard Baker, who has been on leave from his job as superintendent of Mount Rushmore National Memorial since a stroke last year, is returning to his job.

Mount Rushmore spokesman Navnit Singh tells the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal’s Kevin Woster, here, that Baker has been working part-time since Dec. 31, and will return full time on Tuesday.

John Scott, who has been acting superintendent at the memorial, will stay on temporarily to work on special projects before returning to Pea Ridge Ridge National Military Park in Arkansas.

Baker spoke Tuesday evening in Belle Fourche to participants in the Fort Robinson Outbreak Spiritual Run, on the topic of facing challenge and adversity, Woster reports.

Baker, who is Mandan and Hidatsa and whose past Park Service experience includes tenure at the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana and the Knife River Indian Villages in North Dakota, is well-known – and sometimes controversial – for his insistence upon including presentations of Native history and culture at his various postings.

Gwen Florio

Gerard Baker, the Mount Rushmore superintendent who came under fire after Greenpeace activists climbed onto the monuments last summer, is on a medical leave of absence, the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal reports here.

“He did go to the hospital last week because he was not feeling well, and he is at home,” says Chief of interpretation Navnit Singh “He has a lot of accumulated leave. And he’s going to be taking some time off. While he’s doing that, we have an acting superintendent.”

As the Journal reports, Baker came under intense scrutiny after July 8, when Greenpeace activists climbed up onto the presidential images and unfurled a banner with President Barack Obama’s face and a message urging action on global warming.

Although Baker said memorial security was functioning that day, it turned out that some cameras weren’t working.

Baker, who is Mandan and Hidatsa and whose past Park Service experience includes tenure at the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana and the Knife River Indian Villages in North Dakota, is well-known – if not always appreciated – for his insistence upon including presentations of Native history and culture at his various postings.

John Scott, superintendent at the Pea Ridge National Military Park in Arkansas, is in South Dakota and will serve as acting superintendent in Baker’s absence.

“Just because of the extraordinary activity the park has had, the decision was made to bring in an acting (superintendent) while Gerard was off,” Singh said.

Gwen Florio

While many places around the nation commemorated Columbus Day on Monday, at the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota’s Black Hills, it was Native Americans’ Day.

As part of the celebration, the memorial announced a new partnership with the University of South Dakota, according to this Rapid City (S.D.) Journal story.

Courses could be offered there as soon as next summer, when a classroom and residence hall now under construction are to be completed, Jack Marsh tells the Journal.

Marsh is a board member of the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, which will cover tuition costs for as many as 40 Native American students when the program is fully

Monday’s celebration was also meant to be a step toward racial reconciliation in South Dakota. It featured the recorded words of the late Gov. George Mickelson as he spoke about the state’s 1989 decision to replace its observance of Columbus Day with Native Americans’ Day.

Traditional singing, drumming and dancing entertained a large audience who also heard from several guest speakers, among them Mount Rushmore Superintendent Gerard Baker, who is Mandan-Hidatsa.

Baker told schoolchildren in the audience that he dreams of the day he can stand before a group of students and ask them what prejudice or racism is and “nobody would know the answer.”

To watch a video of yesterday’s event, click here.

Gwen Florio

Tim Giago, editor of Native Sun News, today posts a spirited, knowledgeable and affectionate defense of Gerard Baker, a longtime National Park Service supervisor who now is Superintendent of Mount Rushmore National Monument.

Baker, who is Mandan and Hidatsa and whose past Park Service experience includes tenure at the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana and the Knife River Indian Villages in North Dakota, is well-known – if not always appreciated – for his insistence upon including presentations of Native history and culture at his various postings. Now he finds himself in the midst of a very different type of controversy, over the fact that a month ago, Greenpeace activists clambered onto Mount Rushmore’s famous faces and fastened an Obama banner there.

As Giago writes here, “When Greenpeace did its deed the locals came out of the woodwork looking for a scalp to hang on the wall. Baker’s scalp looked pretty inviting to those wanting to see blood.”

Baker was criticized for initially saying that all park security systems worked as they should that day. As Giago points out (for more details, see an earlier Rapid City Journal story, here) Baker has made plenty of enemies along the way, some of whom seem to be seizing upon this opportunity to suggest it’s time for him to go.

Giago isn’t the only one backing Baker, though. The column quotes both U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson and Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in praise of Baker’s professionalism, a viewpoint echoed by prominent people in Rapid City, S.D.

We’ll keep an eye on the rumblings over Baker and will post updates here.

Gwen Florio