Here’s the full story from the Associated Press:

WHITE SHIELD, N.D. (AP) — The Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota says one of the remaining few elders who could teach the Arikara language has died.

Maude Starr, whose American Indian name meant Yellow Calf Woman, died Jan. 20 at the age of 71. Her funeral was held Wednesday in the Fort Berthold Reservation community of White Shield.

Starr held a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of North Dakota. The tribe, which has members of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, says she was one of only a handful of educators with the skills to teach the Sahnish, or Arikara, language.

Starr taught the language and culture to young people through school programs.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Arikara, Fort Berthold Reservation, Hidatsa, Mandan, Three Affiliated Tribes

New York Gov. David A. Paterson wants to raise cigarette taxes by $1 a pack. But the Buffalo News says legislators are resisting that move until the state starts collecting taxes on sales of tribally produced cigarettes to non-tribal people.

Legally, tax breaks on tribal smokes can only go to Native Americans. However, the state has long looked the other way as tribes sold the cheaper cigarettes, reaping huge profits in the results.

Those profits were a tremendous help to the tribes, comprising a $6 billion-a-year business.

Nobody much cared when the state was flush. Now it’s broke, and Paterson – and others – want that tax money.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Carl Kruger presided over a hearing on the issue this week:

“Everyday that goes by we are not doing the right thing for the people of New York,” said Kruger, a Brooklyn Democrat who called the long-standing tax-free sales a “diabolical scheme” that has denied the state billions of dollars in tax revenue.

Lawmakers are growing frustrated with the Paterson tax collection plan because they have not been able to obtain details on when or how the new effort would work. Paterson officials said last week that the Department of Taxation and Finance would issue rules within a matter of days to collect the tax.

The Seneca Nation has vigorously protested any efforts to collect the tax, hinting those could lead to blockades on the portion of the New York Thruway that runs through Seneca territory. (See previous post.)

Gwen Florio

Tags: cigarette taxes, D-Brooklyn, New York Gov. David A. Paterson, Sen. Carl Kruger, Seneca Nation, Tribal smoke shops

Mount Rushmore National Memorial Superintendent Gerard Baker, who is Mandan and Hidatsa, has been on leave since having a stroke last year. His past Park Service experience includes tenure at the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana and the Knife River Indian Villages in North Dakota. Baker is well-known – and sometimes controversial – for his insistence upon including presentations of Native history and culture at his various postings. Here’s the whole story from Steve Miller in today‘s Rapid City Journal:

Mount Rushmore National Memorial Superintendent Gerard Baker said Wednesday that he is fully recovered from a stroke he suffered in November and has felt great since he returned to work full time last week.

“I’m back and I’m more fired up than ever, in a positive sense,” he said.

Baker, 56, is a 31-year National Park Service veteran and said he plans to make Mount Rushmore his last career stop.

“I have no intention of going any other place,” Baker said. “I came here five years ago with the intention that this is my last national park site.”

Baker wants to remain at Rushmore until 2016, the 100th birthday of the National Park Service.

“What better time to retire than that birthday year.”

Tags: buffalo post, Gerard Baker, Knife River Indian VIllages, Little Bighorn Battlefield, Mandan-Hidatsa, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, National Park Service, Native American news

Thanks to our colleague Joe Nickell for this one. He posted the notice on his Nickell’s Bag blog:

Casting Director Rene Haynes (“Twlight Saga: New Moon,” “Skins,” “Into The West,” and “Dreamkeeper” will conduct an open casting call on Valentine’s Day weekend, Feb. 12 and Feb. 13 on the University of Montana campus in Missoula.

Here’s what’s so exciting for us here at Buffalo Post: He’s making a movie of “Winter in the Blood,” the novel by the late Blackfeet and Gros Ventre writer, James Welch. “Winter in the Blood” is about a young man on northern Montana’s Fort Belknap reservation, and it’s one of our favorite among Welch’s books, which is saying something.

The casting call for the movie will take place between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. in the University Center, Room 312. It seeks Native American men and women in their mid-20s through mid-50s for both speaking and non-speaking roles.

Even though it’s a very different kind of story, we can only hope the actors in this movie will see the same sort of success following the young Native actors who comprise the Wolfpack in “New Moon.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: "Dreamkeeper", "Into the West", "Skins", "Twilight Saga: New Moon", "Winter in the Blood", buffalo post, James Welch, Native American news, Rene Haynes, University of Montana