By Talli Nauman, Native Sun News, Health & Environment Editor:

LEAD — On Saturday, July 9, Rosebud Sioux tribal member Connie Giroux donned a miner’s hardhat and lamp, safety glasses, battery belt, steel-toed boots, and a reflective vest. Then she took an elevator ride down a shaft through granite rock to a cavern 4,850 feet below the earth’s surface.

It was not strange to her. She does it practically every day in her job as a supervisor at the Sanford Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL).

What made July 9 noteworthy is that her work was different because of Neutrino Day. She was conducting the first high-definition video conferencing from the depths with visitors up top who attended the fourth annual free science fair.

Giroux could explain to them that her usual work is part of a pretty small crew of a privileged few who are conducting some pretty big world class experiments down there – most conspicuously in the Majorana Demonstrator Project and the Large Underground Xenon Detector (LUX).

As a chapter closed in the international race for space last week with the scheduling of NASA’s last shuttle launch, a chapter opened in the comparatively new global race for the underground, in which Sanford lab is conducting the two experiments. One is to characterize neutrinos and the other is to prove the existence of so-called dark matter.

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Tags: connie giroux, mining, neutrino day, Rosebud Sioux, sanford deep underground science and engineering laboratory

Today’s Rapid City Journal has the story:

The Rosebud Sioux Tribe in south central South Dakota is among eight sites chosen nationally for a U.S. Department of Justice initiative addressing the problem of children being exposed to violence as either victims or witnesses.

Phase one of the program called Defending Childhood provides planning grants of around $160,000 to each of the eight demonstration sites. Four of the sites will be chosen for phase two when their plans will be implemented.

The U.S. Attorney for South Dakota, Brendan Johnson, said the grant reinforces the universal view that tribal communities should become safer for children.

Tags: Brendan Johnson, buffalo post, child abuse, children and violence, Defending Childhood, Justice Department, Native American news, Rosebud Reservation, Rosebud Sioux

Indian reservations are in desperate need of affordable, safe housing, officials from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation testified during a U.S. Senate field hearing in Rapid City, S.D., this week.

Kevin Woster of the Rapid City Journal was there and wrote the following:

Housing shortages mix with gang activities and violence to damage the fabric of society on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in ways that demand more federal funding and reasoned cooperation from Washington, D.C., Paul Iron Cloud of the Oglala housing program said during a joint hearing of the Senate committees on Indian Affairs and Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Housing programs struggle not just because of financial pressures but also because of increasing problems with gangs, suicide and violence that make housing shortfalls even worse, he said.

Iron Cloud testified that “The growing prevalence of this violence is really attacking and destroying the social structure of our reservations, creating unacceptable injuries, death and fear in our communities and undercutting our ability to protect our units and tenants. It is in many ways a reservation-wide situation, but Oglala Sioux (Lakota) Housing, as the primary landlord on the reservation, is uniquely impacted.”

The hearing was called by Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and attended by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, who also stopped Tuesday at the Rosebud Sioux Reservation.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Banking Housing and Urban Affairs, buffalo post, Gwen Florio, Housing and Urban Development, HUD, Indian Affairs Committee, Indian reservations, Native American news, Oglala Sioux, Paul Iron Cloud, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Rosebud Sioux, Shaun Donovan, Tim Johnson, Tribal housing, U.S. Senate

This, from the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal:

MISSION — The secretary for Housing and Urban Development is scheduled to tour the Rosebud Sioux Reservation on Tuesday to see projects operating with the help of HUD money and the dire housing conditions faced by members of the tribe.

Shaun Donovan will tour the area with Sen. Tim. Johnson, D-S.D.

On Wednesday, Donovan is scheduled to give testimony in Rapid City during a joint field hearing of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

Tags: Housing and Urban Development, Rosebud Indian Reservation, Rosebud Sioux, Senate Banking Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Shaun Donovan, Tim Johnson

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

When we put up this post yesterday about MTV stars Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt’s nonsense of choosing Native American-style names as part of some sort of “spiritual” reawakening, we thought that would be the end of it – just another cringe-inducing moment of cultural insensitivity.

But this particular Speidi story won’t go away.

After the couple, who star in “The Hills” reality soap, were criticized by a representative of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the National Indian Education Association. Pratt fired back.

He tells TMZ here that the couple “would like to invite any Native American tribal leaders to meet with us to help us further understand their culture” … but we’re guessing they’ll only do it if cameras are rolling.”

At which point, we’re removing our own metaphorical cameras from the pair, we hope for good.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Cultural insensitivity, Gwen Florio, Heidi Montag, MTV, National Indian Education Association, Native American news, Rosebud Sioux, Spencer Pratt, The Hills

Here’s a problem that’s ripe for attention. Cousins Kevin and Richard Abourezk, enrolled members of the Rosebud and Oglala Sioux tribes, respectively, have started a blog called War Pony Express.

Part of their aim is “to get people talking about predatory lending by car dealers to Native American buyers and plenty of other topics.”

We don’t know how that problem plays out in other states, but in Montana, bills that would have regulated such lending practices, specifically so-called payday loans, got shot down in the last two legislative sessions.

Native people testified at committee hearings in Montana, but failed to sway lawmakers. Now a citizens group is trying to get a ballot measure passed.

We’ll be watching the War Pony Express with great interest, and hope you will, too. Suggestions there may serve as a model for measures in other states.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Gwen Florio, Kevin Abourezk, Native American news, Oglala Sioux, Payday loans, Predatory lending, Richard Abourezk, Rosebud Sioux, War Pony Express

The Associated Press just moved this report on tribes buying back their lands. In order to compile it, the AP had to submit a Freedom of Information Act to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The documents that reporter Timberly Ross received showed tribes have bought back nearly a million acres of their own land. This is the kind of reporting we like. Here’s the story in full:

By Timberly Ross of the Associated Press
OMAHA, Neb. – Native American tribes tired of waiting for the U.S. government to honor centuries-old treaties are buying back land where their ancestors lived and putting it in federal trust.

Native Americans say the purchases will help protect their culture and way of life by preserving burial grounds and areas where sacred rituals are held. They also provide land for farming, timber and other efforts to make the tribes self-sustaining.

Tribes put more than 840,000 acres — or roughly the equivalent of the state of Rhode Island — into trust from 1998 to 2007, according to information The Associated Press obtained from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs under the Freedom of Information Act.

Those buying back land include the Winnebago, who have put more than 700 acres in eastern Nebraska in federal trust in the past five years, and the Pawnee, who have 1,600 acres of trust land in Oklahoma. Land held in federal trust is exempt from local and state laws and taxes, but subject to most federal laws.

Three tribes have bought land around Bear Butte in South Dakota’s Black Hills to keep it from developers eager to cater to the bikers who roar into Sturgis every year for a raucous road rally. About 17 tribes from the Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and Oklahoma still use the mountain for religious ceremonies.

Emily White Hat, a member of South Dakota’s Rosebud Sioux, said the struggle to protect the land is about “preservation of our culture, our way of life and our traditions.”

“All of it is connected,” White Hat said. “With your land, you have that relationship to the culture.”

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Tags: buffalo post, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Citizens Equal Rights Alliance, Land buyback, Native American news, Oneida, Pawnee, Rosebud Sioux, treaty rights, White Earth Land Recovery Project, Winnebago, Winona LaDuke

Johnny Cash used Ira Hayes ballad to make anti-war, pro-Native point with Nixon
Here‘s a bittersweet story about Johnny Cash’s visit to the White House to sing for President Richard Nixon. The president suggested some of his favorites like “Okie from Muskogee.” Cash responded instead with protest songs, among them “The Ballad of Ira Hayes.” As the Salon story says, radio stations didn’t want to play the song about the Iwo Jima hero that highlighted the plight of Native Americans, but Cash counted it among his favorites. More to the point, it tells how that song came to be among Cash’s repertoire after a meeting with protest balladeer Peter LaFarge, son of Oliver LaFarge, whose tragic Navajo love story “Laughing Boy” won the Pulitzer Prize.

Former Rosebud Sioux official questions cost of D.C. trip
A former member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council is questioning the travel expenses of 10 tribal members who flew to Washington, D.C., for last week’s White House Tribal Nations Conference. “It is kind of a shock to see that 10 of our elected officials traveled to Washington, D.C., when tribal paychecks were bouncing on the 30th of October, 2009,” Ron Valandra tells the Rapid City Journal here.

Navajo Times: Multimillion-dollar slush fund; possible AG probe
The Navajo Times continues its scrutiny of the tribe’s finances with this story by Marley Shebala reporting that more than $35 million went into the discretionary funds of the Navajo Nation Council, speaker’s office and president’s office from 2005 to 2009. And Jason Begay writes here that the attorney general has found enough information in the classified reports on President Joe Shirley Jr. to warrant hiring a special prosecutor to further investigate.

Senate committee to focus on gangs, drug smuggling in Indian Country
The Senate Indian Affairs Committee is holding an oversight hearing this week to focus on the problem of gangs and drug smuggling. Those issues are hitting some reservations hard as criminals realize that the tangle of legal jurisdiction on reservations, coupled with inadequate resources for law enforcement, can make it easier for them to operate there. The hearing will be webcast.

Pennsylvania sanctuary honors white buffalo
Seven Native American elders took part in a ceremony near Pittsburgh yesterday to thank owners of the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort for establishing a sanctuary for a rare white buffalo and a black buffalo born at a nearby zoo, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The white buffalo, which was born Nov. 12, 2006, was given the Lenape name Kenahkihinen — translated in English as “watch over us.”

Young readers’ book tells story of abandoned Kootenai warrior and his survival
Salish Kootenai College in Montana has published a children’s book that tells the true story of a young Kootenai man, alone and without supplies or tools, abandoned in the middle of hostile enemy territory on the Great Plains during the 18th century, and how he turned to the land to survive. The story, written the seventh-grade level, was told by the late Kootenai elder Adeline Mathias and is illustrated by Kootenai artists Francis Auld and Debbie JosephThe Char-Koosta news tells how to order it, here.

Gwen Florio

Tags: "Ballad of Ira Hayes", Ira Hayes, Iwo Jima, Joe Shirley Jr., Johnny Cash, Navajo Nation, Rosebud Sioux, Salish Kootenai College, Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Tribal Nations Conference, White buffalo