Here‘s a heartwarming story about Four Rivers Drum, and their experiences when they were asked to be the drop-in drum at the Virginia Beach Parks and Recreation Powwow, which attracts about 10,000 people.

Vince Schilling, Indian Country Today correspondent, explains the group thusly:

Four Rivers Native American Drum started in the mid 1990s with just four drummers and singers and has grown to 19 members. The group played without a name at their first five powwows and locals referred to them as the “no-name drum.” They eventually named themselves Four Rivers because of their location on the Virginia Peninsula. In order for members to perform at an event, they must cross one of the four rivers that surround them.

Michael Cloud-Butler, Ojibwe, second singer and drummer, says the powwow has been held since the 1990s and has helped Virginia Beach understand Native culture.

“When the city started, they knew very little about Native American culture – it takes several years to learn everything,” he says.

But with the most recent powwow, he says, “It was a comfortable feeling today – and to have visited several times as a drum group – it is like a hometown powwow because we live here.”

Tags: buffalo post, Four Rivers Drum, Gwen Florio, Native American news, Native culture and tradition, Ojibwe, Powwow, Virginia Beach, Virginia Beach Parks and Recreation Powwow

Leech Lake tribal attorney Frank Bibeau, left, and legal department staffer Dale Green view a map of the affecting impacting Ojibwe in Bemidji , Minn. The Leech Lake and White Earth bands are gearing up to reassert hunting and fishing rights they say are guaranteed in an 1855 treaty covering much of northern Minnesota. (AP Photo/Minnesota Public Radio, Tom Robertson)

It concerns claims by the Leech Lake and White Earth bands of Ojibwe that 19th-century treaties guarantee their hunting and fishing rights. To prove their point, they say they’ll fish “illegally” one day on Lake Bemidji before the walleye season opens May 15. The two bands have about 30,000 members.

It’s not the first time this has happened. Other Ojibwe bands have staged similar actions, and there’s been violence as a result. These bands are announcing their intentions ahead of time in hopes of avoiding that.

The Ojibwe have legal precedent for their claim. A decade ago, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe won a similar – and highly controversial – claim in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case when they asserted their rights to spear walleye in northern Wisconsin, MPR reports.

“We don’t want to end up like it was in Wisconsin. We don’t want to do it at night. We don’t want to be sneaking around,” Leech Lake tribal attorney Frank Bibeau tells Minnesota Public Radio News. “We don’t want the police out there with riot gear. We don’t want drunk people with beer cans, and having a whole bunch of people getting all mad about things. And we don’t want to have to waste a bunch of time and money fighting about that. That’s nonproductive for anybody.”

The bands plan to state their intentions in a letter to Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

“The letter that’s going to be going out here is — I want to say this politely. We’re not asking for their permission,” says Dale Green, who works for the Leech Lake band’s legal office. “We’re going to re-exert our rights.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Gwen Florio, Lake Bemidji, Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota Public Radio, Native American news, Ojibwe, Sovereignty, walleye, White Earth Band of Ojibwe

Dorene Wiese, president of the American Indian Association of Illinois, grew up hearing her grandparents’ stories and those of other Ojibwe tribal elders. But she realized, as she grew older, that crucial meaning was getting lost in translation, according to this Chicago Tribune column by Dawn Turner Trice.

Dorene Wiese

“But language is the thread that keeps culture together,” said Wiese. “Language is woven into our brains and psyches and memories. Today when we say the word “medicine” in English, we think Walgreens. But in Ojibwe, the word is “midewin” (pronounced ma-DAY-win), meaning ‘from the earth.’ It’s the healing that takes place directly from mother earth.

“That seems like a minor detail, a definition of a word, but when you look at how it means that medicine isn’t just something from a pill or a bottle but from a cornucopia of plants from the Creator, it makes a difference in the way you see it, feel it and remember it.”

Wiese is also part of a group that is trying to bring an American Indian Charter School to the Chicago pubic schools, that would also feature language instruction.

As she tells Trice. “I wanted to learn how to pray in Ojibwe. I wanted to learn how to tell our stories in Ojibwe. That’s the only way we can be whole again as a native people.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: American Indian Associatino of Illinois, buffalo post, Language preservation, Native American news, Ojibwe

CTVOlympics.com photo

First Nations vow that pride will be their Olympics legacy
Although there has been a lot of controversy regarding First Nations and the Vancouver Oympics, Justin George, chief of the Tsleil-Waututh, says the ultimate legacy will be pride, Canadian Press reports here. “The level of participation hands down is going to be the legacy in that it’s given us the opportunity to educate the world (about) who we are,” says George. The Tsleil-Waututh are one of the four bands on whose original territories the games are being held.

Deadline for Cobell settlement resolution is pushed back
TGTBT, as the shorthand goes. Too good to be true. The deadline for the necessary congressional approval of the multi-billion-dollar settlement in the landmark Cobell case over mismanaged Indian trust money has been pushed back to Feb. 28, according to this Indian Country Today story. After decades of mismanagement and squandered funds, another few weeks probably doesn’t matter. But still.

Interior secretary calls summit with tribes over Cape Cod wind project
U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has scheduled a meeting for Wednesday in Washington with proponents of a wind power project off Cape Cod, the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette reports here. Opponents of the project also will be there, including members of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe. Last week, a ruling found that the project would interfere with the park’s traditional religious use of the site.

University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire to save Council Oaks Tree
The historic Council Oaks Tree at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire won’t have to be chopped down to make way for a new student union after all. The tree is on the school seal, and the original – the present one is a replacement – is believed to be the site of peace talks between the Dakota Sioux and Ojibwe tribes, the AP reports here.

A little haggis with your fry bread?
We can’t top this BBC lede, so we’ll just repeat it verbatim: An extraordinary link between Scotland and a Native American Indian tribe is set to take centre stage at an International Clan gathering. Get the story here.

Gwen Florio

Tags: 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Aquinnah Wampanoag, buffalo post, Cherokee, Cobell v. Salazar, Council Oaks Tree, Dakota Sioux, Elouise Cobell, First Nations, Native American news, Ojibwe, Tsleil-Waututh, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

Cody Star in 2005. (Winnipeg Free Press photo)

First Nations artist Cody Starr, a member of the Little Black River First Nation, was beaten to death on the reserve on New Year’s Day, the Winnipeg Free Press reports here.

Bad enough that a promising artist was cut down so young – he was only 23 – even worse that Starr thought he had left behind a life of violence and gangs when he turned to his art.

“I was just tired of it, it was a full-time job with those people,” Starr said back in 2005. Good things came his way as a result.

He was commissioned to paint a mural on the side of a youth agency, and his work was extremely popular.

Stephen Wilson, executive director of Graffiti Art Programming, says Starr “sold a lot of paintings. We couldn’t keep them in stock.”

Two men from Little Black River face charges in his death, Manitoba’s first this year.

Services for Starr are being held today.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Cody Starr, First Nations, Graffiti Art Programming, Little Black River First Nation, Native American Art, Native American news, Ojibwe

Drilling at Two Shields Butte on the Fort Berthold (N.D.) Reservation. (Department of Interior photo)

Fort Berthold questions refinery plan
An oil refinery proposed for the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota would be the first of its kind built in the country in more than four decades. The refinery, to be built on Three Affiliated Tribes trust land, would use pre-refined oil from Canadian tar sands, making it non-air polluting, according to this Bismarck (N.D.) Tribune story. Tribal elder Tony Mandan favors the refinery – but with some qualifications. He wants the reservation’s own oil, not Canadian oil, refined there, and he wants environmental guarantees. “Jobs are not most important. Health is most important,” he says.

Foxwoods: “The wonder and the fall”
That’s the headline on this Boston Globe examination of the recent financial problems at the Mashantucket Western Pequot Tribal Nation’s Foxwoods casino. Foxwoods led the way to casino wealth for some tribes; now, it stands as testimony to these ominous financial times. “The casino helped bring this tribe together,” says Debbie Frankovitch, 55, a Pequot who has lived on the reservation all her life. “Now, the casino is a big embarrassment. It’s just a lot of greed.”

Fossils, birds, critters and … Indians?
Oh, we think not! And neither do Native American professors, students and others who spoke to the University of Michigan’s Exhibit Museum of Natural History about its dioramas, according to this Indian Country Today story. “We are living, breathing, contemporary human beings,” Margaret Noori, a professor of Ojibwe language and literature, reminded museum officials – who agreed. The dioramas depicting Indian people in ancient and colonial times, will be removed.

Museum refurbishes Ojibwe portraits
Here’s the counterpart to the University of Michigan museum story – this one’s from Minnesota. The Duluth News-Tribune reports here (registration required) that several Ojibwe-themed turn-of-the-century Eastman Johnson works maintained by the St. Louis County Historical Society have been refurbished, to the tune of $40,000. Exhibit curator Linda Grover says the turn-of-the-century portraits are treasured by area Native people. “They were drawn in a time right after the reservations had been established. It was a time of change and adjustment. Times were difficult in many ways.

Ground broken on new First Nations reserve in Canada
Also from Indian Country Today, here, the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations people broke ground on a new reserve on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Tla-o-qui-aht council member Elmer Frank calls it a “ground-breaking groundbreaking” as he explains that “it’s the first time the government of Canada has allowed lands to come out of a park, it’s the largest single funding Indian Affairs has ever done in the Pacific Region, and it returns a part of our homeland almost 100 years after it was taken from us.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Eastman Johnson, First Nations, Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, Foxwoods, Mashantucket Western Pequot Tribal Nation, Native American news, Ojibwe, St. Louis County Historical Society, Three Affiliated Tribes, Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations, University of Michigan Exhibit Museum of Natural History

Leo Brisbois (Hamline University photo)

Brisbois is no stranger to accomplishment, Mark Stodghill reports: He was a three-year starting goalie for the Hibbing High School hockey team and one of Minnesota’s top prep cross-country runners about 30 years ago. He went on to earn a law degree and serve as an Army captain on the staff of the senior legal adviser for the four-star general com-manding U.S. Army forces in Europe.

But Brisbois, 47, who spent childhood summers with his grandmother on the White Earth Reservation and now lives in the Twin Cities suburb of Eagan, says all of that recedes in comparison to his present task:

“It means I’m standing on the shoulders of every Indian person, lawyer or non-lawyer, who has struggled over the years to maintain their cultural identity and a place in society at large while providing opportunities for their children and their children’s children,’’ he said. “So I’m not going to let them down. That’s what this means to me.’’

And, he has a mission. He’s endowed a scholarship fund at Hamline University’s School of Law in St. Paul for first-year American Indian law students.

“The reality is, there are 22,000 licensed attorneys actively practicing in Minnesota and less than 100 are members of the American Indian Bar Association,’’ he said. “That puts it in perspective, and the fact that I’m the first person of Indian heritage and descent in this position is why I take this so seriously.’’

Gwen Florio

Tags: Add new tag, buffalo post, Hamline University School of Law, Minnesota Bar Association, Native American news, Ojibwe, White Earth Reservation

David Treuer (DavidTreuer.com photo)

At least, that’s the way it was for too many years, says writer David Treuer in this Salon piece, in which Treuer – who is Ojibwe from Minnesota’s Leech Lake Reservation – ventures into the world of a casino-wealthy tribe.

Specifically, he goes to the new Morongo Casino, Resort and Spa in Palm Springs, run by the Morongo Band of Mission Indians. Treuer, who’s written three novels and a collection of essays on Native American literature, uses the trip as an occasion to riff on the evolution of reservations.

But Indians, he writes, “(quite annoyingly) refused to die. Instead, we got stronger. We bred. We survived. And in many places, despite the crushing poverty and lack of opportunity, we’ve managed to thrive,” he writes. And, once he and his wife, who grew up on New York’s Tonawanda Reservation, have settled into the luxury of the Morongo casino, he marvels “that we (Indians, that is) actually own all this – not my wife, of course, but this, this casino. We own it when we are really expected only to be two things, dead or poor. I thought to myself as I settled into our room (which was as beautiful as the tower that encased it): ‘I just might win after all.’”

The man can write. To find out more about Treuer and his books, check out his Web site, here.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Indian gaming, Leech Lake Reservation, Morongo Band of Mission Indians, Morongo Casino, Native American news, Ojibwe, Resort & Spa, Tonawanda Reservation

Micki Free

Crystal Shawanda

Native Music Rocks bills itself as the first major cross-country tour of Native musicians, playing country, rock, folk, reggae, traditional … you name it. It’s sponsored by the Seminole Tribes of Florida and Hard Rock International – that’s why you’ll be able to get Native Music Rocks gear in Hard Rock Cafes. Among those involved are Grammy and Native American Music Award winner Micki Free, who is Cherokee and Comanche, and country’s music’s Crystal Shawanda, who is Wikwemikong Ojibwe. Here’s a video of an reznet interview with Shawanda:

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Cherokee, Comanche, Native American news, Native music, Ojibwe