This morning, the Navajo Nation’s Supreme Court will examine the validity of a December vote to reduce the size of the Navajo Tribal Council from 88 members to 24, and that also gives the president line-item veto power.

But, as Felicia Fonseca of the Associated Press reports here, there’s an underlying issue — whether a recently enacted law to prohibit judges from using centuries-old traditional values and customs in deciding cases is valid:

Thousands of cases have been resolved in tribal courts using Navajo customs and traditions, which are sometimes the only law available to judges on certain issues. The Tribal Council earlier this year stripped judges of the ability to use what’s known as “Dine Fundamental Law” in deciding cases, saying the laws that have long guided Navajos’ upbringing have been abused.

The justices will hear arguments at the Navajo Nation museum.

It’s a safe bet that the students at the Ruth N. Bond Elementary School in Kirtland, N.M., know a whole lot more Navajo than ya’at’eeh, the word for hello.

As Alysa Landry of the Farmington, N.M., Daily Times writes here, the school has 150 students enrolled in its Navajo bilingual classes, and eight more on a waiting list. That works out to nearly all of the students in kindergarten through third grade.

Bond is the only school with a waiting list for Navajo in the Central Consolidated School District, which covers 3,000 square miles and has a 90 percent Navajo student population, Landry reports.

“Really the only way we can enroll more students is if other students transfer out of the school or their parents pull them out of bilingual classes,” said Veta Glover, who is certified by the state to teach bilingual education. “I hate to turn kids away.”

The school is looking for more people to teach Navajo.

Carol Thomas, an assistant in the Dine Education Center in Window Rock, Ariz., says the Native American Language Culture Certification program allows tribally certified teachers to also receive state teaching certificates.

The need is urgent, says Glover. “From kindergarten through third grade, we learn everything: how to introduce yourself, the colors, the numbers, clans, the culture. If Navajo isn’t being spoken at home, they need to be here to be exposed to it. That’s what I really want for them.”

Gwen Florio

About a dozen years ago, I went to the Navajo Nation to do a story on a grant that provided school computers. Only problem was, there were no phone lines in the community so that the computers could be hooked up.

Times change. Computers don’t need phone lines anymore, but that doesn’t mean computer hookups are any less problematic. The Navajo Nation, like many reservations, comes up short in terms of broadband access.

But according to this story in the Salt Lake Tribune, some $32 million in stimulus funds will increase broadband access and high-speed Internet to the Nation’s 110 chapters.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke calls the move “absolutely essential for the health and the wealth of the Navajo Nation. Too many people are stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.”

Only a few chapter houses have glacially slow dial-up, while many places on the reservation still lack phone and electrical service.

“I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened,” Ken Maryboy, who represents three chapters in the Four Corners area, tells the Trib. “We are in dire need in communication. With Utah Navajos, there’s no such thing as fiber optics.”

Gwen Florio

National Public Radio’s reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan has been justifiably honored. But it came under scrutiny recently with reports on the death in Afghanistan of a 23-year-old Navajo Marine from Rock Point, Ariz.

NPR’s Kabul correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, who was embedded with the Marines India Company 3rd Battalion, 6th Regiment, included in her report details of how the young man died.

The piece provoked comment from listeners who found it both moving, and intrusive, according to this NPR review of the matter.

Although the Marine’s family knew of his death, they didn’t know NPR was planning the piece.

“The only complaint we, as the family, have is that we were not notified about the broadcast,” his sister-in-law tells NPR. “It was quite a shock when we actually heard the story then heard the moment he was killed from the audio. It was too graphic for us to hear.”

She also says she wishes the NPR had not used his name, out of respect for Navajo culture.

As she tells NPR:

“In our Navajo tradition, once we lay him to rest we cannot talk about his passing anymore,” said his sister-in-law on March 4. “Culturally his spirit will not be at ease if we keep hearing about his death…It is hard for all of us to grieve the loss of [name withheld] with all this media attention it is getting and we know that this is not what he would have wanted. He was not the type of person to have wanted all this attention.”

This story is fraught with ethical issues. Should NPR have aired the moment of death? Should his name be aired? Should NPR have notified the family before the piece aired?

NPR’s review of the matter notes there are no easy answers. This blog has printed the names of Navajo soldiers and Marines killed in combat, usually linking to the stories in the Navajo Times mentioning those names. In a story involving this particular Marine, the Times noted that the family asked that his name not be made public. Thoughts?

Gwen Florio

The U.S. Justice Department seeks Native Americans interns are begin sought to help tribal members who worked in the uranium industry or lived downwind from atomic tests.

The interns will help cancer victims apply for compensation under terms of the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, according to this Deseret News story. The internship is designed to ensure that people who qualify for claims get the compensation they deserve. Interns will be based in the Four Corners area and will receive training, housing and a small stipend.

“In addition to helping us reach those Cold War patriots who are suffering and are entitled to compensation, this internship program will provide much needed summer jobs to bright students looking for an opportunity to serve,” says Tony West, assistant attorney general for Justice’s Civil Division.

He added, “The RECA program is an important part of the attorney general’s commitment to this administration’s work in strengthening the nation-to-nation relationship with tribal governments.”

For more information on the internship program or to apply, call (202) 616-4304, or click here.

Gwen Florio

Quilting project honors Native children who died in boarding schools
Jamestown, N.D., resident Ellen Pfeiffer first learned about Indian boarding schools from her former husband, a member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe whose grandmother was taken from her family and sent to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. She found the story heartbreaking, and began to study the era. Barbara Landis, Carlisle Indian School biographer, reports that nearly 10,000 Indian children went to Carlisle in its 40-year-history. Of those, nearly 200 children died, most of them of respiratory diseases such as pneumonia and tuberculosis.

Pfeiffer believes the schools, whose purpose was to assimilate Indian children, did a disservice to Native Americans. Now she’s making quilts to honor the children who died so far from their families. The project involves 186 quilts, according to this Jamestown Sun story distributed by the Associated Press.

Connecticut tribes blast state’s plan to add keno games
Connecticut is looking at adding keno games to help close a $1.3 billion budget shortfall. But tribal casinos – which already offer it – are crying foul, saying it could cut into their profits, Indian Country Today’s Gale Courey Toensing writes here. Jackson King, general counsel for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, says that if the state launches keno, the tribes could stop making payments to the state based on their own earnings, because of a violation of the compact.

Navajo Nation plans five casinos within two years
Despite a drop in gaming revenues around the country, the Navajo Nation Gaming Enterprise says it has secured the funding for five news casinos, and plans to build them within the next two years, according to the Navajo Times. Investment Committee members say gaming looks like more secure route than the stock market these days.

Seneca Nation stops effort to ban mail-order smokes in New York
The New York Times has this story on how the Seneca Nation turned around a bill designed to halt the shipment of mail-order cigarettes. The bill was approved by the New York House of Representatives and a Senate committee, before the Seneca Nation, which sees more than $1 billion annually in gambling and cigarette revenues, launched a full-scale lobbying effort to stop it.

Nunavut to substantially cut polar bear harvest quota; hunters object
Over the next four years, the annual hunting quota for Baffin Bay polar bears will gradually be reduced from 105 to 65, according to the Nunatsiaq News. Biologists are worried the bears are being overhunted, and Greenland has already reduced its quotas. But some hunters are demanding compensation for their communities.

Salish Kootenai College honors lifelong Salish language teacher Sophie Mays
Last month, family and friends on the Flathead Indian Reservation gathered at Salish Kootenai College to dedicate Sophie’s Room. It honors Sophie “Supi” Quequesah Mays died last year at the age of 56, the Char-Koosta News reports. Mays, who grew up with parents who spoke only Salish, dedicated her life to preserving the Salish language. She was the first Salish teacher when the college was founded.

Gwen Florio

Group works to preserve sacred Chief Cliff site
A group of young people, mostly from Salish Kootenai College, is worried that a quarry near Chief Cliff, a site revered by Kootenai people on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, will damage the cliff. They’d like a conservation easement, but tracking down the quarry’s owner is proving tough. Read Missoulian reporter Vince Devlin’s account, here, and watch Tom Bauer’s video, here.

Cherokee quarterback willing to play for Redskins
University of Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford will likely go to the Washington Redskins come draft time, and some commentators are making a big deal over his Cherokee heritage, and the team’s name, considered offensive by many. Bradford is the first Native American to win the Heisman Trophy. Read more on Fredericksburg.com, here.

Robert Redford to join New Mexico’s Jobs Through Film for Natives
The New Mexico Independent reports here that actor and filmmaker Robert Redford is starting a program in northern New Mexico called “Milagro at Los Luceros.” The idea is to create training programs with a focus on Native American and Hispanic filmmaking.

Afghanistan offensive claims life of Navajo Marine
Lance Cpl. Alejandro Yazzie, 23, who is Dine from Rock Point, was killed Feb. 16 in Marjah, Afghanistan, where he was a combat engineer assigned to the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, according to the Navajo Times, here. He was the first in his battalion to die in the offensive, and the 11th Navajo soldier or Marine to die overseas since Sept. 11, 2001.

Minnesota Sen. Al Franken seeks more money for tribal schools
“The reality is that Indian schools, and Indian issues in general, just have not been a federal funding priority,” U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. While the Obama administration has done more than previous administrations, “we have to do much, much more,” the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer reports writes here. In Minnesota alone, 64 Indian schools await funding, he says.

Gwen Florio

I was transported back to Chinle, Arizona this weekend as I sat in the darkened Wilma Theater watching a documentary called “Weaving Worlds.” The documentary “Weaving Worlds” tells past and present story of Navajo rug weavers.

It is one of the many documentaries being screened during the 2010 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival (see related post, here), which began Friday and runs through Feb. 21. This documentary is part of the Indigenous Visions section of the festival, which are films that focus on issues facing Native people.

I was a freshman during my undergraduate studies at Creighton University when I first visited Chinle.

Instead of the usual trip to Cancun during spring break, I volunteered for a week on the Navajo Reservation. However, it wasn’t the imagery that made me reminisce my experiences there, it was an interview with a tourist at a rug auction.

He talked about the designs of the rugs and what they look for and why. His interview ended with his amazement after discovering the woman he just bought the rug from did not speak English. I cannot remember what he says exactly, but says something to the effect of, “I thought everyone in the United States spoke English.”

Read the rest of this entry »

After years of criticisms involving allegations of favoritism, inefficiency and secrecy, the Navajo Nation is switching to competitive bids for its ranch-leasing program.

“We want to practice fairness and all ranchers to bid,” Fritz Roanhorse, manager of the ranch program, tells the Navajo Times, here.

Bidding for 23 ranch leases began Dec. 13 and ends Wednesday, and works much like federal agricultural leasing programs.

Béégashii is the Dine word for cattle. Ranchers looking to raise them on the leased land must submit management plans.

“Historically, members of the Navajo Nation have raised livestock as a way of life with agriculture being a foundation of Navajo culture,” says Agricultural Department Director Leo Watchman. “However, traditional cultural aspects of indigenous people’s lives have changed, especially with respect to agriculture.”

Gwen Florio