John Graham (AP photo)

That’s so it can’t be misused, according to this AP story in today’s Rapid City (S.D.) Journal about the case involving the slain American Indian Movement activist. The attorneys say that secret grand jury records have been posted on the Internet, confidential witness names have been revealed and witnesses have received unwanted visits from defense representatives.

Aquash was shot to death in 1975. Her body was found on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

John Graham, of Canada’s Yukon territory, and Thelma Rios, of Rapid City, are charged in state court with taking part in the kidnapping and killing of Aquash, a fellow American Indian Movement member from Nova Scotia. Prosecutors have said AIM leaders suspected Aquash was a government informant.

Graham also is charged in federal court but his trial with co-defendant Richard Marshall was delayed so federal prosecutors could ask for a rehearing before the full 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the dismissal of one of the three counts against Graham.

Gwen Florio

Tags: American Indian Movement, Anna Mae Aquash, buffalo post, Native American news, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

UND's Fighting Sioux logo

Under an agreement between the state of North Dakota and the NCAA, which considers American Indian nicknames “hostile and abusive,” UND needs approval from the state’s two Sioux tribes to keep using the nickname. The Spirit Lake tribal council supports the name (although that stance faces some opposition), but wrangling within the Standing Rock tribe has delayed a vote.

Here’s today’s AP story in full.

GRAND FORKS, N.D. (AP) – American Indian activists are calling on the state Board of Higher Education to drop the University of North Dakota’s Fighting Sioux nickname and logo.

About 50 people demonstrated outside UND’s Memorial Union on Wednesday. Some carried signs reading, “UND Sioux Logo Identity Theft,” and “We Demand Our Civil Rights.”

The demonstration comes a day before state board meets to decide whether to extend the Oct 1 deadline for dropping the nickname and logo.

American Indian Movement activist Clyde Bellecourt said they should be dropped because they are racist.

One student held a counter-protest sign that said, “Democracy Over All.” Greg Plautz, an aviation student from Milwaukee, said he thinks members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe should get a vote on the issue.

Tags: Fighting Sioux, Spirit Lake Sioux, Standing Rock Sioux, University of North Dakota

Riot police detain a demonstrator protesting in support of the Mapuche Indians near La Moneda government palace in Santiago (AP photo)

President Michelle Bachelet herself announced the plan, saying it would allow decisions about Indian affairs to be made at the highest level of government, according to this AP story in today’s Washington Post. But the Mapuche Indians, Chile’s largest tribe, whose protests include occupying farmland and burning farm machinery, were less than enthusiastic.

“The only thing this proposal will accomplish is to raise a curtain of smoke on the issue allowing them to avoid straight answers to our demands,” says Mapuche representative Jose Santos Millao.

More than 4 percent of the nation’s 17 million citizens belong to one of its nine indigenous tribes. About 700,000 Mapuche are spread over poor communities in southern Chile and in the Santiago area, into which they were pushed after resisting Spanish conquest for 300 years. In August, the evictions of Indians from seized lands led to several violent confrontations between the Mapuche and the government that left one Indian dead.

Now, dozens of indigenous communities have formed the Mapuche Territorial Alliance to fight for political autonomy and press demands to end poverty.

Struggles by indigenous people are not limited to Chile. Peru’s Amazon tribes have staged sometimes-deadly protests against government efforts to allow development of their lands. And in Ecuador, the AP reports, hundreds of Indians briefly blocked the Pan American highway in several provinces this week to protest new water, mining and oil laws.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Chile, Mapuche, Native American news

“Bill Lawrence never flinched from scrutinizing Minnesota’s tribal governments, even when someone fired bullets through his newspaper office windows in Bemidji,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune writes here. “ But a battle with late-stage cancer has prompted Lawrence to fold the Native American Press/Ojibwe News after 21 years.”

For his final edition, Lawrence wrote an editorial headlined “A good day to die.”

“I am no longer physically able to do the tasks – computer searches, investigating, seeking ads – that are necessary to put out an edition,” writes, who is in hospice care in Sun Valley, Idaho, where he has family. The situation “makes it impossible for me to continue.”

Lawrence, a former miner and Marine, is tough. He pushed Minnesota’s 11 tribal casinos to open their books, wrote stories that sent several corrupt tribal leaders to prison, and even challenged powerful Red Lake Reservation Chairman Roger Jourdain – his godparent. He had to mortgage his house when casinos pulled their ads from his paper, the Star-Tribune reports. His work earned him a Freedom of Information award from the Society of Professional Journalists.

His column continued: “I cannot say with certainty that ours will be a lasting contribution. But we sure as hell roiled the waters and made a lot of enemies.I also know in my heart that we made a lot of friends, and that our work was important to the Indian people, especially in Minnesota.”

With the greatest respect, we’d like to disagree with Lawrence on one point. His contribution indeed will be lasting.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Bill Lawrence, buffalo post, Freedom of Information Award, Journalism, Native American news, Native American Press/Ojibwe News, Red Lake Reservation, Society of Professional Journalists

We’ve long read Tanka Bar updates on Facebook, so we’re delighted to see this AP story announcing that the snack bars and other products made by Native American Natural Foods in South Dakota will be available in 49 states. (Yo, West Virginia! Get with the program!) Here’s the AP story in its entirety, and we’ve attached a video on Tanka Bars as well:

KYLE, S.D. (AP) – A Native American-owned company from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation has signed agreements that will make its all-natural products available in 49 states.

Kyle-based Native American Natural Foods launched the buffalo-and-cranberry Tanka Bar in 2007 and expanded its line to include the Tanka Bites and Tanka Dogs, which are available at food service places.

The items are based on traditional Native foods.

The company said it has signed contracts with natural foods distributors UNFI and Tree of Life and food service distributor Sysco.

Chief executive Karlene Hunter believes it’s only a matter of time before the last state, West Virginia, is added.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Native American Natural Foods, Native American news, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Tank Bars

Audra Simpson (Cornell University photo)

This week, it appears Columbia has done the same thing with the addition of Audra Simpson, who will become the Anthropology Department’s only Native professor, and the university’s second Native faculty member. That’s according to a story, here, in the Columbia Spectator.

(At this point, we should probably stop picking on the Ivy League and mention that the issue extends to public universities. Still – harrumph.)

Simpson, who is Mohawk and grew up on Canada’s Kahnawake reserve, says her research “started with questions we were having about belonging.” She studies “the way we think about citizenship, nationality, indigenality.”

(See above video of Simpson’s participation on a University of Michigan panel last year on “Women of Color Negotiating the Academic Industrial Complex.”)

Simpson came to Columbia from Cornell. At Columbia, her first semester classes have seen high enrollments. Maybe her presence will attract more Native professors.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Audra Simpson, buffalo post, Columbia University, Cornell University, Native American news, Yale University

Here’s a sobering report from Portland’s Oregonian. It points out that although rates of child abuse are similar across ethnic groups, Native and black children are more likely to end up in foster care.

That applies more to Native children than any other group – they’re six times more likely to be placed in foster homes, and black children are four times more likely, than white children. What’s more, they stay in foster care longer. What gives?

Thankfully, according to the story, Oregon judges, state child welfare officials and child advocates are trying to tackle the issue.

Multnomah County is one of three counties nationwide in which juvenile court judges are testing ways to prevent racial bias from influencing decisions such as when a child must be taken from a parent and put into state custody.

Meanwhile, Michelle Cole’s story reports, Gov. Ted Kulongoski and the Oregon Department of Human Services have asked a diverse group to consider everything from how race influences caseworkers’ responses to abuse reports to changes that may be needed to make state child welfare laws more equitable.

“Let’s acknowledge it – sometimes racism occurs,” says Multnomah Circuit Judge Nan Waller.

You think?

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Multnomah County, Native American news

World War I Choctaw code talkers, from left, Solomon Louis, Mitchell Bobb, James Edwards, Calvin Wilson, Joseph Davenport and Capt. E.H. Horner. (U.S. Army photo)

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

Tags: buffalo post, Choctaw, Code Talkers, Native American news, World War I

A totem pole outside the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, which recently acquired one of Douglas Tobin's totem poles. (Burke Museum photo)

However, what he’s doing within that setting – prison – is very inspirational indeed. Tobin, a Squaxin Island Indian, is serving a 14-year prison term at the minimum-security Monroe Correction Complex in Washington state, according to this story in the Everett (Wash.) Herald, and is using his skills to teach 10 inmates how to carve a totem pole.

Neighbors donated a 25-foot cedar log, and Tobin’s lawyer contributed $1,000 worth of tools. Tobin’s earning his prison wage of 42 cents an hour for work that an expert in American Indian art says could earn him as much as $3,000 per foot on the outside.

After two weeks, the pole is taking shape. The base depicts a bear protecting a woman who was carved with detail down to her smooth toenails.

Other designs needed to be carved, like a whale in combat with the bear. Tobin says their deadlocked battle will symbolize the idea of respect, a part of prison life, while a shaman will represent the wisdom of judges and lawyers.

Tobin is serving a term for clam poaching. He had been helping the police find geoduck poachers, even as he ran his own million-dollar operation behind their backs, according to a 2003 Seattle Times story. He could be released between 2011 and 2016. He says he wants to start a business that teaches carving and sells American Indian art after he gets out. The pole will stay at the prison.

That’s fine by Tobin. He tells the Herald that the pole will be a tribute to the fact that prisoners can come together and make things work.

“This pole,” he says, took the life of the tree, “but it’s going to live at least another 10 decades.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Dougls Tobin, Native American news, Squaxin Island tribe