Hundreds of the firefighters battling wildfires around the country are Native American (see video above). Among their most important tools are their expensive boots, which can cost as much as $400 a pair.

But as the Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe reports, those firefighters have been fighting the Bureau of Indian Affairs for more than two years over reimbursements for their boots:

But BIA has failed to respond to a September 2009 federal arbitration ruling that ordered the agency to reimburse firefighters for boots they must purchase as a condition of employment. Some federal firefighting agencies provide at least partial reimbursements, the arbitrator said, citing a previous ruling by the Occupational Safety Health Administration.

Federal requirements for fire-resistant leather firefighter boots that rise above the ankle and last for more than one seven-month fire season range in price from $250 to more than $400 a pair, depending on the brand, according to union officials.

“If you’re going to have First Americans be the first responders on wildfires in California or in Colorado, it seems to me that you ought to provide the fire equipment,” Michael Jennings, executive director of the Federation of Indian Service Employees, tells O’Keefe.

Gwen Florio

Mark Trahant is a writer, speaker and Twitter poet. He is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and lives in Fort Hall, Idaho. Trahant’s new book, “The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars,” is the story of Sen. Henry Jackson and Forrest Gerard.

By Mark Trahant

Which rally drew more people? One Nation Working Together or Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor? Left or right? Liberal or Conservative?

“Per usual the rally’s attendance numbers are being disputed by the left and right,” writes John Hudson in The Atlantic Wire. “While a number of progressive bloggers claim the “One Nation” rally drew a larger crowd than Beck’s August event, the Associated Press and others are challenging that claim.”

The logic here is counting people at a rally is evidence that Americans want a smaller, less taxing government, the kind of government that the Tea Party advocates.

But if you really want to count numbers then consider that while tens of thousands of Americans marched for or against government policy, compare that to Europe where ten times as many marched against their governments’ austerity measures. (These marches, I should mention, are small by European historical standards.)

Nonetheless: Austerity is our future.

Read the rest of this entry »

A month from today, the Native American Rights Fund will celebrate its 40th year.

The occasion will be marked at the Chickasaw Nation’s WinStar World Casino in Thackerville, Oklahoma. According to the news release printed in the Native Times:

Larry Echohawk (Interior Department photo)

NARF’s 40 Years of Indian Law Forum will highlight four decades of Indian law and NARF’s role. We will examine current concerns and challenges within each of NARF’s priority areas and their impact on Indian law. Utilizing the tribal leaders and attorneys attending, in each priority area we will craft a shared vision for the future direction for that issue of Indian law. Each session will end with strategic outlines for how NARF can address each issue for the next 40 years. In representing President Obama’s Administration, the keynote luncheon speaker will be Larry Echohawk, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior.

The NARF’s 40th Anniversary Dinner — “40 for 40″ — will highlight the 40 tribes, individuals and organizations that have helped shape the 40 years of NARF. We will spotlight Native clients, past board and staff members and funding partners. This will be a celebration honoring the impact that NARF has had in Indian Country.

The event will also include fun and games, in the form of the Native Justice Golf Challenge for tribal leaders, with Notah Begay II as the golf pro host.

Gwen Florio

Here’s the full story from the Associated Press:

GREAT FALLS, Mont. (AP) — A Bureau of Indian Affairs worker who was driving along a highway in Blaine County says a person in a car heading in the opposite direction fired a shotgun at his pickup.

Ralph Page, a BIA rangeland management specialist from Chinook, was not injured but the blast shattered the driver’s side window. If the window had been rolled down, he likely would have been shot in the head.

“It would have killed me, but I think that glass is just tempered enough,” he said.

Page, 57, said he was driving along U.S. Highway 2 just after noon on Wednesday, headed toward Harlem to pick up a load of hay. The blast came from a gray car headed east just near the Milk River Bridge.

Page did not get the license plate number and did not know how many occupants were in the car, Blaine County Undersheriff Pat Pyette said Thursday.

“I’ve been here nine years and this is the first time that anything like that has happened,” Pyette said.

Pyette said his department was investigating the shooting.

Page doesn’t know whether the attack was random or if someone was targeting him. He said he’s tried not to let himself think about how close he came to being injured or worse.

“Life’s a little different up here,” he said. “I mean I’ve had a few fights, over there at my job, but nothing more than that.”

And while he said he didn’t get too worked up over the incident, Page’s wife and five children — ages 27 to 35 — were upset.

“She wasn’t happy,” Page said.

Just catching up with this interesting story from a couple of days ago by Clifton Adcock of the Tulsa (Okla.) World:

(Photo from NowPublic.com)


A federal lawsuit filed in Tulsa by the Cherokee Nation seeking a declaration that the descendants of freedmen are not entitled to membership in the tribe has been ordered transferred to Washington, D.C., where a similar lawsuit is pending against tribal leaders and the federal government.

The Cherokee Nation filed its suit last year against the U.S. Department of the Interior and five descendants of freedmen — former slaves that had been owned by tribal members. The freedmens’ descendants had obtained tribal membership before Cherokees voted in 2007 to restrict Cherokee citizenship by excluding people whose ancestors were not listed on the Dawes Rolls as having a percentage of American Indian blood.

U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy gets the case. He’s also hearing a lawsuit brought in 2003 by Marilyn Vann, who heads Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes Association. That case names Cherokee Principal Chief Chad Smith and the Interior Department, which includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

“We eagerly await the day when all descendants of Dawes-enrolled Cherokee freedmen can register/reregister as Cherokee Nation tribal members, vote and run for tribal political office, as promised our ancestors by the U.S. government and tribal officials in 1866,” says Vann.

But Cherokee Attorney General Diane Hammons tells Adcock, “The record clearly shows that the federal government itself has extinguished any rights non-Indian freedmen descendants had under the treaty.”

Gwen Florio

The National Congress of American Indians is meeting this week in Rapid City, S.D., and high on their agenda is concern for indigenous people worldwide.

That manifested itself in a push to urge the United States to support of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The United States is among only a handful of countries continuing to refuse to sign the document that supports self-determination and opposes discrimination.

“The U.S. must step up and sign the declaration,” says Ron Allen, chairman and chief executive officer of the Jamestown S’klallam Tribe, according to this Rapid City Journal story.

Adds Juana Majel Dixon of the Pauma Tribe and secretary of the NCAI, “We continue to face grave violations of our rights every day. The U.S. is isolated by not endorsing the declaration.”

As the Journal’s Ruth Brown recounts:

Other topics discussed Monday at the conference included processing land-into-trust applications, which allow tribes to acquire additional land. Most often this land is purchased by the tribe or acquired from federal surplus lands

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said he was working on a strategy for empowering Native nations to build a future of their choosing. According to representatives from the Department of Interior, Salazar said taking land into trust is one of the most important functions the department undertakes on behalf of tribes.

“This is a result of a sustained effort on our part,” said Donald Laverdure, deputy assistant secretary for Indian Affairs. “Our ultimate goal is to rebuild and restore our homelands …we will use whatever resources we have to do that.”

Gwen Florio

Mike Black, the newly appointed director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was in Montana this week to deliver a message:

“I’ve met with my staff and emphasized the fact that the central office works for the regions, works for the tribes and works for the individuals,” Black told members of the Montana Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council. “It’s not vice versa.”

Black traveled to Billings, Mont., just days after his Monday appointment was announced by Larry Echo Hawk, assistant secretary of Indian Affairs. As Susan Olp of the Billings Gazette writes here, it was familiar territory for Black: He worked in Billings for 16 of his 23 years with the BIA.

Black, who is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, told tribal leaders that he is sure of is the commitment on the part of Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Echo Hawk to improving services to tribes:

That commitment starts with the president, Black said.

“We have a prime opportunity under President Obama’s administration,” he said. “He’s brought to light Indian issues more so than I think any president has in a long time, and that’s permeating down through the organization. We need to jump on that opportunity.”

Black touched on issues of interest to the leaders, including the reservation roads program, restoring land back to the tribes and coordinating with other agencies, such as the Indian Health Service, when interests overlap.

He says, the agency is full of public servants who take their mission seriously.

“They’re helping their brothers, their cousins, their moms, their dads and we have some of the most dedicated workforce,” he said. “And I want to be able to improve on that, to give people the tools they need to do their jobs the way they want to do that.”

Gwen Florio

Michael Black, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, will continue to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Only difference now is that it’s official.

Black has held the job on an interim basis since March, but now has been officially given the agency’s top spot, reports Ledyard King of the Sioux Falls (S.D.) Argus Leader, here:

Michael Black

Black, who held the post on an interim basis since March, will manage the BIA’s day-to-day operations through four offices: Indian Services, Justice Services, Trust Services and Field Operations. Those branches administer or fund tribally based infrastructure, law enforcement, social services, tribal governance, natural and energy resources and trust management programs for 564 federally recognized Native American and Alaska Native tribes in 33 states.

“I am deeply honored to have been offered this opportunity to lead the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” Black said in a statement. “I want to express my appreciation to (Interior) Assistant Secretary (Larry) Echo Hawk for his confidence and to affirm my commitment to strengthening the BIA’s mission of service to Indian Country.”

Tribes from reservations in the Dakotas hailed the move. “A good deal” is how Michael Jandreau, chairman of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, termed it, calling Black “pretty sensible and pretty open-minded.”

And Rosebud Sioux Tribe Chairman Rodney Bordeaux says that Black “knows our needs out here. Oftentimes, our needs on the Great Plains and in the Rocky Mountain Region are overlooked in favor of the smaller tribes and self-governance tribes.”

Gwen Florio

More than a century of confusion and disagreement over that most tension-producing of subjects in the West — water — came to an end yesterday when the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project was signed in Washington, D.C.

The agreement, between tribal and nontribal entities, is the first of its kind, and goes into effect tomorrow, Missoulian (Mont.) reporter Vince Devlin recounts here.

“This is truly a historic agreement we are signing today with our non-Indian neighbors,” says E.T. “Bud” Moran, chairman of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.”I am glad we decided a few years ago to resolve our differences through negotiation.”

Devlin writes:

The agreement creates the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project Cooperative Management Entity, or CME, which will have an equal number of representatives from the Flathead Joint Board of Control and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes….

The project, including rights-of-way and real property, will remain a federal project. It includes 17 major storage reservoirs, 1,300 miles of canals and laterals and more than 10,000 structures….

The Flathead Indian Irrigation project dates back more than a century, to 1908. Four years after it enacted the Flathead Allotment Act, Congress authorized construction of the irrigation project and directed the transfer of its management and operation to the owners of the lands being irrigated, when certain conditions and repayment of the debt of construction were met.

But the Joint Board of Control and the tribes never could agree as to what precisely was to be turned over.

Moran, Walt Schock, chairman of the Joint Board of Control, and Larry Echohawk, assistant secretary of the Interior and head of the BIA, signed the agreement at the Department of Interior yesterday.

Gwen Florio