Gerard Baker, who has been on leave from his job as superintendent of Mount Rushmore National Memorial since a stroke last year, is returning to his job.

Mount Rushmore spokesman Navnit Singh tells the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal’s Kevin Woster, here, that Baker has been working part-time since Dec. 31, and will return full time on Tuesday.

John Scott, who has been acting superintendent at the memorial, will stay on temporarily to work on special projects before returning to Pea Ridge Ridge National Military Park in Arkansas.

Baker spoke Tuesday evening in Belle Fourche to participants in the Fort Robinson Outbreak Spiritual Run, on the topic of facing challenge and adversity, Woster reports.

Baker, who is Mandan and Hidatsa and whose past Park Service experience includes tenure at the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana and the Knife River Indian Villages in North Dakota, is well-known – and sometimes controversial – for his insistence upon including presentations of Native history and culture at his various postings.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Fort Robinson O, Gerard Baker, Hidatsa, Knife River Indian VIllages, Little Bighorn Battlefield, Mandan, Mount Rushmore, National Park Service, Native American news, Pea Ridge National Military Park

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, above, has apologized for the mistreatment in the late 19th century of indigenous people who were shipped to Europe and exhibited, the BBC reports here:

“As we near the bicentennial of our independence, we have to confront both the brightest points and the darkest moments of our history,” she said in Santiago.

She said the mistreatment of the indigenous people was due to racist attitudes towards “our indigenous forefathers, whose human dignity was trampled upon.”

Eleven Kawesqar Indians were taken by a German expedition in 1881 and displayed around European cities. Five died while overseas. Their remains were recently flown back to Chili and honored in a ceremony.

Those five will be buried in a traditional ceremony at a remote island near Tierra del Fuego, according to the BBC.

It’s tough not to compare Bachelet’s very public remarks with President Obama’s silence on the recently approved Congressional apology to tribes that he quietly signed in November.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Apology to tribes, buffalo post, Chile, Indigenous people, Kawesqar Indians, Native American news, President Michelle Bachelet

Remember the proposed – albeit watered-down – Congressional apology to tribes?

Apparently it’s a done deal, signed by President Barack Obama on Dec. 19 as part of a defense appropriations bill, as Indian Country Today reports here.

But the newspaper’s Rob Caprioccioso asks the pertinent question:

Is an apology that’s not said out loud really an apology? What if the person expressing the apology doesn’t draw attention to it?

As Capriccioso correctly points out, the measure isn’t even a precise governmental apology. Instead, it apologizes “on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native peoples by citizens of the United States.”

Oh, and it specifies that there won’t be any reparations.

The White House has done nothing to publicize the apology, even though it issued a press release on the president having signed the overall defense bill that contained the resolution.

That silence stands in contrast to leaders of other countries who’ve apologized to their indigenous populations, and also to former presidents in the United States who apologized to African-Americans and Japanese-Americans, for medical experiments and internment, respectively.

Robert T. Coulter, executive director of the Indian Law Resource Center in Helena, Mont., and Washington, D.C., criticizes the “overwhelming silence” on the resolution.

“What kind of an apology is it when they don’t tell the people they are apologizing to? For an apology to have any meaning at all, you do have to tell the people you’re apologizing to,” says Coulter, who is Potawatomi.

“I have had my doubts on whether this is a true or meaningful apology, and this silence seems to speak very loudly on that point.”

Gwen Florio

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