Really festive story from the National Museum of the American Indian (via ICTMN):

On St. Patrick’s Day, the museum would like to call attention to a remarkable gift from the people of the Choctaw Nation to the people of Ireland 164 years ago. We asked Judy Allen, executive director of public relations for the Choctaw Nation, to tell the history of what she describes as “an act that shaped tribal culture.”

The Choctaw people have a history of helping others. Only sixteen years after their long, sad march along the Trail of Tears, the Choctaws learned of people starving to death in Ireland. With great empathy, in 1847 Choctaw individuals made donations totaling $170 — estimated to be the equivalent of more than $5,000 today — to assist the Irish people during the famine. Though they had meager resources, they gave on behalf of others in greater need.

In 1995, Irish President Mary Robinson, later UN Commissioner for Human Rights, visited the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma to thank the Choctaws for their generosity toward the Irish, a people with whom she noted their only link was “a common humanity, a common sense of another people suffering as the Choctaw Nation had suffered when being removed from their tribal land.”

President Robinson also acknowledged the many Choctaws who have visited Ireland to take part in commemorating the Famine Walk.

“Earlier in the month I met one of the members of the tribe, the artist Gary Whitedeer,” she said. “He explained to me that taking part in that walk and remembering the past between the Choctaw Nation and Irish people and relinking our peoples is completing the circle. I have used that expression recently at a major conference on world hunger in New York. I spoke of the generosity of the Choctaw people and this idea of completing the circle.”

This charitable attitude resonates still today when crisis situations occur across the world. In 2001, tribal people made a huge contribution to the Firefighters Fund after the Twin Towers attack in New York City and have since made major contributions to Save the Children and the Red Cross in 2004 for tsunami relief, in 2005 for Hurricane Katrina relief, and more recently, for victims of the Haiti earthquake. Good works are not exclusive to humanitarian organizations and funds.

The Choctaw Nation received the United States National Freedom Award in 2008 for the efforts made in support of members of the National Guard and Reserve and their families. There are countless stories of Choctaw individuals who have looked past their own needs to help their neighbors.

The 11th season of Native Voices the Autry, starts Oct. 7 with “The Bird House,” by Diane Glancy, who is Cherokee.

Native Voices also produced Glancy’s play “Salvage” in 2008. Native Voices is the country’s only Equity theater company dedicated exclusively to developing and producing new works by Native American playwrights, according to Broadway World:

Set in the back room of a failing church in the high plains of Texas, The Bird House delves into the lives of a minister and his two sisters as they sort through the snarls of their past and adapt to loss and the uncertain future of their home and family. The cast includes Ellen Dostal as Clovis, and Native Voices Founder/Producing Artistic Director Randy Reinholz (Choctaw*) as Jonathan Logan/ Reverend Hawk, a part written specifically for him.

Read more about the Autry program at its website, and more about Diane Glancy – at DianeGlancy.com.

Gwen Florio

We’ve been running a day late on everything this week and this very important story from yesterday is no exception. To make up for that, here’s the report in full from Murry Evans of the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – With the leaders of five tribes in attendance, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas read a congressional resolution Wednesday apologizing for “ill-conceived policies” and acts of violence against American Indians by the U.S. government.

Brownback spoke during an event at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., where he and Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, Lois Capps of California and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii joined representatives from the Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and Pawnee nations, Cherokee Nation Chief Chad Smith said.

All those tribes are based in Oklahoma, except for the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, which is based in South Dakota.

Smith said that while most tribes had not specifically asked for a formal apology from the U.S. government, the gesture was appreciated.

“It’s difficult to issue an apology and sometimes it’s difficult to accept one,” Smith said by phone from Washington. “Once you put those differences of the past aside, perhaps the next step is, can you do any better in this round? That’s where our greatest challenge is. The history of the U.S. (toward American Indians) is not a bright record. The real question is, what happens from this day forward?”

Brownback, a Republican, had pushed for the resolution since 2004. Both houses of Congress approved it late last year and President Barack Obama signed it in December. Lawmakers have described the resolution as a symbolic gesture that would help promote a renewed commitment by the federal government to the tribes.

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“The Indians’ Lee Iacocca” was a term also applied to Phillip Martin, who – as the Wall Street Journal reports – led the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians from poverty to prosperity. Martin died Thursday night after a massive stroke. The Journal’s Stephen Miller writes here:

Philip Martin (AP photo)

Mr. Martin led his tribe into printing and manufacturing of auto parts and electronics at the Mississippi reservation once called “the worst poverty pocket in the poorest state of the Union.”

By the 1990s, the Mississippi Choctaws had moved so far up the wage scale that they moved some of their lower-paid industrial jobs to Mexico. Instead, they concentrated on higher-margin businesses, including golf courses, a water park and two gambling casinos. Revenue from the tribe’s various businesses was spent on medical care, housing and primary education. Tribe members were granted scholarships to attend any U.S. university.

“Chief Martin is often positioned as someone whose eye was on economic development but not cultural preservation, said Tom Mould, an anthropology professor at Elon University who has written two books on Choctaw culture. But “Chief Martin was fond of saying that Choctaw culture includes washing machines and basketball, just as much as hominy and [Choctaw] stickball.”

The tribe resisted federal efforts to move Indians west, and did not receive federal recognition until 1945. It’s now one of the largest employers in Mississippi, with assets of more than $1 billon.

Gwen Florio

This news release just came from the White House about the people who will sit with First Lady Michelle Obama during tonight’s State of the Union address. The first lady’s guests include Deborah Powell of the Choctaw Nation:

Deborah Powell is a Native American Development Specialist for the Housing Authority of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Having earned only a high school diploma, Powell built her experience outside of college and soon became interested in accounting and finance. After spending 43 years of her life in her hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona, she moved to Oklahoma in April 2004 for a change of pace and is currently working on a project funded by the Recovery Act. A member of the Choctaw Nation, she is currently helping to track budgets and ensure bids for independent elderly homes. This project, which is still under construction, will provide homes for more than 86 elderly people in the Choctaw Nation. Powell is recently remarried, and enjoys hunting, fishing, and spending time with her family.

For a story about Powell, click here.

For the full list, see below:

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Seems like everyone has heard of the Navajo Code Talkers during World War II.

But this story out of Canada about Choctaw code talkers during World War I reminds us the military already had a tradition of turning to its Native soldiers to safely transmit messages.

The Ontario Inland Bulletin tells about Louis Gooding, a Choctaw Indian from Oklahoma – it was still known as Indian Territory when he was born – who wound up living in Ontario. But before that, Gooding was a member of the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps during World War I.

Several dozen Choctaws were put to work transmitting messages and are credited for helping to turn the tide in several battles, the story says.

The messages sent in Choctaw helped the Allies make strategic moves in the battles at St. Etienne and Forest Ferme in the last months of the war, wrote William C. Meadows in a 2002 book on Indians in modern warfare..

“After twenty-four hours after the Choctaw language was essentially pressed into service. . . ., the Germans’ advances were stopped,” wrote Meadows. “In seventy-two hours, the Germans had been forced into a full retreat.”

Gwen Florio

After 170 years, the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians is leaving the ancestral island where it has fished and crabbed for generations.

Albert Naquin, the tribe’s chief, says in this AP story in the Opelousas (La.) Daily World that the marsh community had been flooded five times in the past six years. About 25 families still call it home. He says the tribe hoped to use about $12 million in federal aid to build 60 homes on 50 acres in Bourg, which is about 10 miles inland.

Naquin tells the Associated Press that the road to the village has been battered and reduced to one lane. Even in modest bad weather, the road can flood, he says. The church was relocated after Hurricane Rita in 2005, and the fire station has been closed.

“I don’t think they want to spend any more money out there,” Naquin says about federal officials.

He says the move could help reconnect members of a tribe that has so often been displaced.

Moving to the land in Bourg “would be a displacement, but it wouldn’t be as much if we went way out into a subdivision,” he says.

Gwen Florio

Nearly two centuries after the fact, the original letter in which President Andrew Jackson told the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes they had to leave Mississippi and Alabama – or else – has been found.

Eventually, five tribes ended up leaving, on a forced march now known as the “Trail of Tears,” during which thousands of Indians died from starvation, exposure, and disease.

Maj. David Haley carried the letter to the tribal leaders more than 180 years ago, according to this Philadelphia Inquirer story. But for years, the only evidence of it was a draft.

Jackson’s tone in the letter alternates between cajoling and bullying:

“Say to them as friends and brothers to listen[to] the voice of their father, & friend,” Jackson wrote. “Where [they] now are, they and my white children are too near each other to live in harmony & peace. Their game is destroyed and many of their people will not work & till the earth. Beyond the great river Mississippi, where a part of their nation has gone, their father has provided a co[untry] large enough for them all, and he ad[vises] them to go to it.”

And, he went on to say, “Tell them to listen. [The proposed plan] is the only one by which [they can be] perpetuated as a nation.”

The letter was found this summer in a private family collection, and sold to the Raab Collection, a Philadelphia-based dealer of autographs, historical documents and manuscripts.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime find,” says Nathan Raab, company vice president. “It’s one of the most important documents in American history. To discover it after nearly two centuries is nothing short of breathtaking.”

Images can be viewed at the firm’s Web site, here.

Gwen Florio

Here’s some good news on a bad problem:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder today announced that more than $5.6 million in stimulus money from the Office on Violence Against Women will go to tribes in Montana, California, Kansas, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

The news comes after Justice Department officials on Wednesday concluded the first of three working sessions on tribal law enforcement issues.

“American Indian and Alaska Native women are more likely to experience sexual assault and domestic violence than women from other racial or ethnic groups, which is why these funds are so vital,” Holder says. “As the Department of Justice convenes the Tribal Nations Listening Conference and pre-sessions, these funds are just the beginning of a renewed partnership between the department and our tribal communities to ensure the safety of every Indian woman and address tribes’ criminal justice challenges.”

The federal provides the Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women with $20.8 million for the Indian Tribal Governments Program to decrease the number of violent crimes committed against Indian women. And, it provides the office with $2.8 million for the Tribal Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Coalitions Program.

The awards are going to the following tribes:

California
Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians, $446,700
Strong Hearted Native Women’s Coalition, Inc. of Southern California, $355,950

Kansas
Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, $334,630

Mississippi
Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, $899,999

Montana
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) of Flathead Indian Reservation, $802,642

Oklahoma
Absentee Shawnee Domestic Violence Program, $510,000
Citizen Potawatomi Nation, $899,999
Comanche Indian Tribe, $687,312
Seminole Nation, $744,809

For more details, go to the Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women site, here.

Gwen Florio