Every Saturday, Buffalo Post features stories from Native Sun News, published in Rapid City, S.D.

By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News Correspondent

PINE RIDGE – The Oglala Sioux Tribe has “grave concerns” about AT&T’s bid for the cell phone service on the reservation, it told the Federal Communications Commission in a filing Sept. 10.

AT&T petitioned the FCC on July 30 for authorization to take charge of the cell phone service on Pine Ridge Reservation, which is controlled by Verizon.

The officials of the Oglala Sioux Tribe “wish to take this opportunity to advise the commission that they still harbor grave concerns about the provision of service on Pine Ridge by AT&T,” the tribal government says in its most recent filing with the FCC.

The statement comes in the midst of contract negotiations between the tribe and AT&T, which seeks FCC approval to assume Verizon’s status as the Eligible Telecommunications Carrier (ETC) on the reservation.

The tribe complained to the commission in an earlier filing on May 24, that transferring authorization to AT&T would void the OST’s contract rights in the Tate Woglaka Service Agreement (TWSA).

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Tags: Alltel, AT&T, buffalo post, Eligible Telecommunications Carrier, FCC, Jonathan Canis, Justice Department, Native American news, Native Sun News, Oglala Sioux Tribe, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Talli Nauman, Tate Woglaka Service Agreement, Verizon, Western Wireless

Jennifer Dobner of the Associated Press has the story:

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — An American Indian church is suing state and federal police and prosecutors over the right of its members to use peyote in religious ceremonies, even if they aren’t of Indian ancestry.

The lawsuit was filed Monday in Utah’s U.S. District Court on behalf of the Oklevueha Native American Church. It contends that federal laws that protect peyote use by American Indians should apply to anyone who belongs to the church.

The lawsuit seeks to block state and federal law enforcement from arresting or bringing criminal charges against church members who “fear reprisal from both state and federal governments for openly practicing their religion,” court papers state.

Named as defendants in the lawsuit are the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency and the Utah attorney general’s office. Messages left with the federal agencies were not immediately returned on Thursday.

Paul Murphy, spokesman for the Utah attorney general said the office could not comment until after it had seen the lawsuit.

A plant with hallucinogenic properties, peyote is considered a sacred medicine by Indians. Court papers say it has been used by indigenous populations for thousands of years. Although considered a controlled substance, federal law allows for the use of peyote by Indians for religious reasons.

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Tags: buffalo post, DEA, Drug Enforcement Agency, James Flaming Eagle Mooney, Justice Department, Native American Church, Native American news, Oklevueha Native American Church, peyote, Utah attorney general, Utah Supreme Court

This from Holbrook Morh of the Associated Press, who writes about the dilemma facing two children whose father is Native American:

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A policy designed to achieve racial equality at a north Mississippi school has long meant that only white kids can run for some class offices one year, black kids the next. But Brandy Springer, a mother of four mixed race [two of whom have a Native American father] children, was stunned when she moved to the area from Florida and learned her 12-year-old daughter couldn’t run for class reporter because she wasn’t the right race.

The rules sparked an outcry on Internet blogs and other websites after Springer contacted an advocacy group for mixed-race families. The NAACP called for a Justice Department investigation — not surprising in a state with a history of racial tension dating to the Jim Crow era.

The district scrapped the policy by Friday afternoon.

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Tags: Brandy Springer, buffalo post, Jim Crow, Justice Department, mixed race, NAACP, Nettleton Middle School, racial equality, Russell Taylor

The U.S Justice Department won’t prosecute former Veco chief Bill Allen, now imprisoned in a federal bribery and tax evasion case, on charges of sex with minors, Richard Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News reports.

Police in Anchorage who began an investigation on those charges in 2004 tell Mauer they’re unhappy.

And Paula Roberds, who is from a Yup’ik village and who said she was 15 when Veco began paying her thousands of dollars for sex, described the decision as “devastating.”

“Guys with money, they can do anything,” she told police in 2008.

As Mauer reports:

Until 2006, when the FBI caught Allen on videotape bribing Alaska legislators and overheard him on the telephone trying to cover up his renovations of the late Ted Stevens’ home in Girdwood, Allen was one of Alaska’s richest and most powerful figures. Allen palled around with Stevens and his friends. He played golf, hosted fundraisers and bought expensive gifts for U.S. Rep. Don Young. And he and other officials of Veco Corp. were some the most important sources of campaign contributions for the Alaska Republican Party and its candidates. He was the final publisher of The Anchorage Times.

He’s due to be released in 2012.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Alaska Native, Alaska Republican Party, Anchorage Police Department, Anchorage Times, Bill Allen, buffalo post, Don Young, Gwen Florio, Justice Department, Ted Stevens, Veco, Yupik

The federal judge who extended the deadline for congressional approval of the $3.4 billion settlement in the Indian trust case says the judgment is “well deserved” and that he’s disappointed it hasn’t been approved.

On Tuesday, Senior Judge Thomas Hogan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia extended the deadline for the necessary congressional approval to Oct. 15. It’s the sixth extension since the settlement was announced in December.

But, he said, “The disappointment of not having the legislation implemented is great,” and urged the Senate “to act as promptly and as expeditiously as possible,” according to this National Law Journal story by Mike Scarcella:

The suit, filed in 1996 by plaintiff Elouise Cobell, who attended the status conference Tuesday, seeks a historical accounting of individual Indian money accounts managed by the Interior Department. The settlement, which includes $1.41 billion in compensation for the plaintiffs, stalled in the Senate earlier this year. Concern was raised over attorney fees in the case. Fees are capped at $100 million. …

Robert Kirschman Jr. of the Justice Department’s Civil Division said in court the administration remains “very committed” to the settlement. “We are hopeful the settlement legislation will be enacted and will be enacted in the near future,” said Kirschman, deputy director of the Commercial Litigation Branch.

Dennis Gingold of Washington, D.C., lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said that “We want this to be done or too many people will suffer.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Cobell v. Salazar, Dennis Gingold, Elouise Cobell, Gwen Florio, Indian trust case, Justice Department, Native American news, Robert Kirschman, Thomas Hogan, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, U.S. Senate

This just in from the Associated Press:

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by descendants of the Apache warrior Geronimo, who claimed some of his remains were stolen in 1918 by a student society at Yale University.

The lawsuit was filed last year in Washington by 20 descendants who want to rebury Geronimo near his New Mexico birthplace.

It claimed Skull and Bones members took some remains from a burial plot at Fort Sill, Okla., where Geronimo died in 1909.

Judge Richard Roberts last month granted a Justice Department motion to dismiss, saying the plaintiffs didn’t establish the government had waived its right not to be sued without its consent.

He also dismissed the lawsuit against Yale and the society, saying the plaintiffs cited a law that applies only to Native American cultural items excavated or discovered after 1990.

Skull and Bones is not officially affiliated with Yale.

Click here to read the Yale Daily report.

Tags: buffalo post, Fort Sill, Geronimo, Judge Richard Roberts, Justice Department, NAGPRA, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, Native American news, Skull and Bones, Yale

Mark Trahant is a Kaiser Media Fellow examining the Indian Health Service and its relevance to the national health care reform debate. He is a member of Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and writes from Fort Hall, Idaho. Comment at www.marktrahant.com. His new book is “The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars,” the story of Sen. Henry Jackson and Forrest Gerard.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – It’s trite to say, “everything is connected.” It’s a phrase that comes up in the context of family, the environment, or perhaps, philosophy. When the subject is reservation violence, however, that same notion could be rewritten as a blunt question: Docs or cops?

Cops are getting most of the attention after the signing of the Tribal Law and Order Act. At a White House ceremony on Thursday, Lisa Marie Iyotte introduced President Barack Obama. She is an enrolled member of the White Clay People, her father’s tribe, but grew up and lives as a Sicangu Lakota or Rosebud Sioux. She had the most difficult task: Describing her own brutal assault and rape that was witnessed by her children. The attack was never prosecuted because of the jurisdictional maze that complicates criminal justice in Indian Country.

“All of you come at this from different angles, but you’re united in support of this bill because you believe, like I do, that it is unconscionable that crime rates in Indian Country are more than twice the national average and up to 20 times the national average on some reservations,” the president said. “And all of you believe, like I do, that when one in three Native American women will be raped in their lifetimes, that is an assault on our national conscience; it is an affront to our shared humanity; it is something that we cannot allow to continue.”

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Tags: buffalo post, Building Domestic Violence Health Care Responses in Indian Country, Cherokee Indian Hospital, Domestic violence, Eileen Hudon, Gwen Florio, Hlealth care reform, Interior Department, Justice Department, Marie Iyotte, Mark Trahant, Native American news, Navajo, Obama, Rosebud Sioux, Sicangu Lakota, Tribal Law and Order Act, White Clay People