Alaskan town rethinks booze sales in wake of crime wave
Bethel, Alaska, has set another vote on alcohol sales for Jan. 19. Last year, Bethel lifted a decades-old booze ban, but authorities in surrounding Alaska Native villages have complained of skyrocketing crime ever since, according to the Anchorage Daily News.

Winona LaDuke faces misdemeanor traffic charges
Ojibwe activist Winona LaDuke, who has twice run for vice president, faces misdemeanor charges for driving without an insurance card, according to the Wadena (Minn.) Pioneer Journal. The Harvard-educated economist and the founding director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project ran twice as presidential candidate Ralph Nader’s running mate.

Mi’kmaq community holds annual forgiveness ceremony
Residents of the First Nation of Membetou, in Nova Scotia, held their annual ceremony of forgiveness, known as Mawmijisultimk, started decades ago by Ben Christmas, the first chief of Membertou. This year, the ceremony had special significance, as it kicked off the 400th anniversary of Grand Chief Henri Membertou’s baptism, according to the Chronicle Herald of Novia Scotia.

Brutal winter threatens Peru’s indigenous Quechua people
We’ve been blogging a lot about the effect of this severe weather on the Oglala Lakota people who live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Down at the other end of the hemisphere, the Quechua-speaking people in Peru’s Huancavelica region, also are suffering from a cold winter, so cold that their children are dying, according to this report by the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper. The people, who live in Andean villages as high as 13,000 feet above sea level, are suffering from bronchitis and pneumonia, and weather forecasters say the worst is yet to come. So many people have died, says the Guardian, that there is talk of a national crisis.

Eight arrested during First Nations Olympic torch protest
First Nations protesters blocked the Trans-Canada Highway, briefly delaying the Olympic Torch relay in Ontario yesterday. They object to what they say is the environmental damage caused by the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, scheduled to start next month, and also the displacement of homeless people in Vancouver, according to this Canadian Press report.

Gwen Florio

Tags: 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Alaska, Alcohol regulations, Bethel, First Nations, Huancavelica, Mawmijisultimk, Membertou, Mi'kmaq, Olympic torch relay, Peru, Quechua, Ralph Nader, White Earth Land Recovery Project, Winona LaDuke

Mashantucket Pequot exhibit highlights contemporary Native art
“Migrations: New Directions in Native American Art,” a show at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center, focuses on a half-dozen artists, most of them from the West, who work in contemporary themes,according to the Hartford Courant. It features Marie Watt, Steven Deo, Star Wallowing Bull, Larry McNeil, Tom Jones and Ryan Lee Smith, and continues through Jan. 9. Above, Larry McNeil’s “Y’eil.”

Crime up in villages after Alaska town allows alcohol
Back in October, the town of Bethel, a community of about 5,600 people and a hub for surrounding villages, decided to go from “damp” – alchol sales and limited imports – to wet. Now tribal police in the villages are complaining about a steep increase in crime, especially assaults, drunken driving and public drunkenness, according to the Anchorage Daily News, here.

Venezuela’s Angel Falls renamed to reflect indigenous heritage
It’s the world’s tallest waterfall, cascading 3,212 feet in the midst of the Venezuelan jungle. It was named for Jimmy Angel, the pilot who “discovered” it in 1933. But now Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez says it will be known as Kerepakupai-Merú, which means “waterfall of the deepest place” in the indigenous Pemon language, according to this story by the Guardian of England.

Navajo Nation to open behavioral treatment center
The new $16 million, 72-bed facility will be the Navajo Nation’s first for people with behavioral issues. Alvin Warren, cabinet secretary of the state Department of Indian Affairs, estimates that 25 percent of Navajo residents, or about 52,000 people, battle alcoholism and do not receive treatment because of cost or distance to treatment centers off the reservation, according to this AP Health News report.

Census making effort to count off-reservation Native Americans
The U.S. Census has already announced efforts to accurately count Indian people in the 2010 census. As part of that move, it will pay particular attention to people who live off reservations. New American Media reports here that in California, for instance, it’s estimated that more than 90 percent of the Native people within the state don’t live on reservations.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Alaska, Alaska Natives, Angel Falls, Arizona Department of Indian Affairs, Bethel, Contemporary Native art, Hugo Chavez, Kerepakupai-Merú, Larry McNeil, Marie Watt, Mashantucket Peqot Museum & Research Center, Navajo Nation, Ryan Lee Smith, Star Wallowing Bull, Steven Deo, Tom Jones, U.S. Census