Think it looks easy, getting that hoop onto the stick? You try it. That’s what students did yesterday at Billings Senior High School in Montana, as part of American Indian Heritage Week.

The Native American Club has been featuring the week’s events, and yesterday, the feature was the Hoop Game as club members invited their fellow students to play.

“It’s hard,” said Tristan Balsam, a freshman, who tried out the game with classmate Miranda Millhollin, told Rob Rogers of the Billings Gazette.

Tahnya LaForge, a senior who is Crow, says it hasn’t been too difficult to get non-Native students interested in the events.

It should be even easier today. The feature? Indian tacos!

Tags: American Indian Heritage Week, Billings Senior High, buffalo post, Crow Nation, Gwen Florio, hoop game, Miranda Millhollin, Native American Club, Native American news, Tahnya LaForge, Tristan Balsam

Scary story by the Associated Press from the Crow Reservation in southern Montana. Fortunately, at least according to early reports, it appears none of the children was seriously injured.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) – Officials say several third-graders were injured in Crow Agency when a pickup truck hit the float they were riding on before a parade meant to celebrate Native American Week.

Gene Grose, principal of Crow School, says the pickup hit a decorated flatbed carrying about 40 students Thursday morning. Witnesses say they think the pickup was traveling at about 35 mph.

The Billings Gazette reports that four ambulances, along with school buses, took the injured children to a Crow Agency hospital, where Grose says they were treated for minor “bumps and bruises.” It is unclear how many students were injured.

The principal says the parade, along with a feast for parents and a mini-powwow planned for the day were canceled because “there are too many traumatized kids and adults.”

The Bureau of Indian Affairs police department in Crow Agency is investigating.

Tags: Apsaalooke, buffalo post, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Crow Nation, Crow Reservation, Crow School, Native American news, Native American week, traffic accident

Susan Olp of the Billings (Mont.) Gazette has the story here:

A multitude of teepees, and powwow singers and dancers from around the U.S. and Canada, will draw thousands of people to Crow Agency this week.

The 92nd annual Crow Fair kicks off Thursday and runs through Monday. As in the past, the five-day fair will feature a powwow, morning parades, a rodeo and horse races.

Equally as fascinating to many are the many teepees that dot the landscape, as Crow families gather together for the annual event.

“It’s one of the largest encampments in the world,” said Mark Denny, Crow Fair general manager. “And we’re the only tribe that puts on something like this.”

Denny said he knows of tourists coming to the fair from as far away as Italy and Germany, as well as from throughout Canada. He expects more than 3,000 people, not including tribal members.

It’s a special time for the Crow Nation, he said.

“It basically brings families together to enjoy themselves, celebrate together, have a good time, put away their troubles and just cut loose,” Denny said. “This is the one week out of the year the Crow people get to come together all in one area to form one large family.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: buffalo post, Crow Fair, Crow Nation, Discover America, Indian Nationals Finals Rodeo, Native American news, Powwow

This story is just too good to abbreviate. It’s by Matt Joyce of the Associated Press. Here’s the whole thing. Enjoy!

SHERIDAN, Wyo. (AP) — Summer has brought another season of Indian Relay racing to the northern Rockies and high plains, sending tribal teams in motion across the region as they haul their horses in search of reservation jackpots, rodeo purses and bragging rights.

Paying tribute to their cultural reverence for horses, horsemanship and bravery, Native Americans speed bareback around a track, then jump from one mount to the next amid a jumbled mass of rearing steeds.

Think horse racing with pit stops.

“It’s a lifestyle really,” said Jostin Lawrence, co-owner of an Indian Relay team from the Blackfeet Nation in Browning, Mont. “We’re always on the road. If we’re not on the road, we’re with our horses.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Blackfeet Nation, buffalo post, Crow Nation, Garryowen, Indian Relay races, Lodge Grass, Native American news, Sheridan Indian Relay, Sheridan WYO Rodeo, Shoshone-Bannock Relay Association

Here’s the entire story from the Associated Press:

BILLINGS (AP) — The chairman of Montana’s Crow Indians says the tribe is seeking a $1.5 million bank loan to make up for a sharp decline in revenues.

Crow Chairman Cedric Black Eagle said Monday that the tribe has a $2.1 million deficit for 2010, out of a budget of about $25 million.

He says it is the second year in a row that the tribe dropped into the red, following a 2009 deficit of about $1 million.

A drop in royalties from coal mining and the declining value of some outside investments were blamed. Without the loan, Black Eagle said 165 of the tribe’s approximately 900 employees could lose their jobs.

Tags: Apsaalooke, buffalo post, Cedric Black Eagle, Coal, Crow Nation, Gwen Florio, Native American news, Recession

It seems to be archaeology day at Buffalo Post (see previous post here). This story is about 17 Crow Nation students looking into their own past during an archaeology field school in a remote part of the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area on what is now the Montana-Wyoming border.

They’re helping excavate a site that National Park Service archaeologist Chris Finley stumbled upon a year ago while surveying the area in advance of a plan plan by the Western Area Power Administration to rebuild transmission lines through the park, according to this Billings (Mont.) Gazette story by Lorna Thackeray:

Four-poled tepees, unique to the Crow, would have stood tall on the sparsely vegetated campsite, their hide skirts held down by heavy stones gleaned from the rumbling landscape in the foothills of the Pryor Mountains. Whirls of smoke would have been rising from lodges of varying size. There would have been tepees for families large and small. Some may have been used to protect their dogs against brutal weather blowing down the canyon. Dogs were an integral part of nomadic life. Before horses, they were the primary beasts of burden. They barked warnings of an enemy approach and, in times of hunger, provided a food supply. The largest of the tepees may have served communal or ceremonial purposes.

“It really sparks your imagination,” says James Vallie, who last year was part of the first Crow field archaeology school funded through a grant from the National Park Foundation.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Apsaalooke, Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area, Crow Fair, Crow Nation, National Park Foundation, National Park Service, Western Area Power Administration

The latest news release from the Seneca Nation – which is furious over a new law banning mail-order cigarettes – accuses President Barack Obama of “deliberate betrayal” of Native Americans.

Obama signed the PACT (Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking) Act yesterday. Read the Buffalo News account here.

The tribe derives significant income from mail-order sales tobacco products. The tribe says that will cause the loss of 3,000 jobs, both Native and non-Native, related to those sales.

But both health groups and big tobacco supported the PACT Act, the latter maintaining that the tax-free nature of the mail-order smokes represented unfair competition.

“The President of the United States invited Native American leaders to Washington D.C. in November and looked us in the eye as a sign of good faith in his pledge to protect federal treaties. Now four months later he has betrayed that promise,” says Seneca Nation president Barry Snyder Jr.

The news release reminds readers that, during his campaign, Obama was adopted into the Crow Tribe, in southern Montana. His adoption by Hartford “Sonny” Black Eagle and Mary Black Eagle made him a member of the Whistling Water Clan, a child of the Newly Made Lodge, and brother to Cedric Black Eagle, now the tribe’s president

“I guess he’s forgotten friends he made when he wanted votes. He is no friend to Indian Country and I would hope the Crow revoke his honorary member status,” Snyder says.

Snyder also blasted members of Congress who voted for the PACT Act, but singled out South Dakota Democratic Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin for praise for refusing to support it.

“Congresswoman Sandlin, whose district includes Rosebud and Yankton Sioux nations, had the backbone to point out that the PACT Act will open the door for states to bring felony changes against tribes and tribal businesses. If only our Western New York lawmakers had this same respect for tribal sovereignty,” Snyder says.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Apsaalooke, buffalo post, Cedric Black Eagle, Crow Nation, D-S.D., Gwen Florio, Hartford "Sonny" Black Eagle, Mail-order tobacco, Mary Black Eagle, Native American news, PACT Act, President Barack Obama, Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking, Seneca Nation, tribal cigarettes, U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin

No breaking Native American news here – just something I found yesterday while looking for music videos of Cary Morin, a Fort Collins, Colo., a musician who performed at the Vancouver Olympics. (See that post, here.) Morin made this video from the Crow Fair in Montana in 2002 – prehistory, in the world of YouTube – and I really enjoyed watching it. Sometimes it’s good just to stop and take a few moments to appreciate things.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Apsaalooke, buffalo post, Cary Morin, Crow Fair, Crow Nation, Native American news, Vancouver Olympics