This year’s theme for the Black Hills Pow Wow in Rapid City, S.D., this weekend is “Honoring the Four Generations, Strong Lakota Women, Mending the Sacred Hoop” and Rock Hill will serve as the host drum. (Enjoy their video from the Sakicawasihk Pow Wow in Canada.)

“Last year was our first time attending the Black Hills Pow Wow,” the group’s Robert Whitehead Jr. of Yellow Quill, Saskatchewan, tells the Rapid City Journal. “We came down to enjoy ourselves, we sang hard, sang for the people and were awarded with a first-place victory. We are very honored that the committee invited us back to serve as the 2009 Black Hills Pow Wow host drum.”

The powwow will be huge, with even more nations attending than last year’s 57, says Dixie Holy Eagle, president of the Black Hills Pow Wow Association.

In addition to the usual competitions among dancers, drummers and singers, there will be a poster contest, softball tournament and the He Sapa Style Show.

And, says Holy Eagle, “the skateboard tournament should be big this year. We have professional skaters from around the country coming.

Whitehead says he’s looking forward to comparing Native life in Canada versus life in the United States, which he sees as not that different.

“In speaking with our friends across the border, we have found that we do have more rights in Canada, as opposed to our American friends,” Whitehead says. “Rights such as a paid education and living allowance for students, medical care, we have yet to experience huge feather raids as the U.S. has. Anywhere you go, it is a struggle to be First Nation. Unless you have an education to back your thoughts, it is almost impossible to be heard.”

To read more of Whitehead’s comments, and for a full schedule of events, see the Rapid City Journal story, here.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Black Hills Pow Wow, buffalo post, Native American news, powwows, Rock Hill

This commentary on the U.S. Senate’s approval this week of the congressional resolution apologizing to tribes (see previous posts here and here) comes to us from Robert T. Coulter, executive director of the Indian Law Resource Center in Helena, Mont., and Washington, D.C.

The Senate has just passed a resolution that apologizes to American Indians and other Native Americans for the wrongs done by citizens of this country. But a genuine apology means you won’t do it again, and this resolution does nothing at all to stop or correct the on-going wrongs that the federal government inflicts on Indian and Alaska native nations. Unfortunately our government still takes Indian land without paying for it, still refuses to account for the Indian money it holds, still violates its treaties with Indian nations without making amends, and still maintains a body of policy and law that is so discriminatory and racist that it should have been discarded generations ago.

More steps will be needed for Congress to finally adopt this resolution. To make a real apology, Congress needs to stop doing the things that it is apologizing to Indian nations and other Native peoples for.

Americans generally do not know that the federal government continues to treat tribes this way, and the evidence is that the public does not support or condone this mistreatment.

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Tags: buffalo post, Congressional apology to tribes, Indian Law Resource Center, Native American news, Robert T. Coulter

You didn’t need to wait till Monday to find out that Indian Country counts, did you?

That’s our feeble attempt to make folks smile on Friday. On a far more serious note, it’s also the name of the National Congress of American Indians’ 2010 census campaign.

That campaign begins Monday during the 66th annual National Congress of American Indians’ convention and trade show at the Palm Springs Convention Center, the Palm Springs Desert Sun reports here.

The event is expected to draw 1,500 to 3,000 tribal, business and political leaders, as well as officials affiliated with tribal gaming and related industries, social or government organizations.

Getting an accurate census count is key, given the way money for so many federal programs is based on population. As the caption to the photo above make clear, for too many decades the Census didn’t act as though Indians even existed. But even today, an accurate count is hard to come by on too many of the nation’s far-flung, rural reservations. Indian Country Counts aims to change that. To drive home that point, U.S. Census Bureau director Robert Groves will sign a reaffirmation of the bureau’s first American Indian and Alaska Native Policy statement.

The conference – this year’s theme is “Our People, Our Nations, Our Future” – will of course focus on far more than the census.

Other speakers and participants include Bureau of Indian Affairs Director Larry EchoHawk; Joe Garcia, president of the National Congress of American Indians and James Steele Jr., chairman of the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council and also chairman of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in western Montana.

Topics include sovereignty, labor relations, education, criminal justice, Indian land and water rights, health, the Employee Free Choice Act, tribal gaming and business.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Indian Country Counts, Native American news, U.S. Census Bureau