The bison battles in Montana continued Wednesday. As Republicans decried the move by Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, to move genetically pure bison from Yellowstone National Park to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Schweitzer visited the National Bison Range on the Flathead Indian Reservation to discuss transporting more Yellowstone bison there.

Missoulian reporter Vince Devlin was with Schweitzer at the range:

MOIESE – A dozen or so bison, chased by hollering horseback riders, thundered down a hillside at the National Bison Range Tuesday, oblivious to the human battles taking place in their name.

The “mini-roundup,” as Bison Range manager Jeff King explained, had a purpose – to cull out four of the animals for placement in a display pasture near the Visitor Center.
But it was timed to coincide with a visit by Gov. Brian Schweitzer and federal officials the governor has verbally sparred with over wildlife management decisions in recent months.
Specifically, the U.S. Department of Interior in December initially turned down Schweitzer’s proposal to relocate dozens of what the governor called “brucellosis-free, genetically pure” bison captured outside Yellowstone National Park to the Bison Range.

At the time, Schweitzer called the Bison Range herd “genetically impure mongrels” and blocked the Interior Department from transporting fish or wildlife anywhere within the state or across state lines in response.

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Tags: bison, Department of the Interior, Flathead Indian Reservation, Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Jeff King, Missoulian, National Bison Range, vince devlin

Charles Cook, superintendent of Poplar Public Schools and James Melbourne, Tribal health director, Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes, signed this letter in response the Associated Press’ Matt Volz’ piece on the suicide epidemic on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.

The pair argue that Volz missed many “positive” points of action the community, which has seen at least five suicides and dozen of attempts by middle school students in recent years, has taken to solve the horrific problem. The piece has been run in various newspapers, including several in the state of Montana.

Here’s Cook’s guest column:

Youth suicide is difficult to talk about. A recent newspaper article from the Montana Associated Press about suicides in our Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes and Poplar K-12 Schools was hurtful, misleading and unprofessional. How we talk about suicide can leave a deep impact.

Everyone is fragile after such tragedies. Experts agree – and our experience confirms – grieving periods leave some vulnerable, including those who knew the victim or who may be likely to attempt. When reporting on suicide, photos of grieving families, detailed descriptions of death and provocative quotes represent irresponsible journalism. It is exploitive and offensive. The reporter’s decision to write this story, despite requests not to, and his decision to overlook many positive actions in our community also shows a lack of respect.

Here are some points the story missed. Our tribe is implementing many recommendations from a 2010 Indian Health Service Report issued after the suicides. For example, the report noted youth requesting more recreation activities. Our Fort Peck Youth Activity Committee is expanding such programming. We applied for grants from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the U.S. Department of Education. Community suicide prevention walks have occurred. We also conducted prevention trainings such as Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) and Native HOPE (Helping Our People Endure).

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Tags: charles cook, fort peck assiniboine, Fort Peck Indian Reservation, james melbourne, matt volz, poplar, Sioux, Suicide

From Matt Volz, Montana Associated Press:

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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Tags: chelle rose follette, fort peck, Fort Peck Indian Reservation, poplar, Suicide

We in the news business are being deluged these days by reports of the imminent death of “paper” newspapers and the concurrent rush go digital in every format possible.

In the midst of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth is the Native Sun News in Rapid City, S.D., which debuted a year and a half ago as a defiantly paper newspaper and has stayed that way ever since. As publisher Tim Giago wrote about that decision:

You won’t find us on the Internet. So many of my Indian readers do not have computers or do not even have access to them. Native Sun News will go back to the traditional way of providing news for Indian country. The paper will have serious news, but we will never abandon that Indian sense of humor that so many non-Indians accuse us of not having. You will be able to hold our newspaper in your hands, sip on a hot cup of coffee, and read the news you used to love to read in The Lakota Times and Indian Country Today.

The paper is especially tough on cases of alleged corruption.

Native Sun News is often the only news outlet to publicize cases like the one involving Donita King, whose story was featured in the July 21 issue. King, an enrolled member of the Assiniboine Sioux on the Fort Peck Reservation in northeastern Montana, says that she and her family have been fighting for years for the money due from her oil-rich allotments.

People are widely familiar with the issue of Native Americans being cheated out of royalties on their land allotments, thanks to the massive Cobell v. Salazar class-action suit against the Interior Department.

But as King tells Native Sun News managing editor Randall Howell, it’s not the U.S. government, but tribal officials, who have been cheating her family. King, who is legally blind, says the money due her family has instead been directed to fake accounts set up by powerful people in the tribe.

As Howell reports, “What started out as a ‘simple probate search’ more than two decades ago, after King’s father had died, has resulted in nearly 50 grand-jury indictments over allotment fraud.”

King, who is a descendant of Hunkpapa Sioux Chief Sitting Bull and who says the long fight has resulted in death threats to her and her family, calls the whole mess a “path of shame.”

And the only place you can read about it is the Native Sun News “The only Indian newspaper that cowboys can read, too!”). You can look at a reproduction of each week’s front page and read a column by Giago online every week at www.nsweekly.com/. And, even though reading the entire newspaper defiantly remains a tactile experience, you can follow Native Sun News, and discussions about its stories, on both Facebook and Twitter.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Assiniboine Sioux, Cobell v. Salazar, Donita King, Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Hunkpapa Sioux, Indian Country Today, Lakota Times, Native Sun News, Sitting Bull, Tim Giago, tribal allotments

Here’s the entire story from the Associated Press:

POCATELLO, Idaho (AP) — On the anniversary of his slaying, the family and friends of an American Indian man killed outside a bar remain hopeful that his killer will be found.

Lorne Red Elk, 56, was found with massive head trauma in the parking lot of Duffy’s Tavern on June 14, 2009. Doctors removed him from life support three days later.

Jeani Walesch, his girlfriend, told the Idaho State Journal that she wants to make sure Red Elk — a gentle giant of a man, in her words — doesn’t become another cold case, fading and forgotten as the years stretch on.

She said Red Elk’s death shocked her so profoundly, she has little memory of events for about a month after his death.

“When you lose somebody to something like this, it’s like a big, black cloud behind you at all times,” she said. “It’s never gone.”

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Tags: Duffy's Tavern, Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Gwen Florio, Lorne Red Elk, Native American news, Pocatello, Sioux

Here’s the initial story from the Associated Press:

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Montana tribal leaders, fed up with growing gang violence, have invited the Guardian Angels to open its first chapter on an American Indian reservation.

Curtis Sliwa founded the citizens’ crime watch group, whose members are known by their red berets. He arrives at the Fort Peck Indian Reservation this weekend to help kick off the chapter.

Sliwa calls it a breakthrough that traditionally insular leaders from the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes invited the Guardian Angels to the reservation.

Chauncy Whitewright III, vice chairman of the Wolf Point Community, helped organize the chapter. He says teens on reservations across Montana are at risk and vulnerable to gang recruitment, and the Guardian Angels should help give them an alternative.

Read the expanded version, here.

In it, Whitewright tells Matt Volz of the AP that “there are all kinds of gangs roaming around up here. Our kids are in danger, they’re being influenced, they’re being targeted. It’s going on every day of the week … and they’re busy recruiting.”

And, he adds, “”It’s not just an Indian problem, it’s all our problem, and we’ve got to deal with it before it gets out of control.”

Tags: Assiniboine, buffalo post, Chauncy Whitewright III, Curtis Sliwa, Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Guardian Angels, Gwen Florio, Native American news, Sioux, Wolf Point Community

Yesterday’s announcement of more federal money to fight crime on Indian reservations was welcomed by lawmakers on some of Montana’s reservations – but those same legislators raised pointed questions about the effects of that help.”

“I can see the benefits” of the new program, state Rep. Margarett Campbell, a Democrat from the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, tells the Missoulian’s Michael Jamison, here. “And I can also see where it could be problematic.”

Treatment programs must accompany prosecutions, she says, because without them, “then all we’ll be doing is breaking up families and putting young parents in prison,” she says. “There needs to be a help component along with the prosecution effort.”

Likewise, state Rep. Shannon Augure, a Democrat from the Blackfeet Reservation, says that “We need to prosecute the violent offenders,” Campbell said, “but we also need to help heal families.”

But there’s no mention in the federal announcement of money for treatment. Just as they fought for the needed funds for law enforcement, we trust that tribes will continue to fight – this time on behalf of the very necessary prevention and follow-up programs.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Blackfeet Indian, buffalo post, D-Browning, D-Poplar, Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Native American news, Rep. Margarett Campbell, Rep. Shannon Augare, U.S. Justice Department

A.J. LongSoldier, who died shortly after being taken from Montana’s Hill County jail to a nearby hospital, died of natural causes, a coroner says.

“There was no foul play involved,” says Fergus County Coroner Dick Brown. He says it could be a month before more tests determine the cause of death, according to this AP story.

LongSoldier, 18, was a standout high school basketball player who led Hays-Lodgepole, on the Fort Peck Reservation in northeastern Montana, to a Class C state championship as a sophomore in 2007.

The story reports that The state Division of Criminal Investigation is investigating LongSoldier’s death, said division chief John Strandell, and a coroner’s inquest will be scheduled because LongSoldier died while in jail.

Blaine County Sheriff Glenn Heustis says LongSoldier didn’t say anything about feeling sick when he was booked into the jail last Thursday on a contempt of court warrant for a juvenile charge. But another inmate says LongSoldier complained the next day about feeling nauseous.

“He was kind of yelling for the guards,” Don Farrar tells the Great Falls Tribune. “He said he wasn’t feeling well, that he was losing color, that he couldn’t hold anything down.”

LongSoldier went to the hospital by ambulance late Sunday night and died Monday morning.

Gwen Florio

Tags: A.J. LongSoldier, buffalo post, Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Hays-Lodge Pole, Native American news

Prescription drug abuse can create a sort of perfect storm of misery on Montana’s Indian reservations.

The problem is already severe in the state – in Montana, which has the unfortunate distinction of a high rate of traffic fatalities, prescription drug abuse kills more people than car crashes.

And problems with law enforcement on Indian reservations – where manpower is short and legal entanglements among state, federal and tribal reservations are high – have been well documented.

The problem is so intense that in August, the Obama administration announced a new effort to try and reduce crime on reservations.

This week, authorities in Montana took aim at the problem, at least on the Fort Peck Reservation in northeastern Montana. A sting targeting suspected prescription drug dealers netted about three dozen suspects on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, according to this Associated Press story.

Authorities said more arrests are expected as part of “Operation New Beginning.”

“I guarantee you there will be more arrests made,” says Roosevelt County Sheriff Freedom Crawford. “Our goal is to get people off drugs, to get people to quit drug trafficking and to protect our community and our children.”

Crawford says many of the pills were initially purchased at the two Indian health service pharmacies on the reservation and two other pharmacies in the county.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Native American news, prescription drug abuse