Ya gotta love the fact that Mioshia Wagoner is getting her master’s degree in conflict management and dispute resolution.

Because this young Navajo and Chickasaw woman is more than capable of resolving conflict in a far more traditional – if not necessarily peaceful – way. As Donald Bradley of the Kansas City Star writes here:

Wagoner, 27, trains at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, where she did her undergraduate work in American Indian studies. She went to China two years ago for the World Championships and brought home a silver medal for Team USA.

Next week she heads to the national boxing championships at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. She has not fought for nearly a year because of an injury.

Her goal: London 2012. For the first time, women’s boxing will be an Olympic event.

No question that she is different from previous Kansas City area Olympic hopefuls. First off, there’s the fact that she studies peacemaking for a career and punches people in the nose for sport.

I don’t know about you, but that sure makes me want to read more. If you click on the link, there’s a video of Wagoner in the ring. Check it out.

Gwen Florio

Tags: 2012 London Olympics, American Indian studies, Boxing, Chickasaw, Gwen Florio, Haskell Indian Nations University, Mioshia Wagoner, Native American news, Navajo, U.S. Olympic Training Center

A lot was going on yesterday at the Montana Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council meeting.

The group heard from Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indians, who made a rare visit to Montana.

And, it asked Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock to look into the circumstances surrounding the death of 18-year-old basketball star A.J. Longsoldier, who died shortly after he was taken from a northern Montana jail to a nearby hospital.

Susan Olp of the Billings Gazette has the story here:

Keel, who is Chickasaw, spoke about the Indian Health Care Improvement Act; the problem of inadequate and deteriorating reservation housing, and the overwhelming issue of under-funding for Indian Country issues in general.

Tribal Leaders Council James Steele Jr. of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, talked about the difficulty of maintaining reservation roads with federal funding.

But perhaps the most emotional issue was the approval of the resolution calling for action surrounding the death of Longsoldier, from the Fort Belknap Reservation and a former basketball standout at Hays-Lodgepole High School. He was jailed on an alleged probation violation. During his two days in jail, he complained of feeling ill, and was twice taken to the hospital and died the second time:

While in jail, he appeared to be hallucinating, was talking to himself and pulled out some of his hair. An autopsy determined that LongSoldier died from acute alcohol withdrawal. A coroner’s inquest in March found that the detention officers were not criminally liable in the death.

Tracy King, president of the Fort Belknap Tribal Council, who attended the inquest, raised the issue at the meeting. King said more should have been done for LongSoldier to help save his life.

He called the handling of the youth in jail “a civil rights violation.”

“I see too many of our youth being railroaded by systems that don’t work in their favor,” King said.

Dr. Kathleen Masis, who works for the Tribal Leaders Council, calls his death a warning.

“It means we need to make sure what is represented as happening never happens again, to an Indian or non-Indian.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: A.J. LongSoldier, buffalo post, Chickasaw, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, Gwen Florio, Hays-Lodgepole High School, Indian Health Care Improvement Act, James Steele Jr., Jefferson Keel, Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock, Montana Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council, National Congress of American Indians, Native American news, NCAI

Scientists deal with facts. But there’s one fact that University of Idaho professor Ed Galindo wants to change – that only 0.3 percent of engineers in the United States are Native American.

But how to change it? Schools need to, as Galindo tells Indian Country Today’s Tanya Lee, here, “build a different paradigm of educating Native scholars.”

His approach is three-pronged: More faculty with advanced degrees at the 36 tribal colleges. More role models in science fields for Native students. And more research related to tribes:

The result is what Galindo, a Yaqui Indian with strong ties to the Shoshone Bannock Tribes, calls it the ISTEM (Indigenous Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education program….

ISTEM is not a stand-alone program. “It’s a process of respect, understanding, a holistic curriculum where science degree candidates sit in on classes on tribal sovereignty, health, leadership and law. Many of these scholars will go back to their communities. They will be more valuable to their communities that way than if they were highly specialized in just one area,” Galindo said.

So far, the Idaho program has two participants, former astronaut John Herrington, who is Chickasaw, and Frank Finley, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and a science teacher at Salish Kootenai College in Montana.

As Finley tells Lee, “Eurocentric scientific training is an entirely linear strategy. A researcher will go out and study an animal for three or four months in the summer, and then write his master’s thesis. Natives don’t do that. A hunter will follow an animal all year round. It takes half a lifetime to understand the life cycle of an elk, say. You can’t learn enough in three months to say you know anything.”

Meanwhile, Glaindo is looking for funding from the National Science Foundation, NASA and National Institutes of Health, and hopes eventually to enroll 20 students in his program.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Chickasaw, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Ed Galindo, Engineering and Mathematics, Frank Finley, Gwen Florio, Indigenous Sciences, ISTEM, John Herrington, NASA, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Native American news, Native American scientists, Salish Kootenai College, Shoshone-Bannock, Technology, University of Idaho, Yaqui

Here’s the story in full from the Associated Press:

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A portrait of traditional Native American storyteller Te Ata will be dedicated in the Oklahoma State Senate Chamber.

The portrait is sponsored by U.S. Rep. Tom Cole and the Chickasaw Nation [Cole is an enrolled member] and is being unveiled Monday and placed on display inside the state Capitol.

Te Ata was born in the Chickasaw Nation near Tishomingo in 1895 and achieved national and international acclaim as a storyteller. She helped preserve tales from her own Chickasaw tribe as well as other Native stories.

She died in 1995.

She was recognized by the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1958, and was named Oklahoma’s first Cultural Treasure by Gov. Henry Bellmon and the Oklahoma Arts Council in 1987.

Tags: buffalo post, Chickasaw, Native American news, Oklahoma Arts Council, Oklahoma Gov. Henry Bellmon, Oklahoma Hall of Fame, Oklahoma Legislature, R-Okla., Te Ata, U.S. Rep. Tom Cole

Nearly two centuries after the fact, the original letter in which President Andrew Jackson told the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes they had to leave Mississippi and Alabama – or else – has been found.

Eventually, five tribes ended up leaving, on a forced march now known as the “Trail of Tears,” during which thousands of Indians died from starvation, exposure, and disease.

Maj. David Haley carried the letter to the tribal leaders more than 180 years ago, according to this Philadelphia Inquirer story. But for years, the only evidence of it was a draft.

Jackson’s tone in the letter alternates between cajoling and bullying:

“Say to them as friends and brothers to listen[to] the voice of their father, & friend,” Jackson wrote. “Where [they] now are, they and my white children are too near each other to live in harmony & peace. Their game is destroyed and many of their people will not work & till the earth. Beyond the great river Mississippi, where a part of their nation has gone, their father has provided a co[untry] large enough for them all, and he ad[vises] them to go to it.”

And, he went on to say, “Tell them to listen. [The proposed plan] is the only one by which [they can be] perpetuated as a nation.”

The letter was found this summer in a private family collection, and sold to the Raab Collection, a Philadelphia-based dealer of autographs, historical documents and manuscripts.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime find,” says Nathan Raab, company vice president. “It’s one of the most important documents in American history. To discover it after nearly two centuries is nothing short of breathtaking.”

Images can be viewed at the firm’s Web site, here.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Chickasaw, Choctaw, President Andrew Jackson, Raab Collection, Trail of Tears