The Crow Fair has always been a time for new beginnings, as Susan Olp from the Billings Gazette reports:

“We kind of consider Crow Fair like what you’d think of New Year’s,” said Nicole Real Bird Cummins, parade manager for the event, which (started) Thursday and runs through Tuesday.

Goals are set for the next year. And, as with any holiday, families get together for food and fun and to catch up on news.

As the people of the Crow Indian Reservation in eastern Montana recover from massive spring floods, the idea of a fresh start is more important than ever. The daunting work of cleaning up began earlier in anticipation of the annual event.

This summer, getting ready for the 93rd annual Crow Fair has been a bit more of a challenge, said April Toineeta, Crow tribal liaison, who has helped efforts in the aftermath of the spring flooding that deluged the reservation town.

Water flooded the campsite, Toineeta said, damaging the entrance road and electrical outlets. That’s all being fixed in time for the start of Crow Fair, she said.

Austin Little Light, this year’s Crow Fair manager, said part of his job has been to repair the arbor where the powwow takes place.

“We bought lumber and redid the roofs and the benches,” Little Light said.

ICTMN also has a story about the “a giant family reunion under the Big Sky.”

Jenna Cederberg

Tags: Crow Fair, Crow Indian Reservation, montana

People on the Crow Indian Reservation in southern Montana had long suspected their drinking water was contaminated.

Now, Montana State University graduate students Mari Eggers and Crystal Richards have confirmed their worries.

The pair, according to this Billings Gazette story, found coliform and other bacteria that can cause a variety of serious health problems:

The project started while Eggers was teaching environmental science at Little Bighorn College. As her class was looking at local issues confronting the Crow Tribe, she noticed that many of the issues were environmental health problems.

Eggers, who is married to a tribal member, was told by community members that water quality was a high priority concern. She teamed up with IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence to create a hands-on water monitoring program for her students.

At the urging of community members, Eggers expanded her work on the project and is now doing so as a doctoral student in microbiology at MSU. She also has a master’s degree from MSU and bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford University.

Richards, who is working on a soctorate in microbiology at MSU, started on a separate project that has now been combined with Eggers’ work.

That work provides valuable information to the tribe as it applies for grant money to upgrade its water and sewer systems.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Biomedical Research Excellence, buffalo post, Crow Indian Reservation, Crow Tribe, Crystal Richards, Gwen Florio, IDeA Networks, Little Bighorn College, Mari Eggers, Montana State University, Native American news, Stanford University

There’s a crying need for more and better housing on many Indian reservations. The shortage is acute and the quality of existing homes is shameful. And don’t get us started on the unemployment problem.

A new federally funded home-building project on the Crow Reservation in southern Montana takes aim at both those issues. Not only will it provide 27 news homes, and put 25 people to work, those homes also are being built by the tribe’s own Good Earth Lodges program.

Good Earth Lodges both makes the blocks for the homes, and then puts up the houses.

Cedric Black Eagle told Billings Gazette reporter Susan Olp, here, about the project and the problems it will address:

On the Crow Reservation, he said, homelessness exists, but it is masked by overcrowding. Often, multiple families live in the same single-family dwelling.

The tribe’s Housing Authority has 1,800 applications for housing. Each year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development allocates funding enough to build five houses.

The compressed earth block and housing program is the culmination of a research and development project funded by the Division of Energy and Mineral Development, Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development. The goal was to determine if the raw materials needed for the blocks could be found on the Crow Reservation, if the blocks could withstand Montana’s climate, and if a work force could be put in place to carry out the program.

The answer was yes on all three counts, said Larry Lee Falls Down, project manager of the Good Earth Lodges.

“We all know the saying – if this was easy, everyone would do it,” Falls Down tells Olp. “This hasn’t been easy, not everyone is doing it. But we are doing it, and we are going to continue doing it. We will build these houses, and we will continue to build more houses.”

Both the University of Colorado Boulder and the Mortenson Center for Engineering and Developing Communities also are involved with the project.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Cedric Black Eagle, Crow Indian Reservation, Crow Tribe, Good Earth Lodges, Gwen Florio, Mortenson Center for Engineering and Developing Communities, Native American housing, Native American news, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, University of Colorado

A railroad is neglecting fences along its tracks on the Crow Indian Reservation, putting both people and livestock at risk, property owners tell Diane Cochran of the Billings (Mont.) Gazette, here.

Although BNSF Railway Co. says its repairs to the fence have been adequate, locals beg to differ.

“They put a Band-Aid on heart surgery,” says Lyle Neal, a brand inspector. “You can’t call it even beginning to be fixed.”

Montana law requires the railroad to pay for livestock killed or hurt by its trains.

But rancher Glenn Elhard says he’s still waiting for payment from BNSF to pay him for a cow killed on the tracks last year. He says he didn’t even bother waiting for someone from BNSF to fix the fence – he just did it himself.

“By the time they got around to it, your whole herd could be in jeopardy,” he says.

Gwen Florio

Tags: BNSF, BNSF Railway Co., buffalo post, cattle losses, Crow Indian Reservation, Gwen Florio, Native American news, ranchers

Today, the Billings (Mont.) Gazette continues its special report on efforts to combat sexual abuse on Indian reservations with this story by Clair Johnson on steps being taken by the U.S. Attorney’s Office (see yesterday’s post about the previous stories here):

Dr. Thomas Schreiner, pediatrician at Lame Deer, talks about his work at the newly opened CARE Center there. He hands out stuffed animals to comfort children who are examined for signs of sexual abuse. (James Woodcock/Billings Gazette)

The Montana U.S. Attorney’s Office has a message to those who sexually assault children on Indian reservations: You will be prosecuted.

Gerhard Curtis Stern, a 33-year-old Ashland resident, was sentenced last fall to 40 years in federal prison for assaulting a child on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. A jury found Stern guilty of aggravated sexual assault for engaging in sex acts with a 4-year-old child over seven months. The FBI investigated after the child told a school nurse Stern had touched her inappropriately.

Severe penalties under the Adam Walsh Act are part of several changes in federal law enforcement that are strengthening prosecution of child sex offenders in Indian Country. Improved communications among charging jurisdictions, increased staffing and integrating law enforcement and social work initiatives are all part of the changing picture.

Two Billings-based assistant U.S. attorneys work child sexual abuse cases in the nearby Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations expressed frustratino at the fact that an FBI Indian Country lab is located in Virginia, making it tough to get timely analysis of physical evidence and leaving victims understandably skeptical that their cases were a priority. Now, two new labs in the West are being considered.

The series also includes a story, here, on a new center for child victims on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, and this list of recent prosecutions of such cases in Indian Country.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Adam Walsh Act, buffalo post, Crow Indian Reservation, FBI, Gwen Florio, Indian reservations, Native American news, Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, Sexual abuse, U.S. Attorney's Office

Props to Susan Olp of the Billings (Mont.) Gazette for this special report on sexual abuse on the Crow Indian Reservation, and on the efforts to combat it.

Few indigenous languages even include words for sexual abuse, and children often speak of being “bothered,” says Michele Stewart, FBI victim specialist in Billings. “Child sexual abuse is not traditional, it is not part of the culture,” Stewart says.

Prosecuting such can be tough in the best cases, and that difficulty can be exacerbated by the fact that many reservation communities are small and isolated, meaning victims often know their attackers. Olp interviews Dr. Earl Sutherland, a clinical psychologist at the Crow-Northern Cheyenne Hospital in Crow Agency:

“Across the nation, around the world, the research is the same,” he said. “You’re more likely to be abused by someone you know than a stranger. And in a small community, there aren’t many strangers.”

Sutherland is one of the founders of the Child and Adolescent Referral and Evaluation Center at the hospital. The CARE Center brings together all of the services needed to help child victims of abuse and their families.

Olp’s report also includes this story on the increasing awareness of sexual abuse on reservations, and on the efforts by counselors and others to deal with it:

According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, violence among early indigenous societies — apart from war — was rare because members of tribes saw it as unnatural and a threat to harmony. The ill treatment that American Indians suffered down through the history of the United States — oppressive policies, racism, forced migration, the introduction of alcohol and the dismantling of families by sending children to boarding schools — have affected traditional Native values, the center says.

Alcohol fuels violence. And the sexual abuse the Native children suffered in boarding schools was passed down, generation to generation. Poverty and geographic isolation are also contributing factors, according to the center, which authored “Sexual Assault in Indian Country, Confronting Sexual Violence.”

How many children are abused on reservations is difficult to know. But the federal Indian Health Service estimates that one in every four girls and one in every seven boys in Indian Country will be a victim of sexual abuse.

The stories don’t make for comfortable reading. But it’s impossible to fight a problem without first knowing about it. Olp will follow up these two stories with one tomorrow about efforts by U.S. Attorney’s Office to step up enforcement.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Confronting Sexual Violence, Crow Indian Reservation, Crow-Northern Cheyenne Hospital, Gwen Florio, Indian Health Service, National Sexual Violence Resource Cente, Native American news, Sexual abuse, Sexual Assault in Indian Country

A new effort is under way in Billings, Mont., to ensure that women in rural areas — especially Native American women — get the mammograms they need.

That’s because rural women are 20 percent less likely than their urban counterparts to get mammograms, Susan Olp of the Billings Gazette writes here.

And, as David Irion, president of the St. Vincent Healthcare Foundation, said tells her, “as a result, women forgo lifesaving preventative care due to access issues. This is oftentimes especially prevalent among Native American people.”

The care comes in the form of a $500,000 40-foot mobile mammography coach with an exam room, two changing rooms and a waiting room. The van will serve northern Wyoming and eastern and south-central Montana – home to the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations:

Stephanie Streed, left, a breast health coordinator and nurse navigator, and Kathleen Ryan, the director of the St. Vincent Healthcare Yellowstone Breast Center, talk Friday after a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the center’s new mobile mammography coach at St. Vincent Healthcare. (Casey Riffe/Billings Gazette)

Pete Conway, director of the Billings Area Indian Health Service, said, “It’s an opportunity for us to partner up with somebody when we can’t deliver all the health care ourselves.”

That inability is a combination of not always having the needed equipment or specialized staff, Conway said. A third factor is that the IHS often is funded at only 50 to 60 percent of the level needed to care for patients.

“We’ve been getting some increases in our budget, which is helpful, but we still need to go out and find partners to work together and collaborate with and help our patients in any way we can,” Conway said.

Giving Crow and Northern Cheyenne women access to the new high-quality screening is a good place to start, he said.

“It’s not only access, it’s the quality of life,” Conway said. “The earlier we can detect, the better off we are, not only cost-wise, but for the devastation it does to the patient and to the community. And we see too much of that.”

Amen to that.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Crow Indian Reservation, Gwen Florio, Indian Health Service, Indian reservations, mammograms, mammography, Native American news, Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, St. Vincent Healthcare

For months, members of a Foursquare church on the Crow Indian Reservation in southern Montana had to meet in a Quonset hut.

That’s all over now, with the construction of a new church, overseen by longtime pastor Ken Pretty On Top.

A dedication ceremony is planned for the congregation’s new, 1100-square-foot church this coming Sunday, reports Susan Olp of the Billings Gazette. here. The new church will be called Spirit of Life Lighthouse for the Nations Foursquare Church.

“This church is for everybody, it’s for all nations,” Pretty On Top tells Olp. “In the Bible it says to love God and love people, and that’s what we want to do here.”

The new church, equipped with a sound and video system, will be able to hold up to 500 people if its overflow space is used.

Every summer for nearly two decades, Pretty On Top and the church have hosted short-term missionaries from all over the U.S., as well as Europe and Asia. People come to Crow Agency for a week, paying their own way and helping out however they can.

The program is so popular, Pretty On Top said, the slots are usually booked a year in advance. He remembers one of the first people who came, a man, who asked Pretty On Top what the pastor wanted him to do.

On previous mission trips, the man had handed out Bibles and evangelizing tracts. But the Crow Agency pastor had a different idea. Crow Fair was going on, and he sent the volunteers out to lend a hand wherever they could.

“What I want you to do,” Pretty On Top told them, “is help people put up their tepees or tents. Don’t mention the church. Don’t preach. Go out there and help them. You have to build relationships first.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: Apsaalooke, buffalo post, Crow Indian Reservation, Crow Tribe, Foursquare Church, Ken Pretty On Top, Native American news, Spirit of Life Lighthouse for the Nations Foursquare Church