The Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes is making it easier for residents to reduce bear/human conflicts.

Missoulian reporter Vince Devlin has the story:

RONAN – Bill Foust admits it took him a little while to figure out how – with his hands full, anyway – to open the lid on his trash cans.

Bears still haven’t mastered it.

And that’s a good thing, considering Foust and his wife Barb live along the front of the Mission Mountains, where bears and humans sometimes have their difficulties coexisting.

The Fousts, who haven’t been able to bear-proof trash cans on their own, have been testing two new specially made bear-resistant containers for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

“We’ve been really tickled,” Barb says. “We’ve already had several repeat performances from the bears, and it’s been no contest. They can’t get into them.”

Eventually, the bears will quit trying, just like you’d stop patronizing a grocery store if it kept its food padlocked to the shelves and repeatedly refused to give you the key so you could shop.

“It allows bears to be bears, and not become dependent on garbage,” says Tom McDonald, division manager for CSKT’s Fish, Wildlife, Recreation and Conservation Program.

The tribes have purchased 125 of the “fully automated, bear-resistant residential curbside refuse carts” – Kodiak Cans is the brand name – developed and manufactured by Northland Products of Prescott, Ariz. They bought them using a Tribal Wildlife Incentive Grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

They have 123 of the $300, 95-gallon containers left to give to homeowners on the Flathead Indian Reservation who have a history of bear-trash conflicts, especially those living along the front of the Mission Mountains.

The Fousts, you see, will be keeping their two.

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A few stories this weekend on the issues of Native women’s safety around the world:

Canada’s Missing Women Inquiry faces renewed community boycott

Calling the British Columbian government’s Missing Women Commission of Inquiry a sham, human rights and women’s advocates groups in Canada are making continued calls for government-led efforts that will bring real change.

David P. Ball of ICTMN has the story:

Citing the province’s refusal to fund legal representation or extend the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry’s June deadline, 15 organizations rejected pleas to rejoin the hearings.

“We get one shot at a public inquiry, and the way it’s being conducted right now, it’s turning out to be a sham,” women’s advocate Marlene George told a press conference on April 9 on behalf of the Women’s Memorial March Committee, which organizes an annual rally to honour Canada’s 600 missing or murdered aboriginal women, among them victims of convicted serial killer Robert Pickton.

. . .

The inquiry “continues to lose relevance and credibility,” groups stated, vowing to support a United Nations investigation announced last December.

“It has become painfully clear over the course of the inquiry’s proceedings that this inquiry is not a meaningful and inclusive process,” the groups wrote. “The commission appears woefully out of touch with how it may be replicating the exact exclusion and discrimination that led to this inquiry being called in the first place. The commission has lost all credibility among aboriginal, sex work, human rights and women’s organizations.”

Here’s an earlier story from ICTMN on the Assembly of First Nations has officially pulled out of the British Columbia Missing Women of Inquiry Commission’s hearing procedures.

Tribal health centers offer self-defense classes in oil boom areas
The recent violent death of a longtime teacher in northeast Montana has many women worried about the effects of the oil boom there will have on their safety. As more and more oil field workers are moving into the Fork Peck Reservation area, health agencies are coming together to offer self-defense classes for women, the Great Falls Tribune reports.

GFT reporter Richard Peterson has the story:

The Fort Peck Tribal Health Department will hold self-defense courses Wednesday and Thursday in Brockton, and April 25 – 26 in Fort Kipp.

Adrian Spotted Bird, injury prevention coordinator for the Tribal Health Department, said the workshops were organized after numerous women from the reservation communities of Brockton and Fort Kipp started asking for more police patrols in the area because of increased oilfield traffic. In the past five months, the tribes have started drilling for oil near both communities. More than a dozen more oil rigs are expected to go up there this summer.

“People are noticing more and more new faces, and they’re getting concerned,” Spotted Bird said. Some oil industry workers, who have been blackballed at bars in Williston, come to area bars to drink, he said. That’s also cause for concern among local residents.

The classes are kept small, about 10 people each, and offer attendees a battle of mace and a whistle, Peterson’s story said.

Jenna Cederberg

Tags: bakken, david p. ball, fort peck, indian country today media network, missing women inquiry, self-defense, women's safety

One of the NBA’s top stars wore a special pair of shoes this week during one of his games. Nike Examiner blogger Juan Martinez explained why the shoes were so special:

(Durant) debuted the N7 Edition of his signature shoe, the Nike Zoom KD IV. The Nike N7 initiative is dedicated to promoting sports among the Native American and Aboriginal communities. Since 2009, the N7 Fund has raised over $1 million for the cause, with a significant amount coming from Nike’s various N7 collections of shoes and apparel. Usually designed for Nike performance shoes like the Nike Huarache and Nike Lunarglide, this was the first time the N7 branding was attached to a signature shoe.

. . . Playing in Oklahoma has made Durant aware of the cause, and it was more than a natural fit for him to take part in the N7 Fund. His quickstrike colorways are almost always the first to sell out and if the trend continues when the N7 Nike Zoom KD IV drops this summer in both home and away colorways, it will greatly benefit the N7 Fund.

Here’s a portion of Nike’s press release on the N7 from the Examiner:

The Nike N7 Zoom KDIV will be available in white and black later this spring at Nikestore.com and Nike retail locations as part of the Summer 2012 Nike N7 collection. The turquoise color highlighted on the special version of his signature shoe is deeply symbolic of friendship and community in Native American culture, and is the foundation color of the N7 collection. A portion of profits from sales of the N7 collection help to support the N7 Fund, which awards grants to Native American and Aboriginal grassroots sport and fitness programs for youth. The fund has raised more than $1 million for grantees since it began, including the Central Oklahoma American Indian Health Council and local program 4 The Love of the Game.

You can read more about the N7 here.

Jenna Cederberg

Breaking news today from the Associated Press:

YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) — The federal government says it will pay more than $1 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by American Indian tribes over mismanagement of trust lands.
The settlement announced jointly by the Justice Department and the Interior Department resolves claims brought by 41 tribes from across the country.

The Interior Department manages about 2,500 tribal trust accounts for more than 250 tribes, including leases for oil and gas and grazing rights. Dozens of tribes have filed suit in recent years claiming the accounts have been mismanaged.

The agreement announced Wednesday is in addition to the $3.4 billion settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by the late Elouise Cobell of Browning, Mont. That deal settled cases brought by 500,000 individual Indians over the government’s mismanagement of trust lands.

Our thoughts are with the family of warrior Spc. Antonio C. Burnside. Burnside was killed in action last week in Afghanistan.

Kristen Cates of the Great Falls Tribune has the story:

In addition to close family and friends, the Blackfeet Nation is mourning the loss of one of its “warriors” in the wake of U.S. Army Spc. Antonio C. Burnside’s death in Afghanistan on Friday.

Burnside (Many Hides, his Blackfeet family name), was killed when insurgents attacked his unit with small-arms fire in the Ghanzi province of Afghanistan on Friday.

The 31-year-old, originally from Great Falls, leaves behind his wife, four children, parents and siblings, as well as a grieving Blackfeet Nation.

Tribal officials report that Burnside’s parents are on their way to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to retrieve his body and bring him home to the Blackfeet Reservation for services and burial.

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Tags: Afghanistan, antonio burnside, Blackfeet, dover air force base, kristen cates, many hides

Written by Vince Devlin, photographed by Kurt Wilson, of the Misosulian:

PABLO – Centuries before the sport was called lacrosse, it had people who played it, and what a game it was.

Up to 1,000 men at a time would grab sticks, and chase a ball over fields that could run for miles.
A single game could last 72 hours.

“I don’t know if this part is true,” Alex Alviar says, “but I’ve heard stories about it. They’d play for two to three days, and there were no boundaries, just goals that were three to five miles apart. They’d hide in trees with the ball, and I suppose they could run out at night and score a goal.”

Native Americans invented lacrosse – “The Creator’s game,” some of them called it – although it took a French Jesuit priest, Jean de Brebeuf, to give it its present-day moniker.

Brebeuf first saw Iroquois Indians play the game in 1637 and dubbed it la crosse, which in French, means “the stick.”

The field and number of players to a side (10) have shrunk in the centuries since, but lacrosse’s forerunner is very much a traditional Native game.

For Alviar, a teacher at Salish Kootenai College who grew up playing the sport in Detroit and continues to do so in Missoula, it didn’t seem right that as lacrosse began gaining popularity in Montana (see related story, Page A1), the state’s Indian reservations weren’t a part of it.

So he brought lacrosse to the Flathead Indian Reservation last year.

“What I’m seeing more and more of in my classrooms is a lot less male students,” Alviar says. “I wanted to create a program to give additional support to high school kids. I think it helps them with academics, with making healthy choices and emotionally, and that can help with them having higher educational goals.”

“Plus,” he adds, “it’s just fun. It’s a Native game, and they should be there.”

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Tags: 10sticks, alex alviar, Flathead Indian Reservation, Kurt Wilson, Lacrosse, pablo, Salish Kootenai College, vince devlin

Navajo comedians draw from real-life funnies
Alysa Landry of the Farmington Daily Times goes inside the funny world of James Junes and Ernie Tsosie, Navajo comedians who are celebrating 10 years of making people laugh.

As Landry reports, the duo’s jokes parallel the real-life scenarios often faced by Native Americans living on reservations, where residents battle long-held stereotypes and humor runs just as rampant as the oft-reported social ills.

What’s so funny?

James and Ernie tell a joke about a Navajo elected as president of the United States. It’s one of their “What if?” jokes, Tsosie said.

“What if there was a Native American in the White House?” he asks. He waits for the audience to start snickering, then he and longtime partner James Junes start making a list of what would happen.

“Rez dogs would always be circling outside,” one says.

“All of his relatives would be living with him,” the other says.

The joke continues with half a dozen more quick exchanges as the audience roars with laughter.

Native American inmates challenging tobacco ban
A federal trial began last week in the lawsuit filed by two South Dakota inmates challenge a state prison ban on tobacco use in religious ceremonies, the Associated Press reports.

The suit was filed two years when the prison system, which went tobacco free in 2000, reversed an exemption to allow the use of tobacco in certain Native American ceremonies.

Inmates Blaine Brings Plenty and Clayton Creek, members of prison-based Native American Council of Tribes, filed the suit in December 2009 against prison warden Doug Weber, corrections secretary Dennis Kaemingk and attorney general Marty Jackley.

James Moore, the officials’ attorney, said ceremonial tobacco inside the state penitentiary was becoming increasingly abused and inmates had been caught separating it from their pipe mixtures and prayer ties. Moore said the state policy allows other botanicals such as red willow bark to be burned, and prison officials stopped short of banning the use of pipes.

. . .

Moore said that South Dakota’s policy change followed more than 10 years of conversations with tribal elders and traditional healers, some of whom perform pipe ceremonies without tobacco.

Yale Nursing director to speak at Native health lecture series
Margaret Moss will be the second speaker at the Native American & Minority Health & Cultural Competency Lecture Series is slated for Tuesday at The University of Montana.

Moss is associate professor at the Yale School of Nursing and director of its Nursing Management, Policy and Leadership Specialty Program and the only Native woman to hold both nursing and juris doctorates degrees.

She will speak Tuesday on whether traditional models of care fit the unique geographical, political and cultural needs of American Indian elders, a UM press release said.

The talk will take place at 12:10 p.m. in Skaggs Building Room 169. The series is sponsored by the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and the Native American Center of Excellence, for more on the NACE, click here.

Jenna Cederberg

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 was a resident at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center where he was working on a book about austerity.

Trahant Reports appears regularly on Monday on Buffalo Post.

Distance is always a great way to rethink problems. And, after a month at Bellagio, Italy, I can’t imagine a better place to sit back and ponder. Every morning I opened my window and stepped on to a small deck overlooking Lake Como and sipped coffee while engaging in thought.

The conversations I heard in Europe were not all that different from those going on in America: What’s the best way to solve or manage national debt, lower unemployment, and, perhaps, more important, how do we recapture the sense of a better future for our children?

Across the ocean, the bitterness of American politics faded. I didn’t miss the shouting on cable that substitutes for discourse because from that distance it’s clear that the problems we face in America can be solved, they are manageable. In Europe, on the other hand, the scale of the issues seems nearly intractable.

But the root issues are exactly the same: There is an unprecedented, global demographic imbalance. In the Western world, we are older and we require more governmental resources at the very moment when governments are stretched beyond their ability to deliver services. This imbalance is so great that it stirs a threat of a new kind of civil war, not one based on borders or ideology, but a war for resources based on our age.

The increasing number of older people represents a challenge to any society, but it’s not just that there are more of us, it’s that there are more of us living longer. In the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Canada, Japan, the trend of living longer is increasing. Today one in ten people, globally, are over 60 years old. Forty years from now that number will double to one in five. By then people over 60 will outnumber children.

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By Jesse Abernathy, Native Sun News Editor

RAPID CITY – Yet another federally funded “improvement” project threatens to further undermine the sanctity and integrity of a culturally relevant Native American landmark in the Black Hills, or Paha Sapa.

The Pennington County-initiated undertaking, known as the South Rochford Road Project, seeks to pave an approximately 12-mile graveled stretch of road between the unincorporated town of Rochford and Deerfield Lake, a recreational destination. This particular section of South Rochford Road, which remains as a historical throwback of Rochford’s gold mining boomtown days of the late 19th century, gouges a swath directly through the center of what the Lakota call “Pe Sla,” or the venerated “Old Baldy” of the Black Hills.

Pe Sla is the genuine, living heart of the Black Hills for the region’s indigenous peoples. For thousands of years prior to European invasion, the Lakota prayed and paid ritualistic homage to the earth and sky, as well as to everything in between and beyond, unencumbered at Pe Sla.

The area lies in an isolated northwestern portion of Pennington County, some 25 miles west of Rapid City, as the crow flies, and is home to around two dozen hardy souls, most of whom are ranchers.

Originally implemented in 2004 by county commissioners, the now almost-decade-long project “is considered necessary to improve year-round access to the Town of Rochford from the Deerfield Lake area,” according to a notice of intent published in the Federal Register in January.

According to some local Native Americans and Pe Sla advocates, however, the proposed project apparently began out of a desire to further develop and promote the quiet site as another Black Hills tourist mecca.

In any event, the existing roadway is difficult to maintain, with its gravel surface, steep grades, drainage issues and curved alignment. The three alternatives under consideration include taking no action, improving the existing alignment and making improvements to a new alignment.

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Tags: Black Hills, jesse abernathy, Native Sun News, old baldy, pe sla, Rapid City