Erich Lochridge of the Rapid City, S.D., Journal has this story launching the festival, whose theme is “Location, Location, Location.”

Given the location, the emphasis on Native-themed films is a natural. Among those will be “From the Badlands to Alcatraz,” a film about empowering Lakota people from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota by training them to swim from the infamous Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Watch the trailer, above.

Today’s lineup includes a presentation by Cheyenne and Arapaho filmmaker Chris Eyre, noted for, among others, “Smoke Signals.”

The whole idea behind the festival, says Lochridge, is to re-create the feel of the Sundance Film Festival in the early days. We hope that’s exactly what happens.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Arapaho Tribe, Black Hills Film Festival, buffalo post, Cheyenne Tribe, Chris Eyre, From the Badlands to Alcatraz, Gwen Florio, Lakota, Native American news, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Sundance Film Festival

Remember the recent post about Aloysius Dreaming Bear, the young man graduating from Oelrichs (S.D.) High School, who was told he couldn’t wear his ribbon shirt and other Native regalia instead of his gown? (See previous post, with video, here.) Contrast that with this story by Holly Meyer of the Rapid City, S.D., Journal:

Central High School senior Jace Jackson could not hold back his tears Wednesday night. He was proud of his accomplishments and pleased with the Feather Ceremony that honored the graduating high school students, but someone was missing from the celebration.

“I was just wishing that my grandfather was here,” Jackson said.

Jackson said his grandfather, who was a traditional dancer, was his greatest influence. He was the reason Jackson is so proud of his culture.

The sponsors of almost 50 Native American students tied eagle plumes and feathers into the hair of the graduating seniors as the ATEYAPI group sang and drummed a prayer song. One of the highest honors in Lakota society is to receive an eagle feather or an eagle plume.

The honor ceremony at the Stevens High School gymnasium celebrated the Rapid City Area Schools’ Native graduates’ accomplishment of earning a high school diploma.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Aloysisus Dreaming Bear, ATEYAPI, buffalo post, eagle plumes, Gwen Florio, Lakota, Native American news, Native American students, Native American traditions, Oelrichs High School, Rapid City Area Schools

A hearing is set for next week in the case of a Lakota teen denied the right to wear traditional dress to his high school graduation.

As Kayla Gahagan of the Rapid City, S.D., Journal writes here, Aloysius Dreaming Bear wants to wear a beaded ribbon shirt with an eagle fan and medicine bag when he graduates May 22 from Oelrichs High School. But the school board voted 23-3 against that.

His attorney, Jim Leach, filed a complaint in federal court yesterday, saying of the Lakota that “this is a culture we found here and it’s an attempt by a young man to make a statement of respect for his culture and his heritage and himself.”

Gahagan writes:

Board members said he could wear the clothing under the cap and gown and after receiving the diploma, remove the cap and gown to show the traditional clothing for the remainder on commencement.

In his affidavit, Dreaming Bear said he was bringing the case not only on his behalf, but so future students across the state will have the opportunity to wear traditional clothing at graduation ceremonies if they want.

When Dreaming Bear pointed out that he could have worn the clothing if he was attending Red Cloud Indian School or Pine Ridge High School, the school superintendent replied he could have attended those schools if he wished, and that students sign a handbook specifying commencement guidelines.

But Leach countered that “I don’t think anybody can be required to give up their First Amendment rights in exchange for attending public school.” And, he added that “the courts have drawn the line at genuine expressions of belief,” he said.

In a letter to the board, Dreaming Bear wrote: “how can I be a honorable Lakota warrior by wearing a white man’s gown, and not my tribe’s regalia?”

The district already pay tribute to its Native graduates during commencement, allowing them to wear eagle feathers and plumes, and have star quilts in their seats, and including a drummer, a Lakota prayer and an honoring ceremony.

Stay tuned.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Gwen Florio, Lakota, Native American culture and tradition, Native American news, Oelrichs High School, Pine Ridge High School, Red Cloud Indian School

Shannon County, S.D., home to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, typically gets noticed for being one of the poorest counties in the nation. However, in election years, there’s a different focus – the county’s generally Democratic voting bloc can swing a close race. Past years have featured allegations of election fraud. This year, the U.S. Justice Department is trying to ensure things go smoothly – and fairly. Here’s the entire story from the Associated Press:

The federal Justice Department says it has reached an agreement with South Dakota’s Shannon County to help Native American voters.

The agreement requires the county to provide election materials and information in Lakota for voters who speak that language, and to have trained bilingual election officials at polling sites.

The agreement also ensures compliance with various other provisions of the Help America Vote Act, which is aimed at helping minority voters in jurisdictions determined by the Census Bureau to have a substantial population of minority-language residents.

Shannon County includes much of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Four of the five county commissioners are members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.

Tags: 2010 elections, buffalo post, Gwen Florio, HAVA, Help America Vote Act, Lakota, Oglala Sioux Tribe, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, S.D., Shannon County, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Justice Department

The issue of Native-themed sports mascots has been much in the news lately, most recently with the ongoing controversy over a decision to end the University of North Dakota’s use of the Fighting Sioux mascot. (See yesterday’s post here.)

Students at the University of Colorado-Denver have been paying attention, and are weighing in on the side of ending all use of such mascots.

“It’s just blatantly racist when you have teams that are called, you know, the savages,” Charles Panke, a Lakota Sioux descendant, tells Denver’s 9News, here. (Watch a video of the newcast here.)

Panke dismisses claims that such mascots actually honor Native people. “You don’t honor somebody by doing these tomahawk chops that are not part of any Native American culture whatsoever or even doing war whoops or things like that,” he says.

So Panke and others in the Ethnic Studies department created the “I am not a Mascot” video. They’re going to post it to Facebook and YouTube, but we haven’t found it there yet; when we do, we’ll post it.

Darius Lee Smith, with the Colorado Indian Education Foundation, points out that Colorado has nearly 20 schools that use Indian mascots, and of course there are many more around the country.

And he applauds the ethnic make-up of the students who made the video. “”The majority of the individuals are Non-native. I think that’s why this project is so important.”

He wants the Colorado High School Activities Association to push schools to change such logos and mascots, just as the National Collegiate Athletic Association has done nationally.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Colorado High School Activities Association, Colorado Indian Education Foundation, Cultural insensitivity, Darius Lee Smith, Ethnic Studies Department, Fighting Sioux, Gwen Florio, Lakota, National Collegiate Athletic Association, Native American news, NCAA, Team nicknames, University of Colorado Denver, University of North Dakota

Peter Hill says he knew two words of Lakota – tipi and hau – when he moved to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Now he teaches the Lakota language. As Kayla Gahagan of the Rapid City, S.D, Journal tells it, here:

Two words to fluency was a long, hard fight, he said. It took seven years, books, dictionaries, living with a Native family and a desire so intense it bordered on obsession.

“I looked under every nook and cranny,” he said. “It was an uphill battle.”

The mastery of the language as an outsider gives him unique authority in the classroom.

He has no problem urging his high school students to learn a language they have a historical, spiritual and ancestral connection to, when he took the initiative to learn it on his own without any of that.

Hill, who now teaches at Red Cloud Indian School, moved to Pine Ridge and taught social studies. He thought he’d pick up the language simply by living on the reservation. But, he says, “Kids who are fluent speakers are a rarity, a diamond,” he said.

Still, he persevered, saying that learning the language was especially necessary because of his status as a visitor.

And, he says, there’s another reason: It’s critical that people both learn Lakota, and share it.

“The language is so critically endangered I’m almost in denial about it,” he tells Gahagan.

This is Gahagan’s second story recently about the Lakota language. Read our post about her previous story about efforts to preserve Lakota, here. It has a link to a video where you can learn Lakota words.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Gwen Florio, Lakota, Native American news, native languages, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Red Cloud Indian School

Only between 5 percent to 15 percent of enrolled members of the Oglala Lakota Tribe are fluent speakers of their native language, and most of those are older than 50. It’s an old story in Indian Country.

In this story in the Rapid City Journal, Kayla Gahagan tells of a nonprofit group on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation called Oceti Wakan that is trying to preserve the language.

“A culture is kept by the language in the deepest sense,” says Cindy Catch, director of the Oceti Wakan. “It formulates how one sees the world.”

Catch says it’s a hopeful sign that 41 percent of almost 9,000 households surveyed in 2007 reported having one Lakota speaker.

Gahagan talks to numerous elders who see language as a way to preserve culture and counter the pernicious influence of drugs, alcoholism and violence among the tribe’s young people:

Mildred Alkrie, a Manderson elder who speaks fluent Lakota, talks about the reservation with pride and disdain.

“I hit that Wounded Knee hill and I’m home, free at last,” she said. “We look out for each other.”

It’s home, and it’s hard.

“It’s paradise, with no civilization, no laws,” she says, tossing a thick black braid of hair behind her shoulder.

Alkrie speaks out on issues of tribal corruption, drugs and alcohol, and works to feed poverty-stricken elderly and the homeless. People feel torn, she said.

“They want to be Indian, but they don’t want to speak the language,” she said.

The link to the story will also lead you to a video of Lakota words.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Gwen Florio, Lakota, Language preservation, Manderson, Native American news, Native language, Oceti Wakan, Oglala Lakota, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Red Cloud Indian School, Wounded Knee

Gerald “Jerry” Mohatt’s resume hits one high point after another in relation to Native American and Alaskan Native education.

Mohatt, who was 69, headed the Center for Alaska Native Health Research at the time of his death this week in Fairbanks. He previously was the dean of the College of Human and Rural Development and College of Rural Alaska, and he founded what is now Sinte Gleska University on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

He also helped develop the College of Rural Alaska, turning it from a snail mail operation to an electronic program.

Mostly, Mohatt’s friends and colleagues tell Mary Beth Smetzer of the Fairbanks News Miner: “He was a good man.”

“He’s recognized nationally for his work with Alaska Natives and other indigenous people and on top of that he is the best man I ever knew, and the best friend I ever had,” says Ralph Gabrielli, director of the Alaska Native Studies and Rural Development department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

A professor of psychology, Mohatt earned his doctorate degree in community clinical psychology and learning environments from Harvard University in 1978, and a master’s degree in psychology from St. Louis University. He was tri-lingual, speaking English, Lakota and French.

Diana Campbell, who works at Center for Alaska Native Health Research as a communications specialist, tells Smetzer that Mohatt’s interest and focus always was “What is right about Alaska Natives, not what is wrong.”

“One thing that characterized his whole career was a commitment to social justice and self-determination to American Indians and Alaska Native people,” says Bert Boyer, who has worked closely with Mohatt for 12 years and is now acting director of CANHR.

“He was a person of great integrity who committed his life to service of others, a person of great wisdom who people often turned to for advice and counsel. He was a great support to many people.”

Diana Campbell, who works at CANHR as a communications specialist, tells Smetzer that Mohatt’s interest and focus always was “What is right about Alaska Natives, not what is wrong.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: Alaska Native Studies, Alaska Native Studies and Rural Development, Alaska Natives, buffalo post, Center for Alaska Native Health Researc, College of Rural Alaska, Gerald Mohatt, Harvard University, Lakota, Native American news, Rosebud Indian Reservation, Sinte Gleska University, St. Louis University, University of Alaska Fairbanks

The Lakota Nation Invitational high school basketball tournament in Rapid City, S.D., that starts tomorrow offers education as well as athletics.

The event featuring 16 boys’ teams and 16 girls’ teams is expected to attract 10,000 people. (We’ve posted video from last year’s grand entry to get everyone in the LNI mood.)

ROTC groups, business students and others will also make the trip along with the teams, and can participate in educational workshops and tribal business meetings, according to this Rapid City Journal story.

The Invitational’s Web site lists events such as a Language Bowl, a business plan competition, storytelling, art show and hand games.

A gathering involving so many young people is a natural place to host events such as suicide-prevention workshops, says Zonya Franklin of the Flandreau Indian School.

“Almost every reservation has had to deal with suicides, and they are mostly young people,” Franklin says. “I have counseled kids from Standing Rock area who have lost friends and relatives to suicide.”

So that’s the serious part of the tournament. We’ll update with the fun part as the week progresses and the final contenders emerge!

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Lakota, Lakota Nation Invitational, Native American news, Native American sports