Posts Tagged ‘fort peck’

15
Apr

Sunday Brunch: Fighting for missing women and more self-defense

   Posted by: admin    in First Nations, Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Native women, racism

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

Marlene George, with the Women's Memorial March Committee, addresses the April 10 press conference. (Photo by David P. Ball , courtesy of ICTMN)


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.

Several dozen women from the Poplar area practice self defense moves during a workshop Wednesday sponsored by Northeast Montana Health Services. (Photo courtesy of: TRIBUNE PHOTO/RICH PETERSON)


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

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20
Mar

Yellowstone Park bison relocated to Fort Peck Reservation

   Posted by: admin    in bison, Fort Peck Indian Reservation

Sixty four genetically pure bison arrived on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation this week, the Montana Associated Press reports.

A bison digs under the snow to graze inside Yellowstone National Park in this photograph provided by the National Park Service. (Courtesy of National Park Service, via Billings Gazette)


Restoring the animal to the area was heralded by tribal members there, which long fought to move some of the herd from Yellowstone National Park.

The move didn’t come without contention. Ranchers in the area have long protested the move due to brucellosis and rangeland damage concerns.

But the Fort Peck Tribes and state government officials reach an agreement late last week to move the bison and wasted no time in transporting them Monday to the northeastern corner of the state.

    Fort Peck Chairman Floyd Azure responded Monday night by saying that the state has no jurisdiction now that the bison are on the reservation.

    “Now that they’re here, they are here to stay,” Azure said.
    For the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of Fort Peck, tribal leaders said the relocation offers a chance to revive their connection with an animal that historically provided food, clothing and shelter for their ancestors.

    The trip from Yellowstone was capped by a welcoming caravan of tribal members who fell into line behind the trailers that carried the bison across the Missouri River and onto the reservation.

    A drum group gathered to sing a traditional song of welcome as the bison were unloaded in a field 25 miles north of Poplar.

    “This has deep spiritual meaning for us. They are the sole survivors from our ancestors,” said Leland Spotted Bird, a Dakota tribal elder and spiritual leader.

Associated Press reporter Matt Volz has the full story.

Jenna Cederberg

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2
Jun

Fort Peck mom sues school district, state over son’s suicide

   Posted by: admin    in Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Suicide

Dalton Gourneau, 17, took his own life last November. He wasn’t the only child of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation who fell to the desperate act of suicide.

It was called an epidemic there, on the impoverished reservation in eastern Montana, after almost nine kids committed suicide. Now, Dalton’s mother, Roxanne Gourneau, has filed a lawsuit claiming the school district and the state are responsible for his death, the Associated Press reports.

Matt Volz with the Montana Associated Press wrote his story of the Fork Peck suicide epidemic in March.

Here’s the story on Roxanne’s lawsuit:

    By Matt Volz, of the Associated Press:

    HELENA – The mother of a teenager who shot himself last year during a rash of child suicides on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana has filed a lawsuit claiming the school district and the state are responsible for his death.

    Dalton Gourneau’s death in Wolf Point in November followed five suicides and 20 attempts at a middle school in Poplar, about 20 miles east on the reservation, leading tribal officials to declare an emergency. Federal health officials were sent in for several months last year to provide counseling and come up with a strategy.

    Indian Health Service officials said in February they believed the crisis had passed. But family members and tribal and spiritual leaders say suicide is still the top problem among children and teens at Fort Peck, with at least one more teenager dying this year.

    Roxanne Gourneau, a judge in Fort Peck’s tribal family court, said Wednesday the suicide epidemic was well-known across the Fort Peck reservation at the time of her 17-year-old son’s death. The school and state should have taken precautions to hire and train staff to deal with students and anticipate the need for extra care in that atmosphere, she said.

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21
Mar

Tragic suicide sprees baffle Fort Peck community

   Posted by: admin    in Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Native health, Native identity, Native youth, Suicide

From Matt Volz, Montana Associated Press:

In this Friday, Feb. 11, 2011 picture, Darrell Follette, left, and Ida Follette recount the day of their daughter Chelle Rose Follette's suicide during an interview in their home on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Poplar. (AP Photo/Michael Albans)

POPLAR – Chelle Rose Follette fashioned a noose with her pajamas, tying one end to a closet rod and the other around her neck. When her mother entered the bedroom to put away laundry, she found the 13-year-old hanging.

Ida Follette screamed for her husband, Darrell.

He lifted his child’s body, rushed her to the bed and tried to bring her back.

“She was so light, she was so light. And I put her down. I said, ‘No, Chelle!’ ”

But the time had passed for CPR, he said, his voice fading with still raw grief. His wife sat next to him on the couch, sobbing at the retelling.

Here on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, a spasm of youth suicides had caused alarm and confusion even before Chelle’s death. The Follettes had talked with her about other local children who had killed themselves. She had assured her parents that they need not worry about her.

“She always promised that,” said Ida as the half-light of the winter afternoon created shadows in the sparsely furnished home. “She said, ‘What’s going on with these kids, are they stupid or what?’ ”
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